Vulnerable Savior
Commentary
It is only two days after Christmas. The parties and festivities might still be in full bloom, but already the "reality" of life is returning to our homes. By tomorrow morning countless numbers of Christmas trees will already lie on the curbs, waiting for the annual pickup. All that will be left in many homes are the pine needles left to dry in the corner, stuck deep into the carpeting or lodged between the floor boards like food stuck between our teeth. The discarded wrapping paper and boxes soon fill the trash heaps, and the children, in too many instances, have already tired of the new toys.
The excitement of preparing for Christmas, the sharing of gifts, and the glitter of decorations has faded away into the Mondays of our lives. The coming of the Christ-child filled us all with promise, but now we have settled once again into the winter of our various discontents.
Where now are the hopes and the dreams? Have they vanished with the day? Could they have evaporated all that quickly? The resounding answer is "No." The hopes and dreams are as profoundly present now as they were on that glorious Christmas. What we are left with after the cuddling baby in swaddling cloths is one who joins us in our vulnerabilities. The Word that became flesh faces the realities that we do: The one about whom we sing "Beautiful Savior" is the Son of God who is also our "Vulnerable Savior."
Isaiah 63:7-9
These verses constitute the beginning of a community lament that continues through Isaiah 64:12. Probably composed shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 B.C., the lament is one of many which tries to make sense of the catastrophe and to seek the help of God.
The first part of the lament praises God for centuries of goodness and covenant loyalty, especially for the deliverance known as the exodus from Egypt. Verse 7 contains a wonderful balance of expression that is lost both in the Revised Standard Version and in the New Revised Standard Version. The petitioner recounts the acts of chesed the Lord has done for the people in the past. Chesed is a Hebrew term that is more specific than "steadfast love." It actually means "covenant loyalty," and as such it defines the fidelity of the Lord to the covenant made with Israel during the days of Abraham and again in the time of Moses. That the word is not simply an attribute but also an activity of the Lord is illustrated in powerful fashion by its appearance in the plural, as here at the beginning of the verse and at the end. The verse begins then with the words "The Lord's acts of covenant faithfulness I will recount, the Lord's works of praise." The verse concludes with the words "according to his acts of mercy and according to the abundance of his acts of covenant loyalty." These expressions demonstrate once again that the Lord revealed himself to the people of Israel through actions in their lives, through events that defined their history. On that basis begins this lament over the absence of the God they have come to know through actions in their lives.
The covenant nature of the pericope is illustrated further by the author's quotation of God's words to the effect that "surely they are my people" (v. 8). Hints of that relationship appear all the way back at Mount Sinai when God announced that Israel would be "my own possession among all peoples" (Exodus 19:5), and it resounds with clarity in Jeremiah's prophecy about the eschat-ological new covenant in which "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jeremiah 33:33).
The definition of God is highlighted by the confession that "he became their savior in all their distress" (vv. 8-9). The title "savior" is not as common a description for God in the Old Testament as one might think. It does, however, describe the action of God as "one who makes spacious for them." The same term appears to conclude the salvation event of all events, the deliverance at the sea in the time of Moses: "And on that day the Lord saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians" (Exodus 14:30). Salvation was, therefore, a release from the confinement of bondage to the spaciousness of freedom. It has to do with the breadth of life that comes with being released from bondage. To attribute that transformation from narrow confinement to elbow room to the Lord is to confess the Lord as Savior.
With the continuation of verse 9 we find the reason for the selection of this pericope to provide the background for the gospel from Matthew 2:13-23. An angel will play an important role in instructing Joseph to leave Egypt and return to Israel. The connection is obvious if we follow the incorrect reading of the Revised Standard Version: "and the angel of his presence saved them." Granted the role of the angel as deliverer from Egypt appears at Judges 2:1. However, the translation of the New Revised Standard Version follows the Septuagint rather than the difficult Hebrew text: "It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them" (v. 9).
The following lines of the verse support this rendering of the NRSV. "In his love he (the Lord) acted as their redeemer." The redeemer was the next of kin who paid the penalty so that the convicted family member might go free. That this verb defines the Lord in relationship to Israel confesses the familial relationship between the two, a relationship that later in this chapter is described as Father to a child (v. 16).
While the pericope is connected to the Gospel lesson by this accident of translation, the context of verses 7 to 9 as the introduction to a lament indicates that even the people of God are vulnerable to the abuses of the world and to the temptations that life in the world brings. If only we had a God who understood our vulnerability!
