“The Dark Side of Christmas” (Matthew 2:1-18)

 It’s going back quite a few years now, but I suspect there are some in the congregation who can recall the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. One of its more memorable characters is Gus Portokalos, the father of the bride. At one point in the story Gus makes the claim, “Give me any word, any word, and I show you how the root of that word is Greek.” “OK,” someone pipes up from the back of the car, “how about the word ‘kimono’?” “Kimono, kimono, kimono,” Gus mutters to himself. You begin to wonder if he hasn’t been stumped. Then he triumphantly shouts, “Ha! Of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word cheimónos, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe! You see: robe, kimono. There you go!”

Well, perhaps unbeknownst to many of us, today we enter the season of Epiphany—and unlike “kimono”, “epiphany” really is a Greek word. It has to do with showing forth or making an appearance. By and large the only time we hear the word nowadays is on those rare occasions when someone might say, “I just had an epiphany,”—by which we might understand they had something like an “Aha!” moment, a flash of insight when suddenly something became clear.

That actually comes pretty close to the meaning of the church’s season of Epiphany. It begins with today’s reading about the journey of the wise men and how Jesus was made known to people from outside the Jewish nation for the first time. It will continue next Sunday with the account of Jesus’ baptism and of God the Father’s pronouncement that Jesus was his beloved Son. And so it continues, until we come to the mount of the transfiguration, where Jesus is revealed to Peter, James and John in all his heavenly splendour.

Yet to observe the season of Epiphany in that way is really to recount only half the story. Running side by side with the account of Jesus’ glory there is another narrative: the context of the dark world into which that light shone. If we take a moment to examine them closely, we find that surrounding those charming scenes on our Christmas cards of angels and shepherds and the wise men presenting their gifts there was a sinister world of hardship, shame and squalour.

The Darkness of Bethlehem

Those of us who watched the “Walking the Road to Bethlehem” video series during Advent were given a different perspective on the events surrounding Jesus’ coming. Let’s begin with Mary and Joseph. Nazareth, where they lived, was a village of fewer than five hundred people and news of Mary’s premarital pregnancy would have spread like wildfire. Although they had both been visited by angels, there was no one in Nazareth who would have believed that Mary was a virgin. In the eyes of the townsfolk her condition would have been a scandal, the subject of endless rumour and chitchat, bringing shame to her and embarrassment to Joseph.

And months later, when they came to Bethlehem, what about the manger where Jesus was laid? It is easy to forget that what we are talking about is a feeding trough for animals. It could not have been the least bit sanitary. Yet it was the only thing available. I wonder what was going through Mary’s mind as she laid her tiny baby down in it. Did she and Joseph have to shoo the animals away as they came in search of food?

Then there were the shepherds. They were not clean-cut farm boys, as we might like to imagine. Rather, as Adam Hamilton pointed out,

They were typically uneducated, usually poor, and, since they lived among animals in the elements, sometimes smelled of dirty sheep… Shepherds were tolerated but not always esteemed by their neighbours.[1]

In fact, Hamilton was being kind. First-century rabbis classed shepherds with thieves and cheats. Their roving life gave them the opportunity to steal from the flocks and they were known to take advantage of it. They had what one commentator has described as an “unfortunate habit of confusing ‘mine’ with ‘thine’ ”.[2] For that reason, to buy milk, wool or kids from a shepherd was forbidden, because more than likely you would be receiving stolen goods.[3]

This morning we read of the visit of the magi. Behind that story there lies the evil shadow of King Herod, sitting on his throne in Jerusalem, less than ten kilometers away. History records Herod as an insanely jealous, paranoid, ambitious and despotic ruler. He maintained a personal bodyguard of two thousand soldiers and employed secret police to keep a watchful eye on the common people. He banned anything that smacked of opposition and would have it put down by brute force. His insatiable thirst for power led him to a series of ruthless acts, including the execution of his wife, his brother-in-law (who also happened to be the high priest), three of his sons, three hundred military leaders, and many others.

