Christmas 2
Mt
2:13-23
1/7/14
We live today in a culture of sound
bites and short quotes. When we watch
the news – whether on TV or in brief videos on the internet – we hear very
short statements by those in the news. We
encounter an even more extreme form of this in social media. On Facebook and Twitter one sees pictures of
individuals from different areas of life with brief quotes next to them. These items invite us to “share” or “retweet”
them so that others will see them too.
By this means a quote that puts a public figure in a very positive or
negative light can “go viral” and spread all over the internet.
Of course, a short little quote like
this doesn’t give us any context. We
learn nothing about the setting in which the statement appeared or was
spoken. We don’t hear what preceded or
followed the statement. We just hear a
brief statement in complete isolation.
The problem is that communication
does not take place by isolated, individual words or statements. Instead, communication takes place when these
individual words or statements are set in relation to other words or
statements. It is the interplay of these individual items that allows the whole
to communicate the message we are trying to share.
When you take a statement out of
context, it is now possible to twist the meaning. It is possible to make the speakers or
writers appear to be saying something they are not. It is possible to make them seem far more harsh
or condemning than they really are.
At first glance, it seems that
Matthew is guilty of taking a statement out of context in our Gospel lesson
this morning. He quotes a verse from the
prophet Jeremiah and says that it was fulfilled in the slaughter of the
children of Bethlehem. Yet when we look at the setting of that one
verse – its context – we find that it is the only negative statement in a
chapter filled with hope about God’s coming saving action.
Our text picks up this morning after
the visit of the magi – the event we will remember tomorrow as we celebrate the
Feast of the Epiphany our Lord (incidentally, just a reminder, the time for
that service is 7:00 p.m. tomorrow night).
The magi had gone to King Herod the Great with a question: “Where is he
who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have
come to worship him.”
Viewed from a purely worldly
perspective, Herod the Great was a remarkable figure. Herod wasn’t a Jew, he was an Idumean – a
descendant from the nation of Edom. Because Palestine
was in the eastern half of the empire, Herod kept finding himself having to
support the leader who turned out to be on the loser in the civil wars that
racked the Roman Empire during the second half
of the first century B.C.
Herod found himself on the losing
side – and yet, he always managed to ingratiate himself to the winner so that
he kept his position. The man was a
survivor. And he not only survived, but
he thrived. He was able to add to the
area he controlled and by the end his life his kingdom was roughly equivalent
in size to the one ruled by king David.
Herod
was a survivor because he was ruthless.
He thought nothing of killing several of his own children whom he considered
to be potential threats.
Herod was no man of faith. He wasn’t someone who lived according to
God’s Word or was looking for the arrival of his Messiah. However, Herod was also not a man who left
things to chance. And so when these
foreigners showed up claiming to have a seen a star announcing the birth of a
Jewish king, he acted. First, he told
the magi to bring him word when they found the child. And when it became clear that they weren’t
going to return to him, he took action to make sure no Bethlehem baby was going
to take away his throne. He ordered that
all the male children two years and younger in Bethlehem and its vicinity be
killed – just to be sure.
However, something far bigger than
Herod the Great and his petty kingship under Roman rule was going on. When the magi had departed an angel appeared
to Joseph in a dream and commanded, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and
flee to Egypt,
and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child,
to destroy him.” Joseph obeyed and at night he took the child and his mother
and left for Egypt. Matthew tells us, “This was to fulfill what
the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’”
God was not going to allow Herod to
destroy his saving plan. Quite the
opposite, in fact the flight to Egypt
becomes the means by which Jesus begins to take up the role of being “Israel reduced
to one.” He, the Son of God, takes the place
of the nation whom God had called his son in order to be what Israel was
supposed to be. He will pass through the
water in his baptism. He will wander in
the wilderness during his temptation.
Yet where Israel
failed, he will succeed and so he will be a light to the nations.
This is all true and is great
stuff. However, there is a part of the
story here that is impossible to overlook.
Jesus wasn’t in Bethlehem when Herod’s soldiers arrived. There were however, other children who were
present – and they were slaughtered.
Matthew tells us: Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet
Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel
weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no
more.’”
The presence of the Son of God in
this world causes other children to be killed. What do we think about
that? Naturally, we don’t like it. Our inclination is probably to turn an
accusing finger towards God. And it’s not as if this is the only time we feel
this way. We feel it when tragedy or
hardship strikes our life and God doesn’t do anything to prevent it. We feel it
when the Gospel itself becomes a source of tension in our relationships. We
feel it when what God’s word says about sexuality brings us into conflict with
our children and family members. These are all circumstances that lead us to
question God and even to feel resentment towards him.
As we listen to our text this
morning, it is very important that we pay attention to the way Matthew
introduces the verse. He says, “Then was
fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.” This differs from the previous quotation
which says, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out
of Egypt I called my son.’”
Like almost all of the fulfillment
quotations in Matthew, this statement about coming out of Egypt says that
God guided things for the purpose of fulfilling the Scripture. However, in the quotation about the children
we are told, “then was fulfilled.” It is
not that God caused this tragedy. Instead, it is the tragic outworking
of the presence of sin in the world. Evil is here, because sin is here. We must grapple with the reality that sin,
death and evil are the normal condition of a fallen, sinful world. They should not come as some sort of
surprise.
The important thing for us to note as
we ponder this text, is the location of Jesus the Son of God. He is here in this world filled with
sin, death and evil. And because
Jesus is here, Matthew’s quotation of the verse from Jeremiah is not taking
the statement out of context.
In Jeremiah 31, the prophet addresses
the Babylonian conquest and the forced exile of the people in 587 B.C. He speaks about the future and how God will
bring the people back. As I mentioned in the introduction to this sermon, the
verse quoted by Matthew is the only negative statement in the whole
chapter. Instead, it abounds with hope
about what God is going to do! And at
the end of the chapter God says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the
LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”
As the events in our text play out,
the incarnate Son of God is present in this world. He will leave Egypt
and enter into the waters of the Jordan. There in his baptism he will be anointed with
the Holy Spirit and be designated as the Servant of the Lord. He will go as the suffering Servant to the
cross. And in his trial and crucifixion
he will submit himself to the worst of the injustice and cruelty that our world
has to offer. He will take our sins upon
himself on the cross and receive the judgment of God against that sin in our
place. By that death he will begin the
new covenant. And then on the third day
he will rise from the dead as he begins the resurrection of the Last Day.
This is what God is in the process of
doing in our text. The events at Bethlehem fulfill
Jeremiah’s words because they are the evil that occur even as God is in the
process of bringing the salvation and the new covenant that Jeremiah describes.
The children killed at Bethlehem are usually
called the Holy Innocents and are often called the first flowers of the
martyrs. Their death reminds us that sin
and evil are still here in this fallen world. That is the same thing we experience in the
hardships and difficulties that we encounter.
However, they died because Jesus the
Christ was present in the world in order to fulfill God’s plan of salvation for
them and for all of us. And because
Jesus accomplished this – because he died on the cross and then rose from
the dead, we have the living hope of the new covenant. We live now knowing that the words of
Jeremiah 31 are true: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember
their sin no more.” We live now knowing that death has been defeated in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And because we know this, we have hope. We have a hope that is stronger than sin; it
is stronger than evil; it is stronger than death. It is stronger because it is founded upon the
crucified and risen Lord who has promised that he will come again in glory on
the Last Day in order to banish evil forever, and to give us resurrection life
in the new creation.
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