Calgary First Mennonite Church

Jesus, the Refugee

Written by Ed Kauffman

"Jesus, the Refugee"

Christmas 1, December 26, 2010

Texts: Hebrews 2:10-18

Matthew 2:13-23

Back in 1966, Simon & Garfunkel released a song that jarred many people, and still sends a powerful message. As they sang Silent Night, a rendition of the 7 O’clock News slowly emerged in the background until it almost overpowered the song. Let’s listen.

"Silent Night/7 O’clock News" – Simon & Garfunkel, 1966

But wait, you say, we’ve barely finished with Christmas, and now we’re reading accounts of Mary and Joseph fleeing for their lives, and male babies being slaughtered on orders from Herod. Can’t we just enjoy the birth? Shouldn’t we allow the peaceful manger scene to linger for a time? Joy to the World, and all that.

Yet the reality is that even while we are singing "Silent Night" there are tragedies going on in the world around us, and perhaps even among us. While we celebrate a birth, there are infants who are dying, whether from violence or from hunger. While we hear the angels singing, others are only hearing the explosions of bombs or the cries of the wounded. And the Gospel writer reminds us of that. One of the realities of the Christmas story is that God became human, and being human means participating in the realities of our human existence.

Matthew, as you may recall, draws a lot of parallels between Moses and Jesus, and we see many of those already here at the beginning of the story. Pharoah was concerned about the overpopulation of the Hebrew people, that they might rise up and overthrow his kingdom, and so ordered all the male babies to be killed. It was only be the quick thinking of Moses mother that he was saved to become the deliverer of his people.

Herod, who was one of the most ruthless of rulers in Israel, was also concerned about usurpers of his throne. At one point he had his own three sons killed because he accused them of plotting against him. It is reported that he gave orders that when he died, soldiers were to go among the Jews and kill someone in each household so that everyone would be in mourning and no one would celebrate his death.

And so, when he learned from the magi of a supposed new king that was born, and realized that they were not coming back to inform him of the baby’s whereabouts, he took matters into his own hands and ordered all male infants under two years old to be killed. While there is no corroborating records of this event, the reality is that this fits who Herod was, and may have been a small enough incident in relation to other actions of Herod that it hardly warranted mentioning. Scholars suggest that in a town of 1000 there may have been no more than 20 households affected.

But for those households, the trauma would have been great. And for Mary and Joseph, and Jesus, it meant fleeing to Egypt, a place of refuge for many from Palestine. Joseph, we are told was warned in a dream, and so took Mary and the baby and fled. It is a story repeated throughout history. Families fleeing before the wrath of a ruler, leaving behind family, friends and most of their possessions. Jesus became a refugee! Some of you know what that experience is like. This infant, God with us, joins the millions of people throughout history who have been and are refugees. Estimates are that almost 1 million people currently hold that status, with over 12 million persons classified as internally displaced – that is uprooted from their homes but still within their own country.

But the story doesn’t end there. Joseph is still having dreams in Egypt, and eventually he is told that they can go home, and so they again pack up and head back, only to settle, not where they started but rather in Nazareth, a small insignificant place away from the metropolis of Jerusalem. Maybe like coming to Alberta and deciding to settle in Didsbury rather than Calgary.

The writer of Hebrews in proclaiming Jesus as Saviour and Lord, begins by noting that this same Jesus, superior to the angels, became flesh and shared in our human condition.

While I can listen to your stories of fleeing for your lives, Jesus can identify with those stories, because his family did exactly the same thing! And Jesus can identify with all those who have experienced suffering and even death. While we celebrate his birth, life in our human condition goes on and has for centuries. While we long for the fulfillment of those peaceable scenes we read about in Isaiah, we are not there yet, and we only need to recall names and dates to remind us of that. Sand Creek, CO 1864 and Wounded Knee, SD 1890 where hundreds of Native Americans were slaughtered; Louis Riel and the North West Rebellion of 1885; Guernica, Spain, 1937; Dresden, Germany Feb. 13, 1945; Dachau and Aushwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945, New York, Sept 11, 2001; Rwanda, Darfur, Colombia, and the list goes on to Iraq and Afghanistan. We could redo the Simon & Garfunkel song at almost any time and still get the same message.

And so, while we celebrate the birth and sing "Joy to the World" and "Silent Night", let us also remember that Jesus was indeed born into flesh and blood. And becoming human opens one up to all the pain of humanity, much of it without explanation. Why is there pain and suffering? Why do innocents die? There are no good answers other than that we live in a fallen world where we humans make decisions that lead to such events. We still live in the in-between times where pain and suffering are just as much a part of life as is new birth and signs of God’s breaking in.

But the message of Christmas is that our hope is not in the comfort and security of any one time and place, for those can all be taken from us. Rather our hope is in a person, in Jesus who came among us to share in our humanity, and in the God who sent him as the pioneer of our faith.