Hebrews 2:10-18
The good news is that we do have a Lord who can say to us in our vulnerability, "Been there! Done that!" The news comes here from an unknown author who reveals of himself only his eloquent Greek and his elevated tradition of worship.
The first verse of chapter 2 appears to provide the purpose for the writing of this letter. "Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it." The author's purpose is to revive the interest and enthusiasm of those who have been believers but are now falling into complacency.
Our pericope follows the argument that Jesus is superior to the angels. The author has demonstrated that truth through various quotations from the Old Testament (always from the Septuagint in this book). In verse 6 he began a section about Jesus' ministry and work for salvation in order to demonstrate further the superiority of Jesus to the angels.
Our pericope begins partway through this section. The reference to God as the one "for whom and through whom all things exist" is, as we might expect in this epistle, liturgical, perhaps even hymnic. The almost identical words appear at 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Romans 11:36, giving the impression that they represent a formula used in the early church. In terms of content the expressions confess a powerful faith in the God who is not only the Creator of all things but the purpose for all things as well.
That God is the one who made "the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (v. 10). The word translated "pioneer" is used of Jesus also at Acts 3:15, where it is translated "Author" of life. In all likelihood the meaning of "pioneer" is better here because throughout this epistle Jesus is portrayed as the "leader" or "forerunner on our behalf" who brings the people of God to the heavenly sanctuary. As the sanctified high priest who had the privilege of entering the sanctuary, Jesus could perform that role of leader.
Strikingly, Jesus' consecration as high priest was not accomplished in the ways typical of Jewish tradition, that is, liturgically, but "through sufferings" (see further 5:8-10). The story of his passion illustrates that point precisely, but the author here is more concerned about using the suffering of Christ as a means of strengthening his argument that Jesus has identified with us humans in every way. He, the sanctifier, and we, the sanctified, "are all from one." Whether that "one" refers to our common origin (so RSV) or our common "Father" (so NRSV), that is, God, or our common human ancestor, that is, Adam, is quite difficult to ascertain. The point, however, is that Jesus became so one with us that he can call us brothers and sisters and not be ashamed of the relationship. Verse 12 quotes the Septuagint version of Psalm 22:22, a psalm well known among Christians because of its relationship with the crucifixion account, in order to connect the psalmist's first person speaker with friends of the congregation at a thanksgiving meal following a deliverance. Verse 13 quotes Isaiah 8:17 and 18, which connect the prophet who trusts in the Lord with the people entrusted to his care. The identification of the prophet with the people led to the role of intercession by the prophet for the people in a number of situations, but the point here is the identification itself. Jesus became flesh and blood along with us so that he might serve as that pioneer who leads us through death to life. Furthermore, he is our pioneer in the sense that his testing through suffering enables him to help us who are being tested.
The pericope highlights the meaning of the incarnation in terms of the suffering and testing that we humans experience in this life. Its words completely eliminate any thought that the Lord that we worship is too aloof to know what we endure in this life, the testing to our faith, the physical agony and heartbreak we endure. How comforting to know that the Lord who sits at God's right hand is the same one who came to earth to share our temptations, our mortality, and our vulnerability! We do indeed have a "Vulnerable Savior."
Matthew 2:13-23
The record of Jesus' birth as told in Matthew's Gospel is stated rather matter-of-factly in contrast to the detailed records that follow the birth narrative, namely those records detailing the story of the Magi and the plot of Herod. The contrast between the birth record and that of the following events makes the reader wonder about the intention behind the discrepancy. An interpreter will need to ponder the significance of that reality for preaching the coming of Christ.
Matthew seems anxious to say something significant about who this Jesus is as well as to explain the reason behind the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. The author goes to great lengths to allude to Old Testament passages that would have been the basis of the early church's readings. In the process he demonstrates both a continuity as well as a discontinuity between the Hebrew Scriptures and the new reality in Christ.
The appearance of the angel again in a dream of Joseph's comes as no surprise since Joseph has already had at least one such encounter. Matthew even uses the same expression here as he used in 1:20: "Behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream." There the expression announced to Joseph that he should, in spite of Mary's pregnancy, marry her. In general, it can be said, angels appear in the Bible as a way of protecting the visibility of God: one hears the voice of God but one sees an angel. The divine security is enhanced when even the angel is seen in dreams.
The angel's message is relatively simple. Joseph is to take Mary and the child and flee to Egypt, remaining there for an undetermined length of time until the angel should tell them to return. The reason for their flight is so that Herod will not be able to do to this child as Herod will do to so many other children of that day. And so Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt.
