Christmas 1 – 2019
Matthew 2:13-23
Marian Free
In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen
Recently I listened to an interview with Timothy Spall the actor who, among other achievements, played the part of the artist J.M.W. Turner in the movie of the same name. I first came across Spall when I watched the extraordinary 1996 movie Secrets and Lies in which he played the lead role. During the interview, he was asked to tell the story of why he missed going to Cannes for the showing of that movie. As he tells it, Spall was at that time experiencing a certain amount of lethargy and, thinking that it was exhaustion, he went to the doctor expecting to be given some sort of tonic or pick-me-up. Within days, while he was in the midst of filming an advertisement, Spall received a call from the doctors’ surgery asking him to come in. Not wanting to spare the time or to leave the filming halfway through he insisted on speaking with the doctor. The doctor also refused to share the news over the phone. When Spall presented at the surgery, he was informed that the cause of his tiredness was not overwork or poor diet, it was a particularly aggressive form of leukemia – acute myeloid leukemia. Had he not been diagnosed and immediately begun the treatment; he might have been dead by the end of the week! Instead of going to Cannes he went to hospital for chemotherapy.
The fact that he was being interviewed indicates that the cure was successful, but Spall’s story is a reminder of how quickly our lives can change. An accident, a diagnosis, a sick or dying child, a change in the world economy, falling victim to a scam, any number of things – whether of our our making or from completely unrelated events – can turn our lives and our fortunes upside down in a heartbeat.
As Matthew tells the story, such was the case with Jesus. His birth was facilitated by the Holy Spirit and heralded by an angel. A new star signalled his arrival. News of his birth reached the centre of power. Wise men or kings travelled a great distance to see him, to kneel before him and to give him gifts that were both rich and rare. This, Matthew leads us to believe was no ordinary child. He was born in the symbolically significant town of Bethlehem – the home of King David. As an infant he was recognized as King of the Jews and worshipped as God. Yet, barely had the wise men left, when Jesus and his family were forced to flee, not only the city, but the country. From being identified as royalty they became as fugitives. From having the world at their feet, they were forced to seek shelter from strangers. From being worshipped as God to being just another refugee fleeing cruelty and oppression. From having the power to strike fear into the heart of Herod and of Jerusalem to being completely powerless in the insignificant, barely known village of Nazareth. From being at the center of the Jewish world to being at its very edges, considered as little better than a Samaritan. Overnight Jesus and his family went from recognition to ignominy, renown to obscurity.
It was a dramatic turn of events, albeit one which has lost some of the impact in its retelling over the centuries. Unlike Luke for whom Jesus was born in a stable and revealed to the poor and lowly including shepherds, who were considered no better than thieves, Matthew places Jesus’ birth among the rich and powerful. Yet, hardly has he established Jesus’ credentials as king and God than he turns the story on its head. Jesus will not, as his beginning suggests, be identified with kings and rulers. He will in fact take his place among the most helpless and vulnerable of his community. Kings will not bow down before him, instead they will oppose him. His followers will not be the wise men from the east or even from among his own people, but the marginalised and the outcast, those with no status at all.
Jesus’ apparent fall from grace turns out to be anything but. As Matthew tells the story, everything that happened was going according to plan. Jesus is a king but, as the readers will come to see, he is a king like no other. Jesus is God, but as God he fully identifies with the plight of humanity to the point of becoming one of and one with them. Jesus’ change in circumstance is full of symbolic meaning that more fully spells out who and what he is, and, through the fulfillment passages, Matthew shows that God had seen how things would work out and that God’s hand had been with Jesus every step of the journey.
Life does not always work out the way that we hope and plan. Sometimes a curved ball is thrown in our direction and we have to re-think who we are, what we are doing and where we are going. At such times we must follow Joseph’s example and believe that, however bleak things appear, God is with us, guiding us through the darkness and helping us to accept and to work with the way things are. Sometimes, with hindsight, we will see that God has moved us through the pain and difficulty to where we were always meant to be.
Swallowsrest 