Matthew 2:13-23
Jesus was a refugee from a land torn by hardship and cruelty … warned in a dream of Herod’s plan to kill the child, Joseph takes his family, in the middle of the night, and flees to Egypt.
Matthew’s congregation would have understood … many of them were refugees, too … after the sacking of Jerusalem … the destruction of its Temple in the 70th year of the Christian Era.
Folks fled for their lives … displaced and uncertain.
A story played out in our world too many times … what with war and rumors of war … earthquake and flood.
12 million refugees – those who cross borders in search of safety - 21 million internally displaced because of violence or disaster – 33 million without a home.
It’s a hard life for millions … harder than most of us will ever know … and beyond all imagination.
In the brilliant movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” his rich Texas friend encourages him to do more about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Charlie Wilson is a little slow to move on it, so his rich Texas friend arranges for a flight to Pakistan to see the refugee camps first hand … Charlie Wilson walks through these camps, disease-ridden and teeming with filth, crammed with tens of thousands of desperate, hungry people, an no greater desperation than that written on the face of a child – Charlie Wilson is overwhelmed … he returns to Congress a champion of the Afghani people, working covertly to defeat the Soviets.
I have no idea what it is to be displaced … do you?
I remember the power outage of the summer of 2003; we were living in Detroit.
I was watching TV when the power went out … Donna called me from a nearby community, saying, “The power just went out.”
I remember thinking … power out here … power out there … this is pretty big.
I waited an hour or so, and still no power, so I called Rachel in California – cell phones were still working – I said, “Turn on TV at your office; see if you can find out what’s happening.”
There it was on CNN – the blackout spreading like spilled ink throughout the northeastern part of the nation.
“Is it terrorism?” we all asked.
Only later were we to learn how dangerously close we came to having the entire national grid go down like a series of dominoes.
For three days, no power.
Ten million people in Ontario, 40 million Americans in eight states.
That evening and the next two nights, we cooked out on the grill … neighbors brought stuff over and we sat in the dark … the night skies was clear … no ambient light … the stars were bright … being August, it stayed light until late … and then, like pioneers of old, our wake and sleep patterns followed the sun.
We made do for a few days until power was restored … but I remember thinking: “How much longer could we have gotten on? - no gas at the pump; stores without refrigeration; everything on emergency power; water still in the tap, but drinkable only after boiling … no cell phones, no radio; no internet; no trains or planes … nothing.
This past week, I drove by a building with an indented store front, claimed by a squatter – a shopping cart, an umbrella, tattered cushions and a sleeping bag, the detritus of poverty … and a salvaged Christmas Tree with a few shreds of tinsel and a bow or two.
Everyone wants a home … even the homeless make do as best they can.
Life is hard for millions of people … really hard, desperately hard.
Our LORD had a hard go of it … a crummy start … and it ended poorly … on a Roman cross and a borrowed tomb.
Why would God enter life on such a precarious note?
Why would God take upon Himself the stress and strain of life at its worst?
Why submit to the humiliation of a trial in Herod’s palace and Pilate’s court?
Why the cradle and why the cross?
What is God doing?
God is undoing death! And death’s paymaster – named “sin” … for the wages of sin are death!
Death in all of its hideous versions …
“Yea though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death …”
The death that comes slowly to a human being without grace … like the movie portrait of Mr. Plainview, “There Will Be Blood” – a man sells his soul for gain … and what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? To trade life for death?
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence and death …
The death of hope in a child beaten by ill-gotten parents and betrayed by a poorly funded safety net that lets too many children slip through the webbing.
The death of faith, hope and love …
The death of a soul long before a body dies …
And death itself … “the final enemy” says Paul the Apostle, against which no human being can stand, no science prevail, no myth soften, and no incantation defeat!
The wages of sin are death … and we’re all gainfully employed in the market place of sin … all of us, great and small; good and bad … nary a one of us can escape:
“There is no one who is righteous, not even one …” (Romans 3:10).
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19).
Our spirit cries out with Paul: “Who will rescue me?”
Will our own goodness suffice to turn the tide and heal the wound?
But when and how?
Has not the world tried long and hard to heal itself?
Every nostrum fails in the final account … peace talks end one war only to witness the onset of another.
Poverty programs work for a time, and then the machinery of greed and power churns out another generation of haves with too much and have-nots with too little.
Medicine and technology promise the moon, but death still comes a-calling, and we each go off into the dark veil.
Hope cannot not be found within history nor will it be found in the human heart … neither invention nor innovation will lead us out of the vicious circle of temporary hope and bitter disappointment … there is no advanced civilization out there who will visit us one day and save us, nor some genius born today or tomorrow who will lead us to nirvana.
“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. No merit of my own I claim But wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”
From sin to salvation … from life to death … from fear to faith … delivered, set free and made new.
Salvation received on bended knee … but of what price God paid.
Our salvation cost everything God had and then some.
No easy work for God … undoing the damages of sin; unraveling the twisted cords of sin and sorrow; disentangling us from the web of death.
It was a breeze for God to create the world …
“Let it be,” said God, and so it was. No muss, no fuss.
Speaking of creation …
Do you now the longest day in the Bible? The day Adam was created, because there was no Eve.”
After God had created Adam he noticed that he looked very lonely.
God said "Adam, I've decided to make you a woman. She'll love you, cook for you, be sweet to you, and understand you."
Adam said "Great! How much will she cost me?"
God said, "An arm and a leg."
"Well," said Adam "what can I get for a rib?"
It was a breeze for God to create the heavens and the earth … the far-flung stars and the starfish in the tidal pool …
But sin entered in … a small thing at first – a question, a lie, a misperception, fruit plucked from the tree – and then gathering speed like a freight train - the onset of fear, the dissolution of love and the beginning of death.
God soon learned that an all-out frontal attack did no good … creating a nation and defending it with sword and spear did no good … commanding us to do better, be better and make something of ourselves did no good – neither promise nor threat resolved the issue and undid the damages done by sin.
So God enters into it, goes to the very heart of it … with a crummy start and a terrible end … God tastes every bitter herb we eat; God takes unto Himself horror and loss, fatigue and fear, ever injustice and every betrayal … at the bottom of the heap, the lowest rung of the ladder … to the very heart of death itself.
“For our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The great exchange … the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world by taking every lick of it, absorbing it, by living within it and feeling all it – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
A pure and perfect love hanging on the cross, smeared with blood and spit; the great Son of God, standing in the breech … taking every hit … a refugee at birth … a man without a home … “Foxes have holes,” He said, “and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His Head” (Matthew 8:20).
Joseph took his family in the middle of the night … a crummy start to the hardest work God ever had to do … to undo the damages of sin, right the ship, get the train on track, get the car out of the ditch; save us from our sins … it was the hardest work God ever had to do!
That’s why He’s our Savior … that’s why He’s the King of kings and the LORD of lords … He’s the incomparable sacrifice; the uncontested Prince of Peace … He’s the Bread of Heaven and the Living Water … He’s life eternal and life here and now … He’s the Master who stills the storm and the hand upon the leper … He speaks to the woman at the well and takes little children into his arms … He bears the cross to Calvary and bears the sins of the world upon His shoulders … He dies our death, and death cannot hold Him … the Tomb would claim Him, but the stone is rolled away … He’s the Good Shepherd of the sheep; He’s the Head of the church, the Firstborn of the dead … He’s at the right of Hand God and He’s with us forever.
Amen and Amen!
