Hear the good news today, friends.  The news that makes this time of the year unlike any other. 

God’s mercy has fallen on the world.  God’s goodness has fallen on the world.  The decorations are still up.  The candles of hope and peace and joy and love are still lit.  Hope and peace and joy and loye have come to us a gift and the gift is “God-with-us.”  The goodness of God is made known to us.  The steadfast love of God, of which Isaiah sings (because Isaiah 63 reads like a Psalm, though I’m not going to sing it this week:

I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us (hope/peace/joy/and love are not something we need to conjure up – they are before us to accept as gifts.  God has stepped into our mess.  Being saved, being delivered from my fears/my missing the mark/messing up/my despair/my search for meaning/my self-centredness/my self-absorption/my own worst inclinations/my apathy (speaking personally) or messes like state-sponsored violence/insularity/exclusion/oppression (speaking more globally) does not foundationally and fundamentally depend on us. Thank God for this because we could never do it.  If we coul,d we would have done it already.

Thank God a King has been born.   We’re moving on from the story of Jesus’ birth, and we’re continuing to ask the question “What does this mean?”  There is a certain type of rebellion in calling Jesus “Lord.”   To call Jesus Lord is to stand in opposition to the so-called powers that be that would claim lordship, or would claim to offer peace and stability and safety.  Leaders that are known for resentment and even rage; leaders that commit state-sponsored acts of violence; leaders whose number one priority is holding onto power are well known to us.  They are nothing new.

Which brings us to Herod.  A Roman-backed client-king.  Known as Herod the Great, which of course brings the question to mind, “What does it mean to be great?”  Known as Herod the Great because of the economic success he brought to the region, because economic success is great, right?  Known as great for the construction projects which he oversaw, because large infrastructure is a sign of greatness, right? 

When we talk about greatness, we must ask the question “Greatness for whom?”  Certainly not for the children aged two and under in and around Bethlehem.  Certainly not for their families.  Their mothers and fathers.  This is not an easy story, and there are many stories that are not easy at all.  Stories that are happening today all over our world.  Someone has said, “even when Jesus was born, there were outsiders bearing gifts, politicians trying to hold onto power, and people in Bethlehem screaming ‘Where is God?’  Rachel mourning for her children.  Mary probably grieved over the news down in Egypt, living off the gold provided by the magi.  After all, the Bethlehem women were a part of their little community – friends who shared resources, stories, and daily chores.  They did life together.  Their children played together.  Such news may have even compelled Mary to ask the same question in the face of such human suffering, ‘God, where are you?’”

Sometimes there are no easy answers to our questions.  Why didn’t God stop it?  Why didn’t all the parents in Bethlehem have the same dream so they could be warned too?  There’s no easy answer to the question of “Why does humanity do such things to one another?” In the middle of the questions, though, we know this good news. God has intervened.  This is what God does.  This is what God has always done in the face of suffering.  Many years prior to our Christmas story, another ruler ordered that all male Israelite babies be put to death.  They were a threat to the Egyptian Empire, you see.  The enemy within.  They were changing the makeup of the nation.  This is nothing new.  What happened?  God heard the cries of his people and he stepped in.  Moses, a baby who was saved from state-sponsored violence, would be called by God to lead God’s people out of oppression and slavery.  The prototypical saving event. God has intervened, and he appears in the form of a vulnerable baby.  This is how the kingdom of God, which has drawn near in Jesus, works, you see.  God’s love is not coercive.  God does not force hope, peace, joy and love on people.  For the last time in a while, let’s revisit what those truths mean in the kingdom of God.  Hope as confident expectation of good.  Peace as not simply absence of conflict (or cease-fires) but flourishing for all.  Joy is not as a mood or feeling that depends on circumstance, but the confidence that in Christ we travel along the freedom highway.  Love that over everything seeks the good for one another.  All of these are rooted and grounded in this baby who will grow up and proclaim the good news and be the good news and heal and make whole and will be killed and will be raised to life and who has promised that he will one day return to renew and restore all things.

This is God’s plan, and it is not going to be derailed by any human ruler or empire, no matter how things may look.  Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall, except for one.  Welcome to my kingdom, Jesus will say, where those who know their need for him are in a good place; where those who know God’s mercy will show it, where those who mourn will know comfort, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (for right relationship with God and with people, for justice) will be filled; where those who make peace – who seek flourishing for all – will be called children of God. To follow Jesus, to call Jesus “My Lord and my God,” is to have something to do in the kingdom of God.  I want us to consider Joseph in our story.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph shows himself to be a shining example of faithfulness to God’s plan, of following God’s leading in his life.  It might be revealed in a dream.  It might be revealed in hearing God’s word. It might be revealed in a song or in the life of someone close to us.  Joseph hears God’s instructions to protect this child and his mother.  Involuntary displacement is one of the defining issues of the 21^st century, and we are reminded in our story that God is not absent from the sufferings of the migrant and the refugee – those who are displaced, the vulnerable among us.  Neither should we be.  Joseph used the resources that had been available to his family to protect them.  Later on in Matthew, Jesus will tell a parable in which he will say that when you welcome a stranger, you welcome him.  

In what ways are we being called to protect the vulnerable?  I know we can be exposed to a lot of news, most of it bad, and how overwhelming the problems of the world can seem.  Perhaps we start with those who are known to us and known to our circles of love and care.  Perhaps we consider what we may do individually to extend care and protection; what we may do as a church; what we may do as a society.  The whole time, we ask God to give us hearts to love as God loves, and hands and feet to work his goodwill for all.  To make that news known in our words and our deeds, that God’s mercy has fallen on the world.  To say “Help us be people of your mercy.”

We continue to live as people of hope – the confident expectation of good.  The confident expectation that God’s plan will not be thwarted.  We have been talking through these weeks of Advent of Toda la tierra espera.  There is a day that all the earth awaits, and we wait for it actively.  The day is God’s kingdom come in all its fullness, the end of mourning and crying and pain.  The renewal of all things and God with us in a whole new way.  We continue to bear the lights of hope, peace, joy and love – the light of Christ as we go through our days, as we long for redemption and restoration.  There is a passage from Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” which speaks to this light.  I want to share it to close:  

“Sheriff Tom Bell is the main character in the novel.  He sees evil with an honesty born of his own failures to bring justice, and he wavers in the sight of all that is frozen and impossibly broken. What he has experienced is so much bigger than himself. As the novel comes to an end, after dark and chilling and unredeemed violence, Bell reflects on why he first went into law enforcement and says, “It was because… I always thought I could at least somehow put things right, and I guess I just don’t feel that way anymore. I’m being asked to stand for somethin that I don’t have the same belief in it I once did.” Sheriff Bell reflects to himself about the only hope he can imagine, a hungering for redemption that transcends the powers of humanity. “I wake up sometimes way in the night, and I know as certain as death that there ain’t nothing short of the second comin of Christ that can slow this train.” Then Bell remembers a dream he had about his father.… “I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold, and there was snow on the ground, and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him, and he had his head down, and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do, and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.” Dreams delivered the Holy Family, and a dream delivered Sheriff Bell into hope.”

May we know that Jesus goes with us and that Jesus goes ahead of us.  May we carry the light of hope and peace as we go along together. May God help us to continue to see and be the light of Christ.  May this be true for all of us.  Amen