The holidays are over. Tomorrow I’ll take down the decorations, box them up, and stow them safely in the basement until next year. The tree will be taken away, the Christmas music CDs will go in the box and I’m back to playing contemporary Christian music and 70s oldies in the car. The leftover food has either been eaten or tossed, and I’m left wondering, what now?
Well, in the Christian year, this is the day we celebrate the Epiphany, when the Wise Men worshiped Jesus and presented him with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And it is the final installment of our sermon series on Joseph.
There are a few things I want to highlight about the scripture passages I just read.
First, the scripture teaches us that ritual is important; ritual matters. Joseph made sure to do the things that were required by Jewish law after the birth of a child. On the eighth day, Joseph took Jesus to have him circumcised. He stood beside the man whose duty it was to perform the circumcision, and then Joseph offered a traditional prayer. And then, forty days after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph went to the temple in Jerusalem to perform the rituals for purification. After the birth of a male child, the mother was considered ritually unclean for forty days, and then there were certain offerings that had to be made in order to restore her cleanliness.
Ritual still matters, doesn’t it? We practice rituals in our families, and we just experienced some of them in the form of our holiday traditions. There is someone who carves the turkey or ham, someone who passes out the presents around the tree, and someone who reads the Christmas story from the Bible. We also practice rituals in the life of the church, during Advent by lighting candles and singing carols, through baptism, Holy Communion, marriages, funerals, and our weekly worship services. Rituals give order and meaning and predictability to our lives. They remind us that God is God, and that God requires something of us. Rituals connect us with our Christian relatives in all generations, as we speak the same words that have been spoken for centuries by the faithful.
Second, the scripture teaches us that anyone who comes to worship Jesus Christ is welcome. The Wise Men were not Jews, they probably practiced Zoroastrianism; they weren’t from Israel, they were probably Persian; and yet they came because they wanted to worship this new king of the Jews. They were welcome, even though they were foreigners, even though they practiced another religion and would have been considered heathens by good Jews. They were the first to worship Jesus, other than the shepherds who came on the night he was born. God was speaking loudly to the world about radical hospitality and inclusivity.
The church still needs to practice hospitality and inclusivity. And yet, too often the church has been full of judgment instead of welcome, too quick to point a finger and too slow to open its arms. There are so many people out there who don’t know that God loves them, and part of the blame for that falls on the people who say they love God. About two-thirds of people under the age of 40 think that the church is not welcoming. And yet, John tells us that God is love. Jesus tells us that we are to love as God loves. And that means, at the very least, that we make everyone who walks through the door feel welcome, and accepted, and loved, not because we think it is a good idea, but because that is how God welcomes us.
Third, the scriptures tell us that Jesus was a refugee. King Herod, who was as paranoid as they come, felt so threatened by this potential rival to his throne that he ordered the massacre of all baby boys under the age of two in Bethlehem and its surrounding area. I don’t know how parents survive watching their child killed at the hands of a brutal tyrant, I don’t know how many children were killed, but it was a vicious, ugly situation. And Joseph was instructed by an angel to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt immediately. They left in the dark of night to hurry to a land that was strange to them, where they didn’t even speak the language, and where Joseph had no connections that we know of to help him find a job when he got there. They were displaced, forced to leave all that was familiar in order to save the life of their son.
Adam Hamilton writes that the U.N. High Commission on Refugees reports that there are now over 65 million people in the world who have been forced to leave their homes. Of course, the situation we are most aware of is the Syrian refugee crisis. Some of these refugees have made their way to the United States. Others are in refugee camps in various countries. They have been turned away by many nations, and have been considered a threat by our government. Then there are the refugees who are just outside the southern border of our country, hoping to come in and find safety and a new life here. I think of what Adam Hamilton wrote in his book: “I remembered that Jesus, who had been a refugee, once told his disciples that the final judgment would be based on how they – and we – choose to treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned. In oft-repeated words, Jesus said, ‘Just as you did it to one of the least of these … you did it to me.’”
This morning we will participate in an important ritual, the sacrament of Holy Communion. And we will think about the radical welcome that Jesus practiced in his own life and ministry. And we will remember that he spent his earliest childhood as a refugee, someone who knew the meaning of living in a dangerous and unpredictable world. I hope that we will also remember Joseph, the man who was a father to Jesus, the man who taught him about ritual, who showed him what hospitality meant, and who courageously did whatever it took to keep his family safe from harm.
