Kingdom Conditions (Matthew 5:1 - 12)

Last week, we looked at the set-up for all of Jesus' ministry.  He hears about John the Baptist's arrest--his betrayal, his handing-over--and instead of retaliating for John’s arrest, instead of calling down angels of heaven to rescue his colleague, he withdraws to a different region, and thus becomes the "man from Galilee." And he begins to preach the same sermon as John: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" and that's as it should be, because in a sense, Jesus is the continuation and--more--the fulfillment of John's prophetic line . . . and his calling of Peter and Andrew and James and John was the illustration of repentance--turn from your old ways, reorient yourselves to kingdom ways . . . in other words,  follow me . . . and as we look at Jesus' teachings about what that means, we should always remember the context that Matthew would have us know . . . namely that Jesus' teachings are a continuance and fulfillment of the Hebrew teachings, that Jesus' reign as King won't be like any violent, retributive king anyone had ever heard of, and that hovering, lurking always in the background is Jesus' own betrayal his own arrest, his own handing-over to be murdered on a cross.

Today we look at the beatitudes, the first section of the Sermon on the Mount.  And before we start looking at them individually, it's important to understand what they are--and also what they aren't.  They are, as their name indicates, beatitudes . . . blessings . . . a form that is not uncommon in the Bible and other ancient literature. But here--unlike in other parts of scripture--they're not moral exhortations, they aren't imperatives, they're not trying to tell us what to do, or how to behave.  Many times, they're preached that way . . . God's people should be meek, this logic goes, and if they are meek, then they get to inherit the earth.  God's people should show mercy to others, and if they do, they will be blessed by God showing mercy to them.  The beatitudes are preached as ideals, and if you reach them, you get a blessing--like a doggie-treat--as a reward from God.  But note that Jesus doesn't say any of this, he doesn't say see those grieving widows over there? Be like them and you'll be comforted. He simply says, flat out, that those who grieve are blessed, because they will be comforted. The beatitudes are pronouncements, declarations about the way things are in the Kingdom of God . . . the meek are blessed, whether it looks like it or not.

And why are they blessed? Because Jesus says so. Jesus is last in a long line of prophets, remember? And it's the job of prophets to be mouthpieces for God, to make God's pronouncements . . . and Jesus is more than that, isn't he? He is somehow the ultimate prophet, the Son of God himself, the fulfillment of all prophecy, and so not only are the peacemakers blessed because Jesus says they are, they're blessed by the fact that he says so. The action of Jesus saying it's so makes it so.  Remember?  In the beginning was the Word? And Jesus both is and partakes of that creative speech. And if this was clear to Matthew and his followers on the other side of the resurrection, it should be even doubly clear to us on the other side of the Trinity as well, where we proclaim that Jesus and God are somehow one and the same.

Well.  Now that we know what a beatitude is--and what it isn't--the only thing left is the word blessed itself--and if you look it up your Funk and Wagnall's--Greek version--you'll see that the Greek word it translates has a range of meanings, from "happy" to "fortunate" to "privileged" . . . but the meaning here is almost certainly "to be a recipient of divine favor."  It's no ordinary blessing, no ordinary warm-and-fuzzy like you might get when you see a baby smile . . . this is the real deal, the ultimate special edition . . . to be blessed is to have the favor of God laid on you.

And that simple fact is what makes the beatitudes so radical . . . it's a list of conditions that God blesses in this new Kingdom--which, you might recall, Jesus has proclaimed as being not too far away.  And these Kingdom conditions, these attitudes and attributes of God's oncoming reign are pretty surprising, especially to Matthew's readers in that day. Take the first one, for instance . . . "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . blessed are those who are not stuck on themselves, who aren't full of self-confidence, full of attitude . . . blessed are those who know that they're not the be all and end all of the universe, who know that it's ultimately God who's in charge.  So much for the take-charge kind-of-guy, huh?  Persons who are pronounced blessed are not those with healthy egos and a strong sense of self worth, they're not those who take pride in themselves . . . as Paul might say, they are those who boast only in the Lord, who realize deep down that their only identity and security is in God.

