Matthew 2:13-23

Now after they 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, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because

they are no more.”

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead. Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over 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 that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”

This Gospel is always a buzz-kill when it shows up so soon after Christmas – and on New Year’s Day this time around, no less. This story of Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents,” as it’s known, is a fly in the ointment of our Christmas celebrations. It is a turd in our New Year’s Eve punch bowl. It is rain on our parade, all the way around. And it’s a story we might wish we would have stayed home from on the first day of 2023.

It is Matthew’s Gospel moving straight from the story of Jesus’ birth, told in just a handful of sentences that say nothing about shepherds in fields, mangers in Bethlehem, angels singing “glory to God” or “peace for those whom he favors.” In Matthew’s version of the story, Mary takes no time to ponder or treasure any of that in the glow of candlelight, like we did on Christmas Eve.

In Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, Mary and Joseph are engaged, there’s going to be a baby, his name will be Jesus – “because he’s going to save his people from their sins” – and that’s that. “That’s the tweet,” you might say, according to Matthew.

And then, some wise men show up, raise the ire of King Herod by tipping him off that this “king of the Jews” has been born, and before you know it, the first family is on the move again – on the run, suddenly – refugees to Egypt – so they can spare their son from the mass murder of children – infants and toddlers, two and under – in Joseph’s hometown. Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!

So, in keeping with the theme…

Did you know that there’s a war going on over in Yemen that’s been raging for the last eight years? And did you know that tens of thousands of children have been orphaned there because of it? From what I can tell, the ugliness in Yemen is barely on our radar in the U.S. I suspect the reason that war doesn’t make the news, like the one in Ukraine does … the reason their president doesn’t get to speak in front of our congress … the reason their plight doesn’t make it into our consciousness is two-fold. First, because they are brown and because Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. And second, because smarter people than me call it all a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. We like the oil we get from Saudi Arabia and don’t want to have to pay too much for it. Anyway, all of that is another story.

Some call what’s happening in Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world and it’s been going on since 2015. And it made me think of Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents” because in addition to all those orphans the war has created, 10,000 children have been killed or maimed, and up to two million more have been displaced – just like Jesus – since it all began.

Merry Christmas.

And did you know there were more mass shootings than there were days in 2022? (Almost twice as many mass shootings as there were days, according to one source I saw.) And did you know that this has been a true statistic every year since 2019? But, I digress. It’s Christmas and our theme today is children.

Last year, just in the United States, 3,597 children died by gunfire, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths involving children — 2,279 — were homicides, which have increased by more than 73%, just since 2018. Most of these involved Black children, even though they are a numerical minority in our country. Last year, suicides made up almost 30% of gun deaths among kids, to the tune of 1,078. Unlike homicides, it’s white kids – mostly white, teenage boys – who die by suicide using guns, but that’s growing among Black and Hispanic kids, too.

One last thing. The United States is the only country among our peers – which means, supposedly, that we are “advanced” in terms of industry, technology, standard of living, and what not – we are the only country among such leading nations where gun violence is the number one cause of death among kids. In other countries like ours, kids are more likely to die from car accidents and cancer/diseases.

In the US, in 2020, 4,357 kids under the age of 19 were killed with a gun. In Australia, there were 10.

In the US, in 2020, 4,357 children under the age of 19 were killed with a gun. In the UK, there were 8.

In the US, in 2020, 4,357 boys and girls under the age of 19 were killed with a gun. In Japan, there were 5.

Merry Christmas.

But, to bring this back to something more closely related to Mary and Joseph and Jesus, on the run, remember, from Herod in Bethlehem to safety in Egypt, it’s interesting to know that nearly 130,000 migrant children entered our own government's shelter system in 2022, which was an all-time high thanks to a record number of minors who show up unaccompanied – alone – by themselves – without a parent or a protector or a guardian to claim them. That’s 8,000 more than last year – and a statistic that’s more than two months old already. Can you imagine how desperate and dangerous things much be for a child to be sent or taken to or left in a foreign land, without a parent, protector, or guardian to claim them? I know kids who won’t go to summer camp on their own or children who won’t spend the night at a friend’s house.

Merry Christmas.

We are generations away from Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents,” but all of this is why Matthew invokes Rachel as part of his version of the Christmas story. She weeps for the children – her own and for others, and for ours, I imagine, too.

See, when Matthew, by way of the prophet Jeremiah, invokes the notion of Rachel, weeping for her children, he was referring to the people of Israel being banished to exile and captivity in Babylon, and having to pass by the grave of Rachel, one of their matriarchs, whose grief cried out from the ground on which they traveled. That was the weeping and loud lamentation they heard at Ramah.

