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Text: Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Matthew 2:13-23 ● I find that this season of the year causes me to be increasingly ‘introspective’. I have a tendency to either be, A) ‘morbidly introspective’, with almost unattainable expectations, or, B) ‘numb’; ready to embrace the New Year with all the ‘mediocrity’ I can muster! I consider myself ‘guardedly optimistic’! [read Matthew 2:13-23] No sooner have we heard the announcement of the arrival of the world’s true King, with the promise of peace on earth, that we are ‘body-slammed’ back into reality. The world, it appears, is not a particularly ‘peaceful’ place. ‘Good will toward men’ seems to be seasonal! Ours is a world of “unrest”; I suppose there’s no need to outline the particulars!? ● I remember, as a child, hearing about the “Flight into Egypt” from Matthew, but we discussed it like it was more of a ‘family road trip’ than the desperate escape efforts of refugees. With the news of the new King, Herod orders the systematic execution of innocent children. I think we get the point: the world was not a safe place for Jesus. After all, he was a Jew and touted as their new King. In that context, it placed Jesus at great risk. I guess you could say that this story does not seem to be a particularly good follow up to the hope surrounding the angelic announcements, but it is a fitting way to characterize our present condition. Ours is still a world where children die and mothers grieve; where the oppressed suffer and the oppressors literally get away with murder. Ours is still a hostile world, resistant to peace. ● Any Jew in 1st century Palestine hearing this story of a Joseph who had a prophetic dream would quickly be reminded of another Joseph who was exiled from his family in Egypt. Hearing of baby boys being ruthlessly slaughtered by the ruling empire would remind Matthew’s readers of the way Moses narrowly escaped a similar fate and how he was told to return because “all those who wanted to kill you have died” (Exodus 4:19-20). Matthew awakens other emotions and memories as he rehearses a scene in their story which recalls Rachel (wife of Jacob, matriarch of Israel, although not the biological mother of all) as the Babylonians seized Jerusalem and carried families off into exile. ● The birth of “Emmanuel, God with us”, and the promise of peace must not be heard as mere sentiment or attempt to dismiss the painful realities we experience. Only God himself entering our world of grief and becoming familiar with our sorrows could somehow accomplish the depth of healing and rescue that we need. The promise is not the clichéd: “It looks bad now, but it will all work out in the end”; that means very little to those experiencing pain or injustice. “After the wise men were gone…” (vs.13) Now that the baby is here, now that Jesus is born, what do we do? [read Isaiah 63:7-9] ● Isaiah offers assurance and hope in the midst of their struggling. He sees ahead to a ‘new day’. God promises to be the Savior of his people, and God promises that “in all of their suffering, he also suffered” (Isaiah 63:7). ● Imagine, God becoming vulnerable; somehow identifying with and being affected by the sufferings of creature and creation. This idea of a God who would be sympathetic to humanity’s suffering and actually enter the story to experience the suffering firsthand was scandalous. It’s why as they were ‘piecing together’ their Messiah-story (there was no consensus), they had trouble reconciling the Isaiah 53 passage which spoke of their King being despised and rejected; pierced, crushed, beaten, oppressed. But Isaiah proclaims that God is with us - not just in the ‘peace’, but in the violence and pain as peace is being established. ● Matthew chapter 2 closes the narrative of Messiah’s birth, and the next we hear of Jesus, he's all grown up, starting his ministry as an adult. It’s time to ‘ponder’ (‘throw together; confer with oneself’). For months, Joseph and Mary are having miraculous visions, angelic visitations, strange guests from strange places- all because of the hopes surrounding this divine-child. Now they find themselves in Nazareth, of all places, with this child who now seems rather “ordinary”; nobody seems to be paying much attention to him now. So “ordinary” it seems that Luke simply says, “There (in Nazareth) he grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom and God’s favor was on him” (2:40). ● Joseph and Mary could only reflect and hope; they could trust that even amidst their questions and absence of visual confirmation that God was up to something: that he had acted; that he would act. ● We are often confronted with times in our lives when the exhilaration has diminished; when we are simply left to ‘ponder’: wondering if our expectations of God were too high? Or, feeling that we were just so desperate for relief that belief in God seemed to somehow soothe us? That even if it wasn’t true, believing it helps us cope? ►The promise of “God with us” doesn’t sound too promising at times. “God with us” does not always seem to expedite deliverance or eliminate my painful life-circumstance. Dreams for peaceful resolution to conflict- in our world, our family, our relationships, are dashed all too quickly. We are rudely awakened to the reality of brokenness and unrest. ►Nonetheless, the power of God is to be discovered in the promise. It is not a tentative, fanciful human wish… it’s a declaration; it’s the faithful word of the God of unfailing love. It’s the most profound expression of strength. ● Of a God who chooses not to quarantine himself from our world, but who enters it; not one who exempts himself from suffering, but who exposes himself to the worst evil has to offer- calling it out, exposing it for all of its deceitful and destructive qualities, and living through it: into death and out the other side! ►First, we “praise” (Psalm 148). That’s our anticipated response; it’s our creative response; it’s the right response. It’s what we crave; it’s what we are missing… even if you don’t know it yet! Praise is not meant to merely serve as a temporary distraction from the disorder of our world, but to set our eyes on another reality- the ‘reign of God’; the ‘order of the heavens’ (Colossians 3). God’s new world, God’s new life has arrived and you are being called to live in it here and now. Paul is encouraging them that although there is much about this new life, this new world that is, at present, “hidden”, when Jesus, the Messiah, returns to restore all of creation, what we knew in part will be fully realized (like watching a movie, wondering how they will bring it all together in the end). ● Paul is not asking us to live in our present world with our “heads” somewhere else; he’s asking us to live thoughtfully in our world with the understanding that we need not live under the restrictions of the present circumstances and powers, but with a view toward interacting with the life of the heavens (with God as King as his desires serving as the order of the day), the Kingdom, as it comes on earth. ►We often get stuck somewhere between our hopes of/for God and our present life-circumstance. We’re so used to trusting our senses (because that’s what makes sense to us) that even when they fail us, it still seems too risky to trust something, or someone else; especially if it’s unseen. Unfortunately, we equate ‘unseen’ with ‘unreal’ or ‘untrue’. ►The way we see things sometimes prevents us from seeing things! Our present way of seeing things often causes us to miss what’s been there all along… we just didn’t notice. The story is constantly stretching us; compelling us beyond the limits of ‘possibility’; constantly requiring us to believe what can’t be proved, to take an honest look at the contradictory circumstances and choose to believe anyway! Our present way of seeing things is so shaped by ‘what has happened to us’ and ‘what we think about what has happened to us’. Maybe, at times, that actually can make us unaware of “God with us; God around us”? ►Whatever you come to trust becomes your source of reality. We were born with a propensity to ‘trust’; life talked us out of it! When whatever you have trusted proves unreliable, you conclude that nothing and no one can be trusted… only yourself. But, in our most honest moments, we realize that although we are sincere, we’re sincerely flawed! ►Emmanuel, “God with us”, means that God can be trusted. And in the end, my desire for a God that can be trusted trumps my wishes for a God that can be explained. It means that even though I don’t understand, I can still trust him. “God with us” means that even ‘right here’, in this volatile, unpredictable world, you’re safe with him; you needn’t be afraid.
“God with us” says that you
don’t need to wonder whether you can trust someone who has given their life for
yours! |