In verse 15 Matthew quotes from Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt have I called my son." The quotation here refers to the people of Israel. The first part of the poetic parallelism in Hebrew is "When Israel was a child, I loved him ..."
Israel was often called the child of God, even the Lord's "firstborn son." The words defined Israel early in the story of the exodus when the Lord instructed Moses what to tell the Pharaoh. "Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, "Let my son go that he may worship me." But if you refuse to let him go, I will kill your firstborn son' " (Exodus 4:22-23). That Israel's identity as the firstborn son of the Lord provides the motive for salvation is attested also at Jeremiah 31:9 where "Ephraim is my firstborn" is the reason for the salvation of the people from exile.
Operating on the oft-stated principle that with God all things are possible, the scriptures announce that the Lord has another firstborn son. Psalm 89 is a psalm that bases the identity of the Davidic king on the superior position of the Lord in the heavenly court. As divine power and authority are transferred to the Davidic king, the Lord announces regarding this ruler that "I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth" (v. 26). That relationship came about with each king on the day of his coronation when the anointed one announced in the ritual, "He said to me, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you' " (Psalm 2:7).
That God has two firstborn sons, Israel and the Davidic king, allowed Matthew to latch on to passages regarding both sons, as he declared throughout his Gospel who Jesus was as son of God. There is the continuity.
The discontinuity occurs in the fact that Jesus as son of God is not the object of God's salvation but rather the means by which God saves the world. Indeed Jesus himself is "Joshua," that is, "Yahweh saves." In other words, the identity as Son of God is not the motive for the son's deliverance but the reason why he himself will be the deliverer.
Matthew makes the connection between Jesus and Israel once again in verse 17 by citing Jeremiah 31:15 and its recounting of the children/people of Israel who had been conquered, killed, and exiled at the hands of Babylonians in the sixth century B.C. The Jeremiah passage explains the weeping over the slaughter of the innocents. Not only is Jesus identified with the suffering people of Israel, he is also identified with those who suffer, die, and grieve.
The story of the slaughter of the innocents is based more on its importance for Matthew's understanding of Jesus than on historical accuracy. From what we know of Herod the Great, especially from the historian Josephus, Herod would have been capable of such an atrocity, but there is no record that he ever ordered the execution of all the babies in the land. He did execute his own three sons and his brother-in-law, and Josephus reports Herod ordered that at his death one member of every family should be killed to ensure genuine sorrow throughout the land.
The slaughter of the innocents, historical or not, does indeed draw our attention to the story about the infancy of Moses in the Book of Exodus. There the Pharaoh ordered the execution of all male babies in order to keep the burgeoning Hebrew population from threatening the Egyptian control. Jewish tradition, according to Josephus, explained the motive for the killing differently: a priest announced to the Pharaoh that a deliverer would be born to the Hebrew slaves, and in order to prevent that possibility the king ordered the baby boys to be killed. In any case, the story of Moses as one whose life was threatened at birth, who fled the land because of danger, and then returned to be the people's savior provided Matthew or the early church before him the opportunity to see parallels with the infancy of Jesus, the Savior of the world. Our pericope connects Jesus with Moses as one whose life as an infant was in jeopardy, who fled (this time into Egypt), and returned to pursue his role as Savior.
Having provided the genealogy for Jesus and the miraculous birth to a virgin, Matthew has already indicated that Jesus is not simply another Moses but superior to Moses. That superiority will surface most explicitly when Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount, especially in the contrast between "You have heard that it was said to the people of old ... But I say to you ..."
The story concludes by informing us that Joseph and Mary brought the baby Jesus back to the land of Israel. Instead of returning to their own home somewhere in Judah, they heeded the warning in a dream and settled in Galilee in the town of Nazareth. While Matthew confuses the issue by citing the fulfillment of some unknown prophecy, "He shall be called a Nazorean," the story's conclusion points to the unsettled nature of Jesus and his family. Uprooted, endangered, at risk, Jesus has come into the world.
Vulnerable Savior, King of Creation, Son of God and Son of man. And here we are at the beginning of the Christmas season.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 63:7-9
By specifying this text on the first Sunday after Christmas -- that day so often called "low Sunday," when the congregation is small and everyone is rather exhausted from the Christmas celebration -- the framers of the lectionary have intended these verses to be simply a praise of the love and redemption that God has manifested in the birth of our Savior at Bethlehem, a sort of "marking time," before we proceed with the church year.
