The Courage of Faith

This is the sermon I gave during the Christmas Day service in 2016 at First Congregational Church of Maltby.

The Courage of Faith

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 25, 2016

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s a story that’s told from the horrible years of World War II. It’s legend not history. It never really happened, or at least the details of it didn’t happen although the historical background of the story did; but it’s a great story. It goes like this: The Nazis overran one of the countries of my ancestors, Denmark in this case. And they did what they did all over the lands they had conquered. They began first to harass the Jewish people of those lands, then to round them up, then to ship them off to the death camps. The first thing they did was make them put Stars of David on their clothing so everyone could see that they were Jews. One day King Christian of Denmark rode out of his palace on a fine horse. Sewn to his coat was a Star of David. He wasn’t Jewish. As a Danish king he was certainly Lutheran. But he was the king. He was the king of all the people of Denmark, and he knew it. He valued all of his people, be they Christian, Jewish, or anything else. So he sewed a Star of David on his coat in solidarity with his Jewish subjects. Many other Danes did the same thing. Because they did, many of the Jewish citizens of Denmark were saved.

Here’s another story that I know is true. It happened in Billings, Montana, during the holiday season of 1993. There was a Jewish family in town named the Schnitzers. It was the season of Hanukah, and the Schnitzers had put menorahs in their windows. The menorah is the symbol of Hanukah, kind of like the Christmas tree is our symbol of Christmas. It’s a candelabra with eight candles on it. Young Isaac Schnitzer was sitting at a desk in his house that wasn’t in his bedroom doing his homework. His parents weren’t home, but a babysitter was with him. Suddenly he heard a loud crash. When he and the sitter went to investigate they found that someone had thrown a rock through the window of his bedroom, a window that had a menorah in it. The sitter called Isaac’s parents. They came home and called the police. A wise police chief came. He told the Schnitzers that he would do everything he could to find the culprits who had done that hateful thing. But he also said that the whole town needed to respond to this act of hate. There had been other acts of hate in Billings in those days. African Americans and Native Americans had been targeted by skinheads filled with hate. A Christian woman named Margaret MacDonald and the chief called a meeting of all of the people of Billings, and many came. She had heard the legend about King Christian and the Danes during World War II. Mrs. MacDonald said “Why don’t we all put menorahs in our windows to show that we stand with the Schnitzers and won’t tolerate acts of hatred in our town?” And they all agreed to do it. A certain Rev. Torney, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Billings, said he would talk to other religious leaders and get them on board. (See? We Congregationalists really do have a history of standing up for what’s right and not insisting that everyone has to be like us.) Soon there were menorahs in windows all over Billings. And the incidence of hate crimes went down.

Today we have a President-elect who says he wants to register all Muslims in our country. Many of us Christians have stood with our brothers and sisters against this and other kinds of discrimination for a long time. We have stood against demonizing people who are different from us. We need to do it again today. Many of us have said that if our government tries to make Muslims register we will go and register as Muslims even though we aren’t. If we do we will be taking a risk. Standing up for what is right always involves a risk. Many Danes really did help many Jews escape to unoccupied Sweden. They took a risk. The people of Billings took a risk when they put menorahs in their windows. The haters smashed some of those windows. Doing what is right always involves a risk.

And we wonder how we can have the courage to take such a risk for someone else, for someone not like us. Here’s how. We can have the courage to take that risk because today is Christmas Day. Today we celebrate how God took an enormous risk by becoming human. God took the risk of being rejected. God took the risk of being scorned. God took the risk of being tortured. God even took the risk of being killed. And all of those things happened to God in Jesus Christ. And God overcame it all. God raised Jesus from the dead. Through Jesus’ resurrection God inspired a movement that we now call Christianity that has brought more people to God than any other movement ever has. That has brought more people more peace, strength, comfort, and hope, than any other movement ever has. That has inspired more human acts of generosity, kindness, and courage than any other movement ever has. That has inspired more people to take great risks to do what is right than any other movement ever has. Yes, Christians have done horrible things too, but that’s not a topic for this day of celebration. Today we celebrate God taking the risk to come to us as one of us. If God was willing to take that risk, how can we not take much smaller risks to do what is right?

