Sermon 12-30-01
Matthew 2:13-23, Isaiah 63:7-9
Now What?
(view lectionary notes for this text)
For months now, we have been getting ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ Child. Not just from the day after Thanksgiving anymore, but even as soon as the Halloween candy is out of the store, we are bombarded with Christmas music, Christmas gifts, and Christmas decorations. We buy, we plan, we party. And it's not all consumer-driven either. We prepare spiritually in the church for Christmas as well. We celebrate Advent, and light the candles in expectation of Christ's birth. We practice anthems for Christmas Eve and find costumes for the pageant and nativity. We hang the greens, and decorate the Chrismon trees. And then, after all this waiting and preparing and planning, Christmas is here and over before we can quite grasp what has happened. Presents have been given and received, the services have ended, and we find ourselves wondering where Christmas went so quickly, and wanting to get our decorations down and packed away. In a flash, Christmas has come and gone yet again, and we are left feeling unsettled. We aren't quite ready for it to be over. Yes, we are tired from the energy-spending that the Christmas season requires, but we aren't ready for the peaceful sense that comes from watching the new born baby in the manger. We find ourselves questioning, Now what? Well, perhaps its a brief stop at New Year's celebrations and then onto Valentine's Day, judging from the drug store displays. But we are looking for some more spiritually oriented insights. Now that the baby is here, now that Jesus is born again, what do we do?
Our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah gives us some help and hope. The verses read today gives a sense of strength and trust in Israel's relationship with God. God says, "Surely they are my people," and Isaiah recounts God's great goodness, steadfast love, mercy and abundance. But the context out of which Isaiah writes is not so pleasant and comforting. Reading the passages surrounding our text for today, we find out that Jerusalem has been destroyed, and that the Israelites have been exiled into Babylon. "Jerusalem [is] a desolation," writes Isaiah, and "Our holy and beautiful house, [the Temple], ... has been burned by fire." After so much pain and destruction, after a whole people being rent from there homes and forced into a strange land, the people find themselves asking now what? Where do we go, now that everything we knew was taken away, now that we have no homes, no security?
Isaiah is a voice of assurance in the midst of their struggling. He prophecies that though the situation looks bleak, though in the immediate present things look hopeless, God declares a new day. "My year of redemption has come," God declares. God promises to be the Savior of the people, and God promises that in the affliction of the people, so will God be afflicted. Imagine, God, afflicted, affected by the sufferings that the people endure. Moved by our pain and sorrow. The idea of a God who would be moved to suffer with and for the people was so outrageous that even the great theologians of history like Augustine and Aquinas rejected the thought. God moved by our pain? Ridiculous! Isaiah proclaims that God is with us – not just abstractly, but concretely, suffering with us. He promises hope, recalls that God has not failed us in the past, and demands our patience.
The gospel lesson presents another picture for us to ponder. Matthew's gospel describes Joseph's dreams and the holy family's flight into Egypt to escape the slayings carried about by the angered King Herod. Chapter two closes the birth narrative, and the next we hear of Jesus, he's a grown man, starting his ministry as an adult. I can only imagine the confusion of Joseph and Mary. For months, they have visions, are told miraculous things about their coming baby, receive strange visitors – wise men, shepherds, and angels, and flee a king's murderous wrath. God has special plans for this baby Jesus, it seems. Then all of a sudden, as unexpectedly as these events took shape, the hoopla fades, and they are left with a child who draws little attention, whose growing up was normal enough that we now know hardly anything about it. Imagine how Joseph and Mary must have wondered if they had somehow misunderstood the angels' messages, if they had just been imagining things, if they had blown everything out of proportion. Maybe this baby Jesus wasn't so special after all? We have one story about Jesus at age twelve in our scriptures, but what about Jesus at age 5? Age 16? Age 21? What was Jesus doing all these years? What was he like? We are left with so many questions. Like Jesus' earthly parents, we find ourselves wondering in this post-Christmas day season exactly what the fuss was all about.
Yet God promised great things through the prophet Isaiah, and God promised a new covenant in the baby Jesus. The people in exile in Babylon, Mary, Joseph, Herod, and the shepherds – these people could not see exactly what God had planned. They could only imagine and hope, watch and wait. We can read the Bible stories with the perspective they lacked. We know that just as Isaiah declared, God brought the people Israel out of exile. We know that though no one heard anything of Jesus for years, God planned a most remarkable ministry through Christ.
With so much focus on presents – gifts, that is – in the past few months, it is helpful to think about a different kind of presence, God's presence, God's closeness to us. When all the fanfare and pageantry dies away, our hope and faith is found in God's ever-continuing presence with us. Isaiah's message to his wondering listeners was to remind them the despite hard circumstances, God was there with them. Surely, God says, they are my people. My people. Isaiah tells us that it the angel of God's presence that saves us. God and God alone is steadfast in love and care for all of us. The Christmas season reminds us that God chose to be present to us in a unique way. God chose to join us, to live on earth and walk with us, to be with us and be one with us in the fullest sense. When the decorations come down – when the shepherds head back to their flocks – when the parties are over – and when Herod finally gives up on searching for the child, Jesus is still with us, God is still incarnate, and God's presence continues with us. The excitement has died down, but God hasn't left us. God proves faithful – not just around for the good times and the celebrations, but here with us three hundred and sixty five days a year.
We are often confronted with times in our lives when we are tossing and turning, wondering, now what? What's next? What's the plan? Following the tragic events of this fall, I have found myself wondering what might happen next. What action will our government take? Why did this happen? How can we move on from such a life-changing event? We've all been waiting, I think, for the other shoe to drop. But it has been 3 ½ months since that sad September day, and as time passes, it is harder and harder to connect with the initial horror we felt on that Tuesday. Now what, we wonder?
The power of God rests in the continued presence that surrounds us always. God is with us, whether there is celebration, or not, whether we recognize God's presence, or not. God is faithful and steadfast. God suffers with us, struggles with us, lives with us. Let us boldly seek out signs of God's presence, so that we can declare with Isaiah, "I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us." God is with us, Emmanuel.