Yet, the dark tones that we find in the Gospel lesson prompt us to see deeper meanings here, and that becomes evident when we consider the context of this text. These verses form the first stanza of the communal lament which is found in 63:7--64:12 and which is uttered by the Levitical-prophetic party in post-exilic Judah. The standard form of such laments includes: 1) a recounting of God's saving deeds in the past, as in verses 7-14; 2) a detailing of the community's present desperate situation, as in verses 63:15-19; and 3) a petition for help, as in verses 64:1-12. Thus the praise in our text (vv. 7-9), is uttered by those who must also confess that they have been in their sins a long time, that they all have become like one who is unclean, and that all their righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (64:5-6). That sets the context of our text.
That also sets the connection of our text with the congregation -- with us -- however, for we who have received God's gift of the Christ child are also those who have rebelled against him and grieved his Holy Spirit (63:10). And all of us, who have celebrated Christmas, are those who have seldom called upon the name of the Lord and bestirred ourselves to take hold of him (64:7). What does that say about the actions of God which are described in our text for the morning?
First of all, God's coming to us in the birth of Jesus has been totally undeserved on our part. Do any one of us deserve the redemption that God has begun in the birth of his Son? Have we earned God's love for us? Obviously not. Rather, we have deserved God's judgment upon us for our neglect of his company and our violation of his commands given us in the scriptures. Our just desserts would be God's abandonment of us altogether.
And yet, God has clung to his covenant relationship with us. He has shown us "steadfast love," which means he has always been faithful to his covenant, as he was also faithful to his covenant with Israel. When the Lord delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and entered into covenant with them at Mount Sinai, he promised them that he would be their God and they would be his special people, a nation set apart for his purpose (that is, a "holy nation") to be his "kingdom of priests," mediating the knowledge of him to the rest of the world (Exodus 19:4-6). And God has made the same promise to us (1 Peter 2:9-10).
Then through all the centuries of Israel's sin against him, God kept that promise, never deserting his people, but constantly forgiving and trying to instruct them and weeping over their evil deeds. And so too God in Jesus Christ has never deserted us, but has steadfastly clung to the covenant he makes with us every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper.
Israel became God's adopted children when he delivered them out of slavery (Isaiah 63:8; Exodus 4:22-23; Hosea 11:1; Jeremiah 30:20), and God became their Father, loving them with the love surpassing that of all earthly fathers (Isaiah 64:8; Jeremiah 3:19; 31:9). And so too when we were baptized, we were adopted as God's children, given his Spirit that allows us to call him "Abba! Father!" (Galatians 6:6-7) and to pray with confidence to "Our Father, who art in heaven...."
The steadfast covenant love that God gave to Israel and that he still gives to us is therefore a love of the most intimate care and concern. There is nothing legalistic about God's relation to us, no cut-and-dried demand that we follow every jot and tittle of his commandments, no wrathful punishment when we do not measure up and fail. No. God's steadfast love is the love of a Father who will not desert his children -- a Father who disciplines us sometimes, to be sure, a Father who constantly has to forgive us, but a Father, too, who instructs us and watches over us, and comforts and guides us, and who will never leave or forsake us. In the words of Deuter-onomy, always "underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deuteronomy 33:27), or in the Psalms, our earthly father and mother may forsake us, but the Lord will take us up (Psalm 27:10). We can therefore enter into the first verse of our text and make it our own prayer, for like Israel, we too have known the abundance of the steadfast love of the Lord, his great goodness, and his mercy (v. 7).
Second, because God was Israel's loving Father, he suffered when his children suffered. Indeed, he not only saw but also experienced their affliction. "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings," the Lord told Moses (Exodus 3:7). The God of the Bible is no distant Ruler, dispassionately observing his children on earth, subjecting them to the twists and turns of an indifferent purpose. No. "I know their sufferings," God says. As in our text, the Lord is afflicted with our afflictions. He suffers our suffering. All through the Old Testament he identifies with his people. And so, his supreme identification comes in the flesh of his Son, who enters into our life, and who knows our temptations, our struggles, our pains, and finally our death. In Jesus Christ, born at Bethlehem, God becomes flesh and blood like we, and he takes all that we are upon himself, and is afflicted with our afflictions.
Third and finally, God carried Israel all the days of her life. And so too does he carry us in Jesus Christ, taking us through our struggles when we have no more strength to go on, preventing us from wandering into paths of temptation and evil, shielding us from the harm that surrounds us in the world, and yes, finally bearing us safely through the valley of the shadow of death, into the light and joy and eternal life of his good kingdom.
