O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. 
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight

Really?  Hopes AND fears? 

By now, the leftovers are in the fridge and we’re thinking up 27 ways to have a bigger, better 2005.  We’re doing our best to hold on to Christmas hope; to keep at bay the creeping shadows of the cabin fever of winter.  We won’t be resigned to the after Christmas case of the mully-grubs this year, we say! 

Hallmark hallows our ideas about Christmas.  Folgers commercials, the best part of waking up, captures those classic scenes of families coming home on Christmas morning.

And don’t we know the delight of a cheery Christmas morning; the pine-scented trees, the spiced cider; the decorations.   We do Christmas morning very well, don’t you think? 

But there is morning and then there is mourning. 

How could the headlines have read in the Bethlehem Morning News the in the days after baby boy Jesus was born in the stable home?

Report:    Intelligence Leak:  Traveling trio outwit King; family escapes Or King Herod threatened by babies, studies show

What would be the lead story?

We have our hunches, don’t we?  Give us the sweet, happy news we want to hear!  Speak to us of shepherds and angels, and wise men on the way.  Speak to us of starry skies and gifts fit for a king. 

However, if we are looking for a G-rated version of Christ being born into the world (or St. Luke’s version, even), we won’t find it in Matthew.  Matthew’s report is the Gospel with guts.   

Joseph and Mary’s seeking shelter to get Jesus born becomes seeking shelter in Egypt to keep him alive.  Our imagination and wonder at Christmas morning is a fleeting moment greeted by Bethlehem mourning.  We’re sitting here barely 10 hours after Christmas Day, and the sleepy town of Bethlehem sounds more like a war zone, dirty, dusty streets stained with mothers’ tears.  It sends shivers up our spines to hear of it, much less thinking about those having to live these graphic scenes of swords drawn over babies’ brows.

Fearing Herod, a paranoid power monger, families huddled quietly together, barely breathing begging their babies not to cry. 

Herod’s seek and destroy mission is typical style for a political tyrant, who will stop at nothing to protect his power, reining terror on innocent people; caught crossways between a King in his prime and the would-be king of humankind.  

Herod, King of the Jews, is the architect of the Bethlehem Massacre, learning the tricks of his tirade from the ancient Pharaoh, who likewise ordered the killing of the male infants of his Jewish slaves. 

The infant Moses, as you will remember, survived Pharaoh’s fury and ultimately led the family of Israelites out of Egypt.  Jesus and his family are crossing over the border into Egypt, hearing that Herod’s hit squads could be close behind.

History is repeating itself in the life of Israel, and Jesus’ refugee family is walking their well-worn path.

Come on, this isn’t what we want to hear the morning after Christmas, is it?  Beyond the sugar rush of our Gingerbread latte and the feeling of eating and drinking too much, something deeper tells us there is something more than our sugary dreams!  Maybe we’re more familiar with Macy’s than Magi; more acquainted with merriment than mourning, but the Christmas story untold is the story tucked away here in Matthew; the forgotten boys of Bethlehem and mothers mourning their children “who are no more.” 

To be sure, we know Christmas is costly.  Figure in those decorations and figurines; the trees; review the Visa Card and MasterCard line items; the electric bill for our own home fantasy in lights in the front yard; not to mention our elevated anxiety produced by the retail media machines.  This is Christmas in America.

The first Christmas in Bethlehem was costly, too.  If Luke makes us hear, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill to all people, Matthew makes us hear the cries of the Bethlehem mothers, grieving the ones they loved and lost.  It is as though the “Peace on Earth, goodwill to all people” we so lightheartedly offer each other during Advent season comes with the Good Friday price of suffering. 

The Bethlehem cradle rests in the shadow of a Jerusalem cross.    Christmas and crying do go together.  Joy and suffering run on parallel tracks.

Christmas does not demand we put on pretend smiles or laugh like the jolly ole elf himself.  Christmas invites us to receive Christ as a gift, born into a violent and suffering world; to embrace the One who continues to be born in our own hearts in a broken, suffering world.

Christ comes to a specific time and place in the midst of Israel’s life and in the midst of our own, wherever we are and whatever the season.   

Christ comes to the couple who wants to have a child and can’t.

Christ comes to the young unwed birthmother who painfully gives up her child the day before Christmas. 

Christ comes to those adopting parents, who, for the first time, know the joy of parenthood.

Christ comes to the broken heart of a daughter, who says her final goodbye to the father she loves.

Christ comes to the family Christmas table where one seat is empty this year.

