Even though Christmas goes on (according to the Christian calendar) until Epiphany, January 6, to many people, It’s Over. Some folks who’ve had their tree decorated since Thanksgiving are bored with it, and want to move on. Others, to whom Christmas has become sad, are eager to get the holiday gone… Scriptures to be heard on this Sunday after Christmas announce that God’s presence continues as relief from the surrounding chaos, and as an alternative to our daily scrabbling.
ISAIAH 63:7-9 inserts a word of God’s steadfast love–hesed–into a polemic issued by an angry and disappointed God against the chosen but neglectful People. These had come back to Judah from Babylon expecting life to continue just as their parents had left it; and it wasn’t. Cards recently received at our house pictured the Good Old Days, and expressed nostalgia that unchanged friends “who are dear to us will be near to us once more”… Yet God has come near: “It was no messenger or angel but {God’s} presence that saved them; in love and in pity{God} redeemed them.”
The author of HEBREWS 2:10-18 reminds her hearers that Christ has become one of us through the infant Jesus. To us is born one who will also suffer the slings and arrows of our own painful situations. The believer is not exempt from the reality of each day. But the Good News is that God is there with us! We therefore shan’t fear the return counter for the ugly sweater that wasn’t in our size anyway! Nor shall we be afraid of death & dying, or whatever principality or power arises in our path… The passage concludes, [Jesus] “is able to help those who are being tested”.
MATTHEW 2:13-23 brings reality home in a terrible way: King Herod had all the boys of Bethlehem less than two years of age KILLED! Jesus escaped because his earthly father, Joseph, had the sense to follow his dream, and fled to Egypt. Hardly a solace for “Rachel”, weeping for her children… The reading tells of God’s protection and providential care in dangerous times. After a bit, the family returned to Nazareth, a backwater town largely ignored by the rest of the world. Even here God provides for the growth & nourishment of Christ, in a despicable place surrounded by non-successful people.
Christmas is always complex, isn’t it? We soon leave the fuzzy candlelight of Christmas Eve for the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather of Business as Usual. Have we heard sleigh-bells ringing in the snow? Maybe. Have our children’s eyes been all aglow with excitement? Probably not. Did our grown children and grandchildren show up with Good Cheer? Nope. Has Jesus been born yet again, God With Us, to walk any road or thorny path with us? Most assuredly YES!
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
Every Tuesday we’re confronted by scriptures to be read in worship on the upcoming weekend; join in at horacebrownking.com
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