In response to the love of such a God who has come to us at Christmastime, let us never be like those in the verse that follows our text who rebel and grieve his Holy Spirit (v. 10). And let us join in the praise of our text for the abundance of God's steadfast covenant love, for the mercy that he has showered upon us in his Son, and for his great goodness.
The excitement of preparing for Christmas, the sharing of gifts, and the glitter of decorations has faded away into the Mondays of our lives. The coming of the Christ-child filled us all with promise, but now we have settled once again into the winter of our various discontents.
Where now are the hopes and the dreams? Have they vanished with the day? Could they have evaporated all that quickly? The resounding answer is "No." The hopes and dreams are as profoundly present now as they were on that glorious Christmas. What we are left with after the cuddling baby in swaddling cloths is one who joins us in our vulnerabilities. The Word that became flesh faces the realities that we do: The one about whom we sing "Beautiful Savior" is the Son of God who is also our "Vulnerable Savior."
Isaiah 63:7-9
These verses constitute the beginning of a community lament that continues through Isaiah 64:12. Probably composed shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 B.C., the lament is one of many which tries to make sense of the catastrophe and to seek the help of God.
The first part of the lament praises God for centuries of goodness and covenant loyalty, especially for the deliverance known as the exodus from Egypt. Verse 7 contains a wonderful balance of expression that is lost both in the Revised Standard Version and in the New Revised Standard Version. The petitioner recounts the acts of chesed the Lord has done for the people in the past. Chesed is a Hebrew term that is more specific than "steadfast love." It actually means "covenant loyalty," and as such it defines the fidelity of the Lord to the covenant made with Israel during the days of Abraham and again in the time of Moses. That the word is not simply an attribute but also an activity of the Lord is illustrated in powerful fashion by its appearance in the plural, as here at the beginning of the verse and at the end. The verse begins then with the words "The Lord's acts of covenant faithfulness I will recount, the Lord's works of praise." The verse concludes with the words "according to his acts of mercy and according to the abundance of his acts of covenant loyalty." These expressions demonstrate once again that the Lord revealed himself to the people of Israel through actions in their lives, through events that defined their history. On that basis begins this lament over the absence of the God they have come to know through actions in their lives.
The covenant nature of the pericope is illustrated further by the author's quotation of God's words to the effect that "surely they are my people" (v. 8). Hints of that relationship appear all the way back at Mount Sinai when God announced that Israel would be "my own possession among all peoples" (Exodus 19:5), and it resounds with clarity in Jeremiah's prophecy about the eschat-ological new covenant in which "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jeremiah 33:33).
The definition of God is highlighted by the confession that "he became their savior in all their distress" (vv. 8-9). The title "savior" is not as common a description for God in the Old Testament as one might think. It does, however, describe the action of God as "one who makes spacious for them." The same term appears to conclude the salvation event of all events, the deliverance at the sea in the time of Moses: "And on that day the Lord saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians" (Exodus 14:30). Salvation was, therefore, a release from the confinement of bondage to the spaciousness of freedom. It has to do with the breadth of life that comes with being released from bondage. To attribute that transformation from narrow confinement to elbow room to the Lord is to confess the Lord as Savior.
With the continuation of verse 9 we find the reason for the selection of this pericope to provide the background for the gospel from Matthew 2:13-23. An angel will play an important role in instructing Joseph to leave Egypt and return to Israel. The connection is obvious if we follow the incorrect reading of the Revised Standard Version: "and the angel of his presence saved them." Granted the role of the angel as deliverer from Egypt appears at Judges 2:1. However, the translation of the New Revised Standard Version follows the Septuagint rather than the difficult Hebrew text: "It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them" (v. 9).
The following lines of the verse support this rendering of the NRSV. "In his love he (the Lord) acted as their redeemer." The redeemer was the next of kin who paid the penalty so that the convicted family member might go free. That this verb defines the Lord in relationship to Israel confesses the familial relationship between the two, a relationship that later in this chapter is described as Father to a child (v. 16).
While the pericope is connected to the Gospel lesson by this accident of translation, the context of verses 7 to 9 as the introduction to a lament indicates that even the people of God are vulnerable to the abuses of the world and to the temptations that life in the world brings. If only we had a God who understood our vulnerability!
Hebrews 2:10-18
The good news is that we do have a Lord who can say to us in our vulnerability, "Been there! Done that!" The news comes here from an unknown author who reveals of himself only his eloquent Greek and his elevated tradition of worship.
