“A Very Bloody Christmas”

Matthew 3:13-23; Hebrews 2:10-18; Psalm 84; and Jeremiah 31:10-17
Delivered December 29, 2013 at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York, NY

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If you’re not thinking about dead babies right now, then I’m not sure you were listening our last reading. And if you’re not thinking about Christmas right now, I understand.  The dead babies kind of overrun most of my mental footprint as well.  And yet that is where Matthew leaves us, is it not?  Only a few sentences ago, we were comfy, cozy sitting around a manger with magi and infantile angels, and now we’re surrounded by a maniac monarch, massacred infants, and inconsolable mothers.  Suddenly, we find ourselves in the middle of a very bloody Christmas story, and it’s loathsome, horrifying, and revolting.

AND YET, Matthew introduced this long story as THE GOOD NEWS of Jesus the Messiah (v1).  So how in the world are we to decipher GOOD NEWS out of murdered children at Christmas?  Well perhaps that’s the point of the story in the first place – that somehow GOOD NEWS is only good if it is somehow better than the worst news, if it somehow acknowledges, addresses, mourns, repairs, restores, and resurrects the very worst aspects of our individual and collective realities.  If the Christian “gospel” is only capable of addressing vague niceties and the vague abstract reality of evil and brokenness, but cannot speak life into the homicidal, genocidal, abusive, poverty ridden, depressed and inhumane aspects of our world then it is in fact NOT GOOD NEWS but a mere delusion sent by the devil to distract us from the Hell we so often live in.  What we need to save us is not the power of positive thinking which whitewashes all the darkness of our lives, but the power of RESURRECTION, which walks into the tomb with us, acknowledges and experiences its despair before transforming the tomb into a womb and death into a midwife.

We don’t need a research physician operating from behind safety glass using the mechanical arms of a robot to touch our bloody, sinful flesh.  WE need a battle surgeon, a field medic who disdains the danger and the doom to run to our side, wrap our wounds, and lead us to life.

And that’s what we get in the Jesus story.

TO READ THE REST OF “A VERY BLOODY CHRISTMAS” CHECK OUT THE MANUSCRIPT, AUDIO, OR VIDEO.