1 Christmas A – January 1, 2017

1 Christmas A – January 1, 2017

1 Christmas A         January 1, 2017
Luther Memorial Church     Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Isaiah 63: 7-9  +  Psalm 148  +  Hebrews 2: 10-18  +  Matthew 2: 13-23

As a new calendar year dawns, grace, mercy and peace to you from God who creates us, Jesus who saves us, and the Holy Spirit who sustains and empowers us.  Amen. 

          Do you know what today is?  Well of course you do!  It’s New Year’s Day…the first day of 2017.  A brand new calendar stretches out before us, full of possibility.  And it’s still Christmas…the eighth day, to be precise.  Eight maids a milking…. And it’s the day after the Peach Bowl.  Well, that’s all I have to say about that.

But generally speaking, because it’s still the Christmas season and because it’s New Year’s Day, we might have expected a Gospel reading that reminds us of Jesus birth.  We might have expected a little bit more about the shepherds or the angels.  Instead, we hear this story from Matthew’s Gospel.  It is a story that is rooted in fear.  And it is, when you think about it, a story that feels all too familiar and all to relevant to the year just past.

All we have to do is name the places:  Orlando, Dallas, Nice, Brussels, Aleppo, Berlin, Chicago….So many places and so many Rachels weeping for their children, because they are no more.

And for every Rachel, for every tragedy, there is a Herod, or someone like him.  In Jesus’ day, Herod had heard that a new Messiah, a new king, had been born.  And he felt threatened.  Would the people follow this new king and not him?  Who was this new king who threatened his power?  And Herod hears that a group of astrologers, of magi, are searching for the king.  So he instructs them to return after they’ve found him and tell him where the child is, so that he might also pay his respects.  Of course, what he plans to do is kill the new born king.  And when he is outsmarted, when the magi return home by another way and Joseph heeds the warning of the angel and takes the child to Egypt, Herod goes on a murderous rampage and kills the male children under the age of two.

This is not the story any of us would choose for this this New Year’s Day and this eighth day of Christmas.   Personally, I’d rather go back to Christmas Eve, when we gathered in this space and lit our candles and raised them high and sang Silent Night and hugged one another a little bit tighter and went out into the cold, through the luminaries, to celebrate with those we love.  I’d rather have Christmas Day when we worshipped here with neighbors from Harbor Church and Broadview UCC…when we sang the carols with delight tinged with a wee bit of exhaustion.

Our celebrations of Emmanuel, God-with us- at Christmas time are to be cherished.  They are to be anticipated as they approach and remembered after they have passed.  But if this is the only time God is with us, then the challenging times in our lives are going to be especially difficult.

What if God were only with us in the twinkling Christmas Eve times of our lives….if we are glad that God is with us in times of rejoicing….how much more desperate are we to know that God is with us in times of grief…in times of loss….in times of fear….in times when the Herods of the world are attempting to rule with fear and hatred instead of love?

This is why we need this hard story on this Sunday after the Nativity.  This is why we need this hard story on the dawn of a new calendar year.

This is why we need this hard story at a time when all that we thought to be sure and certain feels tentative and uncertain.

God is with us when kingdoms crumble.

God is with us when our lives take unexpected turns and we find ourselves on a road toward Egypt instead of returning home.

God is with us when it seems that no one else is…or when that is our fear.

God is with us when the diagnosis is not what we had hoped to hear.

God is with us when the phone rings in the middle of the night.

God is with us when we are forced to flee under the cover of darkness.

God is with us when the evil rulers send the soldiers after our babies.

Have mercy…..

God is with us.

Even when the exterior evidence points to the contrary.

This may seem to be unusual news to hear on this Sunday after Christmas.  This may seem to be unusual news to hear as a new year dawns.  But it is exactly the good news we know we will need….that in every shining moment and in every moment of unimaginable pain and sorrow….God is with us.

Thanks be to God and let the church say…Amen.