The first verse of chapter 2 appears to provide the purpose for the writing of this letter. "Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it." The author's purpose is to revive the interest and enthusiasm of those who have been believers but are now falling into complacency.
Our pericope follows the argument that Jesus is superior to the angels. The author has demonstrated that truth through various quotations from the Old Testament (always from the Septuagint in this book). In verse 6 he began a section about Jesus' ministry and work for salvation in order to demonstrate further the superiority of Jesus to the angels.
Our pericope begins partway through this section. The reference to God as the one "for whom and through whom all things exist" is, as we might expect in this epistle, liturgical, perhaps even hymnic. The almost identical words appear at 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Romans 11:36, giving the impression that they represent a formula used in the early church. In terms of content the expressions confess a powerful faith in the God who is not only the Creator of all things but the purpose for all things as well.
That God is the one who made "the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (v. 10). The word translated "pioneer" is used of Jesus also at Acts 3:15, where it is translated "Author" of life. In all likelihood the meaning of "pioneer" is better here because throughout this epistle Jesus is portrayed as the "leader" or "forerunner on our behalf" who brings the people of God to the heavenly sanctuary. As the sanctified high priest who had the privilege of entering the sanctuary, Jesus could perform that role of leader.
Strikingly, Jesus' consecration as high priest was not accomplished in the ways typical of Jewish tradition, that is, liturgically, but "through sufferings" (see further 5:8-10). The story of his passion illustrates that point precisely, but the author here is more concerned about using the suffering of Christ as a means of strengthening his argument that Jesus has identified with us humans in every way. He, the sanctifier, and we, the sanctified, "are all from one." Whether that "one" refers to our common origin (so RSV) or our common "Father" (so NRSV), that is, God, or our common human ancestor, that is, Adam, is quite difficult to ascertain. The point, however, is that Jesus became so one with us that he can call us brothers and sisters and not be ashamed of the relationship. Verse 12 quotes the Septuagint version of Psalm 22:22, a psalm well known among Christians because of its relationship with the crucifixion account, in order to connect the psalmist's first person speaker with friends of the congregation at a thanksgiving meal following a deliverance. Verse 13 quotes Isaiah 8:17 and 18, which connect the prophet who trusts in the Lord with the people entrusted to his care. The identification of the prophet with the people led to the role of intercession by the prophet for the people in a number of situations, but the point here is the identification itself. Jesus became flesh and blood along with us so that he might serve as that pioneer who leads us through death to life. Furthermore, he is our pioneer in the sense that his testing through suffering enables him to help us who are being tested.
The pericope highlights the meaning of the incarnation in terms of the suffering and testing that we humans experience in this life. Its words completely eliminate any thought that the Lord that we worship is too aloof to know what we endure in this life, the testing to our faith, the physical agony and heartbreak we endure. How comforting to know that the Lord who sits at God's right hand is the same one who came to earth to share our temptations, our mortality, and our vulnerability! We do indeed have a "Vulnerable Savior."
Matthew 2:13-23
The record of Jesus' birth as told in Matthew's Gospel is stated rather matter-of-factly in contrast to the detailed records that follow the birth narrative, namely those records detailing the story of the Magi and the plot of Herod. The contrast between the birth record and that of the following events makes the reader wonder about the intention behind the discrepancy. An interpreter will need to ponder the significance of that reality for preaching the coming of Christ.
Matthew seems anxious to say something significant about who this Jesus is as well as to explain the reason behind the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. The author goes to great lengths to allude to Old Testament passages that would have been the basis of the early church's readings. In the process he demonstrates both a continuity as well as a discontinuity between the Hebrew Scriptures and the new reality in Christ.
The appearance of the angel again in a dream of Joseph's comes as no surprise since Joseph has already had at least one such encounter. Matthew even uses the same expression here as he used in 1:20: "Behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream." There the expression announced to Joseph that he should, in spite of Mary's pregnancy, marry her. In general, it can be said, angels appear in the Bible as a way of protecting the visibility of God: one hears the voice of God but one sees an angel. The divine security is enhanced when even the angel is seen in dreams.
The angel's message is relatively simple. Joseph is to take Mary and the child and flee to Egypt, remaining there for an undetermined length of time until the angel should tell them to return. The reason for their flight is so that Herod will not be able to do to this child as Herod will do to so many other children of that day. And so Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt.
In verse 15 Matthew quotes from Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt have I called my son." The quotation here refers to the people of Israel. The first part of the poetic parallelism in Hebrew is "When Israel was a child, I loved him ..."
