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Scriptures: Isaiah 43:14-21 & II Corinthians 5:6-10
Given on 6/17/2018

    She pressed her infant child closer to her chest, his tiny body wrapped in shredded and torn cloths that still had golden-brown strands of hay stuck to it the way hay always sticks to things. The heat of the day had dissipated and the chill of the night air had started to cut through every part of her body as she offered whatever warmth her slight and worn out frame had to the baby suckling at her breast. The baby, too young to have any appreciation of what was going on found himself in that place where newborns often are—that place where the comfort and nourishment offered by their mother’s milk brings about feelings of contentment and well-being and as he drank he drifted in and out of sleep, unaware that at this moment, he, along with his parents were on the move, trying desperately to get out of a country and a civilization that had been their home, their ancestral home for as long as anyone could remember. Now, that home, that civilization, so often a source of strength and resiliency seemed to be collapsing all around them. The father, too, was there. His countenance, his cadence, his gait betraying the seriousness of the moment. While his partner had the luxury of riding on the back of a donkey as they made their way into the darkest part of the evening, he was tasked with leading the animal where he needed it to go. And perhaps on a normal occasion, this might have had the makings of an activity of leisurely with little sense of urgency to get anywhere at a particular time, tonight was not one of those nights as the father advanced tugging the domesticated beast along behind him. Donkeys, we all know, only have one speed and trying to rush them along really only brings about more consternation for the guide and an increased degree of stubbornness from the animal. But, on this night, the baby’s father was having none of it. For as long as he could remember, from the time that he was a boy it had been instilled in him that it was his job, his duty, his only purpose in life, to protect his wife and offspring from any and all who would do them harm. He was, of course, to provide them with a roof over their head, the resources that come with a honest day’s work, the guidance that comes with being a father and the head of the house at that time in history. But before all that could take place, could have any sort of lasting meaning, he had to protect both mother and child. On this night, the threat had arisen from a brutal ruler who seemed willing to stop at nothing to gain and maintain his power. He had first heard this from those visitors who had traveled from the east to see and adore the child now being carried by his mother. They had warned him of the coming threat to his child’s life, to the life of the child’s mother, to his own life and upon hearing this news he wasted no time as he packed their meager belongings and prepared his family for a trek to a land where they didn’t know a soul, didn’t speak the language, didn’t have a job. And as anyone who has ever attempted it knows, traveling with a newborn makes for an exceedingly difficult journey in the best of circumstances and this was just about the polar opposite of that reality, a reality made all the worse by the knowledge of what the ruler of the land was planning to mete out onto his people. Soon throughout all the land, the peaceful silence of the night would be broken with the shrieks of mothers and fathers mourning the violent loss of their children—those who didn't know to get out, didn’t know to run, didn’t have any sense of where to go if they did run. But he didn't need to know where exactly they were heading, he didn't need to know where they would stop, put down new roots, work, worship, all he knew was that it was no longer safe for him and his family and so he walked as fast as he could manage with donkey and wife and child in tow, trying as hard as he could to set his face towards the fading light of the sun that had disappeared sometime ago, as orange, then pink, then gray, then finally black enveloped the whole of the firmament before him. It was now night and though his body was weary, sleep would have to wait for another time. The darkness of night would provide all the cloak that he would need to begin to move his newly formed family to safety. He would hopefully find somewhere safe to rest when the light of the morning began to awaken the sky that was firmly behind him now. As he walked he let out a long and plaintive sigh that signified both his frustration and his acceptance with his current lot in life. As a sign of love and affection towards the woman who had brought his son into the world he reached his free hand out and rubbed her leg. She, for her part, allowed her mouth to curl upwards ever so slightly before returning her gaze to the baby in her arms. 
