Introduction
Well, the feasting is over, the fridge is looking its normal self, the TV specials are all behind us, the dustmen have been, and the grandparents or the grown-up kids have all gone home.
So it feels quite appropriate that our reading this morning picks up the Christmas story with the Magi now on their way home - v13; “When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared...”
“When they had gone...” Just like in my house and maybe yours, for Joseph and Mary the excitement is now over, the gifts have all been opened, (gold, frankincense and myrrh - a bit left field, but let's not be judgemental), the wrapping has been tidied away, the house was heaving with extra people - and now they’ve left. It’s back to normality...
How does it feel?
For Joseph and Mary, it has been an eventful few weeks! Long stressful journey, hotel from hell (fresh cowpat in the bedroom - that’s going on Trip Advisor), an inconvenient moment for the waters to break, unexpected visitors, weird presents... that went well didn’t it? But now we are back to normal.
The planet keeps turning. Time passes. Life moves on.
The Dark Side
Once the Magi have gone, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he says... “Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child (your child) to kill him.” I'd call that a nightmare.
On the screen is a painting called The Scene of the Massacre of Innocents painted in 1824 by the French artist Léon Cogniet. It depicts a terrified woman holding her young child. Look at her hand covering his mouth in a desperate attempt to silence the noise of his crying. People are running in panic around her. She’s trying to hide but she’s hopelessly exposed. She’s cornered. Literally. Her child is doomed.
There are two angles to the story of Jesus’ birth. In Luke’s gospel, it’s full of wonder and angels and joy and friendly farm animals and simple shepherds. It has a warm glow to it. But in Matthew you see a much darker and heavier side.
Only in Matthew do you find:
· the crisis in Joseph and Mary’s relationship that brings them to the brink of divorce
· and five weird dreams
· and a desperate family fleeing for its life
· and the evil villain Herod, who doesn’t feature at all in Luke, but he dominates the scene in Matthew
· and of course this appalling massacre of innocent children in v16-18
Such were Herod’s vanity and paranoia that he thought nothing of committing atrocities like this, in order to cling on to power.
We know from sources outside of the Bible that he was neurotic and he routinely had people executed (including his wife and three of his sons) in order to preserve his position.
It is another reminder of what the Bible everywhere asserts; that evil is real. It’s why Jesus told us to pray the God will deliver us from it. Scripture says that many antichrists will come into the world. Herod was one of the first and, sadly, we haven’t seen the last.
The reading from Revelation says, in highly symbolic language, that what we see physically on earth has an unseen spiritual reality behind it.
There is a demonic assault on life, on the family, on the gospel, on truth itself - and this is what it looks like. The Bible doesn’t sugar coat the Christmas story or any other story; it tells the truth; it tells the whole truth.
Now we’re going to focus in on the woman’s face in Cogniet’s painting. Notice her eyes wide with fear, with alarm… there’s a look of disbelief on her face.
I’m going to use her face as a lens through which we can see and feel the suffering of the persecuted church today.
Last year, the Independent newspaper carried an article with the headline: Christians: the world’s most persecuted people. And here’s an extract…
“3,000 Christians of Mosul who were driven from their homes in northern Iraq last week by Islamist fanatics who broadcast a fatwa from the loudspeakers of the city's mosques ordering them to convert to Islam, submit to its rule and pay a religious levy, or be put to death if they stayed.
The last to leave was a disabled woman who could not travel. The fanatics arrived at her home and told her they would cut off her head with a sword.
The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity in the United States estimates that 100,000 Christians now die every year, targeted because of their faith – that is 11 every hour. The Pew Research Center says that hostility to religion reached a new high in 2012, when Christians faced some form of discrimination in 139 countries, almost three-quarters of the world's nations.
All this seems counter-intuitive here in the West where the history of Christianity has been one of cultural dominance and control ever since the Emperor Constantine converted and made the Roman Empire Christian in the 4th century AD.
Yet the plain fact is that Christians are languishing in jail for blasphemy in Pakistan, and churches are burned and worshippers regularly slaughtered in Nigeria and Egypt, which has recently seen its worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries.
The most violent anti-Christian pogrom of the early 21st century saw as many as 500 Christians hacked to death by machete-wielding Hindu radicals in Orissa, India, with thousands more injured and 50,000 made homeless.