Israel was often called the child of God, even the Lord's "firstborn son." The words defined Israel early in the story of the exodus when the Lord instructed Moses what to tell the Pharaoh. "Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, "Let my son go that he may worship me." But if you refuse to let him go, I will kill your firstborn son' " (Exodus 4:22-23). That Israel's identity as the firstborn son of the Lord provides the motive for salvation is attested also at Jeremiah 31:9 where "Ephraim is my firstborn" is the reason for the salvation of the people from exile.
Operating on the oft-stated principle that with God all things are possible, the scriptures announce that the Lord has another firstborn son. Psalm 89 is a psalm that bases the identity of the Davidic king on the superior position of the Lord in the heavenly court. As divine power and authority are transferred to the Davidic king, the Lord announces regarding this ruler that "I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth" (v. 26). That relationship came about with each king on the day of his coronation when the anointed one announced in the ritual, "He said to me, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you' " (Psalm 2:7).
That God has two firstborn sons, Israel and the Davidic king, allowed Matthew to latch on to passages regarding both sons, as he declared throughout his Gospel who Jesus was as son of God. There is the continuity.
The discontinuity occurs in the fact that Jesus as son of God is not the object of God's salvation but rather the means by which God saves the world. Indeed Jesus himself is "Joshua," that is, "Yahweh saves." In other words, the identity as Son of God is not the motive for the son's deliverance but the reason why he himself will be the deliverer.
Matthew makes the connection between Jesus and Israel once again in verse 17 by citing Jeremiah 31:15 and its recounting of the children/people of Israel who had been conquered, killed, and exiled at the hands of Babylonians in the sixth century B.C. The Jeremiah passage explains the weeping over the slaughter of the innocents. Not only is Jesus identified with the suffering people of Israel, he is also identified with those who suffer, die, and grieve.
The story of the slaughter of the innocents is based more on its importance for Matthew's understanding of Jesus than on historical accuracy. From what we know of Herod the Great, especially from the historian Josephus, Herod would have been capable of such an atrocity, but there is no record that he ever ordered the execution of all the babies in the land. He did execute his own three sons and his brother-in-law, and Josephus reports Herod ordered that at his death one member of every family should be killed to ensure genuine sorrow throughout the land.
The slaughter of the innocents, historical or not, does indeed draw our attention to the story about the infancy of Moses in the Book of Exodus. There the Pharaoh ordered the execution of all male babies in order to keep the burgeoning Hebrew population from threatening the Egyptian control. Jewish tradition, according to Josephus, explained the motive for the killing differently: a priest announced to the Pharaoh that a deliverer would be born to the Hebrew slaves, and in order to prevent that possibility the king ordered the baby boys to be killed. In any case, the story of Moses as one whose life was threatened at birth, who fled the land because of danger, and then returned to be the people's savior provided Matthew or the early church before him the opportunity to see parallels with the infancy of Jesus, the Savior of the world. Our pericope connects Jesus with Moses as one whose life as an infant was in jeopardy, who fled (this time into Egypt), and returned to pursue his role as Savior.
Having provided the genealogy for Jesus and the miraculous birth to a virgin, Matthew has already indicated that Jesus is not simply another Moses but superior to Moses. That superiority will surface most explicitly when Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount, especially in the contrast between "You have heard that it was said to the people of old ... But I say to you ..."
The story concludes by informing us that Joseph and Mary brought the baby Jesus back to the land of Israel. Instead of returning to their own home somewhere in Judah, they heeded the warning in a dream and settled in Galilee in the town of Nazareth. While Matthew confuses the issue by citing the fulfillment of some unknown prophecy, "He shall be called a Nazorean," the story's conclusion points to the unsettled nature of Jesus and his family. Uprooted, endangered, at risk, Jesus has come into the world.
Vulnerable Savior, King of Creation, Son of God and Son of man. And here we are at the beginning of the Christmas season.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 63:7-9
By specifying this text on the first Sunday after Christmas -- that day so often called "low Sunday," when the congregation is small and everyone is rather exhausted from the Christmas celebration -- the framers of the lectionary have intended these verses to be simply a praise of the love and redemption that God has manifested in the birth of our Savior at Bethlehem, a sort of "marking time," before we proceed with the church year.