    Sitting atop the donkey, she was well aware that the trip on which they had left departed would not ever be an easy one. In traveling, they had to reverse their days and nights and while to an outside observer this might be challenging, anyone who had ever been the parent of a newborn baby knows that this switch happens regardless of whether you are on the back of a donkey or in the comfort of your own home. So it was that periodically throughout the night, the baby would rustle and reach out into the darkness for the warmth of his parent and his mother would in turn pull her son in closer and he would slowly and silently drift back to sleep. Lacking anything to lay him down on for this frantic and extended journey into the darkness the reality of the moment was all the more apparent and as she held him hour after hour she could feel the muscles in her arms strain, and then burn, and then cramp, until, eventually, she couldn’t feel anything at all. But in the back of her mind she knew that the greater threat to her and her newborn son lay in stopping, in putting him down, in taking a break. So with whatever energy she had she gripped him all the tighter and they pressed on into the dark and cold night. 
    When you are pregnant for the first time, every moment is alive with newness. From the moment that you realize that you are carrying a child to the moment that he erupts into the world, each twist, each kick, each flip makes you aware all the more that there is something bigger than yourself going on inside of you and that you have to do whatever it takes to protect it. And then there are the worries. What if the baby doesn't make it all the way? What if he has some sort of congenital issue that you will learn about the moment that you set your eyes on him? What if he can’t see or hear or speak or any number of ailments that you know that it is technically possible for babies to be born with. After birth, all that changes. The awareness of everything that can go wrong in utero changes to the knowledge of all that can wrong in the outside world. The awareness that there was a time when your own body could protect your child and now all that was left are your two hands and your chest and so you pull your baby in close to you and vow to yourself that nothing will ever do harm to him as long as you have air in your lungs and you will do anything it takes to protect him. On this trip, in the darkest and deadest part of the evening, when everything but bats and owls have gone to sleep, this mother treasured all these different things and pondered them in her heart. 
        She knew that each baby is a precious child of God but hers seemed somehow different, somehow special, somehow destined for something more. She allowed her thoughts to traverse back to the previous evening. She still had that glow that new mothers get when they have seen all their hard work come to fruition and they are able to hold the fruits of their labor in their hands. Since his birth there had really been very little time to have to herself. But she had faith. Since her own birth, she had been taught the faith of her parents, to give everything over to God even when all hope seemed lost, even when it seemed that God was asking her to bear more than he young life could possible be expected to carry. From that moment in which she discovered that she was pregnant and bringing a baby into the world—at a time when that world that was crying out for relief. Relief from occupation and oppression. Relief from being under the foot of a tyrannical government. Relief from not being allowed to live their life with any degree of self-determination, from that moment her life had felt like it was being lived in the chaos of a whirlwind. How could she be expected to bring a baby into that world? And with each passing day, she relied more and more on the faith of her childhood. But this latest demand felt like a  cup of sorrow that she could not drink. To have brought a baby into this world only to see her entire world crumble under its own weight. To hear the wailing and lamentations of the new mothers, like herself, who would have to live the entirety of their lives without the one thing that would give them meaning, that would teach them to love, that would be their singular source of joy. Such a pain was too great to carry, but this was her only option. To go to a new land. To seek a new life. To try and exist in a place that was completely foreign to her. That she only knew of because of the stories of the faith that told her that Egypt was not safe for Hebrew people. That in Egypt they had enslaved the Hebrew people’s ancestors and yet, she was getting there as swiftly as humanly possible. Egypt represented the closest thing to safety that she could imagine. A place outside the reach of the ruler systematically executing all the boys that looked like her precious child. Wrapped in swaddling clothes, held tightly in her arms, safe, secure, asleep. There was nothing in the world that she wouldn't do to keep him that way. Even if it meant going to a place where she didn't know a soul, didn't speak the language, didn't dress the same, or worship the same, eat the same foods, know any of the customs. From this moment forward, until she knew it was safe to return, she would be an outcast, a refugee, an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land. And the darkness seemed to swallow both of them as they wearily made their way to their new life. 
