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Hespeler, 1 January 2023 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 63:7-9, Psalm 148, Hebrews 2:10-18, Matthew 2:13-23

I've long struggled with our reading this morning from the Gospel of Matthew, but not necessarily for the reason you might think. It’s not because of the whole incident of the slaughter of the innocents, as horrific as that is. Unfortunately, that is the kind of thing that has happened again and again throughout the history of the world.

What I have some issues with is the end of the story. Matthew tells us that when Mary and Joseph were on their way back from Egypt where they had taken refuge from King Herod’s slaughter, they made a sudden course correction.

Rerouting to Nazareth

They were heading back to their hometown in Bethlehem and they decided to redirect someplace else. “But when Joseph heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth.”

So, what is wrong with that? It does contradict the Christmas story that we know and love from the Gospel of Luke. Luke says that the family was always from Nazareth and that the only reason Jesus was born in Bethlehem was because they happened to have travelled down there for the census.

Here Matthew is saying something quite different – that the couple had always lived in Bethlehem but that, after they returned from Egypt, they made a new home in Nazareth.

You see, both gospel writers had a problem they needed to solve with their story. They knew that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, but they needed to tell a story of Jesus being born in Bethlehem because they knew that was where the Messiah had to be born.

Different Explanations

Luke solved that problem with his famous story of the census, Matthew with this story of a course change on the way back from Egypt. But none of that is what I have a problem with. I get that the gospel writers’ main concern was not to get all of the historical details of Jesus right.

They wanted to make sure that they got the important theological truths about Jesus across and as long as they could tell a story where Jesus was born in Bethlehem and came from Nazareth, they were not concerned that all the details of how that happened were correct.

A Lame Explanation

The problem that I have is this: Matthew’s explanation is kind of lame. He says that Joseph didn’t want to return to Bethlehem because Archelaus, the son of Herod the Great, was ruling there. That much makes perfect sense. Herod had tried to kill the boy!

It’s the part about him choosing – indeed, being led by God – to go to Nazareth instead that bothers me. Because guess who was ruling over Nazareth: Herod Antipas, who was also the son of Herod the Great and the full brother of Archelaus. If he was trying to avoid dealing with a son of Herod, Nazareth was about the last place Joseph wanted to be.

Is Matthew a Bad Writer?

So, that’s my problem with this story. It seems to be such a weak explanation for why they ended up in Nazareth. Either Matthew was ignorant of the fact that Herod Antipas was also the son of Herod the Great or, worse, he was aware of it, and he was just hoping that his readers wouldn’t notice. That’s the kind of thing that makes me lose respect for a writer.

But I have been giving that a lot of thought lately. I think that Matthew is a better writer than that. He is not ignorant of basic history, and he always respects his readers. So, I actually think I’ve been unfair to old Matthew. And perhaps, if I give him the benefit of the doubt, I will discover that there is more to this odd decision to divert to Nazareth than meets the eye. What are we supposed to imagine that the story really was?

“Are we There Yet?”

Travelling along the King’s Highway that led up the coast of the Mediterranean from Egypt was exhausting at the best of times, but it was doubly so when traveling with a toddler. “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Jesus would ask until Joseph started to feel his sanity fray. What could he say but that there were still many days yet to go?

He didn’t blame the boy for being in a hurry. How many times had he told Jesus the stories of his hometown, of the house that he had been born in and the noble family that he belonged to. Of course, Jesus was eager to be there.

Doubts

But, the closer they got, the more doubts Joseph felt. They had fled from Bethlehem in Judah in such fear and disarray that he couldn’t help but feel anxiety at the prospect of returning.

True, Herod the Tyrant, the man who had tried to kill the boy (and succeeded in killing so many others) was dead. That news had been what had prompted him to even think of returning in the first place. The decision had been affirmed in another of those strange dreams that had unerringly led Joseph throughout this whole ordeal, so of course they had packed up and headed out.

