Now
after they [the Wise Men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in
a dream and said, "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." Then
Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.
Matthew 2:13-14, NRSV
Gospel for the Sunday After Christmas
What child is this, who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap
is sleeping? Who indeed? Or what?
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright tells the story of
greeting churchgoers at the door one Christmas, and having a well-known
historian, famous for his skepticism about Christianity, come up to him all
smiles. “I’ve finally worked out,”
he declared, “why people like Christmas.”
Wright asked him to elaborate, and the man continued, “A baby threatens
no one,” he said, “so the whole thing is a happy event which means nothing at
all.”
Wright was dumbfounded, and for good cause: the baby
in the Christmas story poses such a threat to the local king that he sets out
to destroy him, and therein we learn something about the rich meaning at the
heart of Christmas. Some scholars
deal with the inconvenient detail of Herod’s rage by simply concluding that the
whole story is made up. There’s no
record of it anywhere else, they reason, and surely there would be if it had
happened. Herod, however, is
famous for extreme paranoia, and for executing anyone he perceived as a threat,
including his wife and other members of his family. The slaughter of a few babies down the road in the little
town of Bethlehem would not have been newsworthy in Jerusalem, where even the
leading citizens had long since learned to measure their words carefully.
Dorothy L. Sayers notes that the one thing friends
and enemies alike never said about Jesus is that he threatened no one.
But a baby, threatening a king? How could that be? Well, it depends upon who he is, and
sometimes there is in the paranoid mind a flash perception of truth that sane
folks miss entirely. Herod had
messianic aspirations of his own, and here were these strange visitors from
afar, inquiring about where the new prince could be found. If there’s a new prince, Herod in his
fear and anger must deal with him in the way that Herod knows how. Find him, kill him, and to be sure you
get him, kill any who might actually be the prince in hiding.
What child is this?
The angel chorus on the night of his birth announces
his arrival to shepherds, people who are about as far from the royal palace as
you can get. Seekers of wisdom,
probably from Persia, come to offer homage to the cosmic ruler whose birth as
King of the Jews they discern in their reading of the stars. A pious old man at the Temple, waits
patiently for many years, and finds the object of his waiting in an
eight-day-old boy brought to be dedicated by his parents. An old woman, a familiar figure at the
Temple, known as a prophet, blesses the child and consoles his mother.
What child is this?
Missing from the list of characters who surround his
birth are the local dignitaries: the Town Fathers, the Leading Merchants, and
the Clergy. We don’t even learn
the name of the priest who presided at his dedication. Those who wield the kind of power the
World understands are notably absent.
What child is this?
The picture we see is of a helpless child, born far
from privilege and power, barely noticeable to most, and yet to those who do
notice, a source of great joy and hope, or in the case of Herod, great terror. How can he be that? The answer: it can be if he is more
than a mere child.
The Christian proclamation is that this child, in
all his infant vulnerability, is what J.B. Phillips called “God Focused.” How could the Creator of all that is
enter into the creation? By becoming
one of the creatures. And how
could the Creator do that? By
submitting to the very processes already present by which the creatures enter
the world. And why would the
Creator do that? To set straight
the world by rescuing humanity from its habitual course of destruction, which
threatens to ruin all that the Creator had done. And so, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “For us, and for
our salvation, he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he
became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”
What child is this?
Not a visiting spirit, as the Gnostics believed, but
the incarnation of God. The word incarnation,
as used here means God became a flesh and blood human, fully human, while also
fully divine. Such a child would
indeed cause angel choirs to herald his arrival; would cause lowly shepherds to
rejoice; would start foreign sages on a quest for the One who embodies Truth;
would set a demented king on a rampage, and such a child would cause an old man
and an old woman to offer prayers and blessings and thanksgiving that they had
lived to see God’s deliverance for the world.
This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard
and angels sing; haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary!
Howard MacMullen
© December 3013
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