The Second Sunday after Christmas '26

Last week’s gospel lesson for the commemoration of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents, St Joseph was warned to hightail it out of Judea and make for Egypt where the Holy family would be free of the clutches of King Herod.

Now, a week later, Joseph has once again been visited by an Angel in a dream telling him the coast is clear and it is time to return. But Joseph knows that Herod Archelaus has succeeded his father to the throne and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Just as Herod the Great put to death all the male children in Bethlehem under the age of 2 who might fit the prophecy of the “King of the Jews’ and threaten his throne, so too did his son, Archelaus, put to death all the male descendants of the Hasmoneans, those descendants of the Maccabees who had ruled Judea before Herod.

About 2000 years earlier, the children of Israel had followed another Joseph into the land of Egypt where they spent the next 300 years[...] not in safety, but in bondage. God freed them from captivity and through Moses, eventually led them into the promised land, a land that was now so dangerous for the Messiah that the safest place for Him was Egypt, the ancient place of their servitude.

Think about that, the home of the Temple, the place where heaven and earth met, the loci of God’s presence with His people, the place where one was to renew and restore their relationship with God, had become so twisted and corrupt that the Incarnate Word of God had to hide out in the land of His people’s enslavement.

But in reality, anywhere Christ went in this world was where His people were enslaved. What separated God’s chosen people from the rest of humanity was that they could be freed, if they so chose. That they were consistently unable to choose not to is why a deliverer, a Messiah, was necessary. The great mistake of those who longed for the Messiah was in thinking that He would come to save them from others, that if others were punished for their sins, then they themselves would be free, not realizing that they themselves were no more free from sin than others, that they were as enslaved to sin as much as Herod was himself. It’s a hard thing for us to get our heads around. Every fiber of our being tells us that some sins are obviously worse than others. It’s one of those rare times when both our logical brains and our emotional hearts are in complete agreement, we feel it in our bones that there are gradations of badness.

And often it seems that scripture agrees. After all, when Moses bequeaths Israel the law, the punishment for crimes are delineated according to the severity of the offense. Stealing does not entail the same punishment as murder. Punishment is proportional and justice is reciprocal, “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Ex 21:23-25).

However, Jesus seems absolutely unwilling to classify sins in the same way. In fact, he goes out of His way to expand the definition of sinfulness; “Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment... (Matt 5:21-24). Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt 5:27-28).

But here’s the thing. While Israel’s ability to be freed from sin and their incapacity to do so demonstrates the need of a Messiah, we, as Christians, who have indeed been freed from sin, and yet continue to run back into prison at the first opportunity, demonstrate why not only must the Messiah be God Himself, but God Incarnate.

We who have been cleansed from our sins and been made new still struggle to manifest that reality in our lives. In many ways we are like the Hebrews after the Exodus who grumble to Moses that they want to go back to Egypt. Yes, it was horrible but it was predictable, and it's easier for us to deal with predictable horrors than it is to deal with the uncertainties of freedom. Even the freedom from sin. How and what we are to do in this new found freedom is a vexing one. How are we to be new men and women? How are we to be creatures of light?

But there on the altar before us reposes Jesus, flesh and blood. He comes to us as we come to Him. Born into this world, helpless, learning to feed himself, babbling before speaking, crawling before walking. He who is life itself learned to live as we do. Like us, He was baptized, not because He needed it but because we do. He transformed baptism so that it might transform us. He suffered death on the cross to transform death itself into life everlasting, not for Himself but for us, He suffered for us, despite our guilt in inflicting suffering upon Him.

All these things He did as God and man. God could have affected all that by merely declaring that it be so, but so that we weak and pitiful creatures might get it through our thick skulls and atrophied hearts that this freedom from sin and newness of life of which He preached and promised was not some misty-eyed or pious pipe-dream reserved for the hereafter, but was actually lived out here on Earth. What He did as both God and man is something we can do as man and woman grafting our humanity with His and participating in His divinity as His brothers and sisters.

That the newness of life still entails a certain portion of suffering, seems unfair. But I am coming to the realization that in general, the more unfair one’s suffering seems, the more sin one has in their heart, and I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that sin is sin. Sure, if given the choice, accidentally stepping in it is better than deliberately rolling around in it, and stepping in it with your shoes is better than with your bare feet, but in the end, it's still the same stuff. Sin.

The severity of the transgression affects the amount of damage and the work required for restoration but we cannot defeat sin by mitigating its effects but by confronting the fact of transgression itself. We combat the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of others by defeating the sin in ourselves. We overcome brokenness not by fixing but by loving, a love that requires our own transformations by accepting God’s love.

And once again, our Gospel lessons from this week and the last are instructive. Joseph had to flee from sin with his family, but then had to return so that Jesus could confront sin and thereby defeat it with love.

And His love is the only thing that can defeat the sin within each of us. Wherever we go, be it at God’s altar or that place that once held us in chains, we carry our sin but we also carry within us Jesus Himself. Our journey from sin into the love of Christ is not a straight line, but a continual process of growing closer and pulling away, of receiving Him and denying that we know Him, of seeking closeness with Him and fearing His closeness.

We enter into places in our lives, marveling at His omnipresence one moment and the next, in the same places, feeling a decided lack of it. We carry Him into hostile territories, strengthened and protected by Him, and other times, feeling abandoned and alone.

This is the path we have chosen to follow. Christianity is not an easy road. The fact that Christianity is undeniably true does not make the suffering any easier to bear because in order to become who we were meant to be requires us to put to death who we want to be. The spiritual path is marked by exile, bondage, freedom, backsliding, restoration, rebirth, return, but our commitment to and faith in Jesus works all things for our growth in Love.

In this coming year, you will face great trials and seemingly unavoidable temptations. You will also enjoy enormous triumphs, however, in my experience, the things that seem like triumphs are most often manifestations of our sin, because, usually, our triumphs are those things that stoke our self-regard. And what may seem like defeats and setbacks in the moment, turn out to be the real triumphs, because it is when our pride is shattered and we submit ourselves to God, humbly, we can finally open ourselves to experience the power of His love, giving us, in the words of the prophet Isaiah from this morning’s lesson for the Epistle, “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”