And of course, that wasn't exactly the way of the world back then, any more than it is now . . . the strongly self-confident got ahead then, just as they do now . . . "how to get ahead in six-easy lessons" parchments floated around the first century world, just as they do now, and the first step was be confident, look determined, take pride in who you are.  Nobody ever made the big bucks, or climbed that ladder of power and success by having a poor spirit . . . and even if you're literally poor, better not dress like it for a job interview . . .

And what about that blessed are the meek stuff?  Meekness never bought baby a new pair of shoes.  Meekness never made you second vice-president in charge of toadying up to the first vice-president.  Meekness never brought democracy to the Middle East, and are you starting to get the point?  Are you starting to see a trend? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven . . . blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth . . . and who is the King of the Kingdom of heaven?  Who is the ultimate ruler of this kingdom of God, which paradoxically will be on Earth?  Of course, it's the one doing the preaching, Jesus Christ himself . . . and if Jesus is the king, then it reverses all our expectations of kingship, of ruler-hood, doesn't it?  Those to whom the kingdom belongs--the meek, the poor in spirit--are the emblems, the markers of that reversal . . . the world thinks a ruler must be strong, must be confident, but in the kingdom—which let us not forget is already here—the reverse is true.  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed--as well--are those who mourn, in this coming kingdom of God, for they shall be comforted . . . those who lament the present condition of the earth, the desolation brought upon by over-use and exploitation, the turning of our rivers into running sewers and our fisheries into semi-arid deserts . . . the driving to extinction of thousands of species of God's created creatures . . . those who mourn and lament this will be comforted . . . those who lament the oppression of whole peoples, the exploitation of millions, the genocide and the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children for economic and military security of the killers . . .

There are many of us in this category, aren't there?  Deeply wounded, saddened by what we see in the world, by all the inequity and hunger that haunt the earth . . . for us, this is a word of hope, a Gospel word, a good-news word . . . and we can see that the beatitudes are not merely a collection, a list of unrelated attributes, without any internal rhyme or reason . . . those who mourn God's damaged creation, who lament the fighting and feuding and fussing are likely to be the same people who hunger and thirst for righteousness, or at least their kissing cousins . . . blessed are those who hunger and thirst for right-relationships between all in the world, for they will have their bellies filled and their thirst quenched . . .

And the same might be said for peacemakers, no? What drives peacemakers is a hunger and thirst for righteousness, it can't be material gain . . . the world certainly doesn't reward peacemakers very well, does it?  Just the opposite . . . war fattens the coffers of our global economy . . . corporations build the engines of war, they feed and equip the troops during the war, and they receive fat contracts to clean up after the war. Profits coming, during and going . . . no wonder war's so popular!

But not in the Kingdom of God . . . in the kingdom of God it’s the peacemakers who are blessed . . .  the ones who prevent wars are blessed, not those who profit from them. Blessed are the reconcilers, who make peace between warring factions . . . who heal conflict in churches, who get arguing parties to sit down at the table when all seems to be lost . . .            Blessed are the merciful, Jesus tells us, for they will receive mercy.  And Jesus uses the Greek word that refers to concrete acts of mercy rather than simply a merciful attitude . . . maybe he's thinking here of acts of mercy like that of his own earthly father who, against all the rules and norms and social morés of his culture, refused to put Mary away . . . maybe he's referring to those who forgive the debts and sins of others like God, whom Jesus called Abba, who forgives theirs as well . . . it's in that prayer he taught us . . . the merciful weren't necessarily well-regard in his day, and it's no different today . . . oh, we get sappy stories on Oprah about how good it feels to forgive the person who killed their daughter, as the killer's on the way to the gas-chamber . . . forgiveness is OK as long as it's tempered by retribution . . . but Jesus is the one who would not retaliate, would not use violence, to save John's or even his own life.

But the way of the world is retributive, it's the way of the world to reward arrogance, to reward ego, it's the way of the world to reward war, it's the way of the world to reward the forward, not the meek.  It's the way of the world to reward those who like the status quo, who are complacent, who think that they can't do anything so why bother, instead of those who mourn and lament the present, who hunger and thirst and work for righteousness.

