The Costly Gift

If it hasn't affected some of us personally this year, we need only talk with a neighbor who has faced serious illness, death of relatives, job reduction, or some other loss during the year.

We sometimes turn wistful at Christmas, when we think of other years, real or imagined, when things were better or at least different.

And yet, and yet, no matter how difficult the circumstances, the gifts of God shine through our dismay.

It has always been that way, right back to the very first Christmas; there has always been a blend of joy at sadness in the celebration of the nativity of our Lord.

We noted the imperative words of Advent last Sunday – watch, prepare, bear witness, and rejoice – and know that they are admonitions with lots of serious content.

They point us to God's gifts, but not in a carefree manner..

During the 12 days of the Christmas celebration, we will not likely hear this carol on the radio.

It is at Hymn #74:

A stable lamp is lighted,

whose glow shall wake the sky.

The stars shall lend their voices,

and every stone shall cry.

Yet he shall be forsaken,

and yielded up to die.

The sky shall groan and darken,

and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

for stony hearts of men.

God's blood upon the spearhead,

God's love refused again.

The final lines catch it well:

God's love so fully and wonderfully given in Christ in Bethlehem is refused again and again.

The 12 great days are a celebration of God's gift, but the joy is marred by the NO of rejection.

It is because of this continuing reality of the way in which we react to the love of God that the day of the Holy Innocents, the first Martyrs, belongs here, so early in the Christmas season, the 4^th day.

The death of the children of Bethlehem points an accusing finger not only at king Herod, but also at all who violently try to exterminate God's Good News.

As we listen to this story there are three things that are hard for us to take.

(1) As always, the weak bear the sins of the strong.

That is certainly the case with these children.

They had never done anything deserving violent death.

They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Herod's anger was vented on them.

He slaughtered 3 of his own sons, several wives, court officials, hundreds of pharisees and other leaders, and thousands of ordinary people; anyone whom his deranged mind thought might represent a threat to him.

It is quite within the realm of possibility that Herod could order the youth of an entire village to be killed.

Are we shocked and surprised?

There are so many other instances.

On every street corner in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem I remember seeing posters which remind the few remaining Christians in the city never to forget the slaughter of untold thousands of Armenian Christians in Turkey that began on April 24, 1915 while the rest of the world was engaged and distracted by WWI.

The tensions exacerbated in eastern Turkey continue to this day.

The nation of Sudan has been torn in half by civil war which consumed most of the last 25 years.

Christians in the south were systematically starved and tortured by Muslims from the north, and now the Christians remaining in the north cannot get to the south and are being murdered wherever they are found.

It is partly religious and partly economic and political, but it is completely real and deadly.

Two weeks ago we heard of the slaughter of hundreds of school children in Pakistan, in pointless hatred.

Again, the young suffer greatly because of things over which they have no control.

Out of sheer hate, Hindu mobs in India have been torching whole villages and churches that have been Christian for generations.

Week after week in the past many years, we have been remembering one or more of these situations in the Prayer of the Church.

It would be much easier on us all to simply omit that and keep everything nice and sweet, but it is a part of human life in our times just as it has always been.

Jeremiah hears Rachel screaming from the grave for the children of Israel taken into exile, most of them never to return and many of them dying enroute.

Matthew hears the same cry when Herod kills the children of Bethlehem.

It echoes in our ears as well when we hear of situation after situation around the world in our days.

(2) The second thing that we notice is that even in dismal circumstances, the tiniest bit of light gleams like a lighthouse.

Christ was not extinguished by the entire armed might of Herod, and he escapes to grow up.

Even when the government of Pilate seems to finally destroy Jesus with his crucifixion, the light of Resurrection morning signals a very different outcome.

We have learned that the Lutheran churches in Siberia survived 70 years of official oppression.

It was a long nightmare of fear and intimidation during which the rest of the world heard nothing of their lives and struggles,

but now we know that it was the grandmothers who kept the faith and passed it on quietly until the day finally came when it could be shown openly again, when the people could gather publicly for worship, and even a seminary could be re-established.

During Advent, we remembered St. Lucy, whose name means “light” and whose brave example has never been forgotten across 17 centuries.

We have heard of resolute Christians in our own day, ordinary persons and leaders alike, who have continued to bear witness to Jesus at great personal cost, but with joy nonetheless.

I receive a thin publication called The Voice of the Martyrs which gives their stories from a wide range of places around the world.

They are incredibly brave people who know what is truly valuable, and who want to give it away to any who will listen and receive it.

Their examples shall not be forgotten, because the source of their confidence is not in themselves, but in the Lord Jesus who lives in spite of death.

(3) The third marvel from our Gospel story today is that God does not forget even those whom the world labels as insignificant.

Some scholars have gone through Roman records looking for evidence that would support Matthew's accounts of the slaughter of the Innocents and the flight of Mary and Joseph with the child Jesus to Egypt.

They cannot find any documentary evidence, and thus conclude that it didn't happen.

Their conclusion may be too quick.

It may be just as likely that the story which Matthew has given us is the only one written about these things because the early Christians were the only ones who cared enough to write them down and remember them.

This kind of capricious murder was just so common an event.

After all, what are a few kids knocked off compared with the great king like Herod?

Quite a lot, says Matthew!

The Herod-type people of our world spend so much time on themselves, and they reject God's presence.

But the Lord spends his time lavishly on others: the weak, the powerless, and the unloved.

“Let the little children come to me,” Jesus says, ”for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

As inconvenient as some think it to be, I cannot hear these stories without thinking of those tiny children who never get a chance at life because of the government-approved and socially sanctioned extermination of abortion.

It is profoundly embarrassing to me that our church-provided medical plan has the nerve to call that “health care” instead of the sanctioned homicide that I believe it to be.

And surely Rachel weeps for them as well.

The song of the angels to the shepherds , which we proclaimed on Wednesday evening, is a passage which is notoriously difficult to translate.

Whichever way it gets translated, it concerns God's gift of peace and wholeness brought through the birth of this Jesus.

It is God's coming to us in the flesh, for the sake of those whom he favors.

We know from other passages in the Gospels that his favor is upon those who are the most vulnerable, those receiving the least regard, those with no one to speak for them.

Surely the victims of the Bethlehem slaughter are joined by the born and unborn victims of our days as ones in this category marked by Jesus' special interest and care.

And if they are in God's special care, shouldn't they be in ours as well?

We did say that it is a costly gift, didn't we?

Costly for the Lord God who gives, and costly also for those who would share that gift with a hostile world.

And it is Good News that the Lord spends his time lavishly on the weak, the powerless, and the unlovely, and that includes you and me:

--He supports the weak who bear the sins of the strong,

--He is the light which shines through the lives of the persecuted,

--He remembers those whom the world would throw away.

And He will have the last word about all of this life that we live.

This is not the sugary part of the Christmas message, but it is an important part of it.

May we learn that the angels' song is the truest song of all:

Glory-- in highest heaven-- to God; and

peace --on earth --for people whom he favors. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.