But the news that they had picked up on the road had been less reassuring. The word was that Herod had bequeathed the rule of Judea to his son, Archelaus. That in itself was hardly surprising. Of course, Herod would have wanted to keep his kingdom in the family.

Archelaus Reveals his Character

It was the news about the character of this particular son that was alarming. Archelaus had not yet taken up his throne. Before that could happen, he would have to go to Rome to seek the Emperor’s approval.

But even as he prepared to leave, there had been a massive protest in the temple. The people demanded that those who had carried out some of his father’s worst atrocities be punished. Archelaus appeared before the people and promised that their concerns would be addressed.

But then he left and started drinking with his friends. A few hours later Archelaus had ordered the legions to enter into the temple where the protestors were still waiting for their demands to be met. The reports were that some 3000 of them were murdered when they refused to leave.

It really was not seeming as if the apple had not fallen too far from the tree when it came to Herod’s son, Archelaus.

Indecision

Joseph was tormented with indecision. Every step he was taking brought him closer to Judea and seemingly to the clutches of the son of Herod. Should he stop? Should he turn around? Had the dreams finally failed him?

More news from Judea was spreading. It seemed that Archelaus had now left Judea for Rome where he would plead with the emperor to receive his kingdom. But he was not the only one who was going!

Remarkable Opposition

Here was the surprising part. It seemed that a lot of people had decided that Archelaus would not make a very good king. It might have had something to do with those 3,000 dead bodies in the temple. That rulers have opponents is not necessarily news. You get into a position of power, and I can almost guarantee that someone will hate you for it.

What was really astonishing in this case was that people were doing something about it. An entire delegation had set sail for Rome to stand in opposition to the very idea of Archelaus receiving his kingdom. And here was the really amazing part, his biggest opponent was none other than Archelaus’ own brother Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee. He was going to stand before the emperor and tell him that his own brother must never be king.

When Joseph heard that, it made his head spin. He was used to a world in which powerful people just got their way, in which no one would speak up to those who had power and demand that they do better. Was it possible that Herod Antipas was different? Could he actually be the kind of ruler that cared for his people?

A Late Night Talk

That night, once they had managed to get the boy to sleep, Mary and Joseph sat up late discussing the difficult choice that was before them. Joseph laid out all of his concerns to his wife who immediately understood, as she had been hearing all of the same rumours and stories that he had.

She, like any mother, had strong feelings about the need to protect her only son. “We already know that this Archelaus is the same kind of monster that his father was. He has shown it to the world. I don’t want to live away from Bethlehem – away from my family and yours. I don’t want to lose the house you built for us there either. But I will never feel safe if I know that Jesus is within the reach of a man like Archelaus.

“But I also know that Jesus has to be raised among his people and so I am not willing to go further afield than Galilee where I’ve heard there are many Jewish communities.”

“But what of the Herod who now rules there?” Joseph wondered. “He is no less a son of the Tyrant. How can we know that Jesus will be safe from him?

“We can’t,” Mary admitted. “But if he opposes his brother, who does such horrible things, how can he be worse than him?”

A Confirming Dream

Joseph at least felt better for having finally been able to put his concerns into words, but he still felt unsure about what to do as he prepared to sleep that night. Mary’s words had at least made him feel as if they might find a way through all of this. As he drifted off to sleep, it was Mary’s words, “how can he be worse?” that echoed through his mind.

He didn’t recall what he dreamt that night, but when he awoke, he just felt better about the Galilean option. And so, when the family finally arrived within bounds of Archelaus’ kingdom, they turned away from the main body of travelers (most of whom were heading toward Jerusalem) towards the north.

Nazareth

Nazareth was not a big place. It was little more than a village of maybe a couple hundred families in the Galilean hills. Surely no one, least of all the officials of Herod Antipas, would notice them in such a place.

Nazareth was small, but it was only a few hours away from the city of Sepphoris. That also recommended it. Sepphoris was Herod’s new capital, but he had only just named it as such, and it was still under construction. Joseph would be able to get work there on the various worksites. Even better, he could probably work under the table and there would be no documentation. It wouldn’t pay well, but hopefully they would manage to get by.

