From Bethlehem to Calvary
Matthew 2:13-23
Sand tarts. Sand tarts are a type of Christmas cookie originating in Pennsylvania Dutch culture. For my father, who grew up in York, Pennsylvania, home of the Peppermint Patty, sand tarts were a Christmas tradition. Delicate, buttery, and crispy, the sand tarts that my grandmother baked when my father was a boy were for him the taste of Christmas.
Many years ago my own mother once tried to replicate them, but this was an impossible task. Despite using the correct proportions of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and salt, she lacked one particular ingredient…nostalgia. Whether or not she knew it, my mother was competing with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Even if they were baked to perfection, the sand tarts my mother made would never match the taste that lived in my father’s memory. And my dad, who never had a thought that he did not express, was not shy about saying so.
More than any other holiday, Christmas is steeped in memory. The Christmases of the past 30 years are largely indistinguishable in my head, but I can recall with great clarity the Christmases of my youth and even childhood. Feeling nostalgic myself, the other day I tried to conjure the Ghost of Christmas Past by watching a YouTube video about Christmas decor trends from the 1970s. Electric plastic candles in bedroom windows. Homemade felt stockings. Shiny Brite brand tree ornaments so fragile that they needed to be handled like fine china. Angel hair snow made of fiberglass for the mantel. And in my house at least, a can of spray cheese in every stocking. Don’t ask. I don’t know the origin of that particular tradition, but it wasn’t Christmas for me or my siblings without processed cheese spread in a can.
There’s not another holiday that’s more tied to memory, tradition, and nostalgia than Christmas. Each year we watch the same Christmas specials and movies—It’s Christmastime, Charlie Brown, It’s a Wonderful Life, one among the many versions of A Christmas Carol. We eat the same foods, which in my house means keeping kosher by ordering Chinese. In worship we sing the same familiar carols—“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Silent Night,” “Joy to the World.” And of course we read the same Scripture passage from the Gospel of Luke with all its familiar imagery—Joseph and Mary trudging to Bethlehem, the manger, the shepherds, the angel, and the multitude of the heavenly host.
If Luke writes of the light coming into the world, Matthew does not shy from showing the darkness that does all it can to extinguish the light.
I shared with you last week my fondness for Luke’s Christmas narrative—all of it, beginning with the angel Gabriel appearing to Zechariah in the temple to Mary’s pondering the meaning of it all. As many times as I’ve heard it, I can always hear it again. Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus is about the light coming into the world and illuminating the darkness. The angel announces to the shepherds good news of great joy, and it is received as such by them and everyone that they tell. And all who heard it were amazed, Luke writes. The same is true for us. The way Luke tells the story of Christ’s birth, we’re left with feelings of wonder and amazement.
But if Luke writes of the light coming into the world, Matthew does not shy from showing the darkness that does all it can to extinguish the light. This is why I’m so glad that we have four gospels. If all we had was Luke’s account, then there would be a danger of the story slipping into sentimentality. Matthew, however, recognizes that not everyone welcomes the birth of the Messiah as good news. Some, like Herod, see it as a threat to their own power.
And truthfully, there is something even in us that resists the notion of a Savior who forgives sins because deep down we don’t want to admit that we need saving. Those other folks over there, boy, do they ever need saving, but I’m pretty good at following the rules that God has laid out. Sure, I slip up every now and then, but not too badly.
The human mind has a boundless capacity for rationalization and self-deception, and the human heart a darkness that is as deep as midnight. Yet Matthew writes to remind us that the forces of darkness can never defeat God’s determination to deliver us from sin and death. That holds true whether those forces are tyrannical and murderous political regimes or just the self-delusions of our own hearts.
As Matthew speaks of the darkness that gathered at Jesus’ birth, we begin in the middle of the story. So-called “wise men”—the word in Greek is magoi, which can mean magicians or astrologers—have arrived in Jerusalem from the East, possibly from the Parthian Empire, modern-day Iraq and Iran. (When I lived in Korea, there was a church member who suggested that the wise men could have come from further east, as in Korea. That would have been quite a hike!)
The wise men ask Herod, the Roman-appointed king of Judea, where they can find the newborn king of the Jews so that they can pay him homage. It turns out that Herod would also very much like to know where this future king is located. The sooner the better. When Herod learns that Scripture prophesies that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, he sends the wise men there on his behalf with orders to return to him with the child’s home address. But Herod doesn’t want to send a birthday card, he wants to eliminate a potential rival.
Nothing can dissuade or defeat God’s determination to save us from the darkness of sin and death.
Arriving in Bethlehem, the wise men find the child and present their gifts, but rather than reporting back to Herod, they return to their own country by an alternate route.
That brief sketch catches us up with our reading for today, which takes place in two locations simultaneously. Imagine a split screen. On one side is Bethlehem. There an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream, warning him to flee with Mary and the child to Egypt. On the other side is Jerusalem. In the royal palace Herod fumes that the wise men have tricked him. He had wanted to locate his young rival and kill him, but now in fear and desperation he makes a horrific decision. If he cannot identify his rival, he will regard every male child in Bethlehem younger than two years of age as his rival. He will kill them all.
Such murderous cruelty is in keeping with Herod’s character. Herod did not become king by birthright. He was appointed by the Romans. His lack of legitimacy meant that he was ever wary of potential challengers to the throne. He killed the descendants of the last legitimate Jewish kings who preceded him. When he suspected palace intrigue within his own family, he killed his wife and one of his sons. This was a ruthless and merciless man.
And this was the social and political context into which Jesus was born. Matthew shows us the shadow side of the Nativity as opposed to the light that Luke gives us. Each is true in what they tell us of the joy and the terror that accompanies the birth of the Christ child. From the time that he could walk, Jesus was forced to go on the run. Before he was subject to death on a cross, Jesus was no stranger to the forces of sin and death. The cross of Calvary cast its shadow even upon the manger in Bethlehem.
But this is what we must remember: nothing can dissuade or defeat God’s determination to save us from the darkness of sin and death. That goes for the darkness that we see in each day’s headlines. Russian missiles raining down on Kiev even on Christmas Day. Daily atrocities that belie description in Sudan. Thousands of children killed, wounded, and orphaned in Gaza. Devastating cuts to foreign aid that have led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from malnutrition, starvation, and diseases for which there are vaccines or treatments. All over the world Rachel weeps for her children.
While we may not have the same murderous designs as Herod, we feel just as keenly the threat to our authority and status that Jesus represents.
And it goes just as well for the darkness that exists within each one of us, for everything in us that resists the light that has come into the world. While we may not have the same murderous designs as Herod, we feel just as keenly the threat to our authority and status that Jesus represents. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Turn the other cheek. The last shall be first. Forgive seventy times seven times. No, living according to the kingdom of God does not come naturally to any of us. Nor is it something that we can train ourselves to do through heroic and sustained effort. Into this kingdom we are not native born. We must be made citizens through the one who himself fled as a refugee, took the form of a slave, and was crucified as a criminal.
The road to our salvation begins in Bethlehem in a manger and will lead eventually and inevitably to a hill called Calvary and a Roman cross. From Bethlehem to Calvary, from the manger to the cross, each step that our Savior took along that road he took with you in mind, with me in mind, so that what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined” (Isaiah 9:2).