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Praying about the flow of time: Two after-Christmas events

Lynne Baab • Thursday December 26 2024

Praying about the flow of time: Two after-Christmas events

I experienced seven Christmases as a Presbyterian associate pastor. Here’s how it works when you’re an associate minister. The senior minister preaches at Christmas and Easter, and you get the Sundays immediately following. The senior minister, usually experiencing fatigue from those two big events, deserves a Sunday off to recover.

The lectionary Gospel readings for the Sunday after Christmas focus on these stories in the three-year cycle: the wise men (Matthew 2:1-12),the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18), and the boy Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41-52). For some reason, I never got to preach on the boy Jesus in the temple. I preached at least twice each on the wise men and those poor babies.

I grew to love the story of the wise men. Those sages from the east give an international flavor to Jesus’s birth. Jesus came not only for the people of Israel or any one particular people group. The wise men illustrate that from the beginning, people from foreign lands came to worship this Lord of the Universe in human flesh. The presence of the wise men echoes the gorgeous picture in Isaiah 25:6-8:

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
   of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
   the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
   the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
   and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
   for the Lord has spoken.”

To my surprise, I also grew to appreciate preaching on the story of those baby boys who were killed in Bethlehem. The story itself makes me shudder and weep. Herod's lust for power and his fear of losing it, so visible in the story, are timeless, terrifying, and all too relevant today. The evil done because of love of power too often impacts vulnerable children and families.

The presence of that brutal story in the birth narrative of the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, shows that Jesus was born into the real world and meets us in this place of darkness and sorrow. Jesus’s birth isn’t some bright, cheerful event that stands apart from human life. Jesus entered into a broken world, and his identification with the lowly was evident from the beginning: “Low lies his head with the beasts of the stall,” says one of my favorite Epiphany hymns.

Luci Shaw’s poem about the slaughter of the babies captures his oneness with those little boys. The title is “To a Christmas two-year-old.”

Child, and all children,
come and celebrate
the little one who came,
threatened by hate
and Herod’s sword.
Sing softly and rejoice
in the reward
for all the baby boys
of Bethlehem
who died
in Jesus’ place.

Small wonder when He grew
He wanted children by His side,
stretched out His arms, stood,
beckoned you,
called Come to me
and died
in your place
so that you could. [1]

Lord Jesus, in these liminal days between our celebration of your birth and our welcome of a New Year, we pause. We take a deep breath. We acknowledge the wonder of wise men from the East coming to greet you, and we praise you as the One who loves all peoples of the earth. We grieve with you about the baby boys of Bethlehem. We rejoice that you are the One who welcomes strangers, foreigners, children, and all those in need. We need you today and as we walk into a New Year. We praise you that you meet us in our need.

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Next week: The Feast of Epiphany and having epiphanies. Illustration by Dave Baab: Dave's sister Connie and her grandson.

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[1] Luci Shaw, “To a Christmas two-year-old,” The Secret Trees (Harold Shaw, 1976), 15.



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