How the Choice Worked Out

They were right about Archelaus, of course. His rule over Judea quickly went from bad to worse and they often heard reports of his cruelty even in Nazareth. So extreme was his evil that, by the time that Jesus came to the age when he was responsible to keep the law, the Romans had taken his kingdom from him and exiled him far away in the west.

I wish I could say that Herod Antipas was better, and maybe he was from the Roman point of view. But he was hardly lacking in his own evil and cruelty. When John the Baptist spoke against him, he did not hesitate to arrest him and then take off his head. And when, eventually, Jesus did capture his attention, he vowed to kill him too. Of course, he wouldn’t get the chance, but that is another story.

So, I’m not entirely sure that Mary and Joseph’s choice worked out for the reasons that they had in mind. But, you know how it is, you have to make a choice because you are forced to. Somehow, it seems, the choices that we make have a way of working their own way out.

A Story for the New Year

It seemed to me that this story in the Gospel of Matthew was a good one to start a new year with. January is a time when people tend to look forward and look back and try to make the choices and resolutions that will set them on a good path for the future. That is all well and good, but we sometimes think that such decisions have higher stakes than they really do – as if our very lives depend on getting the choice right.

We feel like we are deciding between living under the evil King Archelaus or under the wise and good Herod Antipas. At first glance, the choice may seem that stark, but if you dig into the choice (just like if you dig into this story about the return from Egypt) it is rarely so clear.

People who Threaten to Move Away

We live in a world where we, like Mary and Joseph, feel as if we have little control over who will be in charge. You see that, for example, when people say things like “If Trump becomes President, I’m moving to Canada.” Or (here in Canada) when people say, “If Pierre Poilievre becomes Prime Minister (or maybe if Trudeau gets in again), I’m moving to the U.S.” People rarely do it, of course, because they don’t actually mean it. It is just a way of saying that you feel powerless about something.

Well Mary and Joseph did it – or at least Matthew tells us that they did. And I think that what Matthew may be really saying is that, even if their choice was based on insufficient information and so wasn’t really the choice that they thought it was, they were under the care of someone who not only had better information, but also had a plan to make it all work out.

Choices

Make your choices the best you can. That is all that any of us can do. But when you choose, don’t torture yourself over the options that you rejected. That doesn’t serve anyone well. Go forward with confidence, or to use another word for the same thing, with faith. Sure, things probably won’t work out exactly as you anticipated, but maybe they’ll lead to something magnificent that you never planned on.

Hespeler, 25 December, 2022 © Scott McAndless

Matthew 1:18 21, Luke 1:26 38, Luke 2:1 20, Matthew 2:1 12

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. But, as they travelled along, they just couldn’t help but talk to each other about what they had seen and about how it had and had not fit with what they had expected.

One of them in particular was one of those shepherds, you know, who spends way too much time out alone with the sheep on the pastures and develops a liking for the sound of his own voice. He had developed a habit of constantly giving voice to his thoughts – every little thought that ever came into his head immediately passed through his lips without ever bothering to pass through any sort of filter.

“Man, wasn’t that great,” he said? “And it was just like the angel said. There was the baby and the manger and the swaddling clothes – everything. Still, I can’t quite say that everything was exactly what I was expecting. I was thinking that when we got there it would be a silent night, a holy night – that all would be calm, all would be bright round yon virgin mother and child. But I guess I didn’t reckon on what it is like to be in a stable full of animals in the middle of the night. Calm and silent are not really the words I’d choose.

But wasn’t that little baby something? He was so cute when his little mouth screwed up funny. Looked just like his mom too. And he was so good natured! You know, he was behaving so well that at one point, when he was sleeping and the cattle were lowing because they needed to be milked, the baby awoke. And I said to myself, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he’ll make.” But, of course I was wrong. No sooner had the lowing gotten going than Jesus started to scream his little head off. And he wouldn’t stop neither – kept right on screaming until his mom gave in and started nursing him. I’ll give that to him, that kid knows what he wants.

