Sunday 30 December 2007 Matthew 2:13-end Melanie

Susanna and Jehoiachim were young parents, both twenty three years old, just getting started in life together. They had one child, little Davey, who at eighteen months had learned to walk and was getting into everything, was putting sentences together in strange ways, his soft, high pitched little voice giving a musical lilt even to the Aramaic gutturals. A healthy, happy child, he was the delight of their life. They named him David because they lived in the ‘city of David’, as their village was called, located a few miles south of Jerusalem.
Late one night while everyone was sleeping, the king’s soldiers surrounded the village, and at first light they came into town. They ordered all parents with small children into the village square, made a search to ensure that none remained, and without a word killed every boy younger than two years old. ‘Orders’ they said.
After the horror of that day had receded enough for the villagers to take account, they discovered that twenty one children had been killed.
It is a cruel world, and such things happen. In our time thousands of babies have been napalmed, gassed, starved, and shot down by the order or permission of unfeeling governments. But human beings are resilient creatures, and after periods of numbness, anger, bitterness, and acceptance, Jehoiachim and Susanna were able to pick up the pieces of their life and go on. Without hostility or condescension, they rejected the ‘explanations’ of the tragedy from well meaning neighbour theologians, having no answer to the question articulated for them in their own Bible prayer book, ‘My God, my God, why?’ (Ps 22.1). They even began to find new meaning in synagogue worship.
Until one day when they discovered that on the crucial night before the slaughter of the baby boys an angel had come from God to warn one family to flee. It turns out that God had arranged for Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus to escape and that they had been secure in Egypt. The little boy Jesus was alive and well, but not their little Davey.

When we read Matthew’s story in this way, it raises all sorts of ethical questions for us today. If God does indeed work in this way, and warn people of danger, is it right that only one family be warned?
Would any of us, with this information, share it with just one family and not with the other twenty one?
It also makes us think about other miracle stories – the healing of the blind person is wonderful, unless it is heard from the perspective of all those blind people in the world who were not healed.

Of course there are several responses.

Some people might say that if God had warned all the parents in Bethlehem, Herod would have grown suspicious and may have killed everyone in the village. Although what happened was bad, it was not as bad as it might have been.
Others might say that God was speaking to everyone in the village, but only Mary and Joseph were sensitive enough to hear God’s voice.
Still others might say that of course all this stuff about miracles is just part of the oral tradition of the Bible, and is a way of explaining what couldn’t then be explained through science. We don’t need such language of miracles today.

What all these responses have in common is the taking of the language of miracle stories as objective, true – in the sense that they would be true stories that we would read in the newspaper today.
The story that I quoted at the beginning of the sermon transposes Matthew’s story into a reported incident – a newspaper story.
Matthew’s story though is much more of an insider story. It tries to convey the idea that the God was at work in preserving the life of Christ for his future mission. This is the point, or the truth of the story.

The question we are faced with is not, do miracles happen? Or why should they happen?
But should this story be read as an objective account – a reported happening? Or should it be read as an insider language – to confess the church’s faith that God was at work and active in the birth of the Messiah.

Ultimately the decision is down to each individual. As I commented a few weeks ago in my sermon, Christ bears many interpretations, and we can’t expect him to tell us which one he likes.
However we choose to interpret this story in Matthew, we watch in awe at God acting in history. The transforming grace of God becoming human never loses its mystery and majesty – and that is a vital part of our own journeys in faith.
God works through a family of no real importance in their own society – through an unnamed woman on the edge of society.
God’s saving work for the world begins with this insignificant couple, and yet contains within that family all the dignity and greatness of God incarnate.
This may be the true miracle of Matthew’s gospel – that God is an incoming God,
Prepared to dwell with the most humble
Prepared to live a life of wandering and insecurity
And yet through that, is able to point to a deeper reality beyond anything that we can experience on earth
The reality of God exalted, divine, majestic,
in the shape of a baby.
Amen