But the kingdom . . . Ah!  In the kingdom . . . it is all different.  And that's the ultimate point of the beatitudes . . . each one adds to and reinforces a growing picture of how it is in the kingdom of heaven, which has come near . . . kingdom conditions are where the merciful are blessed, not stepped on, where peacemakers are honored, not usurped and barely tolerated, where the meek and the brokenhearted and those who are pure in heart, who keep their eyes on God instead of their bank accounts are rewarded rather than reviled and persecuted . . .

And by now you've probably figured out that I was being a bit disingenuous when I said that the beatitudes are pronouncements, declarations, not exhortations.  You can probably see that even though it's true, that they simply describe what the Kingdom is like, they do cast something of a moral spell, and they make me feel a little guilty about some of the ways I fall short . . . and that's good, because the beatitudes are the set-up for the rest of the sermon on the Mount . . . they draw the picture of what the kingdom is like, and the rest of the Sermon spins out the consequences, what it means for the church which, after all, is supposed to be the living embodiment of the coming and already-here kingdom.

But there’s one more word to be said about the beatitudes . . . well, one more word I’m going to say, anyway.  And that word is comfort.  Comfort!  Comfort, comfort ye my people, that is what the prophet Isaiah said, that that is what the Beatitudes delivers.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  And we all mourn, don’t we?  We mourn our lives the way we imagined them to be, our image of ourselves, carefully nurtured fed over the years, which often—not always, but often—comes crashing down around us.  We mourn what might have been and what never will be, we mourn the past, and our regrets that sometime seem to flow like water, like a never-ending stream. We mourn the church, both individual congregations and the Church in the world, as it and they change beyond recognition, as they aren’t the way they used to be.  And most of all, perhaps, most of all we mourn those who have gone before, and those whom we know will be here but a little time more.  Life slips away like the withering of the grass, our loved ones gone, too soon, too soon.  But there what remains, brothers and sisters, what remains, is the Word of God, and that Word today, is comfort.  Amen.

Called as Partners (Matthew 4:12 - 23)

     In the church, everyone talks about being called to do this, or called to do that, and that’s as it should be: call is an integral theological construct, especially in our theological tradition called “Reformed.”  We are called into singing in the choir, say, or, called to give so much per month—or week or year—to the church or called to ordained ministry, as pastor or elder.  It is an article of the Reformed faith that all Christians are called by God; it doesn’t matter if you’re doctor or janitor, teacher or social worker, train conductor or even priest.  Our theology of call says that we, as members of the body of Christ, are called by God to that service.

Notice I said “that service:” we Presbyterians believe that our calling by God extends not just into the churchy stuff, like being called to clean up the fellowship hall or called to lead a Bible study, but our mundane, everyday occupations.  This flows out of several theological streams, but most notably, I think, in the doctrine of providence, where God cares and nurtures God’s good creation.  That doctrine says that we cooperate in that effort, that in essence we are co-authors with God of God’s providential consideration, participants in taking care of the world.  As I sometimes put it, as the body of Christ, we are Christ’s hands and feet and legs in the world.

And that certainly is the sense of the disciples’ call in today’s passage, isn't it?  They are called to follow him, to traipse around with him all over the Middle East, but not just as fellow travelers.  “Follow me,” Jesus tells them, “and I will make you fish for people.”  They are to do God’s work, fishing for people, whatever that means.

Well, what does it mean?  People are pictured as being hooked, brought into the Christian boat.  And indeed, Christianity has been pictured as a boat, a ship, carrying Christians safely over the stormy waters of life, which is why so many sanctuaries are built like inverted vessels, including this one. . . although I’m not sure that the image of bring folks into a capsized boat is all that comforting.