Oh, and by the way, Simon, thanks for suggesting that we needed to get back to the flocks when you did. I’m kind of thinking that we just got out of there in the nick of time. Something just didn’t quite smell right (if you know what I mean) and I had the impression that maybe Mary was about to suggest to one of us that we could have the very special honour of changing the baby’s swaddling clothes.

Oh, I’ll never forget this night! It might not have been what I was expecting, but I know that it was just as it needed to be. And I’ll tell my children and my grandchildren all about it. And, maybe when I tell them, I will say that it was a silent night as well as a holy night. And I might even say that when the cattle were lowing and the baby awoke that the little Lord Jesus didn’t cry because, of course, you have to tell the kids something to get them to settle down at Christmastime (or Hanukkah or whatever it is that we celebrate at this time of year).

But I’ll remember that that little baby in the manger was a child just like I once was – with all of the problems and troubles any child has to deal with. Somehow that makes this birth more important than just about anything else.

Do we romanticize the manger and the stable when we think about the Christmas story? Of course we do. And one of the reasons why we do that is that Christmas is such a special time of the year. When we think about where it all started, we certainly don’t want to dwell on the negative aspects of the story – the lice that infested the straw, the cow dung on the floor. But it is not just a matter of trying to create a positive feeling of Christmas. It is also about how we think about that child who lay in that manger.

If you ask most Christians who Jesus was – what was his essential nature – you will often get the simple answer that Jesus was – and is – God. We tend to think of Jesus, above all, as being entirely divine. I mean, maybe he looked human and sometimes acted human, but his humanity was just a matter of appearance. And so the Jesus we think of doesn’t have to  struggle with the kinds of things that we struggle with in this life.

But that is not what the Bible tells us about who Jesus was – nor what the church has agreed about the nature of Jesus down through the ages. The Jesus presented to us in the Bible may be entirely divine, but he is also is entirely human. Yes, he does extraordinary things – miracles and wonders. And yes – the New Testament writers all insist – he was “without sin,” which means more than anything else that he lived his life in a perfect and unbroken relationship with God. But, for all that, he was completely human – perhaps the most complete human who has ever lived, if you want to think of it that way.

But what about what the angel said to Joseph in his dream, “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” What about Jesus being the son of God and the very incarnation of God? Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Absolutely! But you need to understand what that word means – in-carn-ate – it means, literally, to turn something into meat. To say that God became incarnate in Jesus is to say that God became flesh – human flesh –  completely and utterly – that God became just like you and like me. And it has to mean that Jesus, as a man, shared in everything that we as people have to go through. Otherwise, what’s the point? Otherwise it’s all just a big charade.

You know, sometimes I think that the song that best captures what was achieved on Christmas two thousand years ago is not any Christmas carol that I have ever heard (as wonderful as some of them may be) but a pop song that was recorded by Joan Osborne in 1995: “What if God was one of us / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus / Trying to make his way home.”

That, in my mind, is what Christmas is really about. It is an exercise in “what if.” What if God didn’t just hang back in his comfortable heaven – watching us from a distance (to quote a different pop song)? What if God decided to enter completely and utterly into human experience and to do it for a lifetime. The answer to that “what if” question, leads us to the Christmas story and to the life of Jesus.

And what does that mean? It means that, if you turn to Jesus as your Lord, you are not turning towards a God who has no understanding of what it is like for you to make your way through this life. You come to a God who knows something about human frailties and human emotions and how much they can mess you up. I would even go so far as to say that Jesus struggled with things like doubt and depression and despair – even if he never gave into them – because these things are also part of what it means to be human and there is nothing essentially sinful in these things.

The angels sent the shepherds to the manger in order that they might meet a saviour who had been born “for them.” Well, the only kind of saviour that could really be for them was a saviour who knew what it was like to be them. It is the kind of saviour that God has sent for you too. Thanks be to God because, otherwise, where would we be?