So it is that this morning’s reading concludes with a horrific act of violence. It is a scene not depicted on any Christmas cards that I know of. It is not re-enacted in children’s Christmas pageants. Yet it is part of the real world into which Jesus was born. And as a result Mary and Joseph are forced to take another journey, this time to flee with their infant child as refugees to Egypt.

Thus before he reaches the age of two, we find Jesus already the subject of rumour and innuendo, homeless, in the company of the lowest of the low, threatened, persecuted, and a refugee. As we follow the gospel story, we find him hungry, thirsty, tempted, caught in a violent storm at sea, grieving over the death of a friend, in such intensity of anguish that his sweat becomes like drops of blood falling to the ground… So it is that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews can claim that in Jesus, “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all” (Hebrews 4:15, The Message). “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

Darkness Today

The apostle Paul summarizes it in his famous hymn in Philippians, chapter 2:

Although in very nature God,
     he did not consider equality with God something to grasp;
rather, he emptied himself
     by taking the very nature of a slave,
     being made in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
     he humbled himself
     by becoming obedient to the point of death—
              and nothing less than death on a cross!

Jesus knows what it is to be poor, oppressed, homeless, a refugee… And so he stands beside such people; he stands beside you and me today. He is with us, not just for the good times, but in our moments of weakness and need, in our moments of doubt and sorrow, in our moments of anguish and grief. As we pondered in the sermon a couple of weeks ago, Jesus is Immanuel—God with us.

In the church where last served I had my eyes opened to what that means in extreme terms. One Christmas Eve we had the privilege of being “invaded” by the first of what became more than a hundred refugees. They were Karen people from Burma and they are among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

This past Friday Burma marked the seventy-first anniversary of its independence as a nation. Not one of those years has passed when the Karen people, along with other ethnic minorities, they have not been hunted, tortured, forced out of their homes and villages, and slaughtered by the Burmese army. They have been subjected to bombings, sniper shots, machine gun fire, torture, germ warfare and chemical attacks.[4]  Some of my parishioners had seen their relatives shot down in front of them. Others bore machete scars and bullet wounds. Still others had found escape only by risking their lives to walk through minefields. And when they reached the supposed safety of refugee camps in neighbouring Thailand, the Burmese army continued to shell them.

Yet through all of this they never lost their love for Jesus—and, more importantly, their confidence in Jesus’ love for them, Jesus’ presence with them. To hear them sing some of the old favourite hymns like “Take my life and let it be” or “O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end”, and to see them come humbly and faithfully to the Lord’s table, for me was a deeply moving experience. They had known what it was for Jesus to dwell with them in the darkness.

Never Alone

It’s my sincere hope that 2019 will be a year of blessing for all of us. Yet inevitably there will be times of darkness. My prayer is that, as Jesus stepped into the darkness of Bethlehem twenty centuries and more ago, so you may know his presence with you both in the good times and in those moments when darkness seems to be closing in your life.

So allow me to conclude with a story:

At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly—not with cringing shame but with belligerence.

“Can God judge us? How can God know about suffering?” snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!” In another group a man lowered his collar. “What about this?” he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. “Lynched for no crime but being black! We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled till only death gave release.”

Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that people had been forced to endure in this world? “God leads a pretty sheltered life,” they said. 



So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he or she had suffered the most. A Jew, a slave, an untouchable from India, a 
person from Hiroshima, a prisoner from a Siberian gulag, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather simple: before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their verdict was that God should be sentenced to live on earth—as a human being!

“Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Let him champion a cause so just, but so radical, that it brings down upon him the hate, condemnation and efforts of every major traditional and established religious authority to eliminate him. Let him try to describe 
what no-one has ever seen, felt, tasted, heard, or smelled: let him try to communicate God to human beings. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him be indicted on false charges, tried before a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured and let him die! Let him die the most humiliating death—with common thieves.”

