Infinite Worth: Holy Innocents

The holy gospel according to Matthew (2:13-23).

¹³Now after the magi had left,

       an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

              “Get up, take the child and his mother,

              and flee to Egypt,

                     and remain there until I tell you;

                            for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 

¹⁴Then Joseph got up,

       took the child and his mother by night,

              and went to Egypt, 

              ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod.

                     This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord 

                            through the prophet,

                                  “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi,

       he was infuriated,

              and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem

                     who were two years old or under,

                            according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 

              ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

                     ¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah,

                            wailing and loud lamentation,

                                  Rachel weeping for her children;

                                          she refused to be consoled,

                                                 because they are no more.”

¹⁹When Herod died,

       an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream

              to Joseph in Egypt and said, 

                     ²⁰“Get up,

                            take the child and his mother,

                            and go to the land of Israel,

                                  for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 

       ²¹Then Joseph got up,

              took the child and his mother,

              and went to the land of Israel. 

                     ²²But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea

                            in place of his father Herod,

                                  he was afraid to go there.

                     And after being warned in a dream,

                            he went away to the district of Galilee. 

       ²³There he made his home in a town called Nazareth,

              so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled,

                     “He will be called a Nazorean.”

The gospel of the Lord.

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Today’s gospel is not the gospel I want for Christmas—really, I don’t ever want it.

Growing up, when I thought about Christmas, I rarely thought about today’s gospel.  The shepherds and angels from Luke’s gospel would quickly come to mind, the poetic Word made flesh of the incarnation in John and even the magi with the star to follow in Matthew’s gospel would all dance about in my imagination, with Santa and elves and stockings and sleigh rides, but not the flight to Egypt, not King Herod killing all the children.

It wasn’t until I started seminary and consistent worship planning that I realized this story and the commemoration of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents is in our lectionary each year, sometimes as a feast day, the third day of Christmas, and sometimes as a Sunday of Christmas, like this year.  It doesn’t always make its way into a Sunday morning because we celebrate Epiphany on Sundays a lot of the time, like we did last week, but it is part of the Christmas story—the part we don’t want.

We don’t want a ruler so insecure that he is threatened by a baby.  We don’t want a ruler who has no qualms about slaughtering the children in an entire town.  We don’t want a ruler with power he so easily abuses.

We don’t want parents to have to struggle with pain because they do not have the power to save their children.  We don’t want children’s futures to be beyond our control.  We don’t want to be unable to protect these most vulnerable—to be unable to keep them alive and whole and safe.

We don’t want difficult conversations with children about death and evil.  We don’t want to think about the conversation these parents will have with their child when they return from Egypt and the child looks around and asks why there aren’t any kids his age to play with.  We don’t want to break the child’s heart.

We don’t want this Christmas story.  But this is the Christmas story, because just as God is coming to be with us—just as God is deciding to show God’s immense love for the whole world, humans included, by becoming human, humanity—or one human in particular with several lackeys—is deciding that these smallest and youngest humans are disposable.  They are not only a threat to the one in power, but they are also disposable—worth little enough that getting rid of them is an easy spur of the moment decision.

I was talking to a friend this week and she mentioned theology professor Jeremy Posadas’[1] insight that so many people in this country feel, and are treated as if, they are disposable.  The culture we live in puts our value in what we can contribute to the economy, and even then someone could easily replace us—jobs could be shipped overseas, big farms could replace our family farms, downsizing and machines could take over. 

And if we’re not working, we’re disposable, too. Never mind that we might be caring for children or parents or grandchildren, we might have just retired after decades of work, we might have disabilities that keep us from some jobs, or we might do work on the farm and the garden, but those don’t provide pay checks, or maybe we just can’t find work.  The violence we have seen this last year—against people of color, against lgbtq+ people, against police—and the violent and demeaning rhetoric we have heard just feed into this feeling of disposability.

The message is clear: we are disposable, just like the things in our life are disposable.  There’s always something new or better for sale on TV and in stores and it’s easier to replace a broken toy or appliance than try to fix it. 

So much in life declares everything to be disposable, but whenever I think of things being disposable, an image pops into my head of women spread out at separate tables downstairs, each with her own sewing machine.