So no, I don’t really think that there was a lot of real, practical silence in the place of Jesus’ birth that Luke describes in his gospel. But we need real silence in our own hearts to contemplate what that birth and that coming really mean.

A fun, short video for this evening.

Hespeler, 24 December 2022 – 8pm Christmas Eve Service
Luke 2:8-14

https://youtu.be/7gnqtAwO_dU

There is a famous Christmas story, I’m sure you have heard it. It is called The Gift of the Magi by O Henry. It tells the story of a loving young couple who both want to give the perfect Christmas gift to their mate.

The husband decides that he wants to give these beautiful pure tortoise shell with jewelled rim combs that will compliment his wife’s beautiful long hair. The wife, for her part, decides to give her husband a Platinum chain upon which to fasten the gold family heirloom pocket watch that he inherited from his father.

The Twist

The problem, of course, is that neither can afford to pay for these extravagant gifts. And so the wife decides to sell her hair to buy the chain, while the husband sells his watch to buy the combs. Both of them manage to give the gifts they want to, but at the cost of not being able to use the gifts that they receive.

It is a sweet little story about generous giving with a nice little humorous twist at the end. But it is perhaps a reminder that the gifts that we give can surely be a sign of our love. But then again, they can also be signs of other things, can’t they?

Another Couple

There was a young couple who were spending their first Christmas together. And the husband wanted to give the perfect gift to his wife.

The young wife had an ambition. She wanted to go to school and become a doctor. She had the marks to do it. And had earned scholarships that would make it, if not exactly financially easy, at least possible.

But her young husband wasn’t quite so sure about that. He was worried that if she pursued such a demanding degree, that she wouldn’t be able to take care of him, that she wouldn’t be the wife of his dreams anymore. He had been subtly trying to steer her towards a career that would demand less of her time and energy.

The Shopping Trip

And so he went shopping for a gift. After looking around all day, he had finally narrowed his choice down to two possibilities. One was a beautiful silk dress. He knew that this was just the kind of thing that would flatter her figure and appearance perfectly. She never really wore this kind of outfit, but he always just figured it was because she didn’t want to spend the money. It was, you see, a designer dress and very expensive.

His other option was one that he really wasn’t all that fond of. But he had heard her mention that it was something she really wanted. It was actually just an old used stethoscope. He found it in a second-hand shop so it wouldn’t cost much, but he could actually tell that it was really well made. But the gift seemed cheap to him.

The Gift Becomes a Sign

So, what do you think? Two gifts. One really expensive and all about making her fit his idea of who she was supposed to be. The other kind of cheap, but it would actually show, not only that he actually listened to her, but that he was willing to support what she really wanted.

And you probably have an idea which gift he ought to get. But I actually wanted to underline something else. Each gift would be a sign, wouldn’t it? Whichever he chose, it would be a sign about the health of their relationship and of where it might be going. And, honestly, the really expensive gift would probably be a bad sign, while the cheaper one might actually be a sign of hope for the future. So, you see, a gift can be a sign.

A Birth in an Odd Circumstance

And the angel said to the shepherds, “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” So, you see, a gift can be a sign. And that sign is not just about God sending his own son to save us, it is about the form in which that gift is given.

I know that many people have told stories and given sermons about the Christmas story down through the years. They offer various explanations for why Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem and for why it was that, when it came time for the child to be born, there was no room for the family and they had to lay the boy in a manger and wrap him in bands of cloth. But the author of this gospel does not really offer any explanation for it. He just says that this is what happened, he doesn’t say why.

The Explanation

No wait, that’s not quite right. He does offer one explanation. He says that all of it happened in precisely this way because it was a sign. It was a sign that the Saviour was born for a bunch of crude shepherds. It was a sign that the gift that was given was given with a deep understanding of people who struggle to find shelter or to put food on the table. It was a sign that the gift was given by a God who understands both the aspirations we carry in our hearts and the barriers we struggle to overcome to get there. It was a sign of the true nature of the gift.

That gift is a sign for you tonight.

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