So in the year to come, if we see something wrong, let’s have the courage to stand against it. Let’s have the courage to do what’s right. Maybe people won’t like us when we do. Maybe we won’t be able to stop evil when we do. The Danes couldn’t stop the Nazis from killing some of the Jews if Denmark. We might even get hurt when we do. But we can still do what is right. We can still do our part to make God’s dream of a world of peace and justice for all people a reality. We can still say thank you, God, for your gift of Jesus by doing what Jesus would have done, by doing what’s right. He comes to us today as a helpless infant. He comes to us every day as the Spirit of  hope, peace, joy, and love. Let’s have the courage of Billings and Denmark. Let’s have the courage to do what’s right. With Jesus as our help and our hope, we can. Amen.

Herod Was Right

This is a sermon I gave twelve years ago at Monroe Congregational UCC. It seems to me that it is more appropriate than ever as we approach the inauguration of the first American fascist president, so I am posting it here. It speaks a profound truth that we all need to know now more than ever.

Herod Was Right

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 26, 2004 

Scripture: Matthew 2:13-23 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen. 

We all love the Christmas stories, don’t we? We love the star of Bethlehem. It lights our way to Jesus. For us it isn’t Christmas without it. We love the Wise Men. It wouldn’t be a Nativity scene without them. We love the shepherds and the angels and the lambs. They provide countless roles for children in our Christmas pageants. We love most of all Luke’s story of a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn. Christmas is about these stories for us. We cherish our memories of hearing them when we were children and perhaps of reading them to our own or other children ourselves. They are part of who we are, and we love them.

But in Matthew’s Gospel there’s another Christmas story that we rarely hear. It’s one I suspect most of us would just as soon leave out. It isn’t pretty and sweet, it’s brutal and ugly. We leave it out because it destroys our pretty images of Christmas and the coming of sweet baby Jesus. It is the story we just heard of Herod’s massacre of the infants, all the children of Bethlehem aged two years or under. We can hardly imagine such a horror, and we sure don’t want it crashing in on our pretty, peaceful Christmas. Yet there it is. Right at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. The lectionary doesn’t skip it; and neither, I think, can we. So let me try to make some sense out of it here this morning.

Last week I told you that Bible stories are never just about others there and then. They are about us here and now. Keep that notion in mind while I give you another truth about Bible stories. They may or may not be historical accounts of things that actually happened; but whether they are historical or not, the Biblical authors told them for some reason beyond reporting history. They told them to make some theological point. They told the story to make a point about God, or Jesus, or us through that story. That point is often what the stories are saying to us here and now. So what is the theological point of the story of the massacre of the infants? Whether that story is historical or not, Matthew is, I think, trying to say at least a couple of important things about Jesus by telling us his brutal, disturbing story.

One thing Matthew was saying is that, for him and his community, Jesus is the new Moses. Matthew’s story of the slaughter of the children at the beginning of Jesus’ life closely parallels the story in Exodus of Pharaoh’s attempted slaughter of the Hebrew boy children at the beginning of Moses’ life. Matthew, unlike any other Gospel, has the Holy Family coming out of Egypt just as Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt to the Promised Land 1,500 years earlier. And Matthew, unlike any other Gospel, has Jesus deliver his most profound teachings from a high place-the Sermon on the Mount-just as Moses brought God’s law down from the mountaintop in Exodus. There are other parallels between Jesus and Moses in Matthew too, but the point is made. Matthew’s Jesus is, among other things, the new Moses, and the story of the massacre of the infants is one way in which Matthew tells us that.

