The Whole Christmas Story

Sermon-1st Sunday after Christmas Dec. 26, 2010

Lord Jesus!. Oh, make your word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life. Oh Lord, hearken, and do so for your blessed Son’s sake, in whose sweet name we pray. — George Herbert, 1593-1633

Years ago I was talking with a woman from another church and she told me that at THEIR church, they were going to have a Living Nativity outside their building, and they were going to tell the WHOLE story of Christmas (by that I am pretty sure she meant angels, shepherds AND wise men) not just a donkey and a cow with the Holy Family. But because I am such a smart aleck, I said, “oh, the WHOLE story? So you’re going to have the slaughter of the Bethlehem children and Joseph, Mary and Jesus having to escape into Egypt? Needless to say, I was not asked to attend the performance.
This gospel is read every year on the Sunday after Christmas, but we either have Lessons and Carols that day or because most people don’t go to church the Sunday after Christmas, very seldom is this story heard: Are you starting to understand why? It is filled with evil kings, the massacre of children, references to Israel’s past of inconsolable sorrow. And the story ends with the holy family having to go into exile into Egypt. The Christmas story that we think of as beautiful is actually filled with evil, sadness, pain, escape, deception, slaughter, and illegal immigration. You don’t see too many of these scenes on people’s front yards at Christmas, do you? Can you imagine if we told this story every year on Christmas eve? “ one commentator once compared the second chapter of Matthew 2 to “an obnoxious and most unwelcome guest at your Christmas party--the kind of person who talks too loudly and who spills eggnog all over your nice Persian rug.”

When we hear THE WHOLE CHRISTMAS STORY it is unsettling, to say the least.

So, I’m going to give you a little more history than you’re used to because it may be a while before you’ll hear it again and it may help you to understand it a little more fully.
Remember the story about the Wise Men? How Herod told them to let him know where this new king would be born so he could worship them, too? But they were warned in a dream and returned home by a different way-avoiding Herod. That’s usually where our knowledge stops. But after that (verses 12), Herod does find out that the “new king” will be born in Bethlehem, so to make sure he “gets” Jesus, he kills every boy under the age of two in the town of Bethlehem. Usually the number given is about 120, but I don’t know why. Before that happens Joseph, Jesus’ father, is warned in a dream that Herod is coming and takes the family and escapes to Egypt. They stay there for 2 years until Joseph has another dream that it’s safe to return to Galilee (Herod is dead and one of his few living sons is now on the throne). Maybe you’ve heard all of this before. (Let’s see a show of hands). Let me give you some more background.
Herod, the king mentioned in this story was a tyrant. He had 10 wives and dozens of children. He killed many members of his own family (wives, in-laws, and especially several of his sons fearing that they might try to take over his kingdom). The word for pig in Latin and the word for son are only 1 letter apart. Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor at the time of Herod, once punned that it would be safer to be one of Herod’s pigs, than one of his sons (Jews can’t eat pork, get it?). When Herod finally died after ruling for 37 years, they held a national day of celebration and a festival-he was so hated.
The idea that Herod could order the death of all the male children in a little village is not preposterous. He was very capable of doing such an atrocity (Danielle-“she’s evil”).
Rachel in the quote from 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.’[So Rachel] She became a symbol for Israel, in other words, of inconsolable sorrow. How can anyone console you when so much that seems to happen to you is unfair and full of sadness? So, when the Babylonians carried off Israel into exile centuries later, Jeremiah wrote that it was like old Rachel was still crying out from her grave.”
And one more thing-Rachel was buried just outside of Bethlehem. So when Matthew quotes Jeremiah in today’s gospel, he is using a code word for Israel and its inconsolable sorrow-and connecting Rachel and her sorrow to Bethlehem. Even today, if you visit Bethlehem, there are long lines into the tomb where Rachel is buried
Are you starting to understand why people never hear this gospel story? It is filled with a lot of bad stuff. This is THE WHOLE CHRISTMAS STORY: evil, sadness, pain, escape, deception, slaughter, and illegal immigration. You don’t see too many of these scenes on people’s front yards at Christmas, do you? Can you imagine if we told this story every year on Christmas eve? Christmas is supposed to be beautiful and sweet, but the truth is that the Christmas story wasn’t like that.
“In an episode of the TV series “M*A*S*H” back in the 1980s, two doctors and a nurse desperately try to keep a fatally wounded soldier from dying on Christmas Day lest the man's wife and children back home forever after have to associate Christmas with their loved one's death. When the man expires just before midnight anyway despite their best efforts, Dr. Pierce moves the clock hands forward twenty minutes and then puts “December 26” on the death certificate. "No child should have to connect Christmas to death" he says in defense of his unethical faking of a medical record.”

But death is a part of Christmas. And so is new life. And fear, and joy, and awe, and terror. This story is that God breaks into the world that is-not the world we want it to be. God breaks into the world and it is messy and scary and real. The Christmas story is God breaking into the world. It’s not that everything was, or will be, beautiful-it’s that God is with Mary and Joseph, and he will be with us. That’s the truth. Part of the good news is that the story isn’t beautiful-it’s real, and part of the story is that bad things happen to innocent people-and yet, God continues to be a part of Joseph and Mary’s lives. It is a story of challenge. And it is a story of faith. And that, is really The WHOLE CHRISTMAS STORY