    In both our passages from the Biblical witness today, we see the prophet Isaiah and the Apostle Paul ask their respective audiences to envision the world in a starkly different way—a way that has never been conceived of, experienced, imagined. They both ask their readers, ask us to cast our sight to a time in the future in which we won’t remember the former things or consider the things of old because God is about to give them, give us a new vision for the future. A vision of rivers bringing living waters to parched deserts, a vision of pathways being raised up from mighty and rushing waters, of war-makers being extinguished like the wick of a candle, and peace reigning over the whole of creation. Of having the faith to see things not how they are, broken and in need of redemption, of a time in which those who seek to do violence prosper and those who remain faithful to the God of peace are beat down, but, rather having a faith that declares that slowly and surely the old ways of the world are bring redeemed by the renewing of all of our minds and the hope that one day all division will fall away in the light of the new day and the redemption of Christ within creation—a light in which all of us will both see ourselves and our neighbors as the beloved of God.
    Over the course of the last few weeks, the immigration policy of the United States has been placed front and center in collection consciousness of the nation and in the midst of horrifying images and stories emerging from the US-Mexico border, a national conversation has begun about whether or not this is really who we, as a nation and as a people want to be. And while I want to tread very lightly around political issues, firmly believing that persons of all political stripes can be faithful followers of Christ, the issues arising from the separation of children from their parents extends beyond traditional partisan divides and seem to have shocked the whole of the nation and overcome the political demarcation through which so much of our lives together is viewed. Whether in the stories of young babies ripped from their mothers’ breasts, children being taken away to be bathed and never returned to their parents, or just the images of toddlers bursting into tears while their parents are searched, handcuffed and led away, we, as a people, have been rightfully horrified by the actions of our government on our behalf. Moreover, people of faith, not often found on the same side of many issues, have been united in the past week by the use of biblical language as a defense of the indefensible. But just as each major denomination across the philosophical spectrum has issued statements decrying these actions, so, too, must pastors in churches be willing to stand up and say the same thing in the midst of their little sliver of the people of God. We must, as a brotherhood and sisterhood of clergy, stand united and speak with one voice, the truth of God, that what is going on at the border has nothing to do with the vision of a new heaven and a new earth or embodying the love of Christ in whom we are told there is not Jew or Greek, slave or free, woman or man, because all have been made one and that any practice that breaks the sacred and holy bonds formed between parent and child in order to scare persons into compliance cannot be condoned by any religious gathering that seeks to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to a world in pain. Good people can disagree about the practices of immigration and asylum, but no one should be able to defend such a vile practice as what is being done in our name right now. We, as a church, a nation, and a people, must push back against any actions that are counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the betterment of all people, and we must push for each person to be given a modicum of dignity simply because all are children of God. 
    In the past few weeks, I’ve thought a lot about the family from my story earlier. I wonder what that couple, what that baby, would look like today? I wonder if they are out there still, wandering from one land in which the simple act of living life in safety and security, in which the taking care of children, in which the hopes and dreams that all people in all places are born possessing, all seem like absurd pipe dreams, while they spend money they don’t have and risk everything to arrive at a land flowing with milk and honey, to a land that represents the last bastion of hope, to a land that provides a degree of protection from governments that abuse their people, to a land where all people are presumed to be equal just because they were each made by a singular maker. I wonder where we would find Jesus on this day. Where we might sense the Spirit of the Most High passing over the way it passed over the waters of chaos at the beginning of time. I wonder where we as a church, as a faith tradition, as a free people, as members of the human race are called to be and what we are called to do once we get there. Jesus told his disciples that at the end of the age all the nations will be gathered in front of the throne and he will separate the sheep from the goats and usher the sheep into heaven saying that any act of kindness, from the greatest to the most minute, done for the least of these in the world was done unto him. At this time, on this day, I wonder who the least of these are and how might we serve them. I wonder. I’d like to ask you to listen to that story one more time using slightly different words and ask yourself what that might look like today.    

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”  When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 
    

Alleluia, amen.