While God promised them hope and deliverance and salvation, in the end, much like the Good News of Christmas means to be for us now, Rachel was the mother who wouldn’t let the people forget about the children – her children, their own children, or any of God’s children for that matter. Rachel’s tears were the rain on their parade.

And I think we’re supposed to listen to Rachel, still, as we hear this hard, holy story about Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and see it happening among us, still, in so many scary, shameful, sinful ways.

Rachel is every mother weeping for her children, even while living with hope for what has come – and for what is coming – in Jesus.

Rachel is every father weeping for his children, even while searching for the joy that has been born – and that will be born again – in Jesus.

Rachel is every parent – and she would/could/should be all of us, together – weeping and wailing and refusing to let our own comfort and joy, our own silent nights, our own peace and prosperity allow us to neglect the reason for Christ’s coming, in the first place…

To bring good news of great joy to ALL people…

To save God’s people from our sins…

To shine light into the darkness in a way that the darkness cannot, has not, will not … ever … overcome it.

Amen. Merry Christmas.

John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

As you know, a couple of weeks ago – for the first time since Oprah – I took a vacation during Advent. Christa and I went to Key West to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday. It was lovely – and warm – and sunny – and all the rest.

And in addition to eating and drinking and biking and walking a lot, we took a boat ride and snorkeled some. And the highlight of that little excursion was that – in addition to a lobster, some sponges, a couple of very small fish, and some refuse from the recent hurricane – we saw and swam with a sea turtle, which is a relatively rare treat, according to our guide, who seemed as genuinely impressed by it as the rest of us were.

When we began our three-hour tour, our boat’s captain asked if any of us had ever snorkeled or scuba-dived in places like Bali or the Great Barrier Reef, only to warn us that no matter what we were about to see in the Florida Keys, it wouldn’t be anything nearly as cool or beautiful or colorful as any of that. And he was right. It was all pretty gray and dead-looking and lacking in life, even, to be honest.

But there was that sea turtle who – as noteworthy as he was – wasn’t much to look at. I tried to find a picture to show, but every picture I could find online – from the turtles to the water they were swimming in – was too colorful and too pretty and nothing like the one we saw. He was as gray and lumpy and as colorless as the rest of that underwater seascape. And, when he kicked up the sand around him or if you took your eyes off of him for to catch your breath, he could be hard to find again.

He was camouflaged pretty well by his gray, barnacle-covered shell and his slow motion paddling that kicked up the dust and muck beneath him to hide him from view every once in a while. He basically looked like a rock that could swim.

But he did have to come up for air which – according to Christa and our friends – is when you could see more of his true colors. (I missed that part, because I was back in the boat having a beer by then.)

But the whole time I wondered if that sea turtle knew or cared that we were watching him. He didn’t seem to. He just did his thing down at the bottom of the sea, moving rocks around with his nose – looking for a lobster dinner, according to our guide – without any indication that he knew there were nine human beings floating and swimming and pointing and splashing on the surface, less than 6-10 feet away from him the whole time.

So I wondered how risky it must have felt for him to come up for air – to rise to the surface with all those people surrounding him – and to trust that he’d be okay. To expose himself – and whatever colors he was hiding – to the people who were watching. And how could he be sure he’d survive to snoop for more lobsters in the end.

And it made me think of Jesus – and God’s choice to be born; to come to life in a new way; to come out of hiding, you might say; to rise to the surface, as it were; to be seen without the camouflage of so many generations and so much history; and to just live and move and breathe all of a sudden, in the person of Jesus.

Of course we know what a risk that was and how all of that turned out to be – it wasn’t safe… our sin did him in… which was only a surprise to the likes of you and me.

But on Christmas morning … at the beginning of this new day … as we start to retell the story and wonder again about what it means to look for God among us – now that we know how it all panned out – I think our call and joy and blessing is to look for and to see the colorful parts more readily and to notice the good news more often.

Our snorkeling guide gave us some clear instructions before we jumped into the ocean that day – long before we ever saw a thing. She said that if and when we spotted anything noteworthy – and especially if we came upon an octopus or a sea turtle – we were supposed to shout to tell the group what we were looking at, call them over to our location, and point to where the rest of us could see it too.

That seems like a simple, sacred charge for Christmas morning and the days to come … that we keep our eyes peeled for evidence of God’s unhidden grace, rising to the surface of this gray, murky, messy world where we live … that we shout, sing and share that good news with whoever will listen … and that we point others in the same direction so that they’ll be blessed and better for knowing what we know about God’s love, beauty and grace in our midst.

Amen. Merry Christmas.

Weeping Rachel

Sea Turtles and Christmas Day