Christmas and Suffering

[00:00:01] Merry Christmas. [00:00:04] I was glad that Pastor Vanderheide mentioned the twelve days of Christmas. We're still in the season, right? [00:00:11] And we have been treated to all sorts of Christmas stories and events in our hearing of God's word. [00:00:26] It's possible, however, to see the story maybe a little differently. [00:00:35] The appearance of, well, looks kind of like an illegitimate birth. [00:00:42] There's a scandalized stepfather, Joseph, likely an embarrassed family. [00:00:52] A birth taking place in a barn, oh, by the way, in an occupied country. [00:01:01] And then Jesus and his family are homeless. [00:01:11] Doesn't sound very Christmasy, does it? And then on top of that, we get this message of a cruel action, of a threatened king, murdering of baby boys, Trip to Egypt as refugees. [00:01:32] To top it all off, relocation in this backwater, backwashed town of Nazareth where everybody believes nothing good can come out of it. Doesn't sound very Christmassy all of a sudden. Not very kingly. I mean, where's the promise of peace and joy and love and nostalgia and hope and wonder in our text today? [00:02:05] Well, the Old Testament foretold that Christ, the Christ would be despised and rejected. But so soon? [00:02:15] I mean, look at what Jesus is born into. It's suffering. [00:02:21] Not even unlike the physical pains associated with his passion, his whipping, his beating, the crown of thorns. The point is, the suffering of Christ begins right away. It begins at his birth. [00:02:38] Could it be that the world is just plain bad? [00:02:44] Yes. [00:02:46] Could it be that all these events were kind of outside of God the Father's control? That it caught God off guard, that God couldn't control the trouble facing Jesus at his birth? [00:03:05] Well, no, to answer that one, one year I wrote a Christmas devotion to my congregation. [00:03:16] In that devotional writing, I remarked about the trials and tribulations that are inherent in the Christmas story all the way leading up to and including the cross. [00:03:29] Well, one of my co workers took me aside and scolded me because my writing had no holly and mistletoe and cookies and presents around the tree and snow and happy carols. In fact, nothing to do with Christmas at all, she said. [00:03:51] Left me kind of nonplussed. I mean, Christmas without the cross, we have to include it. [00:04:03] And the thing is, it's so easy to dismiss the uncomfortable parts of the Christmas story. [00:04:09] We rather like the warm, cozy nativity scene. You know, a cup of eggnog in our hand, a fire in the fireplace crackling. [00:04:23] You ever spend a night in a barn? [00:04:30] Yes, for the women here this morning. Imagine giving birth there. [00:04:39] Or for the guys. [00:04:41] Have you ever suffered life threatening rejection? [00:04:47] See the reality of what was going on at the time of. Of Jesus is far different than perhaps the traditions that we have surrounded it with. Not that that's a bad thing. [00:05:01] So let's maybe start over. Okay. The baby is born. [00:05:06] Angels are singing. [00:05:09] Shepherds come and adore him. A star appears, and wise guys come to worship him. [00:05:18] And King Herod plots to kill Jesus. [00:05:22] You ever take a needle and drag it across the record? [00:05:27] Oh, there's a sound. [00:05:31] Herod is so determined that he's willing to sacrifice however many innocent lives in order to get at this one baby. And he recognizes that this child is a threat to his kingdom. And I want you to notice with me this morning, even as a baby Jesus challenges the power structures of this evil age, Herod is like, oh, I don't know, the Ebenezer Scrooge without the conversion, Jesus is the Grinch without the change of heart. [00:06:08] Oh, that might have been a spoiler alert. Sorry. [00:06:13] We talk about putting Christ back into Christmas, but today's lesson forces us to put Herod back into Christmas as well. [00:06:25] It's not a world of sparkly decorations or warm, friendly greetings. [00:06:32] Jesus enters into a world of serious dysfunction, a world of brokenness, a world of political oppression. He's really more of a homeless outcast and a refugee and a target of the powers that be than we can possibly imagine. [00:06:49] This makes him the perfect Savior for outcasts and for refugees and for nobodies and for those who, in their weakness, prove to the world that the wisdom and power of God is real. Because God's power is measured in this very thing. The foolish things of this world, the weakest things of this world, to accomplish the salvation of. Of this world. Paul says it in First Corinthians 1. He says God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise, and what is weak in the world to shame the strong. [00:07:27] And so it's right here in this passage that we have in front of us this morning the greatest of ironies, that the Son of God, the Emmanuel, the God with us is now the Savior, who himself needs to be saved. [00:07:53] Matthew could have left this story out just like everybody else did. [00:08:03] Well, I don't know if you see it this way, but it just messes up the warm fuzziness that we all want at Christmas. [00:08:11] There must be a reason for him to include this grisly tale. And the answer lies in the quote from Jeremiah 31 that we heard, that we see here. [00:08:21] Matthew grabs up into his own text a voice heard in rhema, weeping, in loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted because they are no more. [00:08:36] Rachel weeping in our passage is a metaphor for all of Israel weeping because Jeremiah in his writing, calls to mind that anguish that occurred when Judah