Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Christmas - Matthew 2:1-15

When I read this Gospel passage for the first time this week, it felt to me that there was a really obvious thing to say about it. So let me just get the obvious thing out of the way first. Jesus was a refugee. When He was still a toddler, his parents fled with him to Egypt to save his life.

The official definition of a refugee is one who flees their own country due to violence, environmental disaster, or persecution because of who they are or what they believe. That persecution could be based on race, political views, religious beliefs or practices, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other forms of discrimination. There must be a credible threat to the person’s life or safety for them to be categorized as a refugee. 

For Jesus, the persecution was political. In the early part of our Gospel story this morning, we hears how wise men from the east come to King Herod’s palace in search of the newborn king. Their assumption was that a newborn king  must be found in a place. But of course, there was no newborn king in Herod’s palace. Herod becomes unhinged. He’s totally threatened by the idea that there is someone with designs on his rule over Judea. He tells these magi to alert him to where this new king is so that he can worship him - but his secret plan is to kill the usurper. 

Joseph is warned in a dream to flee, so he and Mary escape to Egypt with Jesus. The threat Jesus was facing was real. In a part of the story we don’t hear today, when this newborn king (aka Jesus) can’t be found, Herod orders the killing of all the boys under two in the area where Jesus and his family were staying. Truly, the threat Jesus was facing was real.

I sometimes don’t understand the lectionary shapers. Because there are a couple of OBVIOUS Old Testament passages that make clear the importance of Egypt in the story of the Israelites. They shed some light on why, beyond proximity, the Holy Family might have fled there.

At multiple points in the Old Testament (see for example: Exodus 22:21, Deuteronomy 15:15, Deuteronomy 24:18, and Leviticus 19:34), God reminds the people of Israel that they were slaves and sojourners in Egypt and that they should treat those foreigners who live among them well. 

Here’s just one example, the passage from Leviticus: The foreigner who resides among you shall be to you as the native-born, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 

The obvious thing to say about this passage is that Jesus was a refugee who fled political violence. Scripture enjoins us to care for those who find themselves in our midst. 

This truth is very much on my mind as I prepare to travel to Florida tomorrow to stand with our sisters in Christ, as they have their habeas corpus hearing on Tuesday. That hearing is protesting their illegal detention.  

But there’s something else to say about this passage that, while less obvious, is equally important.

Liturgically, we are still in the season of Christmas, the Feast Incarnation. We are still in the season where we celebrate the reality God took on human flesh and came among us as a fully human person. 

God came among us as one of us in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, who was born in a stable, a child of Joseph, who likely worked as day laborer to build the Roman city of Sepphoris.  God came among us as one of us and became a refugee before he was three. And ultimately, God came among us as one of us and was crucified by the Roman Empire. Crucifixion was the most shameful and painful way the Romans used to kill those they deemed a threat. And they crucifixion to send a message to anyone else who was considering rebelling against Rome. It was a threat. Don’t rebel, or this could happen to you. 

The good news of the incarnation is that God came among us as one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, to enter fully into the human condition, to be with us in all that we face in this life. In the incarnation, God entered into the messiness of humanity.

Through Jesus, God experienced the mundanity of daily life, the joy of family life, the love of friends, and the pain of family separation. Through Jesus, God experienced some of the worst things that can happen to us as humans.  Through Jesus, God truly experienced what it means to be human - the best and the worst. Why is the Incarnation Good News? It means that God is with us in the messiness of our own lives. When life is feeling good and joyful, God is with us. When the bottom falls out from under us, God is there too. God knows what it means to be human and walks with us in the stuff of life.

Sometimes God’s presence is easy to feel. I can definitely look back on my life and remember moments when I felt God’s presence with me. I felt God’s presence when a way opened up towards ordination, as I struggled through a difficult ordination process. I sensed God’s presence the day I met David and throughout our subsequent courtship. I first came to know God from my father, and what he taught me about faith, with his words and his actions. These were moments where I felt the presence of God with me.

But there were also times when it felt like God was totally absent from me. 1996 was a very difficult year. In early January, the bookstore I managed burned to the ground. That same summer we elected a bishop in Western Massachusetts who did not believe that GLBTQ+ persons should be ordained. I served on that search committee and his floor nomination and subsequent election was a blow to all of us. Then, in November, my dad died. He’d entered hospice, but no one expected his death to come as speedily as it did. For more than a year, I felt like God was beyond reach, on the other side of a wall. 

What kept me going in that terrible year, as hurt upon hurt piled upon hurt, was the support of my community of faith. St. James Episcopal Church in Greenfield, Mass buoyed me up, prayed for me, and supported me in countless ways. Their support didn’t magically solve my sense of the absence of God. But their loving support, and the knowledge that they were praying for me when I could not pray outside of Sunday worship, sustained me. 

One of the things that I love about this congregation is that I see that same loving support in all of you. I see it in your prayerful support of our sisters in detention. I see it in how you support one another when life is rocky for whatever reason. I see it in your support of our larger community. I see it in your commitment to justice for people all around the world. It’s not that we are perfect. There are certainly times when we don’t get it right. But this love we have for one another is our DNA. It’s our commitment. 

​The Good News of the Incarnation is that God came among us as one of us. Through the person of Jesus, God experienced the best and worst that life had to offer. And then, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit, and through that gift empowered us to continue God’s work in the world until Jesus comes again. Amen.