As each leader announced a portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of
 approval went up from the assembled throng. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. Suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.[5]

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[1]     Adam Hamilton, The Journey, 113

[2]     Leon Morris, The Gospel According to St Luke, 84

[3]     Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 902

[4]    See Andrew Boyd, Baroness Cox, A Voice for the Voiceless, 215-257

[5]     Author unknown

“On His Majesty’s Service” (Colossians 1:1-14)

What a perfect day to celebrate an anniversary! I’m sure it wasn’t in anyone’s mind twenty-eight years ago, but this day is recognized in many church communities as the festival of Christ the King. (Some of you on your way here this morning may have noticed the sign outside St Thomas Aquinas proclaiming Jesus as King of all creation.) Many of those churches will be reading today from Colossians 1, beginning at verse 15, which runs as follows:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Those verses call us to look upwards to the incomparable splendour of the risen, ascended, glorified Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned at the right hand of God the Father. Few other passages in Scripture give us such an exalted picture of Christ, the unrivalled Lord of the church and indeed of all creation.

This morning, however, I want us to lower our sights a little, if you don’t mind, to look at the verses that immediately precede that passage. The apostle Paul is writing to his fellow believers in Colossae—and if I could hazard a guess, I suspect that that church still had a way to go before they would reach their twenty-eighth anniversary. But I believe we can learn some significant lessons from what Paul says both to them and about them. So, if you have a Bible with you, you might want to turn to the opening verses of Colossians, chapter 1.

Faithfulness

First-century letters always begin with the identity of the sender, followed by the name of the recipient. And take notice of how Paul addresses them in this case. They are “faithful brothers and sisters in Christ”. Now it seems to me that we must understand that word “faithful” in two senses. The first could almost go without saying: that is, that the brothers and sisters in Colossae were people of faith, men and women who had put their trust in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. I have no need to tell you that faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which the whole Christian life—and, by extension, the church—is built. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6).

I well remember a young man who had begun attending a church where I once served. He was a genuine seeker and his quest went on for months and months. He joined us for one of our annual church retreats and at the closing service I noticed that he came forward to receive communion for the first time. Afterwards I asked him about it and he said to me, “John, I could have kicked myself. All this time I have been thinking that Christianity was about knowledge. Today it finally dawned upon me that it’s about faith—and I took that step.” Yes, it’s all about faith, putting our trust in Jesus Christ.

Yet if that were all Paul meant by “faithful”, he could just as easily have left the word out. Surely there has to be more to what he is saying. Surely what Paul is referring to is not merely their initial act of faith that brought them to Christ and into the church, but also their ongoing faithfulness to him. That’s why the Bible speaks of faith in terms of a race. It’s more than just getting off the starting line. It’s running with perseverance, keeping our eyes focused on Jesus, not giving in to exhaustion or to the world’s enticements, until we reach the goal.

This past week Maclean’s magazine published an article based on a recently conducted study of Protestant congregations in Canada. Their byline read, “An exclusive remarkable study finds that mainline Protestant churches that focus on the Gospel and prayer are growing, while those that don’t are in decline.” I consider that as something of a no-brainer, don’t you? However, the study concluded that churches were considerably more likely to be growing where the pastor and the congregation agreed with the statement, “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb,” read their Bibles on a regular basis, believed that “God performs miracles in answer to prayers” and upheld that it was “very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians”. The study also found that about two thirds of the attendees at churches where these statements were affirmed were under the age of sixty, whereas two thirds of those at churches that did not were over sixty.[1] If our churches are to prosper and grow, then faithfulness to Christ and to the gospel make all the difference.

Twenty-eight years ago First Congregational was born out of a spirit of faithfulness—out of a desire to be faithful to God’s word and obedient to Jesus Christ. God has blessed you over those years and I have no doubt that he will continue to bless you as you continue in faithfulness to Christ and to contend “with everything you have in you for this faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish” (Jude 3, The Message).

Fruitfulness

At this point we need to go farther. We need to recognize that faithfulness is not limited to adherence to a set of doctrinal standards or theological propositions. I know churches that are like that and they can be every bit as deadly as those that have left doctrinal standards behind—perhaps even more so! No, true faithfulness will inevitably lead us to action, or what Paul in this morning’s passage calls fruitfulness.