Matthew, however, has another point to make in this story. To get at that point we need to recall that earlier in Chapter 2-actually in the lectionary reading for next week-King Herod, the Roman client king who ruled Judea at the time, learned from the Wise Men that a child had been born "King of the Jews." Now, we hear that as good news, but Herod sure didn’t. He heard it as a profound threat. After all, he was king of the Jews; and he knew of the prophecies from Micah and Isaiah that one would come from Bethlehem who would restore the kingdom of David and usher in the reign of God. Like all kings, he didn’t take kindly to the idea of a rival claimant to the throne showing up. Herod knew that if this child were the promised one, his hold on power was profoundly threatened. He reacted exactly the way earthly rulers usually react to a threat real or imagined. He resorted to violence to preserve his hold on power. According to the story, he didn’t know exactly who or where this child was. He had hoped the Wise Men would tell him, but they tricked him by returning from Bethlehem by a different way and not going back through Jerusalem. So he couldn’t destroy the threat to his power simply by killing Jesus. He didn’t know which of the many infant boys in his kingdom was Jesus, so he had them all killed. Never mind the shedding of innocent blood. Never mind the unspeakable anguish of mothers and fathers throughout the land. All that mattered was that Herod retain his hold on power, so the children had to die. With earthly power it is ever thus.

Now, on one level, this is all pretty bizarre. Why should a king, who not only had his own soldiers or at least his own palace guard at his disposal but who was also backed up by the unstoppable might of the Roman legions be afraid of an infant? That’s all Jesus was at this point, to outward appearances at least. A helpless infant in the care of poor, powerless parents, with no following, no army, nothing that could possibly threaten Herod and his Roman patrons. So was Herod simply paranoid? Was he delusional? Was he mad?

No. Herod wasn’t any of those things. Herod was right. Herod thought Jesus was a threat, and he was absolutely right. Jesus was a threat to Herod. Jesus was, and is, a threat to all earthly power, all who rule by force and lies and trickery, all who would dominate others for their own gain and for the gain of their wealthy and powerful supporters. Herod was absolutely right to be so scared of Jesus that he would resort to mass murder, to a crime against humanity as we would call it today, in an attempt to get rid of him.

But how can that be? What is it about Jesus that makes him such a threat to those in power? Well, for Herod in Matthew’s story it was the fact that Jesus was indeed the promised one, the Messiah; and Herod thought that meant someone who would literally, in a worldly sense, take his kingdom away from him. I imagine that Herod thought that if this really were God’s Anointed One not even the military power of Imperial Rome could save him when this child grew up and came to claim his birthright.

But remember my mantra about Bible stories not being only about others there and then but about us here and now too. What is this story about Herod’s fear of a helpless infant saying to us today, here and now? It says: Herod was right. It says all of the Herods of every time and place are right to fear God’s Anointed One. Why? Because He has a rightful claim on our ultimate allegiance, the allegiance that people of all times and places far too readily give to earthly powers and rulers instead.

Throughout history rulers have tried to neutralize the threat that Jesus is to earthly power. Herod tried to deal with the threat by trying to kill Jesus while he was still a baby. He failed. Some thirty plus years later the Romans tried to deal with the threat by crucifying the adult Jesus. They failed. Some 300 years after that the Roman Emperor Constantine tried to deal with the threat by co-opting him. Constantine made the faith Jesus’ followers had created the official religion of the Empire. Constantine succeeded. With the establishment of Christianity as the religion of Empire Jesus ceased to be a threat to Empire. Or rather, Christianity ceased to be a threat to Empire. It became a tool of Empire. The Prince of Peace was put in the service of rule by violence; and the leaders of dominant world power today continue to co-opt Jesus for the purposes of Empire.

But here’s the thing: They can co-opt Christianity, but they can never co-opt Jesus. Herod was right. Jesus, the real, living Son of God, the true Messiah, is a threat to established power. He demands and deserves our allegiance above any flag, above any nation. He calls us to build a world of peace and justice for all people, not a world of domination through violence. That is what Matthew’s story of the massacre of the infants says to us today. God spoke that first Christmas in Jesus, and Herod heard a profound threat. Herod was right. God is still speaking. Are we listening? Amen.