Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 1 January 2023.
Flight into Egypt, by Gentile da Fabriano, 1423 (Source | Large image)
• First Reading: Isaiah 63: 7–9 (I will tell you of the kindness of the Lord, the deeds for which He is to be praised)
• Epistle: Hebrews 2: 10–18 (He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might break the power of him who holds the power of death)
• Gospel: Matthew 2: 13–23 (The flight into Egypt – Herod’s massacre of the boys of Bethlehem – Joseph’s return to Israel, went to Nazareth)
I wonder how many of us have met teachers or work managers who are expert at giving orders. The bark of command and things are expected to happen, immediately and without question.
It can be there in the classroom, on the sports field or in the office or workshop. There is that expectation that giving orders is enough, without thinking through what they mean or how they are to be followed, as if details were below the dignity and importance of the person in control.
I say nothing here about politicians who also seem adept at making assertions without working through just what they mean or would involve in getting their ideas put into effect. You will all have your favourite nominations for this category of the non-awards.
But this is part of the thinking in our lessons for Isaiah has an apparently bizarre poem of praise for the kindness of the Lord. Now, when the people were following the Law of the Lord and the rains were coming and the flocks were giving forth their young, when the crops were coming in and above all the people were at peace with one another and their neighbours, this was fine.
But what about the times of want and insecurity, when the rains and harvests failed and when they were being plagued by raiders? What then?
Part of Isaiah’s answer is to hold close to the Lord, in observing His laws, in putting their personal trust in Him and in living cleanly and fairly with their neighbours.
Certainly the deportation of the people of Samaria in 722 and of Jerusalem in 587 were examples of wholesale abandonment by the people of the ways of the Lord. Their later restoration to the land was also a sign of God’s ongoing love and care for His people.
This is the background to the flight of the holy family from the reach of Herod the Great to Egypt. They were in fear of their lives and life itself in any part of Herod’s rule was precarious.
But then God incarnate was not born in a palace or attended by crowds of servants. He was born amid the chaos and confusion of a Roman registration decree and the family lived briefly in Bethlehem as Joseph plied his trade and paid his bills.
Then that frightening dream demanding immediate action. They had to move and very quickly. It was one thing to spend a couple of years living carefully in Herod’s domain but it was another when he started playing politics with their lives. So they left with all the insecurity and confusion that flight as a refugee involved.
Yes, Joseph would find a home and work in Egypt, likely enough among the Jewish community that was there. But nothing was going to be certain and as a foreigner among the Egyptians one would still have to be careful.
But the letter to the Hebrews takes the whole theme further. Now the issue is God’s total identifying of Himself with His people – not only with the Jewish people but with all throughout the world who would hear His message and follow it.
Jesus did not live in a palace or other gilded cage. He worked to support the family until there were others who could carry this work on.
He was still having to hustle to find work – whether on building sites or in commissions in His workshop. He would have to source His materials, deliver the work – and ensure that He was paid for it.
In His ministry He would be wholly dependent on others – and while there were wealthy supporters, He and the disciples might still have to go to bed hungry and under the stars.
He would know all about human motivations and manoeuvres. The games that people play, the deceits that they practice.
Often with others – but frequently also with themselves.
Now Jesus was living life in the raw – knowing rich and poor alike and finding that even if they had different opportunities they still had the same motives and rivalries, the same desire to find someone even more vulnerable than themselves to abuse.
Not just crude abuse but the more subtle forms of exclusion and gas-lighting. The same enjoyment of other peoples’ miseries and misfortunes. ‘Terrible. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’
But Jesus also did something more. His life’s work would climax on the cross where He would defeat death itself and its ability to terrorize people. And He could only do this as one who was fully human.
This was the point – to live a wholly human but also a fully blameless life. To take to Himself the judgment of God over the whole of human sin and rebellion.
To do it freely and willingly, knowing that He could escape but being determined not to do so.
This was the loving kindness of God in action. God taking personal responsibility for the whole of the human condition when none other could do so.
This was God placing Himself in the midst of the human situation with all its needs and cruelties and uncertainties. It was God saying that death will never have the last word. It was and is a message that the purposes of God are not frustrated. He will see to that.
