December 1998 Issue

Sermons on this passage address two main themes: the protection of Jesus and the slaughter of the innocents. God guides the holy family out of Herod's path, and for that we are thankful. The puzzle is that while the baby Jesus is protected other innocent babes are slain. Does God guard the innocent or allow them to perish? What is our role—in guarding and in allowing the blameless to suffer? Preachers have ample, if difficult, material to work with in this text.

Lutheran pastor Ingolf Kinden draws four lessons from the passage. In Lessons of God's Presence,¹Kinden describes a painting by the sixteenth century artist Albrecht Durer. The painting, "Flight To Egypt," shows Joseph leading Mary and the newborn Jesus on a donkey into Egypt. An assembly of angels hovered around them. The angels, Kinden preaches, are the presence of God. The presence of God is in turn a four-part lesson to us: intervention; protection; guidance; and promises fulfilled.

The first lesson from the flight to Egypt is that God intervenes. An intervention occurs when someone brings you a warning about imminent danger. In the case of Joseph, the messenger came as an angel, and the message came in a dream.

This is all very well for Joseph, but hardly believable for us. When did an angel swoop down to protect us? When did God save us from a crisis? What's all this about angels and dreams?

The lesson is that we are to be God's angels. The word "angel" means "messenger." We are to bring the message of God's compassion to those who need an intervention. Kinden draws the distinction between what is possible and what is actual. It is possible for God to intervene in each situation, but not likely. We must work with God; God is dependent on us to intervene, to minister. Else the need goes unmet, and God cannot intercede.

The second lesson is of protection. God intervenes to protect Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The angel guides the family into Egypt, and then back to their homeland; in between the before and the after comes the slaughter of the innocents. Thanks to the angel's warning, Jesus is kept safe from the slaughter.

Just so, God protects us. Not from death itself but from despair. Kinden relates the real life story of a man who died of cancer. While dying a long, slow death, the man was protected from despair. He kept his faith, fought hard, didn't become cynical. In the most tragic of circumstances, God protects our faith.

The third lesson is of guidance. The angel guides the parents of Jesus through the specifics of time and place. We, too, have a guide. Our ultimate leader is Jesus himself, but we are guided through "his Word." In order to benefit from the guidance offered to us, we must read Scripture every day and accompany our reading with prayer. Kinden invokes the Latin saying, nulla dies sine verba, "no day without a word." With "a word" each day the path we follow will lead to life.

The final lesson is of promises fulfilled. Kinden reminds us that the journey into Egypt was predicted in Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." Whether it is Matthew's slant or not—Matthew characteristically views the events in Jesus' life as fulfillment of prophecy—the point is that God fulfills promises.

Just as God keeps promises to Mary and Joseph, God keeps promises with us. God is as good as the Word delivered in Jesus Christ. We can bet our life on that.

Eric Dean, in an Epiphany sermon preached in the Wabash College Chapel, takes us directly to the tragic tension in the text. In The Slaughter of the Innocents,² Dean brings to the surface the pain of the unprotected. How can we cheer Herod's failure to destroy the infant Christ, when so many other innocent infants were cut down in cold blood?

Dean draws a fearful connection: "The ghastly deed is the direct consequence of the birth of Christ. . . the infants were the ransom price of the Savior's survival." The difficult, if true-to-life, connection we must realize, Dean preaches, is between Christmas and the Crucificition. As much as we resist the linkage of Christmas and bloody slaughter, that is the linkage we must make. Dean proposes a complex principle of salvation for us to consider: "Many die with Christ in order that we not be condemned."

The truth is that the death of the innocent is a constant factor in life as we live it. The gruesome story is as awful as the horrors of our own day. "It is not the Christmas story which is set aside from life; it is rather we who are set aside from life." We turn a deaf ear to the cries of suffering around us.

The story asks us to listen, so that the cycle might be broken. Could we hear for once the cries of Ramah? Then could we accept the death of the unprotected innocents not as our right but as "an act of reconciliation which we, too, must share?" Nice as it would be for Christmas to be undisturbed by cries, it will continue to be disturbed until we make those cries our own.

In Guarding the King,³ Cleverley Ford centers on our need to take care of Christ. Ford, like Rahner in Sermon Review number four, helps us see Joseph's role in the drama: "Poor Joseph! We never see him but he is in trouble. Shall he marry Mary? Must they flee by the road to Egypt?" We hear little more about Joseph, except that he faithfully stayed by his wife and child.

Ford observes that if a human hand had made up the story, something more miraculous would have happened: the angel himself would have carried Jesus to safety. But since God's authorship is behind the tale, something more ordinary occurs. "God does not use miracles when ordinary means suffice." A father and a mother take their son away from danger; what could be more ordinary?

Like Joseph and Mary, the church must take care of Christ. Otherwise, the church can lose Christ, and lose sight of him, too. By our own doing, or by forces outside the church, Christ can get lost. Ford warns us that Herod—whose other names include Humanism, Rationalism and Secularism—is still after the child in all of our arms. We must look after Christ, knowing that Herod was fooled once before. "He will be fooled again if the Church means business." Ford leaves us inspired to go about our business.

Susan Steinberg

1. Ingolf Kinden, "The Lessons of God's Presence," in Ausburg Sermons, Gospel Series A (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1974), pp. 41-46.
2. Eric Dean,"The Slaughter of the Innocents," in The Good News About Sin: Sermons Preached in the Wabash College Chapel (Crawfordsville, Indiana: A Sesquicentennial Publication, 1982), pp. 96-99.
3. Cleverley Ford, "Guarding the King," in An Expository Preacher's Notebook, by Cleverley Ford (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1960), pp. 36-40.