Second Sunday after Christmas
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15
As we look at the crèche in the front of the church, or as you gaze at the manger scene in your own home, there is a sense of peace surrounding the newborn Christ child. Shepherds stand in awe, Mary and Joseph look lovingly at the baby, and tomorrow we will add the Wise Men who kneel and offer fine gifts. The words of “Silent Night” seem appropriate: “All is calm, all is bright.” But today’s gospel passage has another feel to it, one of urgency and fear. Herod, desperately worried about himself and his reign of power, wants to do away with this child whom some call a king. So Joseph gathers his wife and child, and, in the dark of night, flees to Egypt, where they remain until Herod’s death.
How fearful it must have been for Joseph to head for unknown country with a wife and new baby. How confusing for him to hear an angel of the Lord warn of Herod’s plans to kill his child. How lonely Joseph must have felt.
In scripture we find many other examples of flight, of hearing God’s word to go somewhere. Abraham took several journeys. He heard God1s voice telling him to gather up his family and go, first to Haran and then Canaan and, driven by famine, to Egypt. From Egypt Moses gathers the chosen people and leads them into the wilderness for forty years. Jesus himself goes into the wilderness as he begins his ministry, to face temptation and to hear God’s voice. Jesus’ disciples leave their fishing nets and other occupations to follow Jesus on their journey. The Bible has many examples of people courageo usly leaving that which is known and moving into the unknown. Generally these people’s strongest characteristic is faith.
I began thinking about what it must feel like to gather up one’s belongings, one’s family and follow the voice of God. As I pondered this experience, it came to me that I know many who have done exactly that. It isn’t hard to come up with examples; I’m sure you can think of some yourselves. Even in this congregation have I witnessed the courage of answering God’s call. I think of the family among us who is getting ready to go to seminary, resigning from a secure, prestigious profession, leaving a home and life style that provide safety and comfort—heading for a new life because of the courage to answer God’s call, a call that one of the family members heard through a dream.
I think of the family among us who came here from an African nation, who were persecuted because they are Christians. For years this family lived day by day, not knowing if they would be alive the next day or not, watching friends and family lose their lives for their faith. This family was led by God’s call. It would have been far easier to embrace another faith, to deny God’s call to them. They, too, left the security that they knew to go on a journey of faith.
I think of the person among us who left an important, high-profile career to work in the kitchen and feed the poor. She heard God’s voice, and all the perks of her prestigious job lost their appeal. She traveled her journey of faith to reach out to those in need.
These are important examples of courage and faith, but they are not the only examples, for we are all on our own faith journey. There is not one of us here today who is not called by God to live a life of faith. Just what that life of faith means is different for each of us.
I recently read an article by Deborah Smith Douglas dealing with the topic of God’s messages to us. Douglas relates that in the play “Saint Joan,” Joan of Arc hears voices, specifically the voices of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who instruct her, in the name of God, to raise the siege of Orleans. When a captain dismisses the possibility that these voices come from God—in fact, he insists, the voices come from her imagination, Joan of Arc answers, “Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”
Imagination, says Douglas, is a quality that tends to be belittled by sensible people, who insist on what is tangible and rational and seem to equate the imaginative with the mad, the frivolous, or the deluded. We, too, can be like the captain in “Saint Joan” and resist “the messages of God” unless they conform to our well-established norms of plausibility and rationality.
But God does get through to us sometimes—through memories, dreams, intuition, prayer, even wordless prayer—beyond our intellectual selves. Thomas Aquinas declared that that is how angels influence us: not through our intellect or will, but through our senses and imagination. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, expresses his longing for the people of Ephesus to have “the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which Christ has called you.” (Eph. 1:17,18) It is only with “enlightened eyes” with hearts open and committed to possibilities “not seen”—that we can hear God’s messages to us.
Perhaps you, like I, spend a great deal of time concentrating on the here and now, on the practical aspects of our life in this world. Between the radio, the television, the telephone and the computer, it is very easy for us to keep the eyes of our hearts closed. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t good Christians, committed to living a dedicated life. It simply means that we are not as open to God’s messages as we might be.
Have you ever truly received a message from God? Has the voice of God ever reached into your heart through a dream or a prayer or through your imagination? As I wrote this sermon, I tried to think of a time that I was sure God’s voice was reaching me. I thought back to the times when I felt God’s voice the strongest. For me, God has delivered a vision of sorts mainly through music, through nature and through the Eucharist, for it has been in those experiences that I have heard God calling me to trust in his love, to follow my imagination. Only when I have been willing to move past the intellectual has God truly spoken to me.
Our word “religion” comes from the Latin root “religare” which means to bind, to connect. In some ways, our whole religious life can be seen as a process of making and being made by that kind of connection . . . Webster’s dictionary defines mystery as a religious truth revealed by God that humans cannot know by reason alone, and that, once revealed, cannot be completely understood. Experienced, yes—revealed and recognized, certainly—but not ultimately reduced to rational prose.
In Shaw’s “Saint Joan,” Charles, the King of France, is annoyed that God seems to speak to this peasant girl but not to him. He says to Joan, “Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king, not you.” Joan answers him quickly: “They do come to you; but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do.”
If we pray from our hearts, if we listen for the sound that bells make after they stop ringing, God will find a way past our intellectual instincts. The eyes of our hearts will be enlightened. Joseph was open and willing to hear God’s voice in his heart. He was willing to hear beyond the plausible, rational means. I believe that God still speaks to us; God’s voice can reassure us, comfort us, guide us, if we will only listen.