Twice he speaks about bearing fruit. In verse 6 he points to the gospel, the saving good news of Jesus, bearing fruit in their lives and growing throughout the whole world. Then in verses 9 and 10 he tells of his ongoing prayer that they “may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work…”

In all the world I can’t think of anything that I find more delicious than fresh fruit. What is usually the first section you encounter as you enter a supermarket? The fresh fruits. The grocery marketers know what they are doing when they place them right at the entrance. I remember when we lived in Halifax previously I planted a peach tree in our back yard. What a delight it was in late August to go out and pick a ripe, luscious peach warmed by the afternoon sun! So too, I believe, a church that is fruitful brings delight to the heart of God—Christian men and women and children in whose lives are seen those marvellous fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, what the New English Bible calls “the harvest of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23).

It is clear from what Jesus taught his disciples in John 15 that this kind of fruitfulness is a consequence of faithfulness: “I am the vine,” he says to us, “you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing… This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:5,8). It is as we remain connected to Jesus, as his life flows into us and through us, that we are able, as Paul teaches us in this morning’s passage, to “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God”.

In its final chapter the Bible gives us a beautiful picture of the river of the water of life flowing through the city of God. “On each side of the river stood the tree of life,” John tells us, “bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). Fruitfulness in the Bible is not just a matter of personal enrichment; it’s about making a difference in the world.

From the beginning you at First Congregational chose not to follow an isolationist route. Instead you chose to be fully engaged both with the wider Christian community (for example through Jesus to the Nations and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship) and with the world (through such ventures as Sunday suppers and the Crisis Pregnancy Centre). There can be a sacrifice in that. It means that resources are often spread thin, people sometimes stretched to their limit. But I want to say that the sacrifice is worth it. And you here this morning are the living proof.

Fortitude

And so we have faithfulness and fruitfulness. And to these we can add a third “F”: fortitude. In far more ways than I can number the world is a very different place from what it was twenty-eight years ago. (And why should we expect otherwise?) The church that once was prominent on Canada’s social landscape has long been relegated to the sidelines. Indeed we are off the map altogether. A generation ago the church may have been regarded as outmoded or even comical. Today in many places Christians encounter overt hostility. I don’t need to tell you. You know as well as I do that as often as not nowadays Christianity is associated with narrow-mindedness, bigotry and intolerance—and, sad to admit, we have to take some of the blame for that.

Yet what we face in North America does not begin to compare with what many of our sisters and brothers are encountering in other parts of the globe. Last Sunday was the World Day of Prayer for Refugees. I am encouraged by the strength shown by our fellow believers in other parts of the world who find themselves under considerably greater pressure than we can imagine. When I was here a few weeks ago I told you how my previous congregation was “invaded” by more than a hundred Karen refugees from Burma. Some of them had spent their entire lives in a refugee camp. Others had been shot at and even shot, sliced with machetes, seen their relatives and neighbours murdered before their eyes. Their suffering for the cause of Christ at the hands of an authoritarian government is little known, and it has gone on for nearly seventy years. Yet their witness for Christ continues to burn brightly and in spite of vicious persecution the church continues to grow.

Their experience is replicated by believers in many other parts of the world, most notably in North Korea, Syria and Iraq. Compared to them, what we face in Canada are minor irritations. Nevertheless, it is easy to become disheartened. In our passage this morning, however, Paul says just the opposite. He challenges us to be strengthened—to look to the Holy Spirit to give us endurance and patience. He encourages us to remember that the darkness that surrounds us must inevitably yield to the kingdom of light. He reminds us that the frustrations of the present cannot begin to compare with the glory that awaits us.

As you look ahead to the next twenty-eight years, who knows what may await you around the corner? But one thing you can be sure of. You serve the King of heaven and earth and his will will not be thwarted. May you continue in faithfulness to him and to his word, in fruitfulness as you serve him in the world, and in fortitude as you learn to depend more and more on the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’d like to conclude with an old prayer that has been traditionally used on this Sunday and that seemed fitting for us this morning.

Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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[1]        http://www.macleans.ca/society/it-has-risen-is-this-the-key-to-growing-protestant-churches/. See also https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/17/literal-interpretation-of-bible-helps-increase-church-attendance.