Divine Hope for a Troubled World

Rev. Ron Campbell
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

January 1, 2005

Text: Matthew 2: 13-18

This morning let's talk about Divine Hope for a Troubled World. Several years ago I led a retreat at the 7A Ranch in Wimberley for the grief support group For the Love of Christi. The closing Sunday morning worship service was held in the rustic chapel at Pioneer Village. All the persons on the retreat had lost some loved one under tragic circumstances and for many their grief was fresh and raw. During the prayer time I asked each person to write a personal prayer on a note card. We all gathered around the alter; put our prayers on the table, placed one hand on the cards, and with the other hand we held someone else's hand. I verbalized a prayer lifting up to God the hurts and brokenness of those standing around that table and their prayers. I asked God to touch each person in the places where they needed His grace the most with the gift of his divine presence, comfort and strength. The tears welled out and their grief flowed out uncensored. Then hugs followed all around and God's grace embraced us as we shared holy tears.

Jim Mayfield often makes the comment that if we could hear the hurts of people in worship the screams would be so great that we couldn't hear anything else. Each Sunday in our Pastoral Prayer we offer prayers of joy and prayers of concern. You know life is like a ball of string all wrapped up with strings of joys and concerns. For some people the joys outweigh the concerns. For others the weight of the concerns outweighs the joy. But for all of us our lives contain joys and concerns and every emotion in between. Last week Ann Beaty's message focused on the joy end of the continuum . She helped us share in the joy of a new born baby as Jesus must have experienced as he looked up from the manger at a new world surrounded by a blanket of warmth and love by Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the heavenly angelic choir. God's grace and divine hope are certainly present with us in the joyful experiences of our lives.

Today though, let's give ourselves look at the cruel and hurtful side of life, the concerns side, that we might receive God's Divine Hope that comes to us even here, in the pain of life when we need hope the most. First let's look at the Scripture for today which is the piece of the Christmas Story that we often skip over. I don't want to skip over this difficult text for I find in this part of the story a word of Divine Hope for our Troubled World! We pick up the story after the baby is born and after the wise men inquire where to find the new King and presen t their gifts. When we pick up the story Joseph is warned in a dream to flee , takes his little family to Egypt for safety, and Herod's troops descend upon the little village of Bethlehem and kill all the babies two and under .

Let me share a personal story. On our pilgrimage to Israel in 1997 our tour leader, Lillian Bloom, took us to a Greek Orthodox Church in Bethlehem called the Church of the Nativity. Tradition claims that this church was built over a grotto or cave called the “holy crypt,” which is the place where Jesus was born. We went through a door in the chancel down stairs to a small room where there an alter stands over a blue Star of David on the ground. Whether it is the exact spot where Jesus was born or not it was close enough for me? I got on my knees and kissed the star with a deep sense of reverence and honor. Lillian led us out the front door then into another church just beside the Church of the Nativity, a Western Catholic Church. She led us down another set of stairs into another crypt, this time not a birth crypt but a burial crypt. ”What is that small crept for?” I asked. “The place where the babies Herod killed where laid” Lillian replied. “Lillian how many children were killed?” She immediately said “18.” Of course they would know! If 18 babies had been killed at once in a little town like Bethlehem by an onslaught of soldiers going through every home…of course they would know how many, and remember forever. Verse 18 in our text is a quote from the prophet Jeremiah referencing Jacob's wife Rachel whom he buried near Bethlehem: “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.” I could almost hear the screams and the wailing echoing in that room!

Now the good news! Lillian led us out the opposite way up another set of stairs into a large room with a high ceiling; alter against the wall, a window high up on the side wall, and stairs in the middle of the back wall up to a door on the street. “Lillian, what's this room?” I asked. In this room St. Jerome spent thirty years of his life translating the Scriptures into Latin, the Vulgate. We were standing in the room where St. Jerome lived and worked, completely dedicating his life to getting the GOOD NEWS OF GOD'S DIVINE HOPE translated into a language that the people who spoke Latin could understand! Here we were where St. Jerome slavishly wrote the Vulgate twenty feet away from the spot where tradition says that the babies Herod killed lay in decompose.

You see human hope, based on our life experiences, only works so far . When we hit the depths of human experience, the tough times and the times when we come face to face with the underbelly of human life, cruelty and evil and random tragedies, we need something more , something only God can supply. It's God's Word of Divine Hope when we need it the most that gives us the strength not only to persevere but to be empowered to live in the midst of difficult circumstances with confidence and assurance. That's what is contained in today's scripture lesson: Divine Hope for a Troubled World.

Now let's do a little Theological Work. This story about Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt and Herod killing the babies is only told in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew was writing to a Jewish community which was trying to figure out how Jesus fit into the flow of God's salvation history. Matthew was convinced that Jesus was the new Moses. You see the central events in the life of Israel in their relationship to God revolved around Moses; Moses bringing the people out of slavery in Egypt, Moses crossing the Red Sea through God's miracle, Moses leading them through the desert wanderings, Moses receiving the Torah from God, the tem commandments and the laws that were the basis of the Covenant between God and the Hebrews.

