Lost, Hungry and Needing to find Home (Matthew 1:18- 2:19)

By Kim Thoday

Christmas is a time for miracles. Christmas is a time of miracles. Christmas is about the miracle of God choosing to become one with creation through the birth of Jesus Christ.

For centuries before the birth of Jesus, Israel’s prophets had predicted the advent of the Messiah – God in human form – who would restore Israel and herald the dawn of a new age of peace and justice upon the earth.

Christians have always believed that this ancient prophecy was fulfilled with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. Jesus is the Messiah, born of David’s line, the promised redeemer and saviour of the world. Therefore the title Christ (the Greek word for Hebrew title Messiah)

was attached to the name Jesus by the early Christians. With the birth of this Christ, Christians believe, the new dawn of God’s peace and justice began on earth.

Yet where is the evidence for this new dawn of peace and justice? Since Jesus’ time, history is shot through with human misery and inhumanity on scales that defy the imagination. The supposed vehicle of the good news of Jesus Christ; namely, the Christian Church, has itself been exposed, many times, for its corruption, self-interest and oppressiveness. How is it that we can believe that the Messiah has come in the wake of the modern horrors of World War 1, the Great Depression, World War 2 and the Holocaust, the Cold War, Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, and the plight of most people in the two-thirds world and the imbalances and tensions between rich and poor, north and south, that have produced the postcolonial realities of terrorism? How can we believe, with any sense of credibility, sanity and reasonableness?

This is an enormously complex question; a question that demands an answer yet one that I find so difficult to answer. I know the transforming power and love of Jesus Christ in my own life. I have seen the reality of the love of God transform and liberate both individuals and communities. Yet as a Christian minister I am also powerfully aware of my own imperfections, let alone the brokenness of others, let alone the inequities, poverty and sufferings of a world in bondage. An atheist at this point has a simple answer: there is no God and the tradition of Christmas is a legend. As a Christian I do not have the luxury of such a simple answer.

Christian apologists down through the ages have struggled with this question in many guises. I wish to offer one response. This response has to do with the Gospel narratives of Christmas itself. My response has to do with the kind of Messiah/Christ who was born in Bethlehem of Judea. The birth was anything but regal. God’s entrance into world was remarkable in it’s marginality; i.e. the circumstances of Jesus’ birth were as far removed from the contemporary spheres of influence and power as a refugee camp on the Thai/Burma border is removed from the Pentagon.

Jesus’ parents were poor Palestinian peasants. Worse still they were social outcasts, likely shamed by their families and friends for breaking the marriage code, because Mary was pregnant with Jesus before their marriage. In Matthew’s account, once Jesus is born, the new family is visited by three strangers from the far East. The visitors are not part of a regal deputation nor are they officials of Israel. They are astrologers (magi) who believe that the true King of the Jews has been born in the region. Matthew’s portrayal is full of irony, because immediately after the magi proclaim that a child is born who is the King of the Jews, the official King of the Jews, Herod, is introduced into the narrative. Herod is the centre of religious and political power in Jerusalem under the Roman occupation, yet the magi do not come to pay him homage. Rather they search for an unknown child. Herod’s illegitimacy as true King is further heightened because he is as ignorant about the Messianic tradition as the Gentile magi concerning the whereabouts of this supposed child King. So Herod gathers together the imperial brains trust of chief priests and scribes to help him out. Subsequently, Herod hatches a plot. Clearly, Herod is threatened by the very idea of a rival for the ultimate seat of power within Israel. The tension of a political thriller mounts as Herod tries to use the magi to lead him to the baby Jesus. After diligent searching and making use of their astrological knowledge they find the baby with Mary. The three magi are overwhelmed with joy and bow down to the child and offer gifts fit for a King.

Herod’s plan is thwarted as the magi are warned about him in a dream and so they leave by a different route to avoid him. More divine warnings occur about Herod; Joseph is told to escape with his family to Egypt, the place of infamy and captivity in Israelite tradition. The symbolic power of Egypt would not be lost upon Palestinian ears; Egypt the iconoclastic sign of both tyranny and hope. For though it was in Egypt that the ancient children of Israel were brutally oppressed, it was here that God would save his people though the amazing preservation of baby Moses set afloat upon the Nile by his Levite mother. The unfolding narrative of Matthew continues to have echoes of the Exodus story. Somewhat reminiscent of Pharaoh at the time of the birth of Moses, Herod issues a decree to kill off all the children, two years or under, in the vicinity of Bethlehem; so neurotic had he become about the threat to his power.

For Matthew, these events fulfil Israelite prophecy: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” As Moses was called to lead his people out of Egypt, now the Messiah, the true King of the Jews, would symbolically lead the world out of its bondage. The Christmas narrative in Matthew concludes with the death of Herod and a divine message to Joseph to take his family out of asylum in Egypt and return to Israel. In their travels home, however, Joseph learns that danger may still lurk for their child because Herod’s son Archelaus now rules over Judea. So the family settle in a backwater town called Nazareth in the Palestinian province of Galilee.

Matthew’s Christmas story, like Luke’s account, is very different from much in the constructions of popular Christian culture and imagination. However, these biblical accounts provide access to a remarkable event that does offer hope and meaning in a world that often seems dark and foreboding.