Anyway, we have a word for bringing folks into the boat . . . It's evangelism, or e-word to us mainline Christians, and it’s telling that he commands them to do it here at the beginning of his ministry and also at the end: after his resurrection, in the very last scene he tells them to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  In Matthew, evangelism is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

And that's why the last verse of our reading is so important: in it, Matthew defines what this means, as usual by pointing to Jesus as example.  He “went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”  Seems this fishing for people is more than bringing people to Christ, or getting them to join a church.  Being in the Christian boat means being cared for in life as well.

And it fits with Matthew’s terse summation of Jesus ministry, doesn't it?  He says that he “began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”  The Kingdom of heaven—as Luke puts it, the Kingdom of God.  A reign, or state of being, a way of life, that’s been compared to a mustard seed, where the lion lies down with the lamb, where there’ll be no sickness, toil or danger, and where we’ll practice war no more.

So there’s another thing that the boat we land the fish in symbolizes, and that's the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, and certainly the church has been called a provisional representation of that.  This ol’ inverted hull is to provide not only shelter from the weather but from sickness and hunger and want as well.

But there's another thing about the kingdom of heaven, and that is that it’s not in heaven, not in the sky by and by.  It's among us, right here on earth.  Jesus even says elsewhere that it's within us, but wherever it is, whatever it is, it’s the major thrust of Jesus’ teaching here in Matthew.  As biblical scholar N.T. Wright notes, Jesus’ teachings here are not about how to go to heaven. They are not about “our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’”

And our call is to cooperate with God, to be a motive force with God in both the proclamation and bringing to fulfillment of that sovereign rule, that Kingdom of Heaven.  Wherever we’re called to be, whether butcher, baker or candlestick maker, whether doctor, lawyer, chemist or cop, our calling is to proclaim the Gospel in thought, word and deed, wherever we practice our vocation.

Many in this room are retired from full-time employment.  You’ve run your race, and expect to be able to lay back and relax, enjoy yourself, maybe travel a little, and that's a good thing, that we rest from our labors, but it doesn't let us off the hook from discipleship, from our calling from God.  Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we are disciples of Christ, and our calling is to be fishers of people.

Author and Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner writes that “there are all different kinds of voices calling [us] to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self interest.”  Outside voices compete with the still, small one of the divine for our attention every day.  And lest you think it merely metaphor, let me assure you that “voice” is a perfect way to put it: the word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, to call, which of course is where we get the word “voice.”  Vocation means the work you are called to by God, the work you are uniquely suited for at any given time, place and stage of life.

In our passage today, those first disciples didn't seem to agonize over their call, and their story is  quite simple.  Jesus is walking by the Galilee, and he spies Simon—called Peter—and his brother Andrew, fishing.  And he says “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  And immediately, they left their nets and followed him.  And he spies the two Zebedee brothers, James and John, and he calls them, and once again Matthew says they immediately followed him.  Immediately.

And a lot of preachers over a lot of years have made hay out of that word.  They say “be like Simon, like Andrew and James and John and answer that call immediately.”  But I’ll bet there’s not many today to whom Jesus has walked up and said “follow me.” Anybody here had that experience?  No?  Well, then, we have to hear those voices that Buechner talked about, and we have to winnow out the voice of God from amongst them.  The way Paul put it is, we have to test the spirits, to distinguish God’s true voice amid all the noise.

That process is called discernment, folks, a word that we've heard a lot of over the past few years.  Because, faith communities are called as well as individuals, called to discern God's voice among the babble of the world.  And that’s what we've been doing what with Transformation 2.0 and reading of the Paul Nixon material, we've been discerning the will of God.

But communities are made of people, committed people, who must discern for themselves what God’s will for them in their lives might be.  So listen for the still, small voice of God, wherever it may be, whether from the spirit within or without.  We're never too old, never too young, to prayerfully discern our call.  Amen.

