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Isaiah
63:7-9 &=
nbsp; &nbs=
p;
Matthew
2:13-23 =
&nb=
sp;
Late
one recent afternoon a young man wandered into our church seeking refuge. M=
ike,
our custodian who first encountered this obviously-distraught 26-year old,
stuck his head in my office and asked if I had a “minute” to se=
e a
guy who’d come in off the street looking for someone with whom to pra=
y.
(Mike owes me big time for what that “minute” turned out to be.=
. .
.)
When
trying to put a dent in the usual piles of papers and
“things-to-do” notes on my desk, it’s easy to consider
“drop-ins” like this as an interruption in the task of getting =
my
job done. But as the old adage was confirmed once again, by the end of that=
day
I was reminded that sometimes those interruptions are part of my job!
Chuck
was the young man’s name, and he sat down in my office filled with
confusion, sadness and fear. Frequently pausing to wipe away tears, he pour=
ed
out his story. A resident of Jackson --- the city, not the prison --- he li=
ved
with friends who had introduced him to a young lady at a party. They must h=
ave
had ‘good chemistry’ with one another because she took him home
with her to Paw Paw after the party. Once there, however, chemistry of a
different sort became a problem.
After
sharing some crystal methamphetamine over four days, the woman kicked him o=
ut
of her house. Whatever got said --- or he imagined got said --- when he was
told to leave, this young man was convinced that her family and friends were
out to get him. He had prayed to God for forgiveness for any wrong he may h=
ave
done but was sure he was going to be killed for things he didn’t even=
do
to her.
Overwhelmed
with fear, he had gone to the police in Paw Paw to tell his story and ask f=
or
protection. They quickly concluded that Chuck had a tenuous grasp on realit=
y,
and if there’s something ‘responsible authorities’ in one
jurisdiction like to do, it’s making some other authority responsible=
for
problematic people! He was given a ride to Kalamazoo and dropped off at the
mission. In his state of mind, however, that wasn’t a safe shelter to=
him
because he immediately thought he saw saw several people there who were amo=
ng
those wanting to harm him.
Everywhere
he went around Kalamazoo that day he imagined that cars and people were slo=
wly
but surely boxing him in with the intent of killing him. That’s when =
he
came into the church looking for ‘sanctuary.’ After talking and praying with Chu=
ck for
a while and establishing with him about as much trust as he was able to give
anyone right then, I asked him if he’d go with me to a hospital where
we’d find people who would keep him safe.
The
Delano Clinic was closed by then so we went to the Emergency Room at Borges=
s.
Although I have always gone to our Methodist-related hospital for my own ca=
re,
I must put in a commercial for the Catholics! Since he wouldn’t let me
out of his sight, I witnessed all of his interactions with the hospital sta=
ff
and was very impressed by the compassion and patience with which Chuck was
treated. When they had determined there was nothing they could do for him
medically, they were quite concerned that he not simply wander out into a c=
old
night without a plan, even loaning him a phone so that he could try reachin=
g a
friend in Jackson who might come and take him home. That would have been an
ideal solution for Chuck’s immediate need, but it didn’t pan ou=
t. .
. .
For
me and the friend who was driving us, it was way past dinner time by then.
Chuck hadn’t eaten or slept much for four days! I suggested we leave =
the
hospital, get something to eat and continue talking about ‘next steps=
. We
stopped first at a pizza parlor, but Chuck thought he recognized several ca=
rs
in the parking lot that had been tracking him that day and was sure the doz=
en
or so people we could see inside were waiting to kill him. So we went on to=
a
drive-thru. There were no customers at Arby’s when we approached, so
Chuck thought it would be OK to go in, and so we did. But after ordering fo=
od,
he turned to me with big and frightened eyes and asked, “Is this where
I’m going to die?” With more assurances of his safety, the meal=
was
finished. No better option seeming to appear, we ended up driving Chuck bac=
k to
his home in Jackson --- having to reassure him half a dozen times that we w=
ere,
indeed, heading in the right direction!
Using drugs like crystal meth is not a good decision for anyone, but for a young = man with a history of mental illness since childhood, they further muddled his already shaky sense of personal identity and his capacity to reasonably identity people around him for who they really were. He had no “ID= 221; card to show them at the hospital and couldn’t pronounce a last name clearly enough to be intelligible. Beyond the name “Chuck” and = his claim that Jackson was his present home, the hospital staff got to know lit= tle about him except that a pastor of First Presbyterian Church had brought him there and he was presenting classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. One wonders how many good people he ran away from that day who might have helped him? But he had lost a grip on who he was and who he really was to others.<= o:p>
In
today’s gospel lesson we pick up Matthew’s account of events
surrounding the birth and early years of Jesus. The story of the astrologer=
s,
kings or ‘wise men’ --- as various traditions have labeled them=
---
who are guided to the stable by a strange phenomenon in the sky will be ski=
pped
over because that’s always the text for Epiphany Sunday, which is next
week --- the “Twelfth Day of Christmas.” But those led by the s=
tar
had stirred up concern in political circles by their innocent inquiry as to=
a
new king being born and we hear in today’s reading what King
Herod’s national security advisors came up with in response to that
perceived threat against the Roman occupation government he headed in Judea.
After all, as one commentator noted, “One does not ask a king the add=
ress
of the new king, nor does one country comfortably accommodate two
kings.” The messengers =
from
God that Joseph entertains in his sleep with some regularity in the first t=
wo
chapters of Matthew are always, of course, one step ahead of Herod and his
advisors.
