Br. Luke Ditewig

The Second Sunday after Christmas Day

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

If the Christmas story was a family picture album, what would be first? Luke begins with Zechariah and Elizabeth, an old, barren couple. Matthew begins with a genealogy notably including four courageous women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Their stories and that of sinful husbands Judah and David are scandalous. The four are foreigners. Jesus’ bloodline is not only Jewish but also Canaanite, Moabite, and Hittite. They show Jesus came for the world from the world, from diverse peoples.[1]

Matthew’s next picture is of wise men from the East, magi, foreign astrologers who come to worship Jesus by what they have learned by studying stars, not scripture. Like the four women, they were outsiders. As Ray Bakke wrote, God came through a mixed-race family with a foreign welcome party, God in flesh for all humanity.[2]

When the magi leave, God tells Joseph in a dream to flee to Egypt to save his family. This echoes to the Old Testament. From Egypt, Joseph saved his family. Hidden in Egypt as an infant from Pharaoh, Moses grew up to lead Joseph’s numerous descendants out of Egypt in the Exodus. Matthew shows Jesus’ birth echoes God’s larger story and the prophets.

Matthew quotes prophet Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Matthew writes Jesus fulfills this. Jesus embodies it further. God chose and loved a people—Israel—to bless the whole world. Then more encompassing God sent Jesus to bless and save the whole world. The Exodus from Egypt was the highlight of God’s saving power for Israel. Now Jesus is saved from Herod by coming out of Egypt.

When Joseph and family left Egypt, God directed them twice by dreams. Joseph took Jesus and Mary to Israel planning to return to Bethlehem of Judah. But when they heard Herod’s son was ruling, they went up north to Galilee to the small, little-known village of Nazareth. Matthew writes: “so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’” We don’t know the source of this quotation.

Some suggest Matthew refers to Isaiah as Matthew does elsewhere describing Jesus humble and lowly.[3] Isaiah wrote: “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. . . . he was despised, and we held him of no account” (Isaiah 53:2, 3b).

Dale Bruner suggests Nazareth is the dry ground from which Jesus came up with nothing appealing and of which people expected nothing. [4] We know Nazareth because children took the name of their birth, and so Jesus of Nazareth. Yet it was very small and obscure from which little was expected. As Nathanial said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:6).

Like being laid in a manger, being from Nazareth was humbling. By fleeing oppression, losing home, restarting in new places including far from where one wanted to be, Jesus grew up, as we sang: “with the poor, the scorned, the lowly.”[5] Jesus identifies with us in our diversity, obscurity, and vulnerability. The Incarnate Christ comes humbly, meeting all children of Eve in our suffering, poverty, and weakness, in our losses and grief. This is God who comes so closely, who fully identifies with us and gives grace, unmerited favor.

As when lifted high upon the cross, Christ comes like this to draw in the whole world to himself (John 12:32). In this birth, grace comes amid scandal and sin. Grace comes amid diversity, obscurity, and messy stories. Grace is shared through improbable people: courageous grandmothers and surprising visitors, unexpected neighbors and strangers in Egypt and Nazareth.

Christ comes further this Christmas amid our violent and needy world, amid our suffering and vulnerability. Behold and see, the One comes for us, who identifies with what we need, and gives grace. Whether at home chosen or fled to, with whatever we lack, behold Christ Incarnate, here with grace for all.

[1] R. Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City (Downers Grove, IL: 1997), 125.

[2] R. Bakke, A Biblical Word for an Urban World: Messages from the 1999 World Mission Conference (Valley Forge, PA: 1999), 54.

[3] F. D. Bruner, Matthew, A Commentary, Volume 1 (Dallas, 1987), 62.

[4] Ibid., 61.

[5] “Once in royal David’s city,” The Hymnal 1982, no. 102, words by Cecil Frances Alexander (alt.). This is our Entrance Hymn today.