These women, as you know, have collected t-shirts—from Grace Place, from people, from the whole community—and these t-shirts that people do not want to wear and that could easily be disposable become diapers for families in crisis.  And then what’s left of the scraps from the diapers becomes quilt squares.  And what’s left from the scraps from the quilt squares become rags to clean with. And what’s left from the rags to clean with goes back to Grace Place to be sent in to be repurposed and the money they receive then helps support the ministries of Grace Place.   

Nothing about that t-shirt is disposable.

And that is where God is.  In the basement of this church building, yes, but more than that—in the families and children that will have diapers and quilts, in the ministry of Grace Place, in the rags and people who clean up and care for shared spaces, and in a landfill that is just a bit emptier because of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of t-shirts that are not in it.

You all know the worth of things—t-shirts, jars that can be reused for canning and freezing food, plants and animals.  And you know the worth of humans of all ages—from the youngest to the oldest.

We read of King Herod’s heinous acts and we wonder where God is. 

How could God let those children suffer? 

And there are no easy answers to these questions that we ask from 2000 years ago and the questions that we still ask today—from our lives and our place in history. 

Two of the most striking images from this place in history

last year are of a young boy washed up on shore because the boat carrying him and many other refugees didn’t make it safely to the shore, and the image of a three-year-old boy covered in dust and blood, sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo.  And we ask how God could let these children suffer? 

And it’s not just the children halfway across the world.  We know the children suffering in our own community of faith and connected to our own community of faith, and we ask again and again how could God let the children we love who are sick suffer?

Where is God when human lives feel disposable?

As we hear from Jeremiah, echoed in our gospel today, God is “A voice …heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”   

God is weeping over a humanity that is of infinite worth.  

God is weeping over the violence that tears again and again through this world that God came here to love.   

God is Rachel weeping, the mother who has lost her children.   

God is naming your value and mine because even in the weeping and lament, even in our grief and our pain, God is with us.   

Our questions remain, and yet Jesus is Emmanuel. 

Jesus comes as God-with-us, not to give easy answers to our questions, not to solve all the problems in one foul swoop.  God comes to us because you are of infinite worth.  Because you are God’s beloved.

Thanks be to God.

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[1] Dr. Jeremy Posadas is a professor of theology at Austin College and co-led the fight for LGBTQ equality in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for several years.

sermon epiphanies

(get it?? epiphanies!)

(cn: violence, especially against children)

babies (and children) are, quite probably, the most dangerous threat to unjust power.

 a: Voldemort finds out about the prophecy and has to kill Harry ASAP--no waiting to find out what kind of a threat he will be.

b: Herod's reaction to Jesus = kill all the babies (even though he will be dead long before Jesus is an adult).

c: in Moses' day, the pharaoh's plan to keep all the power away from the Hebrew people is to kill all the babies.

d: Malala Yousafzai's commitment to education access posed such a threat that the Taliban attempted to kill her.

e: very little care or concern was exhibited for the people and refugees of Syria until a little boy was killed on the journey to freedom and another was covered in blood and dirt in Aleppo and people started to care.

f: boko haram kidnapped 276 girls who were students at a government school in Chibok, Nigeria, whose lives--for those who survive--will never be the same.

g: the school to prison pipeline funnels kids away from opportunities to change the world and toward a life of restriction and slavery.

h: child slavery is a tool used to oppress humanity.  from a young age, children are taught not to think past the next 24 hours, if that.  they are kept busy, working in factories and sweat shops and doing sex work so that they cannot think past what is immediately before them, creating a pattern that can continue their whole lives, keeping them submissive to a system that only wants them for what they can do.
i: rape is used as a weapon not only for the violence (psychological and physical) of it, but for the potential of children being born who complicate (for lack of a better word) the culture of the survivors of rape.

babies have not yet learned the hatred and the fear that we live and breathe as adults. they are filled with goodness and potential. what would happen if we actually listened to them? what if you could vote at a younger age? what if children could decide the future of the environment and education?

God's imagination is bigger: advent 4

The holy gospel according to Matthew.

