Who Would Have Thought?

We had dinner with some friends Friday night, and as the youngest son arrived from work one of his siblings said, “It’s all gone.” Mom corrected – “All but the tree. Once Christmas is over, I can’t stand all that stuff it just starts feeling like clutter.” At our house, we used to take everything down and put it away on New Year’s Day. Now, we wait until January 6^th, Epiphany. Probably less because it connects theologically to put everything away after we celebrate the arrival of the magi and more because Lizzie’s birthday is December 3^rd and when she was young we didn’t decorate for Christmas until after her birthday party, so it seemed like we had barely gotten everything up and we were not ready to start taking it back down. We wanted to hold onto it just a little bit longer, enjoy our coffee by the glow of the Christmas tree lights a few more mornings. The house, to me, seems bare when Christmas is all put away for another year.

And we go back to normal. Our calendar has fewer gatherings with friends and family. Our budget gets attention again after several weeks of ignoring it. We turn the news back on and hear the same stories of violence and corruption, of seeking power and of fear. Evil has not been banished.

The angels are no longer in the night sky.

The shepherds have gone, amazing everyone they met with their story as they led their sheep back to their fields.

The magi arrived – at some point – Matthew’s Gospel tells us that the star they had followed stopped over the house where the child Jesus was. Herod did his calculations for the slaughter of children based on the magi’s information about when the star appeared. So, Jesus was likely not a tiny infant, but an active toddler by the time they arrived with their gifts. Now they’ve gone.

And Joseph has a nightmare. Get up – and go. NOW. Herod is going to search for Jesus and kill him. And, indeed, when the magi don’t return with his location so that Herod can order a targeted assassination of the child, Herod orders all boys 2 and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas killed.

Why? When the magi arrived, they asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” And Herod is “eteraxthay”ed and all Jerusalem with him. We often translate it “troubled” or “stirred.” The root is actually the word for water roiling. Have you ever fed fish in a pond or a lake? If you go to the same place all the time, the fish start anticipating that you are bringing them food. My uncle had a catfish pond…he would have corrected me and said it was a lake, but I think by strict definition it was likely a pond. We used to go to the barrel of fish food and scoop it into a metal pail. Then we carried the pail, to the water’s edge close to the duck’s roost. And as we got close, we were to knock on that pail.  Let me tell you, by the time we got ready to start pitching handfuls of food, there were catfish jumping and knocking into each other, the whole surface of the water was a wild churn as they flailed and fought for the pellets of food. The water was “Eteraxthay”ed, disturbed, stirred, troubled. That’s the feeling inside Herod, and all Jerusalem with him.

A new king? Pax Romana was oppressive, but the arrival of a new king trying to assert dominance, to confront the Roman Empire? Herod was brutal and calloused, hard-hearted. He lived in luxury at the expense of the people of and around Jerusalem, over which Rome had placed him in power. But, he served at the pleasure of the Emperor. So, he had built theaters, hippodromes, baths, and aqueducts to demonstrate his success as king of the Jews. Caesarea Maritima, a deep-water harbor city with a gladiator stadium and Roman Temples, the mountaintop fortress of Masada, the fortress palace complex of Herodium, the expansion of the Temple Mount with retaining walls were just a few of his projects. The Western Wall is a remnant still today, and the other sites are impressive archeological sites still to visit. Then, they were marvels, to impress his superiors and his subordinates. To protect his position. To make him feel secure.

And then came the magi. A new king had been born? Fear churned within him. In saying that all Jerusalem churned,  Matthew is telling us that the very foundations of the establishment were shaken. People weren’t afraid of a baby, they were afraid of what change might happen. They were afraid of destabilizing what was a carefully balanced highly-explosive political state.

Fear. The opposite of what every messenger of God first offers – fear. Every time an angel or messenger of God appears what do they say, “Do not be afraid.” The message of God cannot be delivered, cannot be heard, by us when we are afraid. Fear never results in God’s will being done. Quite the opposite. Fear leads to evil.

Now, pause here, because I know someone is going to ask me about the times the Bible talks about the “fear of the Lord.” That fear is a different word. In Hebrew, the fear of the Lord is “yirah” and means “awe and reverence.” In Greek it is “phobos” and means “to be alarmed, to withdraw, and also awe and reverence.” The fear that leads to evil is not the fear of awe that cedes control to One who is greater than yourself, but the fear of ire that resists losing control.

Herod’s fear was the fear of ire, fear of losing control, losing power. And Jerusalem’s fear was what that would mean for them.

Who would have thought that a baby, born into poverty, to unmarried parents in a dirty animal stall would shake the political establishment?

Who would have thought that the one sent into the world to bring peace would spark an infanticide?

Who would have thought that God would be a refugee, fleeing from the place God chose to come and make his home for safety in a foreign land?

Who would have thought that we would celebrate his birth more than 2,000 years later year after year and hope that something would change this time around…and then wonder why it hasn’t.

It’s not the world that changes as we draw near to the manger, it’s us. We begin to glow with Christ’s light. We hear the Christmas angels declaration, “Fear not. For behold, I bring you good news.” And if we allow the churning within us to settle, we receive the news of great joy for all people. The Messiah has been born for us. God is with us. Peace on earth, no more flailing and flopping and knocking our way to the top, roiling the water, churching for more. God is for us. Peace among all in whom God delights. God loves us.

On the day after Christmas the expectation is gone, the presents are opened, the wrapping is trashed the boxes are stacked, that’s over. There are still wars and work and stress in our world. Our awareness of Emmanuel is the change that Christmas offers. God is with us. God is for us. God loves us. Do not be afraid. Be at peace. Amen.