With Christmas just past, Christians are again reminded that we have little information on young Jesus.
January 6, Epiphany, celebrates the visit of the wise men. Popular imagination has them visiting Joseph, Mary, and Jesus in the manger, but scholars believe they gave their gifts to a two-year-old, not an infant.
This young family is then warned that their son is at risk from King Herod, and they should flee. And so they do, intending to stay in Egypt until they hear that it is safe to go home. While there, they likely heard of the “Slaughter of the Innocents,” thousands of children slain, of mothers’ “wailing and loud lamentation” for their children, refusing to be consoled, because their children are no more.
Eventually they would hear that the first threat had passed, but before they could return home, they learn of a new menace. And so it is that they never return home (Matthew 2:13-23).
This is not the most familiar story for many, including weekly worshippers. It is a painful reading, and if presented with the opportunity to skip it, many do. But we do so at our own risk.
For those of the Christian faith, the Bible, both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, are foundational. These words of God are incarnated, made flesh, in Jesus, the Word of God.
How these words are understood, however, is an entirely different matter. Some people understand the Bible to be without error in science, history, and theology. For others, it is essentially a history of the religious and moral experiences of the people of the time. And many others are somewhere in-between.
How we read Scripture is one thing. How Scripture reads us is another. In Hebrews 4:12 it is written, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
One way to understand “living and active” is that, however you understand Scripture, you can believe God’s Spirit blows through it, charging 5000 year-old words with meaning that is relevant and life-changing right now. And that in turn gives new meaning to our world today. As the theologian Karl Barth wrote, Christians should “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”
Imagine then, a young family living in a dangerous place. The parents are warned that their toddler is in danger from powerful and evil forces, and so one night they go to a foreign land, and plan to stay there until it is safe. No doubt they hear the stories, even from afar, of the many who are not safe, who did not get away. Of mothers weeping for children who are no more. Over time, they get word that their homeland is no longer dangerous, but as they return, they learn that the former threat has been replaced by a new one. Once again, they cannot go home.
In these days of a immigration crisis, these words are often read through political lens. But for people of faith, it is far more than that.
If we take our faith seriously, then we must be prepared for this two-edged sword to “judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” here and now. To be faithfully horrified by what happened to Jesus and his contemporaries calls us to be equally horrified by what is happening to our contemporaries in whom he lives today, suffering from family separation and lost children. Dead children.
It is not enough to read newspaper or Bible. Nor is it enough to understand the news through the lens of the Bible. People of faith must challenge newsmakers with biblical principles. The justice and mercy embodied in this Prince of Peace demand not just stories of yesterday, but realities for all, today.
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