Matthew 2:13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 2:14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 2:15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” 2:16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 2:17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 2:18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” 2:19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 2:20 “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 2:21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 2:22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 2:23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”
During your childhood years, what adult, beside your parents, was really and reliably there for you, who believed in you when you didn’t believe in yourself, who encouraged you when you needed it, and challenged you, whenever you needed that, too?
For me one such person was my violin teacher during high school, and principal violinist with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Miss Cecil Vashaw. I had already had three years of lessons with her when my family hit on hard times in my senior year, and we didn’t know how we could afford to pay for more. So Ms. Vashaw taught me for free for another year, on the condition that I keep playing violin, if not professionally, then at least for others, even if just for myself.
Sometime during that same year, Ms. Vashaw contacted my father and said, “Your son, Mathew, needs a new fiddle. He’s ready for something better than the machine knock-off school system instrument he’s been borrowing, or he’ll get frustrated and quit. What’s more, I have an old friend whose health won’t permit him to play his fiddle anymore; it’s a good one, and he wants to sell it to a student for the same price that he bought it years ago. It’s worth at least twice that now. Got any ideas of where you can come up with that money?”
That’s where the second adult hero of my youth comes in, my paternal grandmother, Helena Homich Swora, born in what is now the nation of Slovakia. One day, when I was ten years old, she sat by me, held my hands, examined them, and said, “You’ll be a good violin player like your grandfather was, because you have his long fingers.” Fifty years later, I’m pretty sure that I actually have fairly average length fingers. But at the time I wanted to believe her, and I was honored to think that I had that at least in common with my grandfather, besides my name. He had 3 years earlier. What my grandmother said helped me keep working at tough violin pieces, passages and exercises; I would tell myself, “I can do this; I’ve got long fingers, like Dziadzi, my grandfather did.”
So my father called my grandmother to see if she just might have the money to buy a violin. That took courage, because this was a woman who had lived through three Wars and the Great Depression, who saved every penny and S & H stamps, who made even her own noodles out of scratch (Polish kluski and German spaetzl). For her a ten cent bottle of coke was an unforgivable extravagance that you would regret, the next time war, inflation or another Great Depression came around. But she sent a check for the cost of that violin, also on the condition that I never stop playing it, somewhere, for somebody, even if only for myself, she said. Forty years later, if I go too long without opening the violin case, I have very bad dreams, in which I open the case and it’s empty. Or I’ve backed the car over it. Or I see my grandmother, scowling and wagging her finger at me.
How about you? Who, beside your immediate parents, was a hero for you, who believed in you, challenged you, encouraged, mentored or blessed you with attention, correction, affirmation, and more?
Which brings me to the connection between this Sunday of 2017, communion Sunday, and today’s terrible story about Herod and the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem. If you’re wondering, why that passage, why that story, especially when we’re sharing communion today? I could just say that this story follows on the heels of the visit of the Magi in Matthew’s gospel that we heard about in worship the last Sunday we met.
We could stand to think about this story any day, any time. For one thing, church tradition remembers the young victims of Bethlehem as the very first martyrs for Christ. That’s timely, in an age when the persecution of Christians is on the rise, worldwide.
But today I want to focus on two answers that this story gives to a very common question, especially at the beginning of a New Year. That question is: What time is it? Not just, what time does the clock say it is? Or the calendar? Rather, What time is it in our timeless God’s schedule for redeeming the world and renewing Creation?
The time now is…. borrowed time. It is borrowed time for three reasons: First, we borrow all life, breath, every day, every moment, every beat of our hearts, from the timeless God who created time, and who ever is, was and shall be. Secondly, we borrow all time today against the coming in fullness of God’s kingdom, whenever that happens. At some point, whether by death or at Christ’s return, we will render up our time-bound lives for a timeless eternity in the fullness of God’s presence. Not only did Christ and his kingdom come in First Century Palestine; not only will he come again; Christ comes to us continually, even now, seeking welcome and reception. If we have accepted Christian baptism, our vows of repentance and acceptance of Christ were only the beginning. Christ comes to us again and again in ways to refresh and renew us, to challenge and to grow us, to comfort and to guide us, often into another area of our lives that we didn’t know needed more of his presence and Lordship. Christ and his kingdom come to us anew each day, and with each age and stage of our life and growth. When we go through the changes, the stages, the growth and the losses of living and dying in such ways that our faith grows and our character becomes more Christ-like, we are then again accepting and welcoming the king and his kingdom. Christ also comes to us in the weak, the poor and the needy, young or old. When we welcome them into our friendship, our hearts or our homes, then again, we are accepting and welcoming Christ and his kingdom. So it is always time to welcome and embrace the kingdom of God and its King, Jesus, unlike King Herod, who did the opposite.
Thirdly, we borrow time and this life from our descendants, from the children, and the generations to come. The results of our actions, our use of resources, what we neglect, what we protect, what we use and abuse, restore or destroy, the generations to come will deal with the effects of our choices much longer than we ever ill.
Whether then we are parents or not, it is time, now and always, to cherish and nurture the children, and the generations to come, and to stockpile for future generations the true wealth of character, conduct, love and living that will pay dividends for the generations to come, for, as I said, we borrow time and life from coming generations.
Now some people would say that the one time negates the other. If we believe that we’re living on borrowed time because the kingdom of God is at hand, and Christ is returning, then why think or worry about future generations? That’s what a Secretary of the Interior said thirty years ago: since Jesus was coming back soon, we don’t need to worry about protecting Creation and preserving the earth’s resources for future generation, he said, because very soon, there won’t be any future generations.
