Christmas 2 January 3rd, 2010

Christmas 2
January 3rd, 2010

In today’s Gospel we come face to face with the dark side of Christmas.
It is the first instance of many during Jesus’ life when human violence tried to destroy the presence of God in our midst.
The story of Herod and the flight into Egypt is the first hint that the Christmas story leads step by step to the Cross.

Why, after all, did the angel come to Joseph in the first place? Because King Herod, a Jew but a jpuppet ruler bought and paid for by the Romans, has given orders that all the baby boys in and around Bethlehem should be killed, because he wants this baby “king of the Jews” the wise men told him about to be exterminated.
Because of a vicious ruler who is willing to do anything at all to retain his power, Jesus becomes a refugee child. Jesus is the precious bundle of new life his parents will do anything to protect.
When I first read today’s Gospel, I was struck by one phrase, one phrase repeated twice.
When the angel came to him in warning, Joseph, the Gospel says, “got up, took the child and his mother, and went to Egypt.”
And when the dream angel told him he could take his family back home, Joseph “got up, took the child and his mother” and went back to Israel.
He didn’t question, he didn’t argue, he didn’t beg for time He got up and did what he has to do to keep Mary and Jesus safe.


Fleeing in fear for your life isn’t pretty; it’s not the stuff of Christmas cards. A California poet, William Everson, who knows his desert and has seen first hand the plight of economic refugees from Mexico, describes the “flight into the desert” this way:
The last settlement . . .





Cold and acrid and black.

It’s so easy to indulge in the Christmas story as a lovely bit of fantasy, G-rated, suitable for children and a relief for adults. But today’s Gospel takes us by the shoulders and turns us firmly back toward the world as it really is.
Think of all the fathers around the world, even this Christmastide, even this morning, who don’t need an angel to come to them in a dream to know that they too have to “get up,” take their children, and flee across national or territorial borders for safety.
Think of fathers in Afghanistan this morning after the volleyball bombing—wondering, where can they take their families where might they be safe? Fathers in the border regions of Pakistan—where can they be safe? Fathers in Palestine—where can my children grow up safe?
Fathers in all the war zones of the world or in the places where tyranny creates a false peace, telling themselves, “I must get up and take my wife and children and go . . . where?” Somewhere—is there a place?—where bombs don’t fall from the sky or burst out of car or explode from the earth itself.
No angel comes in a dream to tell them, but, like Joseph, they don’t hesitate, they get up, hold their wives hands, wrap their babies in blankets, and go.

Joseph got up and did what he needed to do.
The angel didn’t make him safe. God didn’t make him and his family safe, didn’t throw a cordon of fire or swords around them to protect them.
God needed Joseph’s collaboration. God needed Joseph that night in Bethlehem to spring up out of bed, help Mary throw together what little was absolutely needed for the flight.
Joseph couldn’t just lie there and pray and God would make it all right. In fact, the paradox, the total mystery of Christmas, is that the One Joseph needed to save was the Savior himself.

This is an amazing God we have!
To give himself to us in the pure vulnerability of a child. To deliver himself over to the care of Mary and Joseph, mere humans like ourselves.
To rely on us for food and safety.
To give himself over into a this terrible mixed up world where innocents are killed, where good men and women are targets of violence.
And yet where men and women are willing to say “yes” to God and “get up” and collaborate with God and with each other to make a world in which children aren’t threatened, oppressors don’t win, and families can live together in peace and safety.
Where you can make a difference, and so can I and how we live matters.

Over the campfire the desert moon
Slivers the west, too chaste and cleanly
To mean hard luck. The man rattles the skillet
To take the raw edge off the silence;
The woman lifts up her heart, the Infant
Knuckles the generous breast, and feeds.