Creekside Church Sermon of December 29, 1996 "A Cross in the Manger" Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23	Rev. David Bibbee
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The let-down isn't limited to Christmas, but happens whenever we resume our routines after a big event. Consider the birth of a baby. The new mom and dad are elated. They are showered with cards, flowers and visitors. The Church fills the refrigerator. Grandma stays for a week to lend a hand. Then Grandma goes, and the reality of dirty diapers and two AM feedings settles in. Consider graduation...a wonderful occasion to celebrate a big accomplishment. Of course, the next day brings an eight AM appointment with the real world. Think about before and after a wedding. Come the big day, the bride and groom never looked better. The promises made before God and guests are so heartfelt and sincere. Then after the wedding the marriage begins, and with it the work of keeping it alive through the seasons of triumph and trial.

Whatever the cause for celebration, there can be a mild depression that sets in afterward, and it seems especially so at Christmas. I remember a children's Christmas pageant where they kept singing, "365 days of Christmas this year!" Not for me. We couldn't stand 365 days of Christmas. It would soon become meaningless. It is having celebrations throughout the routine of our lives that gives special moments their meaning. In fact, it is in paying attention to what happened after Jesus was born that we come to cherish the total impact his coming has made.

Let's set the scene. The manger is empty. Angel voices have become silent. The shepherds have come and gone. So have the strange, gift-bearing visitors from the East. Resuming a semblance of normal life is what now comes for the holy family. But Jesus wouldn't be going home to a pastel blue nursery and lullaby playing teddy bears. Jesus was about to be the youngest person ever to be on a wanted poster. King Herod was the paranoid type. There can be no competitors for the throne. Barrie Shepherd imagines Herod having a nightmare after the Wise Men's visit:

There limped a donkey ringed with dusty cheers,
beneath a harlequin who palmed my fearful city as his own.
While at his broken heels vast festal meals were spread
for royal guests and vagabonds all supping simple bread with ruby vintage.

Drunken star songs rolled along bright heavens
to a stable brimmed with sheepfold men and Magi.
Those murmuring strangers, once again,
casting their purple calculations on the night.

I thought I saw a gallows cross become a throne, high, lifted up,
through rending grave clothes and a splintered stone.
Then, as it ended, a whole regiment of children,
infants really, danced me from my palace piping through the gaping lips of bloody Sheol.

This dream demands immediate interpretation.
Send for my guards!

You remember what happened next. Every male child under two in Bethlehem would be killed. About the same time Joseph also had a dream. "Take the child and flee to Egypt." During periods of persecutions, Jews often fled to Egypt where there was a significant Jewish colony. When Herod died, a dream told Joseph to go back to Judea. Archelaus, Herod's son, was now on the throne, and he rewrote the book on brutality, so in another dream, Joseph was guided to Nazareth. Remember? The place where no one good could come from.

Last Sunday we talked about angels proclaiming his birth. Today we talk about the holy family running for Jesus' dear life. Now he is a refugee, and we know no more what to do with this abrupt turn, than we know what to do with the let down after the build up for Christmas. But in this quick turn we see a preview of where this little life is headed. Little Lord Jesus, the child of hope, would become the man of sorrows.

The manger of Bethlehem didn't only cradle a king. It also cradled a cross. This is not our customary seasonal subject. We are a lot like the man who went to Church on Christmas to hear something that might make him feel good. What he got was a message on Christmas in light of the cross. Leaving the service he complained to the pastor, "When I come to Church at Christmas, I don't want to hear about the death of Jesus. I want something glad and cheerful!"

Well, who doesn't? Who wouldn't rather focus on a cradle than a cross. But the prospect of death from which Jesus was protected as a child, he willingly met as an adult. Celebrating Christmas and Easter is pointless apart from the love made manifest through his suffering, sacrifice, and death. We wish for an extended afterglow of Christmas, but already after his birth, there is a dark cloud hovering over him.

Paul Tillich remembered the witness who appeared at the Nuremberg war crimes trial. The man had lived in a Jewish graveyard in Poland. It was the only place that he and others could hide after escaping the gas chambers. He wrote poetry during this terrible time, one about a birth. In a grave nearby a woman gave birth to a boy. The eighty-year old grave digger assisted. When the baby uttered his first cry, the old man prayed, "God, hast thou finally sent the Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah can be born in a grave?" But three days later the poet saw the baby sucking his mother's tears because she had no milk.

Describing this heartrending scene, Tillich says we forget that the manger of Christmas was the utter expression of poverty and distress before it became a place where angels appeared. And it has been forgotten that the tomb was the end of Jesus' life before it became the place of his final triumph.

