Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to Exeter Congregational United Church of Christ on the First Sunday after Christmas, December 27, 1998, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews 2:16-18; Matthew 2:13-23

For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham.

I love that, because I am no angel. In fact, I look around and I don't see any angels here. You all look a lot like me. And that's fine with me. We like to think we're a pretty tolerant church, and maybe we are, but I doubt if even we could tolerate angels, and it's hard for me to imagine why angels would want to hang out with the likes of us either.

But we're no angels. And there is the whole point of the Christmas story: that since humanity chose to move away from God, and since God loved them and could not let them go, God chose to move toward humanity in this specific way: to be what we are, who we are, and where we are, to live as we live, suffer as we suffer, and die as we die. And that is what we celebrated this week.

And now it's over. The angels who proclaimed the big event, the multitude of the heavenly host who praised God and sang Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and goodwill toward all-- they've gone, the sky is empty of them. And angels now speak only in dreams like this one Joseph had, and they are not proclaiming or singing either, they are sober voices of warning and instruction. Because not everyone is celebrating. God takes flesh and comes to earth in pursuit of runaway sinful humanity, but one runaway sinful human, King Herod, immediately takes up a pursuit of his own, to search out and destroy this interloper at all costs.

Joseph gets a warning so he can get up and take the mother and child and flee. But the land is full of other parents who get no angel warning, and King Herod doesn't care if their babies get caught in his search and destroy campaign. Some say those children are the first martyrs of Christ. Others say they can't be martyrs because they have nothing to do with Jesus, they just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nowadays we are still familiar with this unfortunate sort of thing, and we call it "collateral damage." It happens a lot. Sometimes the cause of the collateral damage is a wicked ruler like King Herod or worse. But good rulers trying to do the right thing can also make it happen. Why it happens, and whether the persons who make it happen are good or bad, makes a big difference to those of us who might have some say in it. It makes very little difference to the people on the receiving end of the damage.

All of which may go to prove that the story of King Herod and all those innocent babies, which has been called much too horrifying to be told in church, is at least as pertinent in our day as it was two thousand years ago, and we will never appreciate our own need of the Christ child and the Incarnation if we do not see that and accept it. Is not the very use of the term "collateral damage" in our own national conversation a way of distancing ourselves from the flesh-and-blood reality of people being hurt and destroyed by other people?

I do not say this either to blame or to excuse anyone or any faction in the two huge and horrible dramas in which we as a nation are now involved, the one in Washington and the one in Iraq. I say it because I believe that the churches of Jesus Christ, all of them, are called by God to a difficult task now, and that is to name this distancing activity, no matter who is doing it and no matter for what reason, to name it, to say it is what it is, and to say it is sinful under any circumstances in the eyes of God, and those who are doing it should not do it. I say this is difficult because it certainly means pointing the finger at our own friends and allies, no matter which side we're on, and even at ourselves, as well as pointing it at our adversaries, who of course deserve it richly.

It grieves me to say I am as good as the next person at distancing myself from these flesh-and-blood realities, from flesh-and-blood people whom I cannot acknowledge as my own people because my welfare, or the welfare of my people, seems to require doing things against their welfare. I am not saying this very well, and that grieves me too. But I have a story to tell you that made the point to me forcefully. I stumbled across it this week. Perhaps it will do the same for you.

It's about missionaries and cannibals. Sounds like a racist cartoon, doesn't it? But I gather it's true. It was in 1962. The missionaries were Americans, a couple named Don and Carol Richardson. The cannibals were very isolated head-hunters called the Sawi in the jungle of New Guinea. When the Richardsons moved into the jungle, they didn't understand the Sawi any better than the Sawi understood them. Each found the other totally bizarre and fascinating. Out of sheer curiosity, two Sawi tribes, which had been in different parts of the jungle, moved their villages to be next to the home that the Richardsons had built, so Don and Carol found themselves residentially surrounded by these people. They spent some time learning the language and getting acquainted, and then one day they went to the central meeting place and stood there, surrounded by the skulls of the people's former enemies, and began preaching the Gospel. They told them about the history of God's people Israel and all their ups and downs, leading right up to God's promise to send a Messiah to save them, and they told them about Jesus, the whole story.

The people were bored. They didn't think it was very interesting and they didn't see how it had anything to do with them. Don and Carol were frustrated. They were also discouraged about the way these two tribes, who were not used to living side by side, kept declaring war on each other. Don counted 14 wars in his time there. So they gave up and announced that they were leaving, and they told the Sawi why. The Sawi surprised them by saying, "If you stay here, we'll make peace tomorrow morning."

When the Richardsons woke up the next day, they found the two tribes standing facing each other across the clearing on either side of their house. There was a feeling of tension, people milling about anxiously, a sense of danger. Finally and suddenly, in one of the tribes, one man dashed into his hut while his wife wasn't watching, came out carrying their newborn baby, and ran with it across the clearing to the other side. His face and body language conveyed awful terror and grief. His wife saw what he was doing and ran after him, screaming and begging him to bring the baby back to her, but she couldn't catch him and she fell down in the mud, moaning.

The man reached the other side and handed the baby over, and he said, "This is the peace child. I give you my son, and I give you my name." Before long someone from the other side brought another child back across, exactly the same way. Later on the cannibals explained to the missionaries that as long as those two peace children remained alive, the two tribes were bound to each other and would live in peace. A little light bulb went on in Don's head, and he went back to the place of the skulls and started preaching again, only this time he referred to Jesus as God's Peace Child for the whole world, and built a whole Christian theology around that idea.

Man, I wouldn't be a missionary for all the tea in China. No way can I think that fast on my feet. And even if you get bored, you probably won't eat me alive.

But this time the Sawi listened, and they understood as they had not understood before. Which is remarkable, I guess. But what's even more remarkable, I think, is that we might understand our own faith-story as we have never understood it before, if we can listen to it with their ears. When we talk about Christ, we talk about sacrifice. We talk about doing for others. We talk about trust. We talk about putting away the calculus of power. We talk about being members one of another. And I wonder who learned more about all those lovely things in this weird cross-cultural encounter: the missionaries or the cannibals. Indeed, who are the missionaries and who are the cannibals? Who are the holy innocents, and who is King Herod?

It does us no harm, and possibly a lot of good, to look for ourselves on both sides of that clearing. Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given. And he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.