The First Sunday After Christmas; St. Andrew’s Pictou, NS, December 26^th 2004

 

Thin Veil of Safety

 

Isaiah 63:7-9

Psalm 148

Matthew 2:13-23

 

The central theology of the Christian Church is the divine love of Almighty God coming to earth as a living, breathing human being like you and I.

 

This central theology has a name; it is called “the incarnation.” God’s love was incarnated in Jesus Christ. To say it another way; God’s love came down to earth as a human being, or, God “pitched his tent with us” in Jesus Christ.

 

The whole notion of God as revealed in the Bible is an ongoing revelatory process; a movement from God “way out there” to “God with us:” Emanuel. Just as the Bible gradually reveals God, God is also gradually revealed in our own lives.

 

Remember way back when Moses went up Mount Sinai to commune with God and brought the Ten Commandments back down the mountain to the people.

 

At that time, God was seen as a distant God. God was a saving God who brought his people out of bondage in Egypt to a promised land, but God was experienced as distant; out of sight, out of touch.

 

Then God got closer when the people were on their journey to the Promised Land. God’s presence dwelled with them in the tabernacle. They carried “the presence” with them, which was to finally to rest and dwell in “the holiest of holies” in the temple at Jerusalem. God got closer to his people and traveled with them on their journey to the Promised Land, and then dwelled in their temple.

 

In Jesus Christ, God got really close to people; God became one of us in Jesus Christ.

 

Wow! God became one of us. Feeling like us, smelling like us, getting tired like us; getting hungry, and thirsty like us. Getting angry and loving like us, but most of all, getting vulnerable and open to pain and suffering like us.

 

Almighty God, of his own free volition and his own free will, moved from the position of invincibility and ultimate power to a position of weakness and dependence; from a position of safety, sending his one and only son Jesus, to the dangerous position of being a human being.

 

A human baby is about as vulnerable and dependant as any animal born. From birth and for a long time, we need to be fed, clothed, taught, kept warm and be protected from harm’s way.

 

Wasn’t it a supreme act of trust that almighty God would entrust his one and only son to the care of two teenagers: Mary and Joseph?

 

Just like it is today, the world was extremely hostile to the safety of children.

 

The Biblical text tells us that after the Magi had presented to Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, that Joseph was warned by an angel in a dream, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

 

Joseph was to enable the prophecy to be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” And away they went to safety in Egypt.

 

King Herod, furious that he had been tricked, sent out an order that “all of the children in or around Bethlehem who were two years old or under” were to be killed, as they were: another prophecy was fulfilled; from Jeremiah (31:15):

A voice was heard in Ramah,

Wailing and loud lamentations,

Rachel weeping for her children;

She refused to be consoled,

Because they are no more.”.

 

(Ramah is a geographical name given to several towns in ancient Israel.)

 

So the joy of the birth we have been celebrating at Christmas came to us with great cost, just as the message of salvation that Jesus himself brought us would come at great cost to him at his crucifixion.

 

The essence of the message for us today is that God in Christ came to us as we are: vulnerable as a baby and with the real presence of life-threatening danger: one minute Jesus is totally safe with his parents, the next moment his life is in danger, and he moved from one side of that thin veil of safety to the other side where there is real danger.

 

We see a veil as a frail barrier, but something that is usually thin and we can see right through it. We can see through from one side of the veil to another. Imperceptibly our sight moves though the veil. One moment Jesus was safe, the next he was in mortal danger.

 

The same is true in our experience of life: there are times when we are totally safe, and then we seem to move to the other side of that thin veil of safety and we are in danger and need to respond to that danger.

 

The shocking thing is how thin that veil of safety is.

 

We are hearing in the news lately that the police have found the DNA of 31 victims in the earth around a pig farm in BC. 31!!

 

How many people would have known these 31 people and yet they didn’t seem to notice how they moved through that thin veil of safety into the realms of mortal danger. Nobody noticed. There were no headlines, 31 Women Missing!!

 

Modern day “Herod’s” share drugs to get others hooked, have risky sex, and take passengers when they drink and drive.

 

I am not saying this to scare people, anymore than the angel tried to scare Joseph and Mary about Jesus. The angel was just trying to protect them.

 

I am just asking for awareness. I am asking for an awesome respect and gratitude for safety, the need for safety, and the right for safety, for all women, men and children.

 

When you see the evidence that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq by the country that does have weapons of mass destruction and know what they look like, when you see people still drink and drive, when you see people freely take life destroying soul destroying drugs, when you see people hate and seek revenge, when you see a hockey player get a 500 dollar fine, a years probation, and 80 hours of community service for a violent, premeditated, evil act and goes on, if the NHL resumes, to make over 7 million in his next year, you get a message about the power of evidence.

 

The evidence is in and what the evidence shows is: that the evidence doesn’t matter.

 

But does it matter?

 

Does it matter that 31 women were brutally slaughtered?

 

Does it matter that the Iraqi people probably won’t take on American style democracy with missiles and bombs?

 

Does it matter that Tanner died and his family is distraught?

 

Does it matter that Steve Moore and his family had their lives shattered as was his vertebrae?

 

I think it all does matter to God, because God knows how the parents of the 31 women feel. God knows how Tanner’s parents feel. God knows how Steve Moore’s parents feel.

 

God knows and is in solidarity with how you and I feel, and it darn well matters!

 

“…an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up,’”

 

For us to be safe, you and I need to be in prayerful contact with God so that we can listen to the angels bringing us the news that we need to hear, so that we won’t be part of the mountains of useless, disregarded, evidence: the evidence that doesn’t matter to politicians, the justice system, greedy hockey officials, and others like them, and there are many.

 

The distance between safety and danger is a thin veil. Passing from one side to the other can happen easily and without our perception.

 

Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were a faithful, together, family unit. The same reality is a must for us; to be faithful, to be in prayerful contact with God and with each other; to listen for the warning signs that we are in danger of passing through that thin veil of safety to peril.

 

AMEN                  Rev. Alan Stewart