We could have a manger without a cross if the world was like the one Ethel Merman sang about where, "Everything is coming up roses and lollipops." There wouldn't be a cross in the manger if kings never abused power and nations, much less individuals, never went to war, and there was far more will for love than determination to hate. There would be no cross if people looked to the needs of others rather than their own wants...there would be no cross in a world where everyone wins, and no one is poor...where there are no accidents and there is no disease to cut down a life in its prime. There would be no cross if everyone lived to glorify God and lived the way God intended, or if we could save ourselves by ourselves. But we do not live in such a world, and if there is any hope, it can only come from a God who has come into this broken, sinful world for the sake of love, first in a manger, and in the end, on a cross.

There was a French play about two people who conspired against their government. Luci and Jean were imprisoned, and they spoke their undying love which would never be broken, even if one should go free and the other stay in prison. Soon afterward, the jailers took Luci and brutally assaulted her. She was brought back to the cell days later, and she would not allow Jean to touch her. Their words of oneness were broken because Luci knew that Jean could not feel her deep suffering.

The ability of one person to appreciate the suffering of another keeps them apart, but nothing brings people so close as when one knows the others pain. If God had never entered the world, God could not draw us near. An omnipotent, distant God looking down upon a searching, suffering people couldn't convince us that we are loved. But at Bethlehem, God came to us. At Bethlehem, God came to us. God entered life's pleasure and its pain. This is how the passage from Hebrews puts it:

We see Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

He delivered all those who through the fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. Because he himself had suffered and had been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

We accept suffering as a part of life in a broken world, but we don't face it alone. We face it with the eternal companionship of Jesus who saves us from our dread fear of life and death. His willingness to become one of us, to live and die for us has bridged the distance between God and us.

I talked with someone who said that Christmas felt distant this year. "The carols and stories were beautiful as ever, but I am sick of the shallowness of it all. I'm sick of hearing about Tickle Me Elmo. I'm weary of the pre- Christmas hype. Blue from the post-Christmas let down." A contemporary poet expressed the same mood, and also an awareness of where our hope lies when he wrote:

I'm dreaming of a right Christmas when every item that I buy will be on sale and also the ideal gift for persons who have everything already.

I'm dreaming of a bright Christmas when the tree lights work first time and flash their brilliant message of success,

from every tasteful, decorated, artificial, non-allergenic yet natural look alike limb.

I'm dreaming of a lite Christmas when, no matter how much fruitcake, cookies, egg nog, champagne, and other goodies I consume, my weight will magically fall to just below average.

I'm dreaming of a right Christmas when all my cards bear personal, intimately joyful greetings and arrange themselves in matching multitudes on every horizontal dust-free surface.

I'm dreaming, but I'll bet that what I get will be the usual trite Christmas, impolite Christmas, damp-with-fog-not-white Christmas, tight Christmas, goodnight Christmas, bank will not underwrite Christmas. I'm praying that, despite Christmas, I find myself midnight Christmas able to invite Christmas and its new born child to stay and light a way into my Christmas-darkened heart.

If the good feelings we have seem short lived, gone with the Christmas Eve Service, gone with the departure of relatives, and gone with a good-bye to the tree, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Once the visitors had departed, Jesus and his family departed for life in an unknown future, full of blessed times, hard times, and overwhelming times, but in all times with the certainty that God was present to accomplish his good will. On the surface it appeared that nothing had changed. Wood chips were still flying in the carpenter's shop. Mary was humming a tune while washing diapers. Nothing seemed extraordinary, but everything had changed.

After Christmas we must go back to everyday life. If we go back only with a story about a manger, then we will have little more than a glow today that's gone tomorrow. But if it is about the promise of a presence, that changes everything.

Christmas gave us Christ who came in a cradle, emptied himself for our sakes, was obedient unto death on a cross, and was raised from the dead. If there is any reason to celebrate, this is it. Now I will let these verses from Ann Weems pull together these thoughts about Christmas, the cross, and living each day with him and for him:

If there is no cross in the manger, there is no Christmas.
If the babe doesn't become an adult, there is no Bethlehem star.
If there is no commitment in us, there are no wise men searching.

If there is no room in our inn,
then "Merry Christmas" mocks the Christ child,
and the holy family is just a holiday card,
and God will loathe our feast and festivals.

If there is no good will toward others,
it can all be packed away in boxes for another year.
If there is no forgiveness in us, there is no cause for celebration.
If we cannot go now, even unto Golgotha,
there is no Christmas in us.

If Christmas is not now,
if Christ is not born into the every-day present,
then what's all the noise about?

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