was exiled into Babylon back in 586 B.C. [00:08:50] rachel, all of Israel weeps over the destruction and captivity that was taking place. Rhema According to Jeremiah 40, verse 1. Ramah was a gathering place for the exiles, kind of a depot as they were marched off to Babylonian captivity. And Jerusalem is in flames, and captives are herded to this place of departure. And lines of Jewish sons and daughters are marched to slavery, and children were put to death in Judah and all of Jerusalem, and no one to deliver them. [00:09:31] And the curtain falls and Rachel weeps and all is lost. [00:09:44] But death doesn't have the final word. [00:09:48] Exile is not the end of the story. As we saw. God himself is so enraged by the exile that he promises restoration right away there in Jeremiah 31, that a remnant will be preserved and come back to the land, albeit 70 years later. [00:10:06] Matthew. [00:10:07] Matthew grabs up this Old Testament text, this Jeremiah text, to describe another night in Bethlehem, a night very different from the night already described. [00:10:27] There's no angel chorus. [00:10:29] There's no Gloria in excelsis. There's no shepherds. There's no wise men. Instead, the air is rent with shrieks and cries and sobs and tears. A hellish horde has done the bidding of a paranoid devil. [00:10:44] And newborn babes buried in graves of fresh turned earth. [00:10:50] No one to save. [00:10:58] The incident is called the Slaughter of the Innocents. You see it pictured here. [00:11:06] It's a masterwork by a French painter whose name I have forgotten. [00:11:15] Innocence. [00:11:18] Well, really innocent of any crime against Herod. [00:11:23] But still they die. [00:11:26] Death falls upon them. The curse consumes even these little ones. Children, innocent infant children. [00:11:35] It's got to be one of the hardest texts in all of Matthew. Newborns. [00:11:42] Why? [00:11:44] Why. [00:11:49] We have to be careful here? [00:11:52] Because while these children are innocent of any crime against Herod or of the state, are they innocent of Adam's fall? [00:12:06] No. [00:12:08] Innocent of original sin? [00:12:12] No. [00:12:14] Innocent of offending their creator in the transgression of the first parents, Adam and Eve? Again, no. [00:12:26] Because Scripture is clear that anyone innocent before God does not die. And the big problem here is there's no one like that. [00:12:34] All have sinned. Scripture points out to us. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. [00:12:44] Still at the point of a sword. It's brutal. I mean, in our own day and age. Death by meningitis or pneumonia or spina bifida or sudden infant death syndrome or cancer. [00:13:00] Is infant death by any of these means any easier to explain? Death for any infant, regardless of the means? [00:13:12] Well, it raises all the why questions in our mind, doesn't it? [00:13:17] And Matthew's account brings us face to face with these why questions and face to face with the one who was sent to do something about them. [00:13:39] So Herod vents his fury on Jesus, and God preserves his son by sending him into exile, pictured here in the painting by Eugene Girodet. [00:13:55] Rachel weeps for her children in Bethlehem, but God has saved his elect one, the one sent to save them all. God says, this world will not crush my son. [00:14:07] My son says, God will save my people, so that he may save for all eternity those who are being saved. [00:14:21] And yet, on another dark day, Jerusalem was weeping. The daughters of Jerusalem, the daughters of Rachel, wept and mourned as a singular man. A lone man, whipped and scourged with bloodied head, trudged up a hill dragging a wooden cross to Gall Gotha. And to them he says, daughters of Jerusalem weep not. [00:14:52] What he does on that day forever enabled them and you and me to be able to sing Gloria in excelsis. Who is this man? [00:15:10] None other than the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. His identity as the Son of God is shown by going where his people went, to Egypt and back, standing where they stood in the River Jordan and fighting and winning spiritual battles where they lost in the wilderness for 40 years, ultimately dying where and how his people deserve to die. [00:15:41] He dies in their place as a ransom for sin, taking death upon himself and giving life back in return. [00:15:57] Who is out there that can say Jesus doesn't understand my predicament. He has never been through any situation like mine. [00:16:08] Our response ought to be immediate. [00:16:12] Really? [00:16:15] Really. [00:16:18] And it's true. Today we encounter all sorts of people who feel themselves to be the victim and who yet reject the very one who has lived it all and still promises to come alongside and deliver them. [00:16:30] Jesus calls them. Jesus calls us into a relationship with himself. And he chooses to do it through His Word and through sacraments and through people who see the world through the same lens as Jesus sees it. [00:16:44] People who themselves are the poor and the meek and the lost and the persecuted for righteousness sake. People who have been frightened by the very presence of evil. [00:17:00] Faith in his deliverance is not always the comfortable ride that we think it ought to be. [00:17:12] Jesus was ultimately executed for his care. [00:17:16] But don't forget, he rose victorious over death and his eyes are on the very reason that he came to redeem the helpless, the intimidated, the lost, the persecuted. That was the lens through which Jesus saw his suffering and his crucifixion and. And his glorious resurrection on this earth. [00:17:40] My question is, do we see the world through the same lens?