God Claims the Child (Baptism of the Lord, Year A, Matthew 3:13 - 17)

     In the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou," the none-too-bright prison-escapees are gnawing on a gopher-carcass in the Mississippi piney-woods.  Suddenly they hear soft, ethereal, almost nonexistent, music coming from somewhere . . . "When I went down to the river to pray" . . . and Delmar, the dimmest of the three, is strangely drawn by it, almost against his will, and he stumbles through the trees, and the music gets louder, until finally he finds it's source.  It's coming from a congregation, white-robed and ghostly in the trees, and there's a preacher standing waist-deep in a river, baptizing sinners . . . and Delmar can't help himself, he just splashes on in, bulling his way to the front to be baptized . . . And as he slogs back out of the water, he says "Well that's it boys, I been redeemed! The preacher warshed away all my sins and transgressions, including that Piggly-Wiggly I knocked over down in Yazoo City!"  But Everett -- the only slightly more-intelligent ringleader -- is not impressed, and he tries to explain that baptism washes away sins in the eyes of God only, but Delmar still doesn't get it: "there were witnesses," he says, "they saw us redeemed!"  To which Everett replies: "That's not the issue, Delmar. Even if it did put you square with the Lord, the State of Mississippi is more hardnosed."

Delmar is -- to put it charitably -- confused about what exactly baptism means . . . and he's not alone.  In fact, he's in pretty good company.  Some of the major figures of the church have had the same trouble.  If you read Acts, you can see that its author Luke believed that you can't be a Christian without being baptized, and in the Roman Catholic Church to this day, baptism is considered salvific -- that is, you can't have eternal life without it.  For example, if a baby is born sickly, you'd better hurry up and baptize it before it dies, lest it go to the outer darkness where, as we all know, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Martin Luther, the father of all us Protestants, believed the same thing, but his fellow reformer Zwingli disagreed -- the way he saw it, baptism was just a bare sign, something that we do because Jesus told us to "do this in remembrance of me," but for no other reason . . . According to him, it has no power to save, or do anything else, in and of itself.  And this is the way modern-day Baptists -- and most evangelicals -- look at it: we do it because we've been commanded to, and that's reason enough.

 But wouldn't you know it, we Presbyterians take a kind of middle way -- we wouldn't want to be extreme or anything --  and it was a trail blazed by our founder John Calvin, who believed that although baptism isn't strictly salvific, it's not just something we just do, either . . . God has a hand in it as well.  According to him, it's a "means of grace," a way by which God transmits some of God's grace to us

And, now that you've fallen asleep - and is that nodding I see back there? - it begs the question -- if folks like Augustine and Luther and Calvin can't get it straight, people who spend their whole lives studying scripture and thinking about such things, what hope do we have?   Even though we're not dumber than a bag of hammers like Delmar -- we know we're answerable to the law if we knock over a Fifth Third Bank or something -- but still: how can we -- sitting in the pews, or standing here in this pulpit, for that matter -- figure out what it all means?

Well, maybe if we go to scripture it'll help . . . and this is the Sunday to do it - it's Baptism of the Lord, when we look at Jesus' Baptism, and through that lens, our own.  And if we know nothing else, we do know that he was baptized by John the Baptist, who seems mightily embarrassed to be baptizing the Messiah:  "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"  See, John thinks that baptizing someone indicates some kind of hierarchical relationship, some kind of power differential, between the baptiz-er and the baptize-ee.  And of course, the church has perpetuated this, hasn't it?  One of the fights in the our own denomination over the past decade or so has been over who gets to do the sacraments, including baptism . . . we've got a problem in rural areas where there are a lot of little churches who can't afford a full-time pastor, and our denomination has historically only allowed fully-ordained, seminary-educated pastors -- like yours truly -- to baptize somebody.  And this has helped stop the historical spread of Presbyterianism -- it's one reason there's so few of us out West -- and it perpetuates the image that us pastors are somehow more powerful Christians or something than our congregations.  Sort of like the Catholics believe about their priests, only our theology is all about the priesthood of all believers.

Well.  Good sense -- and demographics -- won out, and we have commissioned lay pastors who can baptize folks and serve communion . . . but not before a lot of grousing by pastors -- most of whom should've known better -- about how they went to seminary for three years, scraping and sacrificing and walking uphill through the snow to get to class, and some uneducated . . . person . . . comes along and can all of a sudden do the sacraments . . . and all this from a belief -- embedded in the church system -- that those who get to baptize do so because they're special.