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph,

       but before they lived together,

              she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

       ¹⁹Her husband Joseph,

              being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,

                     planned to dismiss her quietly.

              ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this,

                     an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,

                            “Joseph, son of David,

                                   do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,

                                          for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

                                   ²¹She will bear a son,

                                          and you are to name him Jesus,

                                                 for he will save his people from their sins.”

²²All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord

       through the prophet:

              ²³“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

                     and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

                            which means, “God is with us.”

²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep,

       he did as the angel of God commanded him;

       he took Mary home as his wife,

              ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;

                     and he named him Jesus.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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One of my favorite TV shows is Joan of Arcadia.  In the show God, in various personifications, show up and talks to a high schooler named Joan.  In one episode God asks Joan to keep her friend Adam’s art piece out of the art show.  When Joan doesn’t, Adam wins the art show, sells his sculpture, and decides to use the money to quit school. 

Joan is distraught.  Realizing why God didn’t want the piece in the show, she does the only thing she can think of in that moment: she smashes Adam’s sculpture.

Joan encounters God again toward the end of the episode and lists all the ways she tried to stop things—talking Adam into not entering the show, buying the piece herself, stealing it.  Nothing else worked and as she gets ready to blame God for “making her” destroy the sculpture, God says, “Don’t blame me for your failure of imagination.”

Joan and Joseph are in similar situations.  He is as good as married to Mary according to custom and law, only to find out that she is pregnant and it’s not his kid.

What’s a guy to do?  Divorce is the only option he can imagine.  It’s just a matter of doing it quietly or publicly.  He can bring her to the public square, which would bring shame to her and her whole family, or he can “dismiss her quietly”—get a quick divorce and send her back to live with her family and raise her child, if her family will have her back, that is.  With any luck—which she’d need a lot of—she will survive all of this, the child will as well, and they can all move on with their separate lives.

Joan and Joseph both have a failure of imagination.  In fact, we as humans quite frequently suffer from failures of imagination.  We can only imagine two less than ideal, and usually mutually exclusive options.  We have created an either/or world. 

Joan can either brake Adam’s sculpture or let him quit high school.  Joseph can either quietly divorce Mary or make it into a public scene.  We can either provide military support to the Syrian government besieging Aleppo or provide military support to the rebel forces fighting back.   

We can either get into arguments or talk only about neutral topics and to people with whom we agree.  We can either be upset about the new school or support our students.  We can either want justice or forgive someone who has wronged us.  We can either be sinners or saints.  We can either be sick or whole.  Jesus can either be human or divine.  God can either be three or one.

And then God steps in, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

God’s imagination is bigger than ours.

Joan could have asked the woman who bought the sculpture to make her purchase contingent on Adam staying in school.  Joseph can remain faithful to Mary and help raise Jesus, who is Immanuel, God-with-us.  We can support Doctors without Borders and the White Helmets who are rescuing those left behind in Aleppo.  We can seek to understand each other’s perspectives when we disagree and have conversations about how we care differently for the most vulnerable. 

We can volunteer at the new school to show our care for the students, and appreciation of the staff.  We can forgive others for harm and hold them accountable for helping restore the community that was fractured by the wrong they committed.  We can be both sinners who do wrong and saints, made righteous by God through our baptism.  We can struggle with illness and be so full of love that we draw a community together in support and care.  Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  God is both three and one, the holy Trinity.

God’s imagination is greater by far than ours and God’s embrace, despite our best efforts, is wider.  God in Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  Jesus does experience the ups and downs, twists and turns of human life with us.  God-with-us, Immanuel, is also big enough to embrace the whole cosmos, to bring all of life and love into being.

When we are struck with a failure of imagination, it only takes a brief search in the Bible to find our imaginative God who brings both light and dark into the world, who advocates for justice and peace, who restores wholeness to individuals in communities.  Who comes as human and divine, who acknowledges the reality of human institutions of authority and God’s reign, which holds ultimate authority.  Jesus brings an alternative to violence—renewed opportunities for relationship and resistance to evil that does not require violence. 

When we are faced with a failure of imagination, God-with-us, Immanuel, fills the world with endless imagination.

Thanks be to God.