Twas the Day After Christmas

Matthew 2:13-23

The Sunday after Christmas is an awkward time. Our society has already forgotten about Christmas and is already gearing up for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Christmas is past. But on the Christian calendar Christmas just starts on the 25^th and goes for twelve days, the 12 days of Christmas. That is why we are still singing Christmas songs in the worship service. I am pulled between the two calendars. I want to be faithful to the Christian observance while not being oblivious to what people are thinking and feeling in our society. What most of us are feeling is that things are starting to get back to normal. They will not really get back to normal until after New Year’s Day. But the family Christmas celebrations are over. We probably not have taken down the tree and decorations yet, but there is a sense that the holidays are nearing an end.

What is left of Christmas after the guests have gone home, the presents are put away and the leftovers are eaten? What happens after Christmas? In the gospel lesson for today we have the story in the Gospel of Matthew of what happened after Christmas. It is very informative and helpful to see what the characters in the Christmas story do after Christmas and what God does after Christmas.

I. First, God still speaks after Christmas.  Let’s look at the Wise Men. They are barely mentioned in our reading for today. The first line of the reading says, “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.” The “they’ referred to are the Wise Men. Their story is in the first twelve verses of chapter 2. It clearly says there that the Wise Men came to Bethlehem at some time after Christmas. It says in 2:1 “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

How long after Christmas the Wise Men came is up for debate, but I will not debate it here. It is clearly after Christmas. Even though in the Nativity Scenes we tend to crowd the wise men, angels and shepherds all together, as if they all appeared at the same moment, the gospel story does not describe it in that way. The Wise men clearly traveled to Bethlehem and worshipped the Christ child after Christmas.

As such they are an example for us. Christmas is not the end of the worship of Christ. For many people Christmas is the beginning and end of their religious experience. It may be the one and possibly only time they might come to church to worship. It used to be Christmas and Easter were the two occasions, but Easter is not the holiday it used to be, even though from a Christian and biblical point of view it is the more important of the two holidays. But our culture does not promote Easter the way it promotes Christmas. The Easter bunny runs a distant second in popularity to Santa Claus. So for many people Christmas - especially Christmas Eve - may be their only worship experience all year. And most Americans do not even observe Christmas in a religious manner.

But in the Scriptures the worship of Christ continues after Christmas. Christmas is only the beginning. The Wise men probably started their long journey from the East after Christmas and arrived long after Christmas day. Therefore they are a model for us. Christmas is just the beginning of a new year lived in worship and service to Jesus Christ.

God still speaks after Christmas. God spoke to the Wise men after Christmas. After they had met and worshipped the Christ child, God spoke to them in a dream warning them not to go back and report what they knew to King Herod. Verse 12 says, “Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.”

God spoke to Joseph after Christmas. We see that in our reading in verse 13 “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.” God spoke to Joseph after Christmas.

In both of these examples God spoke to protect them and especially to protect the Christ child from harm. I will talk more about King Herod in a moment. He is the villain of the story. But for now I want to emphasize the protection of God. The purpose of God speaking and leading the Wise Men and Joseph was protection.  This is a demonstration of the love of God.

There is a hymn we sing at Christmastime. “Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, love divine. Love was born at Christmas. Star and angels gave the sign.” This divine love is overshadowed at Christmas in the waves of sentimentality that surround the holiday. But this is clearly the meaning of the holiday. God sent his only begotten Son to earth at Christmas out of love for us. When God speaks to us, it is in tones of love. Not sappy sentimental love. It is not just a feeling that brings tears to our eyes. It is strong courageous love. This is love that protects, love that saves. Love that costs something.

God still speaks after Christmas. The gospel lessons in these Sundays after Christmas will quickly go from the birth of Jesus to the teaching ministry of Jesus. God spoke through Jesus after Christmas through his parables, sermons and miracles. God speaks still today in love.

II. Second, Evil still acts after Christmas. Our gospel lesson includes the story which is called The Slaughter of the Innocents. When King Herod discovered that the Wise Men had deceived him, he became furious and ordered his soldiers to go into Bethlehem and kill all the children under the age of two in an attempt to kill the Christ child. He saw this infant Messiah as a threat to his own rule, just like the young North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un saw his uncle as a threat and had him executed this month.

We know too much about the slaughter of children in our American society. We repeatedly hear on the evening news examples of some crazed gunman, usually a young man, who goes into a school somewhere and shoots children and teachers before turning the weapon on himself. The slaughter of innocents happens today. It does not stop for the holiday season. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown CT happened during the holiday season last year. The recent shooting in Colorado happened a couple of weeks before Christmas. Evil does not take a holiday.