And that's exactly where John is coming from when Jesus comes to get baptized . . . Israelite priests -- those with religious authority -- were the only ones who could perform acts of ritual cleansing, and John couldn't for the life of him see himself in a dominant position over the Messiah -- you come to me to get cleansed?  It oughta be the other way around . . . But Jesus knows better, and it's the first clue we get that baptism may be more than just a ritual dunking: "Let it be so for now," he says, "For it's proper for us to fulfill all righteousness."  Fulfill all righteousness . . . this language of fulfillment is important in the New Testament, it's almost technical talk, and it means for something to come to fruition, often that God's own self has made it that way, has brought it to its ripe, tasty state . . . and Jesus is saying that something foreordained by God is brought to realization by this act.

Pretty heady stuff . . . and John can't argue with that logic, can he?  So he goes ahead and baptizes Jesus, and then all heaven breaks loose . . . when Jesus comes up from the water, it busts open and the Spirit of God descends on him -- it looks just like a dove! -- and it lands right on him, and a voice from heaven -- and we just assume that it booms, that it's this big, old, deep male voice, but maybe it's not, maybe it's soft and feminine, maybe it's lyrical and magical, maybe it's the voice most dear to each person present -- but whatever it sounds like, what it says is unmistakable -- "This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased!"

And when Delmar comes up out of that muddy Mississippi river, we don't see a dove or anything, but we do see his face, and it's transformed, he just knows things are different now . . . he knows the truth, that something supernatural -- something outside the bounds of our surface, cause-and-effect world -- has happened to him . . . God's Spirit has come down from heaven and landed on him, soft as a dove, and he has been called a Child of God, he has been called "beloved."

And that, brothers and sisters is what God does for us at baptism.  We are Christian, we are Christ-like, and Christ's model for baptism -- what happened to Christ at that event -- is the model for our own.  And the key observation is that John is just a vessel, almost like a conduit, for the work of God through the Holy Spirit.  It is God who sends the Spirit, it is God who redeems, it is God who claims the child.

In my younger and more fire-breathing days, I used to say that because it's God that does the work, God could just as easily do it through my cat -- who let me tell you is not a whole lot more intelligent than Delmar -- God could work through my cat to baptize folks if God so desired, but saying stuff like that gets me in trouble, so I don't say it much any more . . . but our whole theology of Baptism flows from this one fact: it ain't the church or the pastor or the person being baptized that does the deed -- it's God working through the church and through the pastor and through the person being baptized.  It is God who sends the Spirit, it is God who redeems, it is God who claims the child.

Many protestant denominations practice what they call "believer baptism:" they'll only baptize adults who are past the "age of consent," that is, who know what they're doing.  And one of their major criticisms of Catholics and mainline Protestants like us is that we practice infant baptism, and how can a baby know what she or he is doing?  But I hope now that you can see that the practice flows naturally from our belief that it's God who does the choosing, it's God who does the redeeming . . . and it doesn't require consent or even consciousness on the part of the one being baptized; it is God who claims the child.

But there's a practical problem with infant baptism . . . most folks don't remember it.  Oh, you hear from people who claim to remember as far back as birth, but it's not the rule . . . but that's why -- or at least one of the reasons why -- baptism takes place in the community.  Every time we witness another's baptism, we in a sense remember our own.  We remember that we are redeemed, we are chosen, we are forgiven all our faults and failings and transgression, even if not by the state of Ohio.

I may have told you this story before, but I preached for a beautiful little Hispanic congregation in Arizona one Epiphany Sunday, in their pink-hued stucco church, and after the sermon there was a baptism, and lined up on one side of the copper font were the child's god-parents, and on the other were her parents, and the minister held the child and said the ancient words, and made the ancient movements, and although I have only a passing acquaintance with Spanish, I understood nevertheless . . . and although that dark-eyed child won't remember the occasion, her parents will, and her god-parents . . they'll remember the sights and sounds and the words, and they'll think to themselves: "that's how it was for me," and their child's baptism will become their own, and theirs will become hers . . .

