Sermon of January 2, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Matthew 2:13-23

“Protecting Jesus”

That passage we just heard is sometimes overlooked and not given the same attention as the two passages on either side of it in Matthew’s gospel. Just before it is the visit of the Magi or the three wise men, which is prominent in our Christmas story, and just after it is the appearance of John the Baptist as a grown man who is baptizing in the Jordan and actually baptizes Jesus, who is his cousin, in Chapter 3 of Matthew.

This passage doesn’t seem to rise to the same prominence as the baptism of Jesus or the visit of the wise men and it kind of gets lost. One of the problems with it is that there really are very few details. It basically says that Herod threatened to kill all the male children, Jesus was a male child, and Mary and Joseph, being warned in a dream, took Jesus to Egypt, stayed there until Herod was dead, and then came back. But here is a period of time some months, maybe up to a couple of years, where Jesus was an infant, and there really are no details about that time period other than that they went and came back.

The interesting thing about this passage is that it shows Jesus needing protection. Jesus was vulnerable. Jesus was dependent upon Mary and Joseph to protect him and keep him safe from the threat of Herod. What a different situation this was than most of the rest of the gospel, where Jesus doesn’t seem to need protection, or at least doesn’t want it. He stands up to the Pharisees, the chief priests, the leaders of the temple, the religious powerful at that time. He stands up to Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, and doesn’t seek or accept protection from other people. But here, in this early time of his life, he needs protection.

It made me think, should we ask ourselves, does Jesus need us to protect him in this day and this age? Does Jesus need us to protect him from being forcibly removed from our midst? After all, that’s what really happened. It was out of love and out of concern that Mary and Joseph took him to Egypt , but they forcibly removed him from Judea and took him to Egypt. He was forcibly removed by his parents for his own safety and out of love.

But it seems that there are risks today that some might want to forcibly remove Jesus from the mainstream of our culture, take him away from us. Or at least take him away from some of us. It seems like in the last few years, there is more and more arguing about who Jesus belongs to. Politicians are talking more about their faith and seeming at least to imply that they have the Christian agenda. It happens on both sides and everywhere in between, no particular candidate. Celebrities, people in the limelight, are talking more about their faith, but almost in a way that they are taking Jesus as their own.

It even happens, probably more dangerously, in denominations, where within Christendom there are denominations saying Jesus belongs to us and probably not to the rest of Christendom who might disagree with a certain understanding about Jesus. There are those who would forcibly remove Jesus from others, almost kidnap Jesus and claim him as their own.

So I think that’s something that we need to be aware of as Christians today, that we might need to protect Jesus from being forcibly removed from the world at large, from all of Christendom, so that Jesus isn’t being held only by a special interest or a particular denomination that wants to keep him from the rest of us. That’s one possible way we need to protect Jesus, so that he’s not forcibly removed from those who would love him and want to serve him but might not be approved by others.

Another way we might want to think of as a way to protect Jesus is to protect him from becoming distant in our lives. When Mary and Joseph take Jesus away from Judea , they go to a distant place, and he lives there away from his familiar surroundings and people they knew, and was, for that time period, distant and in a foreign land.

There is that risk today, I think, as well. That sometimes Jesus can become distant from us as individuals, and sometimes from churches, as other things come into play and take his place. There are the classic things we talk about, that we let our possessions and our material things and our aspirations for our careers take precedence in our lives and our faith, where Jesus becomes more and more peripheral and more and more distant. There is that risk.

The risks exist in churches also. Whenever I end up talking with people about church, when people see me who belong to another church or live somewhere else, they invariably talk about problems in their church. They’re not talking about whether their church is fulfilling Christ’s work and Christ’s mission. They’re talking about a problem that exists in their church because people are upset about finances or something about a building or something that happened in a meeting where people got bickering.

There’s that risk in congregations, too, that buildings or property or policies can end up becoming the central focus of what the church is about and Christ’s mission gets sidetracked and becomes distant. We need to protect Jesus from becoming distant and off on the periphery of our lives, and remember that Christ should be at the center of all that we do. And all of those other things really do fall into place when we let that happen. Other things work out when we put Christ at the center of our lives and the center of our life as a church.

And one other thing that I think we need to do is to wonder if we need to protect Jesus from becoming either unknown or anonymous today. When Jesus was in Egypt with Mary and Joseph, he was, I imagine, unknown and anonymous in a sense to the people there. They were living as aliens in the land, they weren’t with their familiar friends. They probably got to know a few people but they still were more anonymous than they would have been in Judea .

Is there a risk today? There is some worry that Jesus may become more anonymous in our culture and in our society as things happen, like prayer isn’t allowed in school and “in God we trust” might not be on money some day, the pledge of allegiance might not say “one nation under God” or the Ten Commandments might be taken out of a courtroom – all those things we hear about.

Those are certainly concerns, but I think sometimes the bigger concerns are not the more obvious things, but the subtle things. Is there a risk that Christ might become less known, more anonymous, if we don’t act out our lives as Christians more effectively in the world around us? I don’t think it’s the big, obvious, very present things that matter as much. I think it’s more whether we do our job as Christians living out our faith in obvious ways to other people on a daily basis. That’s how we make sure we protect Jesus from being unknown or anonymous.

I was at the Highland Park deli the other day and was engaged in "mutual harassment" of one of the deli people behind the counter, and a woman standing next to me at the deli counter got into it as well. I said to her, “He really is a good guy,” and she said, “I know. He’s a good Christian man. My grandfather was that way. He didn’t talk a lot about things, he wasn’t really flamboyant in his faith, but in a humble quiet way he lived out his faith in the way he related to other people and how he did things. People see that.”

That little conversation reminded me that that’s how we make sure that Christ doesn’t become unknown or anonymous in the world. It’s not necessarily the big things that capture the attention of the media, but by how we quietly, humbly, act Christ-like – speak and do things in a way that reveals to others the living presence of Christ in our world today.

The good news today is that we, like Mary and Joseph, have it in our power to protect Jesus in this day and age, to protect him from becoming irrelevant or unknown or distant from ourselves, our church and the world. A good new year’s resolution, if you make those, might be to imagine how you would protect Jesus and keep him central in our lives and in the awareness of the world and in the awareness of your neighbors and friends and community and coworkers, as you speak and act in a way that makes him known.

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