Yet, the dark tones that we find in the Gospel lesson prompt us to see deeper meanings here, and that becomes evident when we consider the context of this text. These verses form the first stanza of the communal lament which is found in 63:7--64:12 and which is uttered by the Levitical-prophetic party in post-exilic Judah. The standard form of such laments includes: 1) a recounting of God's saving deeds in the past, as in verses 7-14; 2) a detailing of the community's present desperate situation, as in verses 63:15-19; and 3) a petition for help, as in verses 64:1-12. Thus the praise in our text (vv. 7-9), is uttered by those who must also confess that they have been in their sins a long time, that they all have become like one who is unclean, and that all their righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (64:5-6). That sets the context of our text.
That also sets the connection of our text with the congregation -- with us -- however, for we who have received God's gift of the Christ child are also those who have rebelled against him and grieved his Holy Spirit (63:10). And all of us, who have celebrated Christmas, are those who have seldom called upon the name of the Lord and bestirred ourselves to take hold of him (64:7). What does that say about the actions of God which are described in our text for the morning?
First of all, God's coming to us in the birth of Jesus has been totally undeserved on our part. Do any one of us deserve the redemption that God has begun in the birth of his Son? Have we earned God's love for us? Obviously not. Rather, we have deserved God's judgment upon us for our neglect of his company and our violation of his commands given us in the scriptures. Our just desserts would be God's abandonment of us altogether.
And yet, God has clung to his covenant relationship with us. He has shown us "steadfast love," which means he has always been faithful to his covenant, as he was also faithful to his covenant with Israel. When the Lord delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and entered into covenant with them at Mount Sinai, he promised them that he would be their God and they would be his special people, a nation set apart for his purpose (that is, a "holy nation") to be his "kingdom of priests," mediating the knowledge of him to the rest of the world (Exodus 19:4-6). And God has made the same promise to us (1 Peter 2:9-10).
Then through all the centuries of Israel's sin against him, God kept that promise, never deserting his people, but constantly forgiving and trying to instruct them and weeping over their evil deeds. And so too God in Jesus Christ has never deserted us, but has steadfastly clung to the covenant he makes with us every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper.
Israel became God's adopted children when he delivered them out of slavery (Isaiah 63:8; Exodus 4:22-23; Hosea 11:1; Jeremiah 30:20), and God became their Father, loving them with the love surpassing that of all earthly fathers (Isaiah 64:8; Jeremiah 3:19; 31:9). And so too when we were baptized, we were adopted as God's children, given his Spirit that allows us to call him "Abba! Father!" (Galatians 6:6-7) and to pray with confidence to "Our Father, who art in heaven...."
The steadfast covenant love that God gave to Israel and that he still gives to us is therefore a love of the most intimate care and concern. There is nothing legalistic about God's relation to us, no cut-and-dried demand that we follow every jot and tittle of his commandments, no wrathful punishment when we do not measure up and fail. No. God's steadfast love is the love of a Father who will not desert his children -- a Father who disciplines us sometimes, to be sure, a Father who constantly has to forgive us, but a Father, too, who instructs us and watches over us, and comforts and guides us, and who will never leave or forsake us. In the words of Deuter-onomy, always "underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deuteronomy 33:27), or in the Psalms, our earthly father and mother may forsake us, but the Lord will take us up (Psalm 27:10). We can therefore enter into the first verse of our text and make it our own prayer, for like Israel, we too have known the abundance of the steadfast love of the Lord, his great goodness, and his mercy (v. 7).
Second, because God was Israel's loving Father, he suffered when his children suffered. Indeed, he not only saw but also experienced their affliction. "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings," the Lord told Moses (Exodus 3:7). The God of the Bible is no distant Ruler, dispassionately observing his children on earth, subjecting them to the twists and turns of an indifferent purpose. No. "I know their sufferings," God says. As in our text, the Lord is afflicted with our afflictions. He suffers our suffering. All through the Old Testament he identifies with his people. And so, his supreme identification comes in the flesh of his Son, who enters into our life, and who knows our temptations, our struggles, our pains, and finally our death. In Jesus Christ, born at Bethlehem, God becomes flesh and blood like we, and he takes all that we are upon himself, and is afflicted with our afflictions.
Third and finally, God carried Israel all the days of her life. And so too does he carry us in Jesus Christ, taking us through our struggles when we have no more strength to go on, preventing us from wandering into paths of temptation and evil, shielding us from the harm that surrounds us in the world, and yes, finally bearing us safely through the valley of the shadow of death, into the light and joy and eternal life of his good kingdom.
In response to the love of such a God who has come to us at Christmastime, let us never be like those in the verse that follows our text who rebel and grieve his Holy Spirit (v. 10). And let us join in the praise of our text for the abundance of God's steadfast covenant love, for the mercy that he has showered upon us in his Son, and for his great goodness.
