I Like to Picture Jesus As... (Matthew 2:13-23)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 12/29/13

Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library

In the movie Talladega Nights,  there is a scene that I have always found hilarious, but I find it to be even funnier now at this time of the year. In the movie the famous race car driver Ricky Bobby is gathering at dinner with his family and best friend and he begins to pray and starts his prayer with “Dear Lord baby Jesus”  Throughout his prayer he keeps referring to Lord baby Jesus, until his wife finally cuts him off and says, “Hey you know sweetie, Jesus did grow up, you don’t always have to call him baby, it’s a bit odd and off-putting to  pray to a baby.” I like the Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace. When you say grace you can say it to grown up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus or whoever you want. After some more arguing Ricky’s friend jumps in and says, “I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt,  because it’s like a want to be formal, but I’m here to party too. The kids jump in I like to picture Jesus as a ninja fighting off evil Samurai.” So finally Ricky begins his prayer again, “Dear 8 pound 6 ounce newborn infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just and infant and just so cuddly, but still omnipotent… and he finally continues and finishes the prayer.

            Now this example is of course over the top, but it does make us wonder how do we actually think of Jesus?  At this time of Christmas it is normal for us to think about Jesus as a little newborn infant, it is in fact what we are celebrating with Christmas, but as the season ends as we move on further into the calendar that’s usually not how we picture Jesus anymore. We begin to picture Jesus as an adult, we picture Jesus as  he performs his miracles, as he goes about his ministry, and yes as he dies on the cross at Calvary. After Christmas we jump from newborn baby Jesus to 30 year old grown adult Jesus. That leaves a lot of years of Jesus’ life in between. And it is not our faults that this is the way that we transition our thinking of Jesus, because it is the way that the Bible itself moves. In between the time of Jesus’ birth and the visit from the magi, to the time of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, one of the few stories that goes into any detail about the life Jesus in between happens when Jesus was twelve. Jesus and his family were traveling together and thinking Jesus was with other family members, Mary and Joseph lost Jesus. When they backtracked, the went to the Temple to find Jesus listening and asking questions of the teachers. Other than some other smaller stories about Jesus being taken to the temple for consecration, or being told that he grew and was full of wisdom we really don’t know that much about much of Jesus’ life. What happened between this story where Jesus is twelve, and the adult Jesus that we find being baptized? The answer is we really don’t know all that much. So then the question to ask is what happened between the time of Jesus’ birth and this story of Jesus at twelve years old? While we still do not know that much about Jesus himself, but thanks to our scripture for this morning we do know a lot about what was going on with him and his family at that time.

            Our scripture starts by saying, “after they had left,” but who are “they?” well if we were to backtrack a little in our scripture we would find that they were the magi, or the wise men as they have been traditionally called.  Word had gotten out in the land that a child had been born that who was being called the King of the Jews. King Herod, gathered all of his best advisors together to figure out exactly what was going on and who this child was. He then sent out the three magi to go to Bethlehem and find this baby child, because he claimed he wanted to offer him praise as well. Herod had much more sinister intentions however, he saw this baby child as a threat and wanted to find a way to get rid of him. The magi find the baby child and pay their respects, but they were told in a dream that Herod had bad intentions, so they returned to their country by a different route.

            That brings us back to our scripture for today. Herod finally realizes that he had been tricked by the magi, that they were not coming back to report the location of the child. Herod gets angry, he gets rash, he wants to get rid of this threat so bad that he does the only thing that would seem to guarantee the end of this child, and the end of the threat to his power; Herod orders all children in and around Bethlehem that were two years or younger. This surely would do the trick.

            It probably would have too, except an angel came to Joseph and said, “"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."  The angel warns Joseph and in doing so foils Herod’s plans. Joseph takes Jesus and Mary and they move to Egypt, where they wait until Herod dies and they can return back to home. How long that will be no one really knows, but now they sit and they wait. Sadly this is how our dear savoir is forced to spend much of his early life.

            Think about it, I mean really think about all that this family has faced in such a short time. Mary and Joseph had to struggle with the news that Mary would bear the Son of God. Then they had to travel to Bethlehem for a census, Mary would give birth to Jesus in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Shepherds would come and pay homage to Christ, and Mary would ponder all of this in her heart, and later magi would come from the east and bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. If all of this was not wild and strange enough, they now had to flee the land that they knew, and had to become exiles in a foreign land.   Oddly, they would become immigrants in Egypt, the very same land that God had helped the Israelites and Moses escape from centuries before. On top of all of this while they were gone the children of all the people of Bethlehem and its surrounding areas were being killed, all because Herod wanted just one child dead, their child,  Jesus. Imagine the fear, the guilt, the sadness that must have accompanied Jesus and his family for much of the beginning of his life. When the Gabriel angel came to Mary a few years ago he promised her that he brought news, but so far she had faced much more hardship than any seemingly good news.

