Broadway and Ocean
If you’ve been reading the papers over the holiday weekend, you’ve seen the report that two Santa Cruzans died on New Year’s Day. In what appears to have been a domestic dispute that turned terribly violent. At the Seven-Eleven at Broadway and Ocean downtown. You know, we can worship up here on this hill, but our hearts have to be with those families and wherever else violence takes human life. Faith doesn’t exempt us from their agony; quite the opposite, it insists we care and pay attention. So I want to ask that you join me now in a full minute of silent prayer. While we may not know their names, these two who died, in a small way this morning we share their grief.
[Silence]
You probably know what comes next, how the story takes a dark and deadly turn from here. Herod realizes that the wise men have slipped out of town, by another road, and he flies into what Matthew calls a ‘furious rage.’ And he orders all the male children anywhere close to Bethlehem, all boys two years old and younger, rounded up and killed. Herod’s presence in our Christmas story is a dark one, a murderous one, a reminder that violence will stalk the little Christ child all his life. So – it’s not just about the fantastic robes and the shiny crowns. Something else is going on here, something troubling and all too real.
Jesus is born into the world at the corner of Broadway and Ocean, born into a world where boyfriends fly into jealous fits and gun down girlfriends, born into a world where presidents justify massive invasions with lies and distortions. Jesus is born into a world of violence. Whatever else he comes to do, he comes to show the world another way. This morning’s story is a story about that.
Now those of you who’ve done some bible study will know that scholars are inclined to call these infancy narratives, what we call Christmas lessons, story-telling of the highest order. This is not to say there’s no truth here; but most are hesitant to call these tales history, believing instead that Luke and Matthew draw on biblical wisdom and creative imagination to call our attention to important themes, questions around Jesus’ life and ministry. Why was a poor man from the countryside chosen by God to heal the broken world? Why did he inspire such opposition? And why did he have to suffer so? Important themes, huge questions: and they make for great stories. Now I want you to hear me when I say this takes nothing away from the power or authenticity of these texts. Good stories shake us up, inspire us, invite soul-searching and moral imagination. That’s what we have here; that’s what Matthew has given us. An invitation to moral imagination.
Maybe the central theme of the infancy narratives is the universality of God’s love, the expansive reach of the good news. If the question is, “Who does Jesus come to teach and touch, to reconcile and heal and love?,” the answer seems to be everyone and everything. We get stories about poor and marginal shepherds, the first to hear the angels’ cry of joy. We get stories about kings or scientists or philosophers – take your pick – wise men from the east who come by starlight with gifts. And we get stories about creation itself: all the animals in the field, and all the animals in the barn, and the night sky itself singing out in praise. If the question is “Who?,” the answer seems to be everyone and everything. This Christ comes to make all things and all beings one.
Hold Them Accountable
And maybe it’s the very notion of universality, the very idea that this Christ comes to make all things and all beings one, maybe it’s this that Herod resents most of all. Maybe Herod rules by fear, controls by fear, and fear works best in a divided world. We see it here. We see it in our own country. When you can incite fear of the illegals, or fear of the Arabs, or fear of the terrorists, or fear of the socialists, you can make a lot of political hay as they say. Once you’ve got the people good and scared, you can convince them that all kinds of things make sense: walls on the borders, wiretapping and secret courts, heck, even torture as it turns out. Now Herod’s going tell us that all these things have merit, that he’s just trying to keep us safe, that he’s really looking out for our best interests. “Help me find the baby Christ,” he tells the magi. “I want so much to pay him homage.”
But here’s where it gets personal, and more than a little political for you and me. Because you and I, people of faith? We’re called to be skeptical, suspicious when it comes to power. Our sacred texts insist on it. Herod’s lying through his teeth. The walls on the borders, the wiretapping and secret courts, the misadventures in Iraq, all that torture: it was never to keep us safe, it was never in our best interests. Herod has no intention of traveling to Bethlehem and worshiping the baby Christ in a cave.
