Sermon: The Vulnerability of God

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
January 06, 2008

Epiphany

The Vulnerability of God

Matthew 2:1-23

Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In all the beauty and warmth of Christmas, as the nativity stories are read, I think it’s easy for us who’ve been Christian our whole lives to get lulled with the baby Jesus into a kind of sleepy, heavenly peace.  It’s hard for us to hear the really shocking parts of the birth narratives anymore, where the holy child is anything but warm and comfortable.  In Luke’s story the newborn Jesus is poor and homeless, and in this version from Matthew’s gospel, King Herod is happy to murder all the boy toddlers in Bethlehem just to be sure he wipes out the one the magi predict will be King of the Jews.  Why in the world would a loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God send his son into such an awful situation? 

After all, Luke’s gospel has the refugee Mary give birth NOT in a stable (because there’s no mention of any shelter at all in the Bible) but somewhere else – maybe even on the road, but certainly very exposed and dangerous. The best the poor parents can do to protect their fragile newborn son is to wrap him in bands of cloth and lay him in a manger – which is just as likely to have been on the outside of a shed or barn, or in the corner of a field, as inside a cozy stable.  And in this text from Matthew, even though the wise men find Jesus a little older and settled down with his parents in a house in Bethlehem, he is far from safe.  As “King of the Jews,” he doesn’t have much of a kingdom to rule – since his country is under brutal occupation by the Roman Empire.   Herod has already proved himself a paranoid and violent king – enough that he has had several of his own sons murdered, to remove any threat they might pose to his throne.  So why in the world would God leave his child so vulnerable and exposed, if he expected Jesus to live long enough to grow up to be his people’s messiah?

Besides that, since Jesus was what we would call today an “at risk” infant, born into poverty and violence, why would the writers of the gospels want to make sure all the messy details got recorded?  Wouldn’t they want to gloss over the dangers a little?  Otherwise God the Father they’re trying to promote looks kind of irresponsible.  By the time the New Testament was written, “the scandal of the cross” was already a problem for the first Christians.  It was hard to make progress in evangelizing the world with a Savior who was NOT all-powerful. Instead, he was a street preacher and healer born out of wedlock to a small-town carpenter and his fiancé and then crucified by the Romans as a traitor to the state.  How could he compare to the great Greek hero Hercules, also born to a mortal and a god, whose 12 labors shows off such enormous physical strength and courage?  Baby Jesus looks kind of puny by comparison. 

In the ancient world it was just common sense that the way you could judge the most worthy gods was by their power – and the military power of the nations that worshiped them.  In other words, ancient peoples often would convert to the gods of a conquering army – figuring that the gods who failed them must be weaker than the gods of the victor.  So Matthew had a challenge to set out in his writings a sermon that proclaimed the Good News of the birth of a king like Jesus in a way that would make sense and be convincing to the listeners of his time.  Matthew does this in several ways. 

First, by placing Joseph as the baby’s guardian through a divinely inspired dream and leading the family on the great escape to Egypt, we can’t help but think of the OTHER Joseph who (in Egyptian exile) was in a position to save his people through a series of dreams.  Second, the arrival of the “wise men from the East” would have been another validation of Jesus’s royal destiny, considering that their work as astrologers would have been as respected as astronomy is as a science today.  And finally, by having the infant Jesus narrowly escape Herod’s “massacre of the innocents,” and then return later to be a guide and savior for his people, we are reminded of Moses, who as an infant only narrowly escaped Pharoah’s murdering rampage against all the Hebrew baby boys.

Now even if you assume (as most of us do) that God wasn’t worried about the risk in such a dramatic and dangerous birth story because, as God, he could provide all the miraculous protection the baby might need – we are still confronted by my original question.  What message is God trying to send by allowing his divine child to reach us in such a reckless method of delivery?  What can we learn today about the nature of God in this mysterious incarnation, when Jesus comes to us so weak and vulnerable?

First, the vulnerability of Jesus calls us into action.  We are not passive recipients of salvation – we are more like recruits into Christ’s army or onto his team.  We are called to be his disciples in the service of humanity – in spreading the good news of love and joy and hope and peace into this world.  I saw a poster once that showed this very well.  It looked like a kind of mug shot of Jesus, a pencil sketch of his head and shoulders.  And under it, these words:  “He lived on the streets.  People said he was crazy.”  Nothing more had to be said.  It was a call to action, to see the face of Christ in the face of our brothers and sisters in need.  This is exactly what we are doing now in our church with our refugee resettlement ministry.  A young family – mother, father, and young son – displaced by death threats and violence in their own country, is finding shelter and safe haven with us.

Second, the vulnerability of God permits us to make ourselves vulnerable, which is a great challenge, but also a great gift.  I had a dear church friend, who’s been gone for a number of years now, but he was born in an old Louisiana farmhouse back in the 1920s.  He was a twin, and premature, so the doctor handed him to his grandmother with a command to take him away to die – no need to upset her daughter, my friend’s mother, by even having to see the smaller, weaker baby.  Why allow her to get attached when there was no chance he’d survive?  The doctor focused on trying to save the healthier son.   But my friend Bob’s grandmother would have none of that, as you might imagine.  She wanted to take the risk of losing a baby she had taken the time to love.  So she vigorously rubbed him, and warmed him, and talked to him – Bob said she bullied him into living!  Much later, she helped Bob get through the death of his twin – who died on a French beach on D-Day.  He said she taught him everything about letting go to love, to accept its relentless power, even when it hurts so bad you think you’re going to die.

Finally, our awareness of the vulnerability of God, in the life and death of a mortal Jesus, we hope makes us more aware of the fragility of our own existence.  That awareness usually makes us more thankful, and more likely to treasure every moment of the life that is given us.  Not only that, if even God’s own son was vulnerable to injury, suffering and death, then we must be reminded that the pain we experience is not divine punishment and is not meaningless, but rather is the way we have been given to walk – with the compassionate Christ by our side.  The cross, and God’s table of grace, reminds us that God does know what it is to be human, and understands our own pain, and loss.  The covenant that connects us in Christ’s church universal means that whenever one member of the body suffers, we all suffer.  The vulnerability of God is ours as well – and it draws us ever closer to the heart of Christ.

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.