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THE REST OF THE STORY

Sermon preached at Midway Hills Christian Church

December 26, 2004

Matthew 2:13-23

Well, here we are, the day after Christmas! You know, it is always kind of weird to preach the Sunday after Christmas. We spend the whole four weeks of Advent building up to Christmas Eve when we get to light the Christ Candle and sing Silent Night. So the Sunday after Christmas seems anti-climatic. It was difficult for me to put the bulletin together for today because we were working on the Christmas Eve bulletin at the same time. And it was even harder to write this sermon on the Wednesday before Christmas.

Here we are… at the end of Advent…but at the beginning of Christmastide. In the life of the church we have twelve days—from Christmas to Epiphany, which is January 6-- to linger over the birth of Christ, to contemplate in our liturgy and worship what the coming of Christ really means for us and our world.

Many of us are familiar with the radio newscaster Paul Harvey. Based in Chicago, Mr. Harvey has been a mainstay of U.S. broadcasting for over a half a century. His trademark greeting “Good day!” is heard on some 1,200 radio stations across the nation, reaching some 24 million listeners daily. In May of 1976 he began a series of programs on the ABC radio networks entitled “The Rest of the Story,” which delve into the forgotten or little know facts behind stories of famous people and events. I can just hear his voice, “And now, The Rest of the Story…”

What we have in our gospel lesson for today from Matthew is, I believe, The Rest of the Story. Matthew and Luke, tell widely divergent stories of what happens after the birth of Jesus. Luke’s gospel includes the angel’s appearance to the shepherds, and Mary and Joseph’s presentation of the child Jesus in the temple.

Mathew describes an angel’s message to Joseph in a dream, followed by the journey of the magi in response to the appearance of the star, the magi’s conversation with Herod, their worship of the child, the slaughter of innocent children, and the holy family’s flight into Egypt, precipitated by yet another revelation to Joseph in a dream.

According to Matthew, Mary and Joseph flee with Jesus to Egypt almost immediately after his birth. Yet according to Luke, they are in Jerusalem at the temple eight days after the birth, presenting Jesus for circumcision, and they journey home to Nazareth as soon as the required rituals are completed. In Matthew, however, the family remains in Egypt until the death of Herod, when the third and fourth of Joseph’s dreams reveal to him that it is now safe to return with the child to Nazareth.

The Rest of the Story, lies, I believe, not in harmonizing these events of Matthew and Luke. The Rest of the Story lies with this passage in Matthew’s gospel. It can be found in Herod’s response to the news of the birth of the Christ child. It is found in Joseph’s dreams. The Rest of the Story can be found in the journey to a foreign land.

For all of the warm fuzzies we may feel with idyllic scenes of shepherds and wise ones and the little lord Jesus asleep on the hay, the reality of this account in Matthew is that Christmas is dangerous business. The good news is threatening to those in power. Mary said it:

“God has shown strength and scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”

No wonder Herod wanted Jesus killed.

But it’s not just the proud and powerful, the evil rulers of the world, that are unsettled by this “good news.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.”

Like the original prophecy Isaiah gave to King Ahaz, “Emmanuel,” God with Us can be good news and bad news. A word of comfort and a word of indictment.

Christmas can also be dangerous because it evokes our dreams and hopes. There is a scene in the movie, Shawshank Redemption, in which one prisoner says to another, “Hope is a dangerous thing. The reality is that we’re in here, and hope is out there.”

Christmas can be costly because it demands that we put “the hopes and fears of all the years” to work. It calls on us, like Joseph, to respond to our dreams. In Native American culture there is a talisman called a ‘dream catcher.’ It looks like a simplistic version of a spider’s web, adorned with decorative feathers and beads. According to legend, parents are to hang a dream catcher over their newborn’s cradle. The web catches only the child’s good dreams, while letting the bad dreams escape.

For our world today, this seems backwards. Wouldn’t it be better if the dream catcher snagged only the bad dreams, those of hate, despair, envy and vengeance and kept these destructive dreams from free-floating around in our atmosphere? We must free our good dreams, not keep them to ourselves. We must let good dreams become as prevalent and pervasive as the nightmares that surround us.

Like Joseph in today’s text we must be God-dreamers. Holy dreamers. Joseph heard the call of the Holy in his dreams and responded by putting that call into action. The power of the Holy transformed the motivation behind all Joseph did. Joseph did not simply have a bad dream and run away from Egypt. He had a Holy dream and immediately implemented God’s plan.

Like Joseph, if we respond to Holy dreams, we may find ourselves in foreign land. It seems God has always been in the business of leading people in ‘a way they know not.’ God said to Abraham and Sarah, go from your homeland, to a land that I will show you. God made a way when there was no way for the Israelites at the Red Sea. God said to Israel through Isaiah, “I will lead them on their journey in a way that they know not; in unknown paths I will guide them. I will turn darkness before them into light and rough place into level ground.” (Isaiah 42) The angel said to Mary, “with God nothing will be impossible.” The angel said to Joseph, “get up, take the child an his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you.”

If we take the Rest of the Story seriously, we may find ourselves in unknown territory, with God asking us to trust in some ways we never have before.

In May of 2001 Paul Harvey found himself living in a nightmare: he lost his voice. The ailment kept him completely mute and off the air through most of the summer. Harvey was finally diagnosed with a virus with no set time for recovery. He said, “I was haunted by the possibility that I might not broadcast again.”

Harvey had been scheduled to speak at a Salvation Army event but sought to be excused due to his voice problem. The organization, though, had sold thousands of tickets, and asked him just to show up without having to utter a word. When Harvey arrived at the Cincinnati airport, the Salvation Army Major who greeted his plane said a prayer for him, “God we know something good will come from Mr. Harvey’s silence.”

Later Harvey recounts, something good did come of it. His silence led him to epiphany. An epiphany that taught him a new way to pray. He said, “My prayers had so often been a shopping list of things I wanted to be done, but then I began to pray, Thy will be done.”

Within a few months Harvey was led to a voice specialist who performed an outpatient procedure that reinforced a weak muscle alongside a vocal chord and within minutes, the voice which had been mostly mute came back to life.

What will be your epiphany as you take the reality of Christmas more seriously? Is God calling you to some Holy dreaming? Will you have the courage to act on those dreams? What are some ways you are being invited to trust God’s leading into territory that may be unknown to you, but not to God? The ways you decide to answer these questions will become for you, The Rest of the Story…..