Preacher: Nicola Devitt
Readings:
Isaiah 63, 7-9
Hebrews 2, 10-18
Matthew 2, 13-23
I hope you've all enjoyed celebrating Christmas in various
ways.
No doubt some of our celebrations have been suitably traditional…
I think we tend to observe the same traditions every year
partly because they've become powerful reminders of the
meaning of the feast itself, and partly because they're a way of drawing together the family or the community
who are celebrating.
Well, whatever the reasons, we're in good company, drawing
on the traditions of the past.
If we look at our
gospel reading for today,
we see that in
celebrating Christmas
Matthew is drawing
heavily on tradition.
He is telling us of a new event, the birth of
Christ,
but in terms borrowed entirely from the past, from the Old
Testament.
In fact he's using a kind of meditation on the scriptures
which grew up among the Jews when they were exiled to Babylon in the 6th century.BC,
when they'd been stripped of everything that singled them
out
as God's people, and
that distinguished them from the Babylonians…
(Remember psalm 137,
By the waters of
Babylon we sat down and wept as we remembered Zion)
So under these circumstances their scriptures took on a new
significance…the scriptures told how God had acted in the past, and the Jews
believed that God was faithful, and consistent,
so that meditating on God's words and deeds in the past
would
throw light on their present circumstances.
And so when Matthew comes to tell us
of the way God is acting through Jesus, he too looks back ,
using the lens of
history to interpret the events of Jesus' birth and infancy.
So if we read
Matthew's gospel in a version which distinguishes the bits Matthew
wrote, from the quotations he's using,
we're struck by the first 2 chapters being punctuated by 5
clear OT quotes,
each preceded by Mt's familiar formula, 'This took place in
order to fulfil what was written in these OT words…'
….Matthew is retelling the Old testament in
the light of Jesus Christ.
So if we look at today's gospel, from the 2nd
chapter of Matthew, we see that the story of the return from Egypt opens
with the angel
assuring Joseph that
'those who were seeking the life of the child are dead'
Now, we might wonder why the angel says 'those' in the
plural,
when the story told us of only one, Herod, who
wanted Jesus dead…
but then we see that the phrase has been borrowed directly
from Exodus 4, where Moses is urged to come out of his
desert exile and return to his brothers, because those who had been seeking his
life, are now dead.
So Matthew is perhaps pointing to Jesus as the new Moses:
God had raised up Moses as the saviour of his people in his
time, and now here is Jesus being raised up in a remarkably similar way:
And it is remarkably similar! Just look at the
parallels-
the birth of Moses is foretold to his father in a dream,
as the birth of Jesus is foretold to Joseph in a dream.
Pharaoh(the wicked king) is warned of the birth of Moses
& feels threatened, just as Herod(the wicked king) is warned & feels threatened at the
birth of Jesus …
Pharaoh consults astrologers for advice…
just as Herod consults the Magi (who are actually referred
to as astrologers in some translations)
and then the slaughter of children in each case is ordered
to eliminate the threat posed by this appointed child,
and God intervenes to deliver the infant Moses, or Jesus…
:-) these
similarities aren't
accidental, here indeed is the new Moses
But then if we read on in today's gospel, as
well as the new Moses,
Matthew alludes to Jesus in royal terms
as a king in the line of David,
for whom Israel had longed throughout her history.
So…we see the Magi asking for the king of the
Jews,
and offering him gifts similar to the gifts offered to King
Solomon
by the queen of Sheba (in the first book of Kings)
…and she too was guided by a star, there's another echo
which would have been familiar to Matthew's earliest readers.
And here we have not just any old king in the line of David:
as Matthew explicitly says later in his gospel (Chapter 12)
'now one greater
than Solomon is here'
….and no sooner has Matthew told us of the Davidic kingship
of Jesus,
than he moves on to the next era of Israel's
history,
when the people were exiled to Assyria and Babylon.
Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah from this period ,
(that's his reference to Rachel weeping for her children)…
but actually the isolated quotation is rather misleading (as
isolated quotations often are!)
…and the whole text is actually not pessimistic at all,
it's full of God's promise of restoration: if we look a bit
further into it, we read:
'A voice is heard in Ramah, lamenting …it is Rachel weeping
for her children…
But the Lord says this:
Stop your weeping
they shall come back from enemy country…
For the Lord is creating something new on earth…
I will make a New covenant with the house of Israel,…
.
So we see that Matthew is professing his faith in Jesus,
by telling us that the whole story of God
acting in history culminates in the arrival of Jesus on the scene;
from Moses and the Exodus, through the era of Kings and the
wisdom of Solomon,
to the exile and the hope of restoration…it all flows
together in Jesus
and the texts Matthew's chosen to suggest this
aren't just isolated examples of scattered texts simply
foretelling the future.
They're something much deeper than that.
Matthew's evoking the most important themes in
the Hebrew scriptures, Passover, Liberation, Exile & then Restoration, The
Kingdom…
these are the ways that Matthew's audience would have
understood & recognised
God reaching out to his people in the past,
and Matthew's telling us that
Jesus is the
way God continues to act:
·
to deliver his people from slavery
·
to bring about the kingdom of God on earth
·
to raise the new
Israel from the ashes of the old.
So the Christmas stories aren't just a spectacular series of
miraculous events, confined to the past,
and indeed our Christmas celebration is not just a
commemoration of an extraordinary series of things that happened 2000 years
ago.
These stories are actually about God's passion, God's commitment to humanity, God's dream
for a transformed world…and it's quite clear that after 2000 years, we still
haven't got there yet!
So if we are to take
Christmas seriously, we
must participate in bringing about God's vision for the world… working
towards a world of peace based on God's justice.
But to do this, like the characters in the Christmas
stories,
we need to be changed by the experience of
God-as-shown-in-Jesus
There's a particular phrase that Matthew uses about the Magi
after they've seen Jesus, to describe the change they experienced. He says,
'They went home 'by another road'.
So…They no longer travelled the same path but followed a different
way.
Perhaps as we reflect on
these stories and their meaning for ourselves,
we too should be following a different way …?
And with this in mind, I'd like to leave you with a prayer
for the new year, (from the SPCK book, Bread of Tomorrow):
Journeying God
You have called me out, and away from home & I don't
know where you are leading.
Pitch your tent with mine.
Show me the movement I must make
toward a wealth not
dependent on possessions
toward a wisdom not based on books
toward a strength not bolstered by might
toward a God not confined to heaven,
but scandalously earthed, poor, unrecognised. AMEN
END