Jeremiah 31: 7 – 14
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

The Gospel lesson appointed for this, the second Sunday in Christmas-tide, gives us another chapter in the story of Christ’s birth: the flight into (and return from) Egypt. In a dream, Joseph — who if you recall has been the recipient of important dreams before — Joseph is warned by an angel of the Lord to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt. And so, faithful and obedient, Joseph “…got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.” Matthew is quick to point out for us the symbolic significance of this action; he also gives us an explanation of the Holy Family’s settling in Nazareth and points us to another prophecy this fulfils. Both Egypt and Nazareth were symbolically significant to the children of Israel. Egypt was the place of exile and oppression, before Moses brought the people out of that land into the Promised Land; and Nazareth was a village viewed with some scorn, if you recall Philip’s question in the Gospel of John, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” All the same, both places figured in the prophecies surrounding the coming of the Messiah, and Matthew is very careful to make sure that none of his readers miss this important clue to Jesus’ identity and importance.

This Gospel passage, with its overtones of threat and danger, contrasts strikingly with both the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Epistle appointed for this morning. In the passage from the Prophet Jeremiah, we have one of the most beautiful of prophecies: “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel…They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again…” It’s a beautiful promise, full of the hope of both ease and justice; and it reminds us just what we celebrate, with the coming of the Messiah. “I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. … and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord.”

Maybe that last piece is the part for us to ponder: “My people shall be satisfied with my bounty…” For us, surrounded as we are by the modern secular culture of consumerism, being satisfied with the Lord’s bounty is a concept rather foreign to our understanding. Consumerism is constantly harping at us, fostering our discontent, seeming to promise that if we just acquire that one last thing, we will finally achieve happiness — but ‘that one last thing,’ like the horizon or the end of the rainbow, is always ahead of us and out of reach. It seems likely, given the blinders imposed by our culture’s rampant consumerism, that even were we indeed recipients of the Lord’s bounty, we would not easily recognize it. In fact, the longer I pondered these beautiful promises, the more I began to recognize that we are constantly receiving the Lord’s bounty, but that our culture of consumerism erodes our ability to be satisfied with what we have already been given.

This is a challenging insight. All of us are aware of other people who have more than we do; all of us recognize there are things that are beyond our ability to provide for ourselves or our families. But nonetheless, we are blessed by God and are recipients of the Lord’s bounty. Why is it so difficult for us to be satisfied with the gifts and challenges we have been given?

Part of the difficulty comes, I believe, because we imagine that there are other people — rich people, powerful people — who do not feel the same inadequacies, fears and insecurities that we experience daily. The culture of consumerism and its ally, the advertising industry, certainly encourage us to believe that there is some objective point beyond which people — some special people — no longer feel there are things beyond their reach. We are encouraged to accept the notion that there are people who really do and can buy anything their hearts desire, and that somehow, we, too, can enter this small and select segment of the population. Personally, I doubt this on both counts. First, I expect that no one ever feels rich enough to believe their resources exceed their capacity for wanting things. Even the wealthiest people still have to make budgets and husband their resources. It’s human nature to feel the need to count the cost — and to save against unanticipated expenses. And secondly, there is no way for any of us to attain this carefree, restriction-free state. To me, it looks like the way a child views adulthood. I remember believing (a long time ago, when I was small) that there was a point — perhaps a particular age, perhaps an event like college graduation or marriage — beyond which I would be a member of the all-knowing and powerful ADULTS, and that questions and doubts would all be behind me. When I was eight, I never imagined that my parents were winging it — I thought they had access to some secret adult knowledge that guided their actions and decisions. And further, I figured that after I’d paid my dues (as it were) and attained the venerable age of (say) 25, I’d know all the things adults knew, too. I’d figured out, by the time I was in my teens, that that hope might be a tad too optimistic, but I am — even now — disappointed on some level to discover that even at my truly advanced age, every bit of wisdom I’ve gained has been through the (usually uncomfortable) medium of experience. There isn’t a magic number beyond which we simply become wise, just as there isn’t wealth or property or power or fame enough to make us feel secure, satisfied and in control.

The reason for this is simple — possibly depressing, but simple: we are NOT in control. Everything we have, everything we are, everything we love and value could be wiped out in an instant, and there’s not one thing we can do about it. We hate this knowledge; we struggle against it, deny it, reject it. We make endless contingency plans — invest in things like health, life and property insurance — we make prudent budgets and save for our retirement; but all the same, we are not in control. Perhaps it is the illusion of control, our constant striving for that one thing we cannot have, that keeps us from being satisfied — truly satisfied and at peace — with the bounty of the Lord.

The Epistle lesson gets at this issue from a more positive light. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul writes, “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will…” What Paul is saying, here, is that we have all — already! — been given more and greater blessings than we could ever earn or deserve. With blessings like these, why do we even imagine we need to be in control? But although the passage appointed for this morning leaves this part out, Paul doesn’t end with his recital of the gifts our loving and gracious Creator has showered upon us through the presence of his Son in our lives. Paul adds a prayer for the disciples at Ephesus — a prayer that is just as relevant and important for us modern disciples here in Norwich as it was to the community for which it was written. “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”

We have already been given all the blessings we could possibly require. We are beloved by God, beloved enough so that Jesus Christ chose to be born among us and to die for us, and we have the blessing and challenge of doing God’s work here — at St. Barnabas’ and in our individual lives of faith — as part of the Body of Christ. May God give us the eyes to see this, the courage to embrace the tasks to which we are called, and the peace and satisfaction of knowing that we are both loved and needed by God and by one another.

In the Name of Christ,
Amen

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas’, Norwich, Vt.