“The Original ‘Let’s Take Christ Out of Christmas’”.

     There has been a lot of blather these last few years, much of it coming from television and radio talk show hosts, complaining that they – the “they” being the ACLU, the “liberal media”, the forces of political correctness, etc. – that “they” have conspired to take Christ out of Christmas.  Those who, out of sensitivity to those who are Jewish, Muslim, pagan, or none of the above, say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, are accused of secularizing the holiday, and even of victimizing Christians – although how a group that makes up over three-quarters of the U.S. population can be considered “victims” might be a bit of a stretch.

            In our reading for today, on the other hand, we get the original guy who really did want to take the Christ out of Christmas – King Herod. Herod had heard rumors that a child had been born who would be king, and the arrival of the magi from the east, telling him that they sought this child, was enough for Herod to commission the magi as his agents, charged with reporting back to him the location of this potential usurper. But the magi, having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, go home by another route. Herod, infuriated that the magi have thwarted his machinations, exercises the nuclear option, sending his henchmen to murder all children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem.

            But Joseph, having himself been warned in a dream about Herod’s murderous scheming, wakes Mary in the middle of the night, and together, with their newborn clutched close to her breast, flees across the border to Egypt.

            Herod wants to take the Christ out of Christmas, and people pay for his jealousy, his rage, his paranoia. Children die. Parents are bereft.

            I often have folk telling me that politics has no place in the church or in the life of faith. The first Christmas, however, is political to its very core, with a petty tyrant ready, willing and able to eliminate a potential rival, even if it meant the wholesale slaughter of infants.  Herod knows that there is room for only one king, and if this child is to be king, he cannot be.

            By telling us of Jesus’ start in life as a political refugee, Mathew is telling us in prose what John tells us in his gospel in poetry, that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out.” 

            So even as we abhor the violence in this account of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt, we can see that at the heart of the narrative this is the Christmas story as well; that on Christmas, love was born into the world, and nothing, not even the power of earthly tyrants, can separate us from so strong a love.

            But while the Christmas story begins with this story of God’s all-powerful love, it does not end there.  While nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, we, like the shepherds and the magi and Mary and Joseph before us, cannot remain huddled around that manger forever, for he is no longer there. The Herods of this world still walk the earth, still hatch their murderous plots in modern palaces around the world, still scheme to profit off human misery, whether it be sex trafficking in Thailand and Los Angeles, or arms trade on the African continent, or drug peddling in our high schools and on the back streets of our towns. And too many Rachels still bewail their lost children, the children victimized by bullying and violence in their homes and neighborhoods, the grown children ensnared in cycles of spousal abuse, the young men and women fed into the meat grinder of constant warfare.

            Joseph had a dream, a message from God, that compelled him to get up and out in the middle of the night, that an innocent child might be protected.

            The question for us, even as we celebrate the joy of Christmas, is whether we, in the light of day, will remain huddled around an empty manger, or instead respond to God’s call to get up and go, and do our part, in our turn.

            Merry Christmas! Now get out of here.

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