Matthew wanted this community to see clearly that Jesus was the new Moses. Like Moses; Jesus was vulnerable as a baby and plucked from the threat of death, like Moses Jesus went into Egypt that he could save his people and bring them out of slavery, in this case slavery to sin and death. Matthew also wanted to show that Jesus' authority was anchored in Moses and the Old Testament but it went beyond as well. This is clearest when we look at Matthew's description of the Last Supper. Jesus participated in the Passover Supper and honored this traditional ritual that commemorated the Exodus, but Jesus changed some things in it and by doing so transformed it, demonstrating that his authority superseded that of Moses. Jesus took the unleavened bread of the Passover but instead of the traditional words, Jesus said, “This bread is my body broken for you. When you eat of this bread remember me.” And when he lifted the Passover Cup of Blessing which recalled the blood of the sacrificed lamb, Jesus substituted for the traditional words, “This is my blood poured out for you. Remember me when you drink it.” And Jesus added that Thursday evening, “My sacrifice establishes a New Covenant” which incorporates but supersedes the Old Covenant at Sinai, a New Covenant signified and sealed by my death and my resurrection.

So you see this story of Herod killing the babies must be interpreted in the larger context of Matthew's understanding of Jesus as the new Moses. In this baby Jesus God was beginning a new work of salvation in human history that would eventually lead Jesus to the cross and the empty tomb. In the birth and the life of Jesus, the cross, the tomb and the resurrection, God's most definitive work of salvation had been accomplished, even more decisive than his work through Moses.

Now let's bring this message of divine hope closer to home, to our lives. I would like for you to turn to the hymn we sang as our opening hymn today, “How Firm a Foundation,” number 529. For a number of years a dear friend of mine and I have had a running conversation about this issue of where God is in our troubles. This friend has experienced many times of great stress in her life and is suffering now with her Parkinson's disease which is getting much worse. Year's ago she shared with me that she had struggled with this hymn, especially verse 3: “When through deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow; for I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”

What does it mean that God will be with us and bless our troubles and sanctify our deepest distress? Well, we've come up with several attempts to satisfy our puzzlement about this. But I've settled on one interpretation as the best I can come up with: one definition of “to sanctify” is that this means “to be set apart for God's purposes.” This makes sense, for it doesn't focus upon o ur natural desire that our lives be made easier and it doesn't focus upon what God does or doesn't do for us. No it focuses upon how God can use our troubles and our deep distress for his purposes. For God “To bless our troubles and to sanctify our deepest distress” is to be set apart for God's purposes that God might transform our troubles into someone else's blessing. Let's look back at Jesus sparred a cruel death as a baby while many others died. Perhaps God inspired Joseph in that dream to flee not that Jesus should be immune to the cruelty and pain of the world, but that Jesus might be sparred so that the purpose for which he was sent by God could later be fulfilled. You see suffering and the cross and the tomb still awaited Jesus in his future. Jesus wasn't sparred as a baby out of special favor but for a special purpose.

I'll bring this sermon to a close by sharing a real life story showing how God's divine hope in our troubled lives can be transformed into God's blessing for others. Let's circle back to the opening, the worship service at Wimberley on that retreat with For the Love of Christi. For the Love of Christi emerged out of the tragic experience of Don and Susan Cox . In 1985 Christi Lanahan, their daughter, was hit by a drunk driver in downtown Austin on a Saturday night, then drug 300 yards under his truck. Don Cox, her step-dad, who raised her as his daughter, had to identify her mutilated body. Her mother Susan and Don lived in virtual hell for two years.

In 1987 they both, reaching the depths of their poisoned life of loss, grief, anger, depression and numbness of their souls, looked at each other and agreed, “ We've got to find a way to deal with this without killing ourselves. We've got to find a way to turn our tragedy into some kind of blessing.” So, on a Monday night, in their living room, they looked at the small circle of friends they had invited who had experienced similar loses and pain, and Don and Susan said, “We're here ‘For the Love of Christi. Who are you here for?” Susan and Don Cox found divine hope in the midst of the worst tragedy of their lives. God's grace empowered them not only to move on and to live again, but also to use their experience of the loss of Christi to bring God's divine hope to many others who are walking the same path of grief. The Christi Center on Hancock Drive is recognized nationally as being a model for reaching persons in the depth of despair with human and divine hope.

Where are the places in your life, your soul, where you need God's healing touch and divine hope the most? When we go to a doctor, the doctor will in some form begin to ask us “Where do it hurt?” We can ask the same question related to the health of our souls. Where do it hurt, in your soul? Where you need God's healing touch and divine hope the most in your life and in your soul? Where have your troubles caused you pain that still lingers on that you can't seem to get past? And what are your troubles you're dealing with now that seem overwhelming in your life? This story of Joseph and Mary fleeing in fear and Herod killing the babies that is our scripture today contains a word of divine hope for our lives in the places where we hurt in our souls. Let's take this medicine in , the healing balm of the Good News of God's Divine Hope contained in this difficult story in Matthew, the second part of the birth story, and let it heal us as we look forward to this New Year, which will contain great joys and perhaps also great sorrow. For through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus and our willingness to devote our lives to living in His grace, we can know that God is with us, God is for us, that God will bless our troubles , and indeed, God will sanctify our deepest distress.

Let us Pray: Oh God, take our troubles and our distress and use them for your redemptive purposes in our world. Plant in our souls the message of your divine hope for our troubled world and our troubled lives. Amen.