And in a few minutes, we will relive our own baptisms, and I invite you to reflect upon what it has meant to you over the years, and how you have lived out its promise and obligations . . . reflect as well upon what God has done in and through your baptism, and remember that through it, God has bestowed God’s Spirit, forgiven our sins, and claimed us as his children.  Amen.

Dream a Little Dream (Matthew 2:13 - 23)

     Happy New Year!  Bring on 2017 and good riddance to 2016.  That's what many folks have been saying, anyway . . . First of all, there was a fractious, contentious election, which I would say was anything but presidential.  Columnist Dave Barry—who, of course, has the Pulse of the Nation—says that “it wasn't just bad.  It the Worst. Election. Ever.”  Other not-so-bright spots were that race relations seem to have reached a new low, internet hacking—including credit card numbers, personal records, and foreign interference  with the Worst Election ever—has reached an all-time high, and it was the warmest year on record, prompting many climate scientists—except the seven working for the oil industry—to say that a tipping point has been reached.  When they're not saying “I told you so,” that is.

And if all that weren't bad enough, we lost a lot of great people in 2016.  Two bona fide space heroes—Texas’ Edgar Mitchell and our own John Glenn, former First Lady Nancy Reagan and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  Ellie Wiesel, Umberto Eco and Harper Lee.  Leonard Cohen . . . David Bowie . . . Prince.  And just last week, Princess Leia—aka Carrie Fisher—and her mom, Debbie Reynolds, and I kid you not: there is now an on-line campaign to keep 2016 away from Betty White.

But if you thought 2016 was bad here in the good old U.S. of A., it doesn't hold a candle to how the year 6 B.C.E. was shaping up for one Joseph of Bethlehem.  It began on a low note when his fiancée Mary was found to be pregnant, which wouldn't have been that big a deal in loose-limbed Galilee except for the fact that they hadn't even lived together yet.  So even though he had every right to kick Mary to the curb, thus ruining her reputation and her parents’  reputations as well as her aunts’ and uncles’ and cousins’ reputations, he resolved to put her away quietly—what a guy!—but then along came the first of four dreams that would run (some might say ruin) his life over the next couple of years.  In it, an angel of the lord appeared saying “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  And as soon as he woke up, he did what the angel told him and married her, but didn't have relations with her until she gave birth, and they named the boy Jesus.

Well.  Things go along normally enough—unless you count that little episode with the wise men—until his second dream, when another angel—or maybe it’s the same one—comes to him and says “Get up, 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.” And I gotta say, these aren’t happy dreams, even though they have angels in them: they seem more like nightmares to poor old Joseph.  The first one had meant he'd have to undergo the ridicule that would come upon him when he married a woman who was — seemingly — pregnant by another man.  Remember: in that honor-shame society, there would have been a whole lot of shame going on.

But the second dream was even worse, so he packed up all his stuff—it was hard, ‘cause he'd grow up there, his family was there, and his livelihood—but he packed it all up, and Mary’s and the baby’s stuff, and heads out on the road to Egypt.  And though he may not have known exactly why Herod the Great was after them, we do, we know it was because he was paranoid and insecure, so much so that he maintained a private security force and built no less that six—count ‘em six!—fortresses, all in the service of keeping himself in business as the King of the Jews.  Which is why he got a little . . . defensive when the three wise men stopped in to see him, asking “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”  So he consulted his historians and theologians and assorted hangers-on, and they all told him the same thing: Bethlehem, and he told the magi to go and find the child and tell him who he is so that he could come and worship him himself.  But after seeing the babe and giving him gifts, the wise men were warned—in another dream, no less—not to go back to Herod, so they went home by another way.

And are you beginning to get the point, that dreams are really important here in Matthew’s version of the birth narrative?  Contrast that to over in Luke, where there is nary a one.  Really—check it out.  When the angels appear to Zechariah and Mary, they just . . . appear.  The word dream isn't even mentioned.  And there's another thing: the story over there is told from Mary’s point of view.  The angel comes to her . . . she ponders the whole thing in her heart . . . There's none of that over here in Matthew.  The annunciation happens to Joseph—in a dream, natch—and the whole scenario is told from his point of view.  There are no shepherds watching their flocks, by day or by night, no heavenly choir of angels, no manger in a barn.  In Matthew, Jesus is born in a house, and unless it was a really dirty one, there were probably no barnyard animals around, either.