Therefore our vigilance against evil cannot take a holiday. I do not know the solution to gun violence. It seems to me that almost all of these young men who did these terrible shootings used guns that were purchased legally. These were not illegal weapons, so it seems to me that the solution to this problem involves much more than gun legislation. I was reading an article that reported that these much-publicized mass killings account for just 1 percent of all murders nationally. We are talking about a culture of violence in our country. And to be honest it is not just our country. There is a culture of violence in the world. In many countries it takes the form of civil war, international war, organized crime or government violence against its own citizens. There is no easy solution to this problem.

It is not just about violence. It is about evil in the hearts of men. Evil will not be restrained by laws. Evil is by nature law-breaking. The apostle Paul talks about this in regard to the moral law of God. He says that the Law does not stop people from doing wrong. In fact he says there is something in us that rebels against law. If it is wrong, we want to do it. If you have any doubts about that being part of human nature, spend some time with my grandsons. If you say, “Don’t do that!”, then that is exactly what they want to do. That is why there will always be bad people doing bad things. Evil does not take a holiday because we spend a day celebrating the Prince of Peace. There will be still be King Herods and Bashar al-Assads and Kim Jong-uns.

Likewise suffering, illness and death do not take time off for the holidays. I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago entitled “A Funeral at Christmas” about recently going to Pennsylvania to conduct the funeral of a friend. I mentioned in the blog my memories of the death of my father at Thanksgiving thirty years ago and the funeral of my grandfather the next year on Good Friday. Death does not take a holiday, regardless of the play and film by that name.

Our problems do not take a holiday just because the calendar turns to December. In fact financial problems might be worse when people get their credit card bills in January. We might be able to momentarily forget our troubles for a day of celebration, but the day after Christmas they return. Problems, suffering and evil still are present the day after Christmas.

III. Third, we still have to respond to God the day after Christmas. In our gospel lesson, the Wise men heeded the dream and returned to their homeland by another route. Mary and Joseph heeded God’s message in the dream and fled to Egypt. Then a couple of years later the story says that an angel appeared to Joseph once again in a dream and told them to return to Israel to Nazareth. And they obeyed. After Christmas we have to listen to God and obey.

One issue I need to address in this scripture is dreams. In the gospel of Matthew the post-Christmas story is filled with dreams. God speaks to the Wise men and Joseph primarily in that manner. And it seems like angels populate these dreams. It raises the issue of dreams today. Does God speak to us in dreams? To be honest I do not know. I believe that God spoke to the Wise Men and Joseph through dreams. And we see this elsewhere in scripture. Joseph the patriarch in the Book of Genesis was a famous interpreter of dreams. God spoke to Jacob in the dream of Jacob’s ladder.

But God has never spoken to me in a dream. And when people have told me that God has spoken to them in dreams, I confess I am a bit cautious about interpreting such dreams as signs from God. I am not saying it doesn’t happen. I am just saying that it has never happened to me. Perhaps the Near Death Experiences that people have these days are a type of dream in which God is speaking and giving them a glimpse of heaven. But that is the closest thing like this that I know of.

I hear God’s voice in other ways. I hear it through Nature. I hear it through Scripture. I hear it through conscience. I hear it through intuition. I hear it through the Holy Spirit. I hear God speaking through his people. That is how I hear God speaking today. But the fact remains that God speaks still. He spoke to the Magi. He spoke to Mary and Joseph and he speaks to us.

If God does not speak to us today then our religion is just a memory of God speaking in the distant past. That is not my religious faith. I believe that God speaks today. We have to discern God speaking to us today. There are a lot of false voices and false prophets today just like there have always been. It takes some spiritual discernment to distinguish between the voices that claim to speak in the name of God today. To discern the authentic voice of God takes wisdom, which comes from God and from time and experience of a living relationship with God. But the more we grow to know the Spirit of Christ the more we recognize his voice.

Jesus says, “14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own…. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” He says, “the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

God speaks today. Christ speaks today. But there are also a lot of other voices clamoring for our attention. But if we know Christ, we will recognize his voice and follow him. That is what Joseph did. I am sure that Joseph had lots of dreams in his life, but he did not pack up his family and move to Egypt every time he had a dream. He knew the difference between the voice of God and the voice of his own unconscious mind. When he discerned the voice of God, he responded in obedience.

We have to respond today. We have to be open to hear the voice of God, discern the voice of God, and then obey the voice of God. Not just on the holy days and in the holy seasons but after Christmas. After the Christmas carols have long ceased to be played and sung, we are to still hear the voice of God speaking to us in Jesus Christ. And we respond in worship, service, and love.