January 2, 2011
(Second Sunday after Christmas)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Of Risky Journeys and Prophecies Fulfilled
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Im waiting for the annual crabby Christmas letter from my Uncle Bruce. Bruce is my last remaining uncle, and has spent his life burnishing his image as the family maverick. For decades, he wrote fascinating letters of the travels he took all over the world, and interspersed within the stories little drops of venom about the family. Actually, he's not really a snake; rather more of a wounded man. Over time I've come to think of his letters as a bouquet of roses. Hold them too firmly, and the thorns will prick you. Admittedly, this charitable attitude is put to the test when he writes about my mother. His memory of her is very different from my own. In one of his last letters, he wrote of mom being lax in her discipline of us when we were young. It was a puzzling observation, because I remember my mother being clear in her expectations of our behavior and consistent in the consequences.
It's interesting when stories intersect and when they conflict. In broad terms, three of our four gospels pretty much intersect most of the time in their accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, there are some textural variations, and this year by quirk of the calendar, we see one of those variations extremely clearly. Yesterday was the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. The gospel for the day was Luke's account of Mary and Joseph taking the infant Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem where he was circumcised on the 8th day following his birth, in accordance with Jewish Law. Today, our gospel is Matthew's account of Joseph being warned of danger by an angel and of him taking the holy family and fleeing to Egypt.
Matthew and Luke tell the story of the infancy of Jesus differently. Asking which version is the more accurate one is as pointless as asking whether my or my uncle's memory of my mother is the more accurate. Accuracy is useful in the hard sciences, but is notoriously slippery the moment human interpretation enters the picture. Far more fruitful questions might be: why does Matthew tell the story the way he does? What might he want us to know about Jesus, telling the story as he does?
Matthew, of course, was writing to Jewish converts to Christianity an audience who would have been well-versed in the sacred stories of their own antiquity, including for example, the story of another man named Joseph who was also a dreamer. Who went down to Egypt because of the murderous intent of others. A man after God's own heart, whose son (in a manner of speaking, many generations later) was a man named Moses the one who delivered God's people from bondage and brought them to freedom. A coincidence? Not likely. Matthew shares the details he does because he wanted his listeners to remember their own story of salvation and to see in the birth of Jesus a continuation of Gods salvific work. Centuries had passed since Joseph the Patriarch went down to Egypt, centuries had passed since Moses brought Josephs descendents back to the promised land. The monarchy had risen and fallen, neighboring empires had taken turns running roughshod over Israel, and yet still God's promise remained and remains sure, Matthew tells us.
And in that salvific work, God calls forth from us a response a response which frequently leads us out of our comfort zones into uncharted territory. God called Joseph of Bethlehem into a very different kind of marriage and parenthood than he likely ever would have imagined for himself. Called him to protect his wife and newborn child by fleeing to a foreign land a land which ironically had represented bondage for his ancestors. And in faithfully carrying out this risky journey, he helped to ensure Gods plan of salvation by which Jesus -- an infant who was both God incarnate and Josephs foster son -- would ultimately free the world from the bondage of sin.
It is interesting when stories intersect and when they conflict. Lukes infancy narrative brings Jesus to Jerusalem where, years later, he will give his life on a cross. Matthew tells of fleeing to a foreign land by night and living as political refugees and later, returning to the Land of Promise. Though the accounts vary widely in the details, they nonetheless both offer glimpses of the gospel in miniature of risky journeys and prophecies fulfilled; of political power and military might being thwarted by the reign of God; of Gods saving grace lived out fully in the midst of the messiness of human affairs.
And lets be honest. Its an unsettling gospel this Second Sunday after Christmas. Even with our lectionary carefully omitting Herods slaughter of the innocents from our gospel reading today, we nonetheless are left with ugly reminders of political expediency running amok, of bloodshed casually ordered in order to maintain a carefully crafted status quo, realities to which people within our global village today remain well acquainted despite the centuries of time that intervene. Our gospel today challenges us to move away from the sweetness of the Nativity crθche and into the consequences of faith in an incarnate God who chose vulnerability over omnipotence, who invites us (as one writer put it) to turn our life projects upside down, if need be, and follow him to an uncertain end.