Now, I also believe in Christ’s return. With the ancient creed I confess, “Christ shall come to judge the living and the dead.” But when he is coming is not ours to discern, nor decide. We do have some responsibility however for what we are found doing when Christ and his kingdom come as a sudden final inspection of ourselves and the church. Whether that sudden final inspection happens, whether on my deathbed, or before, I want to be found doing the opposite of what King Herod did. Because he could not welcome the Christ child, he became an enemy, a threat and a danger to all children, including, history tells us, his own.
When Christ comes, next time in glory, I want to be found at my post doing what I was supposed to be doing all along. I don’t see how waste, greed or profligate self-indulgence would please the Master. I can think of nothing that he wants me to be found doing at his return that would not make the world better for the generations to come. Living in reference to the coming of God’s kingdom, now and in the future, and living so as to bless, nurture and cherish future generations, are mutually compatible things; they’re even identical.
That’s why I have this beautiful West African cloth hanging in the office next to my desk. It says, “Even if [I knew that] the end of the world is for tomorrow, I will plant a tree today.”
So again, what time is it? It is always time to welcome and receive Christ and his kingdom. And it is always time to work for the welfare of children and of generations to come. For Christ himself said, “Whoever welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me (Mt. 18:5).” Let’s consider some of the ways in which we cherish and enrich our children and the generations that follow us: 1) Zion has an abuse prevention, protection and response policy that was updated just this year. That happened when there was no problem pushing us to do so, I’m glad to say. Every year, when we refresh our acquaintance with the details and demands of that policy, I hope no one rolls their eyes and says, “Again? Didn’t we go over this last year? Don’t they trust me?” It’s precisely because we develop, review, renew and apply these policies and procedures that we can most trust each other. More importantly, the children can trust us.
2) Then, secondly, there are our ministries geared toward youth and children, and those of the community, such as our Christian Education ministry, Second Sunday activities, high school and middle school youth programs and sponsors, a mentoring program, and our summertime Vacation Bible School. But the legacy we leave to our children is an important matter for all, not only for parents, youth sponsors or Sunday School teachers.
One of the most important things we can do for the children, whether we are parents or not, Peter described in his Second letter: “Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Grow in the goodness and godliness of our relationships with God and others, in our homes and in the church. Because that not only makes children more secure and safe, it’s how children and youth learn these same values and beliefs, from our character, our values, beliefs and behaviors.
I invite us then to think of church not so much as a place nor as a time on Sunday morning, but as a great chain of Christian nurture that connects the generations. Those in the know about lifelong Christian formation say that every child needs about five or six Christian adults, besides their parents, giving them care, attention and affirmation if they are to take Christ seriously and stick with him through the challenges and changes of growing up.
So for us older folks, don’t let the fact that we don’t get the music, the slang or the technology of younger people scare us away from showing care and interest in them. I still see the lights go on in their eyes whenever an older person shows up at their games or asks them how their classes or their activities are going. And kids, don’t roll your eyes at us old-timers when you discover how clueless we are about things and people that matter to you. We have something to contribute that will far outlast Rihanna and Justin-what’shisname.
The dangers and challenges facing children and youth are at least as great now as they were in Herod’s kingdom. Not far from Herod’s home turf, we have been treated to a daily spectacle of Syrian children caught in the crossfire of a civil war, with no sides showing any respect nor restraint for their innocence nor their vulnerability. Closer to home, children born to undocumented parents worry and wonder, What will become of us if our parents are rounded up and deported? Some parents in this community and elsewhere worry and wonder, Who will take and raise my children, who were born here, if I should be rounded up and deported?
Even for children in well-off and secure settings, it’s an increasingly unfriendly world. I left a hand-written note on the windshield of a stranger’s car last year, since I didn’t know who or where the owner was. It asked, “How will I explain your bumper sticker to a six-year-old who is just learning to read?” Now I don’t approve of anonymous letters. They’ll go right into the trash should ever I get one. But did I want someone who sported a bumper sticker so rude, crude and lewd, to know my name? So I left my note anonymous. If you disapprove, “let the righteous smite me, it will be like oil to my head,” says the Psalm. Since then, I’ve only seen more of such communications, and worse. I believe that children have a right to innocence, and to developmentally safe and reverent ways of learning about human relationships and sex. And evidently, the market and the media disagree.
There is also, of course, the issue of abortion. I am conflicted about the politics of it. But whenever a society or the economy calls anyone “unwanted,” born or unborn, I question that society and its values, rather than the person in question.
Instead, I would like to think of the church of Jesus Christ as something like a herd of musk oxen in the Arctic Circle. In the presence of wolves, Polar Bears or Eskimo hunters, the adult cows and bulls form a circle with their horns facing outward, toward the predators, and with their calves and other weakened, vulnerable members on the inside, as if to say, “You have to get past all of us, to get at any of us.” I wish the world were more that way. But let the church of Jesus Christ show how it is done.
So again, what time is it? Whatever the clock says, whatever the calendar says, it is always time to embrace and receive God’s kingdom and God’s anointed King, Jesus, whether anew in our lives, or in a new part of our lives. It is also always time to invest ourselves in the welfare of the weakest and most vulnerable among us, especially of the children and of generations to come. When the King comes, that’s what I want to be found doing. Because more than a few people did that for me. And because, when the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, he did so as a child, a very needy, vulnerable, dependent and endangered child.