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Sermons
When We Are Most Helpless
Matthew 2:13-23
The Downtown Presbyterian Church
Rev. Kenneth M. Locke
Studying this text I realized pretty
quickly I was going to have to narrow my focus.
There are any number of important ideas here we could address. There’s room for a sermon on free will:
we are free to worship Jesus or to attack him.
We could talk about Jesus fulfilling Old Testament prophecies. We could even talk about the importance of
following God’s voice.
But thinking about this text and us as
a congregation I thought how part of what makes us who we are is we are a
caring people. We care about the
oppressed. We are concerned for the
powerless. We feel strongly for the
helpless.
And so we care, and we care deeply,
about infants dying because their homes and hospitals are bombed. We care about children dying because their
parents are abusive or neglectful or spend their energy worshipping the demons
of addiction. We care about the ones who
are barely walking picking up some adult’s cocaine or something equally
deadly and swallowing it.
And we care about all these innocent
children who are murdered, no chance to escape.
No angel whispered to their parents, warning them to get out of
town. We can see the shocked parents crying,
refusing to be comforted. We can see the
guards wiping their swords and muttering, “orders
are orders.” We can see the mass
grave at the edge of town.
Was it worth it, God? Was your child worth more than all of
them? Did you feel better after Joseph
and Mary crossed the border? Did you
weep with Rachel and refuse to be consoled?
Well now, we say, let’s not get
too angry at God. If all the children
had fled Herod would have been suspicious.
Extreme situations require extreme measures, and innocent people get
hurt.
It was prophecy, of course. No one would believe Jesus if he didn’t
fulfill the ancient writings. It had to
happen.
We could just say God is God, God doesn’t need
to care. God can do as God chooses.
All true, but I don’t buy it. Knowing God counts the hairs of our heads,
knowing God gave his son to die so we might live, do you see that God
condemning innocent children to be murdered?
I don’t.
But perhaps, just perhaps, this story is not about
innocent children dying at Jesus’ expense. Maybe it’s about something else.
When I was a boy, maybe 5 or 6, my granddaddy would
sit me on his knee and talk about us going bear hunting. “We’re gonna
shoot that bear and bring that bear to town and everyone will say ‘who
shot that bear, who shot that bear’?
And I’ll say ‘Ken Locke shot that bear.’” Then he’d hug me real tight and I would
know I was loved.
Granddaddy
and I never went bear hunting, and as far as I know granddaddy never
went bear hunting. All he ever hunted
were birds and by the time I was born he had stopped that. The point was never about hunting. The story was about him guiding me as I grew, his expectations for me and how proud he was of
me. The story was never about
hunting. The story was about the nature
of our relationship and how much he loved me.
Matthew and his readers know the tremendous cruelty
of Herod, how he murdered several of his sons and some of his wives, practiced
torture and slaughter on a massive scale.
There is no historical record of a massacre in
Matthew also knows at this age the infant Jesus is
passive, unable to protect himself, totally dependent on God to ensure he grows
and is able to begin his ministry.
What Matthew is saying to us in this text is God is
with Jesus from the beginning. From the
very beginning when Jesus can’t even walk, God is with him, protecting
and preparing him for ministry. Not that
Jesus lived a charmed life. He was
human. When he stubbed his toe it hurt,
when he was hungry his stomach rumbled.
Eventually he died a horrible death on a cross. God never spared Jesus any pain, but he
protected him along the way.
And so it has been for the church. James was executed. Stephen was stoned. Paul was shipwrecked. And so it has been for the church to this
day. Missionaries are killed in
But nevertheless God is with the church. From its earliest, crawling efforts to its
faltering, stumbling steps today, God has never spared the church but has
always watched over us to help us grow and enable us for ministry.
This story is not about God preferring Jesus over
others. It’s not about God’s
attitude towards human life.
This story is about God’s devotion to our
salvation, and how God would not let the forces of evil conquer our salvation
when it was most vulnerable.
This story is assuring us when you and I are
struggling in ministry but we are weak, scared, unable
to protect ourselves, God is with us.
When we are powerless against evil, God is guiding and enabling us.
The good news of this text is when you and I are as
helpless as infants God is with us just as God was with Jesus from the time he
was born.
We are a
people who feel deeply and strongly. Let
us feel this deeply and strongly: that in our fumbling, faltering ministry, God
is with us. Thanks be
to God.
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