So here’s the thing, and it’s a biblical ethic, I think. We’re called to be skeptical and suspicious when it comes to power. We’re supposed to assume that Herod is prone to lying. That’s not to say that everyone in public service, or everyone in a position of authority, is malicious and duplicitous. Of course not. But you and I are supposed to be smart, suspicious, to recognize that those with vested interests in the status quo are all too often inclined to protect those interests. Even to lie for them. It’s our calling, then, a true Christian calling, to work, to organize, to bring pressure to bear – informed and educated pressure – on authorities and public officials. To hold them accountable for the common good. It’s our calling to energize the people’s hope for peace, and then to insist that authorities respond to the dynamic and powerful will of the people.
This is what Christians like Martin Luther King and Daniel Berrigan have been saying all along, of course. And let’s not miss the relevance of our own partnership with COPA. When we show up at a Shared Prosperity Convention, in the hundreds as we did, we build an organization with enough power to energize the people’s hope for peace and hold our elected officials accountable for the common good. That’s what COPA’s all about. That’s what we’re all about. And it has everything to do with the biblical ethic. It has everything to do with discipleship and faith. (I hope, by the way, that many of you are going to join us for our COPA potluck after worship next week. A great chance to reflect on our experience in November and where go from here.) We could take a simpler path and settle for the kind of piety that leaves governing to Bush and Obama, that leaves laws to Farr and Maldonado and Laird. But that’s not biblical faith – and that’s not First Congregational Church. Hold them accountable. Energize the people’s hope for peace. Insist that government work for us. That’s biblical faith. That’s us.
A Road Less Traveled
Now it’s all so easy to locate King Herod out there somewhere: in the powerful, in the elected, in the rich. Just the same, I’m strangely convinced that there’s a little bit of Herod in all of us. This isn’t just a morality play; it’s an invitation to reflection. For all of us. Think about it. He’s all about control, Herod is, controlling the politics of Jerusalem, controlling the energies of his people, controlling the coming and going of immigrants and emissaries. And he senses, quite accurately, that the child born in Bethlehem comes with a love that just won’t be controlled. Once Jesus starts practicing forgiveness and risking mercy all over the place, Herod will lose his grasp on the politics of fear. And once Jesus starts breaking bread all over the place and feeding crowds with just a few fish, Herod will lose his grasp on the economics of scarcity. Brothers and sisters come to the table, lay down their grudges and stop fighting one another.
So it’s all about control for Herod, and maybe so, there’s a little bit of Herod in all of us. Maybe there’s a bit of Herod in me that likes my world ordered and predictable, that likes to be liked and respected and validated by the cohort in power. Maybe there’s a bit of Herod in you that likes to be right and hates to be wrong, that enjoys a good fight and resists reconciliation. Because it’s messy and uncertain, and we feel out of control. Mercy’s like that. Grace is like that. It’s messy sometimes. Anger’s just plain easier.
So this isn’t just a tale of political intrigue. It’s also a tale of spiritual struggle. Jesus comes to us with a dangerously simple message of love. Will you love God will your whole heart, and with all your courage, and with your mind? And will you love your neighbors that way too? Will you love them enough to forgive them when things get hard, when hearts get bruised and broken? Will you love them enough to make sacrifices for their wellbeing? A dangerously simple message of love.
And along the way, he asks us to give up on controlling everything. To give up on controlling our spouses and partners. To give up on controlling our kids, too. To give up on manipulating stock portfolios and troop deployments and the flow of immigrants at the border. Jesus says give up on control and take up the cross. The cross of love. The cross of grace. The cross of compassion. Let go, the 12-steppers tell us, and let God.
It sounds easy. But we know that it’s not.
Love comes with a cost. Grace comes with a price. Compassion comes with great sacrifice. Those three wise men? They arrive at Mary’s house. They fall on their knees to worship. They release their need to control the world, to control one another, to control everything. They turn their egos over to God and take to a very different path, another road. It will take them to places they never imagined: to prison cells and homeless shelters and food pantries; to the corner of Broadway and Ocean, to a Shared Prosperity Convention in Watsonville. It will take them into the crowded streets where children are hungry and up on a hill where Jesus hangs on a cross. Love comes with a cost. Grace comes with a price. Compassion takes a road less traveled.