Matthew’s story tells of a divine-human drama, of a God who chose to immerse himself in a chaotic and fragile world. I love to reflect on the fragility of both the births of Moses and Jesus; the miracle of their survival, let alone the miracle of their impoverished and unlikely beginnings and the fact that they both became spiritual leaders who have influenced the history of the world in decisive ways. Yet the great miracle is that God chose the form of Jesus to dwell amongst his creation. Jesus of all people! Jesus who was conceived (albeit from divine initiative) out of wedlock. Jesus who was born of a poor peasant family. Jesus who was recognised not by Israel or by its leaders but by some Gentile “new-agers” from the East who bowed down and worshipped him as King. Jesus who with his family, became an asylum seeker in Egypt. Jesus who was, from the very beginning, at the periphery of the dominant social, political and religious culture. Yet, Jesus, who from the beginning was seen as a threat to that dominant culture.

Within the profound mystery of the story of Christmas, lies the answer to our struggle to make sense of our perennially broken world. The story of Matthew’s Christmas is a potent reminder that God entered into a violent and chaotic world, and to that extent, no different from our world today. It was a world of suffering and oppression yet one also of joy and hope. God did not enter into this world to dominate and control by force or coercion. Rather, God’s new dawn in Jesus began at the margins and on the edges. Jesus’ life, ministry and teaching would continue the contours of his birth and early childhood. In this life, God was reflected in human form. God’s character and purpose was revealed in a new way. This character is unconditional love and this purpose is salvation from self. This revelation could only come from the margins of society. For it is only at the margins that the true vulnerability of our fallen humanity is exposed. It is only in a state of asylum from the self of the dominant culture that we can recognise our collective human powerlessness and brokenness. And it is only when we choose to face the vulnerability of our powerlessness, and live from a position of real dependence upon God, that we can both experience for ourselves and offer others unconditional love and salvation from self. Under the star of Bethlehem, this is exactly what God chose to do, to become the helpless human-being.

The litany of tragedy, massacre, war and terrorism that marked the twentieth century in scales never known before in history has been the result of a fallen humanity largely that still has not recognised the nature and purpose of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Yet many people throughout history have been transformed through their acceptance of God in Jesus Christ. And the world would be a far darker place were it not for those saints and sinners who have lived out unconditional love and salvation from self. For such a world would not have its laws of justice, movements for peace and reconciliation, codes of human rights and so on. Notwithstanding the many inadequacies of these humanitarian projects, particularly in regards to the two-thirds world, without the collective will to enforce these codes of behaviour human survival would indeed be tenuous.

The hope of Christmas of a new order of peace and justice, however, needs to manifest itself from the deepest level of God consciousness within the human spirit. Whilst we need to organise our collective goodness, for the protection and viability of human society, real goodness can never be organised. Goodness or perhaps better, God-ness, is always contaminated or even perverted, when we organise it. A friend of mine Ian Corlett, a Church of Christ minister in Australia, recently said to me that he has begun to realise that evil is always organised. True goodness, the goodness of unconditional love and salvation from self, he says, can never be orchestrated or contrived or organised. Goodness is lasting when it is offered unconditionally and without the contamination of self-interest. Goodness is the totally free offer of love and acceptance of the other. In Jesus Christ, God offered himself totally free for the sake of the world. The transforming, liberating, reconciling, love within the human spirit is the everlasting legacy of God’s project of human-being. It cannot be controlled or manipulated or in the end, organised. At its core real goodness is a spontaneous gift of God. It is this goodness that outlasts the Herods, Hitlers and Stalins of the dark side of human consciousness. It is this goodness that transformed the bitterness and resentment of Nelson Mandela and produced the miracle of a united South Africa for black and white. It is this spontaneous grace gift of God that has raised people from the ashes and debris of the worst crimes against humanity. It is this God-ness that gives hope and determination to continue to strive to make the world a better place. It is this spirit of hope that drove the Israelite prophets to declare that things don’t have to be the way they are; there is a higher purpose and the true goodness we live for is worthwhile because it prefigures the new age and already participates in this new order that God will bring to conclusion at the end of time.

At the end of World War 2, the Russians began to march the German prisoners of war back to Germany. Ordinary Russian people lined the streets in their thousands to see the spectacle. Remember that no nation had suffered more casualties in WW2 than Soviet Russia. Conservative estimates are that 40 million Russians died as a result of the war. One could not possibly imagine the feelings of those ordinary Russian people as the German soldiers were marched on by. The chorus of hatred in heckles and jeers permeated the scene. First came the German officers, relatively well fed, in their uniforms, marching in step, able to keep a semblance of dignity and respect. But after awhile the vast bulk of prisoners appeared, the ordinary German foot soldiers. They could hardly march at all, let alone in step. They were emaciated, with few clothes, truly humiliated, wretched, gaunt, pitiful creatures. The jeers and abuse stopped. There was a hush over the crowded lines of people. Then finally a couple of elderly Russian women, from the margins, broke through to these ghostly figures and held out crusts of bread. The bread was gratefully and eagerly accepted and soon many other ordinary Russian bystanders were moving amongst the columns of German prisoners with offerings of bread. It became so overwhelming that the Russian guards could not stop the crowd. This is the concrete dynamic of spontaneous goodness that lies deep within the human heart. This is the miracle of Christmas. God, in Jesus Christ, is about unlocking this unconditional love and salvation from self for the sake of the other. Once Christ has been birthed within us, the new dawn of peace and justice is being realised. Somehow, those ordinary Russian people were moved with an unconditional love that revealed to them that their enemies were simply other people’s children who were lost, hungry and needing to go home. We are all, deep down, someone’s child, lost, hungry and needing to find home. We are all in need of the miracle of Christmas.

Blessings in this time of Advent,

KIM THODAY

HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST, South Australia http://www.hewett.org.au