Change is Coming

Anitra Kitts Rasmussen, San Francisco Theological Seminary Intern
St. John's Presbyterian Church, Berkeley California

Matthew 2:1-12
January 2, 2005

(Anitra is also the Director of Communications for The Covenant Network of Presbyterians)

Jesus wasn't born in the middle of a Christmas card - he was born in the center of death, violence, cruelty, intrigue, hunger, homelessness, and midnight flights out of town.

Change is coming.

This is the real message that magi in Matthew’s nativity narrative are delivering to Herod, the Roman puppet ruler of the region.

Change is coming and notice is being served, the Magi say when they start asking around town for the birthplace of the new king. Change is coming, and Herod is a poser. The real king has been born - and by the time this game is over, the Roman occupiers and their puppet overlords will be exposed as the two-bit pretenders that we all know they really are. God has acted and Herod is already history. Herod believes them, because he knows it's true. He is only in power through brute force and gratuitous appeasement.

But he's nobody's fool, he knew what it took to get to that position, and he knows what it takes to keep it. So he hides his fear behind a mask and oozes sweetness and light, proclaiming his own intention to worship and honor his own replacement. Of course this is the same guy who kills not one, but two of his own sons because they became too much of a perceived threat, but that comes later in his life, after this story… Those who hear this Gospel already know this about Herod. The story that follows the visit of the Magi is not a surprise to those listeners. They already know that Herod is bad news. And Matthew places Jesus directly in harms way. Jesus wasn't born in the middle of a Christmas card - he was born in the center of death, violence, cruelty, intrigue, hunger, homelessness, and midnight flights out of town.

I like Matthew's version of how Jesus was born. Matthew doesn't pull any punches, he doesn't allow us to linger on the pastoral image of a loving couple making do in a stable in a Mediterranean climate which is to say inconvenient but special in its own way… like when the lights go out for a couple of hours... You know, the part where it's still an adventure. Instead, by including Herod's simple and direct attempt to eliminate the threat to his power, Matthew makes it very clear that from the beginning, Jesus was in the middle of some very hard times.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, isn't just a cute name for a baby; it’s a statement of fact for Matthew, for you and me, and for our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world from us this morning. God is with us in all things – the good, the bad, the scary, the completely incomprehensible,

Change is coming, it's always coming. Sometimes we know what it looks like and we can plan for it, schedule it, control it… or at least - like Herod - think we can - but sometimes change happens without warning.

We'd like to think that all change is under the control of God; which is to say, our control. We'd like to think that if we live right, then God will keep a special eye out for us and keep us, and the people we love, safe from harm. We want to think there is something we can do that will keep us - and our loved ones - safe.

Only, there isn't.

Chaos, the bounce of the ball… and how then does God work?

There are hundreds of stories coming out of the Indian Ocean right now where things could have gone one way but went another instead. "I don't know why I'm alive," one survivor said in a radio interview, "I really don't."

And he’s right to say this for chaos was turned loose when the earth ripped open last Sunday morning and one person survives when ten others die for no discernable difference in who they are or what they did in those short few minutes between the arrival of the water and its departure.

There will be many stories where people will say, “It must have been God” – like the boat filled with orphans and their missionary caretakers who race just ahead of the wave across the lagoon to safety. They had one of those classic missionary motor boat engines – some cast off that barely worked and wouldn’t start for four or five pulls – only this time it caught on the first pull… who is to say that God wasn’t in that?

But if God is in that, then where was God when the father surfaced holding only clothing where his baby daughter used to be?

Chaos ... the bounce of the ball … and how then does God work?

I can say this much - God is in the middle of that water, God is shouting into everyone’s ears – “Grab on! Run, run as fast as you can!” God is saying “Look Out!” and God is saying – “I am With You – Emmanual – I am with you!”

But why one survives and another doesn’t? Why does God allow the killing of babies, and why does their murderer die in his own bed of old age? Here we reach the boundary of what we can say of God and God’s ways. Too much damage has been done by those who rush into this mystery. None the less - the way Jesus was born into, lived through and died in the middle of some of the worse suffering imaginable - and then comes back to walk and talk among us again - tells us this:

Change is coming.

Death and destruction is not the final state. Matthew is unambiguous about this – as is the rest of our gospel writers – and Paul too. The last sentence in the Gospel of Matthew’s quotes the crucified and risen Christ reminding the followers present and all who hear and read Matthew across time and space: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Paul writes, from prison and facing death in his last known letter, beginning with Romans 8:38 – “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Nothing. Nada. Not Herod, or whoever has taken his place today, nor walls of water or openings of earth or firestorms that race across the hills above us or lab results or the phone that rings in the middle of the night or phones that don't ring any longer or… nothing.

But in case I haven't made my point, lets get back to Matthew:

Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: (chapter 6) “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value then they?”

And again, in chapter 10, starting with verse 29: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted.”

Every single human lost to that wave has a name known to God. Every single person left standing on the shore is known to God, who loves and desires only their well being.

I don’t know the whys of these things. But I know this – tsunamies and earthquakes and fires are not how things are going to be forever.

Change is coming.

I hold on tight to the vision John shares in the book of Revelation (chapter 21)– "then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of the heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, see I am making all things new."

In the meantime – for that is where we stand today...

In the meantime – for that is where we stand today – in the meantime between Christ’s presence and Christ’s return – in the meantime we have some people who need to be fed and clothed, and held, and to stand in silence with, to stare out to the sea with. They are across the world from us, they pass us here in the streets, they are sitting next to us in the pew this morning.

Change is coming. But God is with us. Let us travel out with the Magi to find the Christ child, let us send out our gifts that lead to life and away from death. Let us live as if God is with us, let us tell the others, the ones who need to hear the Good News, let us tell them that a child has been born in the middle of hell on earth. He is the one, He is Emmanual, God-with-us.

Herod is a poser, and of little real consequence.

The real king, the sovereign of God's Kingdom, moves among us today.

The Covenant Network

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