In Burma, Christians are routinely subjected to imprisonment, torture, forced labour and murder.
Persecution is increasing in China; and in North Korea a quarter of the country's Christians live in forced labour camps after refusing to join the national cult of the state's founder, Kim Il-Sung.
Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Maldives all feature in the 10 worst places to be a Christian.”
And we know of course it’s not only Christians, as we’ve seen with the Rohinja this year. But most people in the West would probably be surprised to learn who the most persecuted people in the world are.
According to the International Society for Human Rights, which is a secular group, 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.
The Bible says that “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
Jesus himself said, “everyone will hate you because of me.” But “happy are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”
Joseph’s response in v14 is very like those Christians I just spoke about all over the world.
They escape as fugitives for a foreign land and the great unknown.
Verse 14; “So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt.”
Fearful Times
For Mary and Joseph, the arrival of their baby was a new start. Their lives would never be the same again. All their hopes and longings for their new baby boy, all their dreams for the future must have felt so fragile.
And in v20 God says “Get up!” again, this time to move out of Egypt. It must have felt like their homelessness, rootlessness and the feeling of being hunted down would never end.
Do you get that feeling sometimes, that it’s just one thing after another, that trouble is relentless? Verse 22 says, “When Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.”
In all the uncertainties of their life Mary and Joseph felt real fear. What will become of us? What is going to happen to our baby?
Matters of Life and Death
Between 1899 and 1901 there was a great anti-colonial and anti-Christian uprising in China. It was a sudden national mood swing that brought severe persecution.
188 missionaries and 32,000 Chinese Christians were bound in public. Their noses and ears were cut off and eyes gouged out before they were beheaded.
Lizzy Atwater was an American missionary to China at that time. She was 22 years old and pregnant with her first child.
She wrote to her family on 3 August 1900. And this is what she wrote.
“Dear Ones, I long for a sight of your dear faces, but I fear we shall not meet on earth… I am preparing for the end very quietly and calmly. The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will not fail me. I was very restless and excited while there seemed a chance of life, but God has taken away that feeling, and now I just pray for grace to meet the terrible end bravely. The pain will soon be over, and oh the sweetness of the welcome above!
My little baby will go with me. I think God will give him to me in Heaven, and my dear mother will be so glad to see us. I cannot imagine the Savior’s welcome. Oh, that will compensate for all of these days of suspense. Dear ones, live near to God and cling less closely to earth. There is no other way by which we can receive that peace from God which passes understanding…. I must keep calm and still these hours. I do not regret coming to China, but am sorry I have done so little. My married life, two precious years, have been so very full of happiness. We will die together, my dear husband and I.
I used to dread separation. If we escape now it will be a miracle. I send my love to all of you, and the dear friends who remember me.”
Twelve days later, Lizzie, her husband, their unborn baby and six other missionaries were hacked to death.
Later, when Lizzie’s parents in Ohio, heard the dreadful news of the death of their daughter, son-in-law, and unborn grandchild, they said, through tears, “We do not begrudge them – we gave them to that needy land; China will yet believe the truth.”
Why did the devil single out China? Perhaps because of the extraordinary potential of the church in that land. In our own lifetimes, there has been an unprecedented revival in that country; estimates put the number of Christians there now at 100 million.
Lizzy’s blood, and that of her husband and unborn child, will be avenged by God alone. The Bible speaks of the terrible consequences that await those who “did not choose to fear the Lord,” like Herod.
But the sweetness of the gospel is this: no matter how low a human heart sinks, even as low as Herod’s, or lower still, it is never too low to be able to turn to God and be made new!
None of us here are anywhere near Herod’s league, but the Bible is clear that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Why be separated from God and his blessings forever if you don't have to? God loves you. If you had been the only person on earth, Jesus Christ would still have come as a baby, lived as a man, and gone to the cross and laid down his life for you. He loves you that much!
It may be that for some here today, right now, God is speaking and giving a fresh chance to turn to Christ. Don’t put it off to tomorrow! The Bible says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.”
That’s why Jesus came.
Ending
While you and I do not know what tomorrow holds, we do know the one who holds our tomorrows, and he says again to each of us, “Get up! The time to take action is now.”
Let’s pray...
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 31 December 2017
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