            Why did all of this have to happen this way? What is the point of all of this hardship? Did it mean anything at all? These are difficult questions that Mary and Joseph had to face, but as our scripture for this morning shows us, there are answers to some of these questions.  In particular our scripture answers whether or not all of this means anything at all. We find that much of what happens to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is the fulfillment of scripture. The family had to flee for their lives and live as exiles in Egypt, and while this all seems just circumstantial, that they just needed a place to flee after being warned about Herod, we see that the prophet’s said, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” The death of so many children at the hands of Herod was so tragic, and yet this tragedy was also foretold, “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”  Even when Herod passes away, and the angel tells Joseph it is safe to return home, but not to Judea because Archelaus was ruling there, but instead to Galilee, this too had special meaning because the prophets foretold, “He will be called a Nazorean.” So many of the events in the early part of Jesus’ live, even the tragedies had a special meaning, because they all pointed toward Jesus being the fulfillment of scripture. They all pointed towards Jesus being the Messiah. So to answer the question of whether all of this means something, well the answer is yes. It means that Jesus is the Messiah.

            This however does make the other questions much harder to answer and can create some dangerous ideology if we are not careful. We have seen that these things happening point to the fulfilment of scripture, but why did scripture had to be fulfilled this way?  Why did the family have to flee from the land the loved? Why did so many young children have to die? If we aren’t careful we can start to think that since it is fulfillment of scripture, that God had somehow scripted it all to occur in this way. This is quite easy to follow, but if we follow this train of thought then we are saying that God wanted countless numbers of innocent children to be murdered, just so Jesus could fulfill some prophecy. I am not willing to say that. Do I have the perfect answer to why these things happened, no, but I don’t believe that God creates evil but instead finds ways of extending grace in the midst of hardships, These evil things have happened and yet God still gives hope to the world, by showing that in spite of the evil and because of the evil Christ has come. Christ has come to conquer sin and death, Christ has to set us free, and Matthew points to the words of the prophets to make his point.

            We will never be able to ever fully explain why evil exists, why hardships happen, why something that is supposed to be so good can be so difficult, but same time I think we also have a distorted view of what is good.  We hear that something is good news and we automatically assume that means easy. We hear good news and we imagine some far-fetched idea like winning the lottery and relaxing on the beach on a private island, and then if the good news doesn’t match this idea, then we are disappointed, we get upset at the first sign of difficulties. And yet if we look at some best times in many of our lives, we will see that there usually is a lot of difficulty that comes with. Good news you got into the college of your dreams, but that also means the work will be harder, you will be graded harsher, and the students around you are just as smart if not smarter than you. Good news we’re getting married, but we all know that marriage is a commitment and alongside the joy is also many struggles and hardships. Good news you’re having a boy, but that means 18 years of struggling to raise him, from being woken up late at night at the beginning to staying up late at night worrying about the decisions he’s making when he’s  a teen and everything in between, parenting is also a struggle. All of these things, getting into college, getting married, having kids, are things that most of us would recognize as good news, things that most of us who have experienced any of them treasure as some of the best news in our lives, and yet we all would laugh if someone told us it was easy.

            The good news that Gabriel told Mary about nine months prior to Christmas, was indeed good news, but it was by no means easy news.  Mary and Joseph had to struggle the entirely of Jesus’ life. From the birth in the manger to his death on the cross and everything in between the good news of Jesus Christ on Earth was also difficult news for Mary and Joseph.  Maybe that’s why Ricky Bobby wanted so much to picture Jesus as an 8 pound six ounce baby Jesus. It all seems so perfect, so easy, when we picture Christ’s life as little sleeping baby. Cooing and laughing in the arms of the mother Mary. And yet we know that Christ did not come to Earth for and easy life, took on a life of hardships by taking on our brokenness, and yet living as an example of perfect obedience to God’s will, which of course included dying on the cross for our sins. Jesus’ life was not easy. As we have seen through our scripture for this morning it did not even take long for his life to become difficult; fleeing for his life, living in exile for much of his early life. But though Jesus’ life was not easy, it sure was good, Jesus fulfilled what the scripture spoke of, Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus Christ came to save.  So how do you picture Jesus. Does this change your view at all? Do you picture him as a baby, or as an adult? Do you picture him maybe as a teen or as a toddler and young boy like in our scripture this morning?  I like to picture Jesus as all of the above.  I like to picture Jesus not as any one image, but rather as a whole gamut of a live lived in accordance with God’s will. In fact it doesn’t matter how I picture Jesus, I just picture him as good news.