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Dreaming of Home

"Dreaming of Home"

Matthew 2: 13-23

Baby Jesus is 12 days old. Christmas is almost cleaned up at the Wyatt house. The tree had to go, because our adolescent cats and baby Puggle had pretty much destroyed it, playing wild games of ‘snarl and chase' at high speed. New Year's Day arrived, and the vacuum cleaner came out of hiding ... but the crèche, today, is still sitting on Grandma's sideboard in the hall. It's an oddball assortment of a least four manger scenes, of different ethnic varieties and little artistic significance. One day, an African-looking Magi and a white Baby Jesus escaped from the creche, and re-appeared on the kitchen counter, along with a red Laughing Buddha statue that they hijacked along the way. This diverse three-some artfully arranged themselves in a new tableau on top of a bumper sticker that read ‘Who Would Jesus Bomb?' We are a strange household, but we're inclusive!
Baby Jesus is back on the sideboard, and he's resting quite nicely in the manger. I'm sure he'll nap until I'm ready to deal with him. That's what babies do ... don't they?? Any parent knows a disconcerting moment, after birth. You've just spent 9 months focusing on pregnancy, labor and delivery. When it's done, you want to rest on your laurels, rest on anything, actually! At your most exhausted, newborns have needs! You want to sleep; that baby wants ... you! There is no sentimental afterglow - we're whisked to the next stage of parenting, ready or not. It's amazing how quickly little people assert themselves. One of our family stories is of a toddler girl, barely able to talk, who didn't like her nap. She would sing and chatter for hours, and one day, she discovered the true purpose of the baby monitor. She figured out that Mama must be listening on the other end! And so, after scampering around her crib, she got right up next to the monitor and called into it: "Mama, I not sweeping!"

The tableau at the end of the Pageant, the crèche on the mantel ... it didn't stay peaceful, not for long. Today, the Magi have come. Baby Jesus is plucked from the manger, and the Holy Family is off and running. They are refugees, fleeing for their lives. The wise men went to King Herod, asked him about the newborn ‘King'. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know you don't ask an insanely jealous Herod - insecure puppet of the Roman Empire - about a rival without causing some anxiety. Matthew tells a terrible story of a warped plan to eliminate any competition. There is no historic record of what scholars call the "Slaughter of the Innocents." We do know Herod was vile enough to be accused of it. If you are a first-century Jew, Matthew's audience, you hear significant echoes in this story. Matthew echoes Israel's past, to prove Jesus is the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecies. Mary's Joseph echoes another Biblical Joseph, who also went down into Egypt. Mary's Joseph has dreams; the other Joseph had dreams, too. Baby Jesus is saved from Herod. This echoes baby Moses, saved from Pharoah. Herod is the new Pharoah, Joseph is another Joseph, Jesus is the new Moses; he will save his people.

Poor Joseph; every time he has a dream, he has to leave town! Go to Egypt, says the angel. Go to Israel, go to Galilee! Poor Mary, trying to raise a baby, on the run! The whole family must have been dreaming ... of home. A place to put down roots, buy unwieldy things you can't carry around on a donkey! I think of homeless people I've known, pushing grocery carts. Can we imagine having to carry blankets, clothing, food, a tarp for a rainy day? Can we imagine being a refugee, in danger? The afterglow of the manger fades quickly ... the life of young Jesus was not easy. It was the life of the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed of this world. Jesus was in exile, like so many we hear about every day, dreaming of home.

This Christmas I asked myself: ‘Why did Benazir Bhutto go home?' Why did she leave the safety, the luxury of self-imposed exile in London and Dubai to go home to Pakistan? The moment she landed, she was in grave danger. I am no expert on Pakistani politics. I know there are questions about Bhutto's tenure as prime minister ... despite her western education, her charismatic appeal, a champion of democracy. She is described as ‘a creature of Pakistan,' complex and mysterious, her loyalties shaped by that country's turbulent passions and by her own desire for power. And yet her assassination is tragic, a blow to democracy, a brutal reminder of the threat of terrorism, religious fanaticism. In her return, we see a longing for home, for her own people, more powerful than the fear of death.

Exile. Dreaming of home. Since 1960, the Dalai Lama, head of state and spiritual leader of the people of Tibet, has governed in exile, in Dharamsala, India. Will his people's longing for home ever be realized? Our world is filled with refugees. This week, Kenyans fled their homes, escaping terrible violence after a disputed presidential election. Many Kenyans crossed the border to neighboring Uganda. 250,000 people are displaced, say aid workers. We learned in horror of women and children trapped in a church, set ablaze. The Boston Globe, on Thursday, ran a story about Iraqi refugees. It began: "US admissions of Iraqi refugees are nose-diving amid bureaucratic in-fighting despite the Bush administration's pledge to boost them to roughly 1,000 per month." When I was a little girl, the Presbyterian Church my Father served sponsored a Vietnamese family, refugees from that terrible war.

What Herod did - "the slaughter of the innocents" - it's still happening. We, too, live among systems of domination and oppression and violence. The Christmas story is as shocking and subversive and necessary today as it was in the day of the Roman Empire. God comes to share in the pain of our lives, to confront the powers that be, with gentleness and vulnerability and nonviolence, speaking truth, with love, to power. Jesus lives the refugee life, the life of suffering; God inhabits our real lives, not the picture postcard, the manger scene, but the real, daily incarnation of tumult and upheaval. Joseph and Mary, on the run ... there was always an angel watching over them, keeping them safe, warning them, in dreams, when to move on. God was with them, every step of the way; maybe that, in and of itself, constitutes home.

Maybe it isn't where we are on our journey that matters; maybe what matters is that God is WITH us. Maybe being settled is an illusion; but God is with us, anywhere. The romantic pageantry of Christmas Eve and the terror of flight to Egypt; they're connected. Jesus came to share our journey, and redeem it. Herod may not be in our Pageant, or our crèche. But Herod is part of the story, because Jesus did not come just to nap on the front of a pretty Christmas card. He came to get inside our hearts and our souls and our lives, refugees in our own way. He came to cry salty tears, feel wet rain on his face, see the beauty of bare branches outlined against a winter sky. He came to feel the morning sunshine warm his hair, to know love. If we're dreaming of home, home is God with us, everywhere ... Amen.