"Celebrating Christmas When God Seems Far Away", Dec. 29, 2024

“Celebrating Christmas When God Seems Far Away”

A Sermon based on Matthew 2:13-23, Jeremiah 31:15-17a

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, Dec. 29, 2024

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! And I wish you all a very happy New Year! I love Christmas. It’s probably my favorite holiday. I love Christmas trees, Christmas lights, the sparkly decorations, the candle light service, presents, food, and Christmas carols! When Christa was little we would sing Christmas carols and play our Christmas CD’s – in those days they were CD’s – until Joe would say, “I don’t care what CD you put on as long as it isn’t Christmas music!” But most of all I love the Christmas story: the manger, the angels, the shepherds, the star, the wise men, and, of course, Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus – Emmanuel – God-with-us. Such a beautiful story!

Then we come to the part that we read today – the part we would rather forget, the part where Herod’s soldiers kill the innocent babies of Bethlehem.

And we remember that our world is not perfect, that we don’t always hear angels singing or witness miraculous births, but that sometimes really bad things happen.

We desperately need the spirit of Christmas in our hearts – our broken world filled with bad news, war, violence and hatred desperately needs to hear the message of Christmas – God with us, Emmanuel. But how do we celebrate Christmas in a world where innocent children are slaughtered, in a world where God often seems far away?

All of us encounter tragedy in our lives – life is like that. But times like Christmas, when everyone else seems to be happy and celebrating, can bring out the painful memories and remind us of our grief. Maybe that’s why this horrifying chapter is included in the Christmas story – to remind us of the realities Jesus came to redeem.

Just as the first century Jews wanted a Messiah who would lead an army into Jerusalem to drive out the pagan Romans, we want a cosmic Christ who will come and sweep away all evil.

Yet this story reminds us that God sent a weak, vulnerable baby, who barely escaped being murdered by a despotic king. We want a pretty Christmas in a clean stable, but Jesus was probably born in a place that smelled – well, like a barn. We want a comforting and comfortable religion, but instead God gives us a faith that requires a crucifixion before the resurrection, and a Christ who tells us that if we wish to follow him we must take up our cross as well. And at the end of this beautiful Christmas story we find the Holy Family fleeing for their lives, and the slaughter of innocent children.

What can we make of all this? Why do “bad things happen to good people,” as Rabbi Harold Kushner so succinctly put it in his book by that title? I am not going to try to answer that question this morning, except to say that we live in a fallen world, where God gives us free will. Sometimes we make the wrong choices. When we make bad choices – that’s called “sin” in theological terms – sometimes we are not the only ones to suffer: sometimes innocent people suffer as well. God does not cause evil, but sometimes God allows it to happen.

The good news of the cross and the resurrection is that God can redeem even the worst that can happen, that death is not the end, and that evil does not have the final word.

Though we may never understand why God permits such terrible things as the taking of innocent life, we can choose how we respond to living in the midst of evil. We Christians are called to celebrate Christmas – not just on Dec. 25th, but the other 364 days of the year as well. We are called to acknowledge, and to show with our lives, that Jesus Christ really did come in the flesh; he really was born in a real place and time and he lived and died and rose again to be the Savior of humanity.

How do we “keep Christmas” with these realities in mind? How do we keep our faith in the face of suffering and injustice? In the scriptures we read many stories of people of faith in other times and places who held on to their beliefs when life got difficult. One of them was the prophet Jeremiah, who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of his people to Babylon.

Often called “the weeping prophet,” he correctly foresaw the imminent downfall of Jerusalem and lived to see his dire predictions come to pass. His gloom and doom prophecies did not make him popular with the ruling powers. When Jeremiah’s prophecies were read to King Jehoiakim, the king took a knife, cut the scroll into pieces, and threw it into the fire. Jeremiah and his scribe, Baruch, had to go into hiding to save their lives. Later King Zedekiah had him thrown into an abandoned cistern, where sank into the mud at the bottom and would have perished there of hunger and thirst, if some friends had not pulled him out. Jeremiah lived to witness the siege of Jerusalem and its downfall, along with the destruction of the beautiful Temple of Solomon. His people were exiled. He, too, had to leave his home, never to return. Yet, in Jeremiah 31, the very chapter where he writes of “Rachel weeping for her children,” he urges his people to remember God’s promises. In the verses immediately following, we read: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord:

they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future, says the Lord.” Jeremiah responds to misfortune by remembering God’s goodness and God’s promises. With God, there is always hope.

