A WONDERFUL AND FEARSOME GIFT
Our task as believers is to find and open this hidden word and to unravel its content. In this way we delight in the word of God intended for our ears only. In this way we hear God’s call for us. If we ourselves are ready and willing, in this way we hear and obey, thus helping to fulfill God’s will in the world. This hidden word then is why we read the Bible. Only persons of faith, only those who properly worship at the Christ Tree, get this present. And what does God present us with, a wonderful or fearsome gift?
The word this morning is mercy. Mercy as in “compassion and forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” Mercy as in “an event to be grateful for, especially because its occurrence prevents something unpleasant or provides relief from suffering.” Mercy as in “a journey or mission performed out of a desire to relieve suffering; motivated by compassion.” The mercies of God, indeed, are too many and wonderful to contemplate in this morning’s Gospel reading of the Holy Family’s Flight into Egypt.
Joseph hears a merciful message from an angel of the Lord. The message is simple: get out of Bethlehem because King Herod has discovered where you are. Herod as a ruler is remembered in history as vicious, really merciless to his people. The prophecy says Jesus will grow up and become a King. Herod says over my dead body, actually over the dead bodies of all young male children in Bethlehem for he sends his troops to kill not only baby Jesus but the entire gender age group just to be sure. Among his recorded atrocities this was a relatively minor occurrence.
The Holy Family though escapes to Egypt, perhaps hiding in the Sinai peninsula among the Bedouin people until another message comes to them. By the mercies of God, Herod has died and it has become safe for Joseph to take Mary and Jesus home, though not to Bethlehem. Instead they head north, beyond the Sea of Galilee to relatives in rural Nazareth, again being warned in a dream. All this foretold in prophecy.
Here we come to the true hidden word. The mercy God intends is not about angels helping Joseph maneuver the Holy Family around deadly kings. The mercy God purposes is enfleshed in the person of baby Jesus. God's mercy has come to live among us in the person of baby Jesus. Jesus is on a mission of mercy. To grow up, live, teach, heal, work wonders, suffer, die and rise again on our behalf; in a word, to provide God’s people with relief from the predicament of being human or said in biblical language rescue humanity from the wages of sin that is death.
This holy present on the Second Sunday of Christmas is marked From God, with love; it is too wonderful and fearsome to contemplate except by faith.