In
Jesus’ day as well as ours, those who are in love with power, no matt=
er
the expense to others, are not only incapable of understanding the greater
power of love --- they are threatened by it.
The
works of love which transcend all the traditional boundaries the world draw=
s to
separate “us” from “them” and the prophetic call for
the rich and powerful to act justly with the poor and dispossessed --- are,
indeed, signs that a new Kingdom has appeared. And though it is a kingdom n=
ot
of this world, it will confront every tyrant and resist the oppressive forc=
es
of every worldly empire since. The sovereign of this new Kingdom was, indee=
d,
the baby Herod sought to destroy --- and he was right to identify him as a
threat to the kind of authority Herod represented.
Biblical
scholars concur that the travelogue which ensues is for the purpose of
identifying, especially for a Jewish audience, who this Jesus is. Hardly an=
yone
ever reads the first seventeen verses of this gospel, but that’s where
Matthew begins to give Jesus an unmistakable identity by tracing his geneal=
ogy
back to the ‘once and future king’ David. Messianic texts in He=
brew
scripture point to that ‘one-who-is-to-come’ as a descendant of
David who will usher in a kingdom even more glorious than that of
Israel’s best remembered --- almost mythological --- king who had sla=
in a
giant with a slingshot!
The
escape into Egypt identifies Jesus with Moses, the one called by God to del=
iver
God’s people from slavery. Recall that at the beginning of his life M=
oses
had to escape from a tyrant seeking to destroy young Jewish males and did s=
o by
being floated down the Nile in a basket and hidden in the reeds until he fo=
und
a safe lodging. And when he received the call to go back to Egypt after
becoming a “wanted” man he, too, was told that those who seek h=
is
life are now dead.
Matthew
quotes two Old Testament references from Hosea (11:1) and Exodus (4:22) to =
the
calling of God’s son “out of Egypt” --- which in their
original context referred to Israel’s exodus from slavery. What does =
that
say about the ‘newborn king’s’ identity? It says he is the new Israel, the
‘chosen’ one in whom God’s saving grace is pleased to dwe=
ll.
Unlike Israel, however, Jesus will faithfully be obedient to the will of his
Father in heaven so that through him, as was originally promised to Abraham,
all of humankind will be blessed.
No
particular Old Testament reference can be found for the prophetic claim Mat=
thew
cites that the messiah would be called a Nazorean. Biblical scholars disagr=
ee
about the source of that claim. The sojourn to Nazareth in Galilee may, in
fact, have taken place for political or economic reasons but Matthew wants =
us
to know that God’s hand was involved in every step of the way as the =
one
we came to know as “the Son of God” and our “Savior”
was born and raised, protected and guided in preparation for that life and =
ministry
through which a New Covenant was given to humankind.
Who
is Jesus? Matthew seeks to confirm his identity with the many references to=
a
pedigree “spoken of by the prophets.” He is the “Promised=
One
of God.” He is the
“Messiah” for whom Israel has been waiting, the “anointed
one” of whose kingdom --- unlike David’s --- there shall be no =
end.
He entered our world in a very special way. He’s been through what the
scriptures said the Messiah would go through, and he lives where the prophe=
ts
predicted he would live.
Matthew’s
stage is set. Some thirty years would intervene before this Jesus appears o=
nce
again, the next time at the Jordan River. We’re familiar in a general=
way
with how the story goes from there and how his identity develops and broade=
ns and
comes to include more than the Jews. But we need to become ever more famili=
ar
with who Jesus is because as his followers we are called to identify with h=
im
and imitate him. We need to really know and really practice what that might
look like in our every day life.
With
whom and what is our identity connected? The college we attended? The
organizations to which we belong? The occupation we have? Our roles as pare=
nts
and children? The political party we support? Well, some of those may be pi=
eces
of the identity we’ve inherited or have made for ourselves. But do we=
see
ourselves foremost as a child of God? Do we identify with those who seek to
imitate Jesus? And are we prone to identifying others who may be different =
from
us in race, customs, religion, sexual orientation as strangers of whom we n=
eed
to be afraid --- or as brothers and sisters in Christ whose identity is also
that of a child of God, which means we have far more in common than anything
about us that is different? Would others identify us as imitators of Christ=
?
Let
me close with a story someone sent me about an incident at a busy airport o=
n a
Friday afternoon as some business men were rushing to catch their flights h=
ome
from a regional sales meeting. Amid the crowd in the terminal and the flurr=
y of
brief cases and overcoats swirling around, one of the salesmen inadvertently
knocked over a table full of apples a young lady was selling, and the apples
spilled all over the floor, some rolling a good distance away. Without stop=
ping
or even looking back, concerned only about catching their plane, the men
continued on and reached their boarding gate just in time.
“ALL
BUT ONE,” the story goes. ….
“All
but one!!! He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, a=
nd
experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been
overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him and waved good-bye. Th=
en
he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the floor. He was
glad he did. . . .
The
16-yearold girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down
her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her
spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one =
to
care for her plight.
The
salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back=
on
the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that =
many
of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another bask=
et.
When
he had finished he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here,
please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?” She nodded
through her tears. He continued on, “I hope we didn’t spoil your
day too badly.”
As
the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to =
him,
“Mister. . . .” He paused and turned to look back into those bl=
ind
eyes. She continued, “Are you Jesus?” He stopped in mid-stride =
and
he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that
question burning and bouncing about in his soul: “Are you Jesus?̶=
1;
That’s our destiny, is it not?