Another thing Jeremiah does is to challenge evil and injustice when he sees it. Despite the risk to his own life, Jeremiah publicly rebukes the kings of Judah for their idolatry and their failure to keep God’s laws. The words he spoke to the ancient kings of Judah could have been spoken to Kind Herod: “Your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence” (Jeremiah 11:17). There was no one to challenge King Herod in his day. There was no one to stop him. He was an absolute ruler. But today we live in a democracy. We have the right to speak out against evil and injustice and we must use our voices to do so. As it says in the Book of Proverbs: “Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out; judge righteously; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8).

Yet when we are bombarded daily by bad news on the internet and TV, it’s easy to get apathetic or to look the other way. We are rightly horrified when we read of Herod’s bloodthirsty acts, but innocents are being slaughtered today, too. We stand by and do little as school shootings, wars conflicts, and famine take more innocent lives. Poet Wendell Berry recently wrote: “We have become a society of people who cannot prevent our own children from being killed in their classrooms—and who do not much mind the killing of other people’s children by weapons of war.”

Right here in California, families with young children now account for a third of the homeless population. At the most recent Point in Time Count, nearly 10,000 people were unhoused in Santa Clara County alone, including some 2,700 children and youth. I am glad our church supports the Bill Wilson Center for unhoused youth and families. We also gave part of our Alternative Christmas funds to orphanages in Cameroon to help children displaced by conflict find a safe haven where they can be fed and attend school. Let’s be on the lookout for other ways we can help children in need, both close to home, and far away.

Rachel is still weeping for her children, and God weeps with her. “All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” is an oft-repeated quote. Like Jeremiah, we can choose to trust God, and speak out against evil, even when things seem hopeless.

I will close with a story of hope from our Advent study guide, Calling All Angels, by Erin Wathen: [A woman named] Yong Cha Prince was ready to close the Western Motor Inn in Denver, which she had run with her husband for many years. After the death of her husband, as well as their young adult son, she was ready to return home to South Korea. But the night before the closure, a woman appeared at her door. She had six Venezuelan boys with her, and they had no place to go. Yong Cha invited them to stay for free. But there were more. Migrant children came to the motel, as well as adults who had [recently] arrived in the city…

They were finding it hard to stay warm since the weather had turned cold. Within just a few days, every room was full. There were nearly three hundred guests.

The innkeeper, along with Christina Asuncion, who found and brought those first boys to the door, continued working to house and feed as many of their neighbors as they possibly could… of course, feeding hundreds of people a day is more expense than two women alone can cover… [So]members of the community…chipped in to help.

…This story could have gone so many different ways.” Christina might have walked the other way when she encountered those boys in the local park – out of fear, or maybe because she didn’t want to be bothered. Yong Cha might have been afraid to open her door to strangers…The neighbors might have…protested the whole thing, not wanting immigrants or the unhoused to stay in their neighborhood. But one took the boys to the door. The other said yes, come in, we have room…

and [they] kept opening that door again and again. And instead of protesting, the neighbors came to help. When people stop being afraid of what might happen and trust God – or just trust the better angels of their nature – it is amazing what can happen.

Wathen concludes: “Here is the good news of love made flesh: love doesn’t have to wait until we are perfectly ready and available, until we have all the plans in place and all the supplies ordered and the roof fixed. Love doesn’t have to wait until we have enough money or enough hands or enough energy or perfect faith. Love comes to the door, to meet us as we are, asking only that we do the same.” And when we do, we become partners with God in overcoming evil, in living out the promise of Christmas – Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.

With thanks to: Wathen, Erin. Calling All Angels: An Advent Study of Fearlessness and Strength. Presbyterian Publishing. Kindle Edition, 2024.