The point is, the two accounts of the birth of Christ (Mark and John don't have any) are very different, even though we tend to conflate them, having shepherds and wise men and cows and chickens gathered all cozily around a manger with Mary pondering mysteriously away.  But they have very different theological emphases and concerns.  Take the dreams . . . Who else do we know named Joseph whose life was shaped by dreams?  You only get one guess . . . Of course it's the penultimate son of Jacob, also known as Israel, founder of the nation of the same name.   It was a dream that got him into hot water with his brothers, and after they sold him into slavery—note that it was in Egypt—it was his prowess at interpreting dreams that elevated him to second in the land.

And likewise it is a dream that gets our Joseph to Egypt as well.  When the magi go home by another way, Herod’s plans to go to Bethlehem to kill Jesus outright are foiled, so he plans to kill all the Bethlehem children under two years of age.  It wouldn't be too hard, given the size of the town there couldn't have been more than twenty children who fit the bill.  But Joseph is warned in that dream to go to Egypt, along with Mary and the babe, so he does, and stays there until the year four B.C.E., the year of Herod’s death.  And Matthew casts it all in terms of prophecy, because that’s his thing, that’s why he’s telling us about the dreams and everything, to relate the birth of Jesus back to his ancestors, back to the stories about the great Hebrew heroes.  “This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet,” Matthew tells us, “‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’”

And while Joseph and family are off in Egypt, Herod the so-called Great, infuriated at being tricked by the wise men, does the deed, he has all the Bethlehem children of the right age murdered, in what's been called the massacre of the innocents, and they were innocents, just like the Egyptian first-born that God killed so many years before . . . And can you see what Matthew is doing here?  He’s drawing comparisons between the birth of Christ and events more than a millennium before, when Israel was in the land of the Pharaoh.  Events that led to the founding of a nation and their release from bondage, their redemption.

And he does it not by pointing out that history has repeated itself exactly, because it hasn't, instead he points out patterns of similarity, using what literary scholars and other ne’er-do-wells call typology.  Both times there was a guy called Joseph who was guided by dreams.  Both times, there was a sojourn in Egypt and a killing of innocents, even though in Jesus’ case it was the bad guy doing the killing, while in the of the slaughter of Egypt’s first-born it was God.  And both times, they were refugees from a cruel  tyrant, even though the first time it was a whole nation and the second time only one family.

Well.  Once again, Matthew relates events to prophecy, this time to the voice of Rachel, wailing in Ramah.  Then Herod the Great dies—that's how we know it’s 4 B.C.E.—and in yet another dream, the angel tells Joseph it's safe to go back to the land of Israel, and once again he packs up and heads out, but he’s afraid to go home because Herod’s son is ruling there, and in his last dream, he's told to settle in Nazareth, so Jesus can grow up there, once again as prophesied.

And so ends the tale of Jesus’ birth, not with a bang but with a settling-in, a settling-down, so he could grow in stature and in favor with God and human-kind.  And at first it seemed to me to have little relation to our situation today, little a hard-working pastor could hang a lesson or a moral upon.  Then I started thinking a bit more like Matthew, I started thinking typologically, and one type-scene or type-event jumped out at me.  For the first two years of his life, the most formative years, Jesus was a political refugee.  He fled his little mid-eastern country from a brutal dictator bent on his destruction.  And hmmmm . . . what today does this remind me of?  Could it be . . . Syria, a small middle-eastern country where a brutal dictator holds sway?  Where millions of refugees—whole families of men, women and children—are fleeing for their lives?

And I think to myself: We're supposedly a Christian nation, and yet we're having a debate about whether to let refugees in.  Isn't it the case that Christian is as Christian does?  I mean, what if Egypt—Pharaoh and all--hadn't let in the refugee who was the Son of God?  Amen.