I wonder what it must have been like for Jesus to grow up and hear the story of his own birth; to hear what Herod did to so many other children and tried to do to him; to hear of the courage of his own parents who risked their lives to protect his.

If we really want to know what God thinks of Bethlehem’s boys and Bethlehem tragedies the world over, we only have to look at how important children were to Jesus. 

Children are so important to God that Jesus says; “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:5).  When disciples wanted to know who was greatest in the kingdom of God, Jesus put a child in front of them.

Good parents want to protect their children from all possible dangers and bad influences.  Being good parents can sometimes lead you to a foreign land (just ask Joseph and Mary).  Parents, do you ever feel like you are speaking a foreign language and living in a foreign land with your children?  These gifts of God can bring deep joy and deep sorrow.  When we discover their good manners, their intelligence, athletic gifts, or artistic talents, it gives us deep joy. 

When we discover their learning disabilities, physical handicaps, or are surprised at just how much we don’t have in common with them, it can bring us deep sadness. 

In the places of our lives where joy and sorrow touch each other, we know that these differences (and even imperfections) can be sources of strength; children are gifts of God.

One of the most sacred rituals we have at Wilshire is baby dedication.  In fact, we residents are learning that if we want to pastor a church at least 15 years, learn to do baby dedications well!!

Part of the birth story of our children at Wilshire should be the day their minister walked them up and down these aisles and the words of wisdom to the parents:  “Parents, this child is not your own.  This child comes from God and is going back to God.  You are to be stewards of this child’s life while on earth.”

Poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran expands our parental vision: You’re children are not your children.  They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.  They come through you but not from you.  And though they are with you they belong not to you.  You may give them your love but not your thoughts for they have their own thoughts.  You may house their bodies but not their souls.  For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit; not even in your dreams.  You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you…you are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.[ Gibran, Kahlil, The Prophet, (Knopf, 1951)]

Therein lies our knowing, for both parents and children, of when to let go and when to hold close.

In his book, Opening Blind Eyes, John Claypool chronicles his experience of life as a sheer gift of grace; that we are of incredible worth to God simply by virtue of being born.

However, in July 1968, applying this vision to life became the greatest challenge of his life when his daughter, Laura Lue, was diagnosed with acute leukemia.  The human temptation in periods of grief is to become angry or bottom out in hopelessness.  John experienced both of these feelings:  “What kind of God are you?  Why would you allow an innocent girl to suffer as she did and then die?  What right did you have to take away the one I cherished?”

John says if he had not at least had a taste of life as grace, he never would have made it through the valley of the shadow of death. 

He asked, “Who was Laura Lue, really?”  He concluded, “She had been a gift—not something I had created and therefore had the right to clutch as an owned possession, but a treasure who had always belonged to Another…Had Laura been my possession by right, then God would, in fact, have been a thief, and my anger would have been justified…. I could be angry that Laura had died after only ten short years; or I could be grateful that she had lived at all and that I had been able to share in her wonder.” [Claypool, John, Opening Blind Eyes, (Abingdon, 1983)]

Children have those rare and precious gifts to be insightful about the deepest mysteries and difficulties of life.  We care for them, and we learn from them.  In fact, all of us once were them.  Do you remember yourself as a child, the questions, the curiosity, and the wonder?

Diane Komp is a retired pediatric oncologist at Yale, expert in blood diseases and cancer in children.  Spiritually, she began as an agnostic/atheist, but her young patients changed her mind.  She tells some remarkable stories of wisdom and grace from children struggling for life.

She tells the story of one 3-year-old boy battling lymphoma.  Breathing was difficult for him, and he had to choose his words carefully.  Shortly before he died, he shared some of his own wonder:

I have some secrets about God that I’m kind of embarrassed about when I tell them.  I lost some of the secrets, but now God is kind of giving me memories about them.  They’re mostly about God loving you.  I’ve got one secret right now; God loves us all; that’s what I really know. [from www.speakingoffaith.org, Children and God, (December 16, 2004)]

If the mystery of the Christ child is known to anyone, maybe children know it. So, if we want to get close to the mystery, maybe we should get close to a kid; close to the wonder.

The wonder of it all is that we can share the wonder of the child Christ, who continues to be born, even in our broken hearts.  Christ’s gift to us is proof that beauty and brokenness, joy and suffering, merriment and mourning; hopes and fears go together. 

And when we tell the story of Christ coming, we tell both sides of the story of morning.

That Christ comes to us like that is enough to make Christmas morning, and hundreds of mornings in between, holy and full of hope for us all.  Christ the light of the world is born, and we are not left to face our darkness alone.  Amen.