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Where
Is the Child? In today's
Gospel reading from St. Matthew we hear King Herod asking a question
that has doubtlessly been asked a countless number of times down through
the centuries, ever since the birth of Jesus: Where is the Child? Now,
Herod's inquiry has a very negative agenda behind it. He is so threatened
by the idea of a rival for his throne that he wants to identify and
destroy the baby. Others have asked so they might know and serve Jesus.
Still others probably have voiced the question as a sneering criticism
of the seeming lack of God's presence in a troubled world. You yourself
may well be a person who has asked yourself this question, wondering
about what has happened to all the promises of peace, justice, mercy,
and love that were supposed to surround the arrival of the Messiah.
Things don't As a way
of responding to that perfectly legitimate question, I would like you,
in your mind's eye, to join me in a journey this morning -- a journey
back into time. Where we're going together is a time in mid-December
of the year 1940. We find ourselves in a bitterly cold, barren landscape
in rural France. The setting is a desperately cruel and forbidding
one: a concentration camp created by German storm troopers that's designed
to imprison as many French intellectuals, artists, politicians, and
religious leaders as possible. The camp is part of a scheme aimed at
establishing absolute control of the people by removing contact with
anyone who might offer any guidance in resisting Nazi Our eyes
cannot comprehend the ugliness and brutality that surround the scene:
barbed wire, vicious dogs, searchlights, uniformed guards in turrets
bristling with machine guns. Hundreds of prisoners are shivering in
the cold, and they're only partially clothed against the blasts of
frigid wind. They have nothing at all to protect them against even
the basic elements. There's no Still,
life is incredibly resilient and, not surprisingly that December, some
of the priests and ministers came to the camp commandant to ask if
those prisoners might at least have a Christmas worship service. Their
request was not only refused but they were ridiculed for even having
such an idea. Didn't they Now in
that prison was one of the greatest thinkers, writers, and philosophers
in modern French history, the agnostic/atheist/existentialist Jean
Paul Sartre. It was to this totally unlikely author the clerics went
in an effort to turn that simple Nativity play into something powerful
that would sustain the minds and hearts of every one of those hundreds
of suffering and discouraged French prisoners - not just the Christians
or even the religious of whatever background, but everyone. Sartre
took some persuasion, but eventually agreed to create the text for
a Nativity play which he titled Bariona. The play is a Let me tell you just a bit about Bariona and then share with you one central piece of dialogue that may help you understand why its message is so dramatic in its impact. Sartre's
Nativity play is set in first century Palestine. It is a country firmly
occupied by the great military force of that day, the Roman Empire.
The people are ground down by an overwhelming tax burden - a tribute
they have to pay or be arrested and crucified by the authorities. They
are a people imprisoned, without hope. Bariona is the mayor of a tiny
little town with a handful of people. As the play opens, we find Bariona
receiving a very unwanted visitor, the unfeeling Roman tax collector.
He is told that despite all the suffering and And so
it is that we see Bariona at the back of the stable -- an unlikely
assassin, who for compassion and mercy's sake is contemplating murder.
But before he can act, he once again meets one the of Wise men, old
Balthazar, who recognizes him, knows why he is there, and talks to
him about why he must let this child live. Listen in as Balthazar helps
Bariona see things in a
Where is
the Child? There he is, a tiny infant wrapped in rough swaddling cloth,
lying on a bed of straw, placed in a feeding trough for animals. Like
Bariona we, too, stare in amazement and surprise. We are shocked at
the power of that visual statement: God has completely, utterly, fully
committed to us -- come You see, so often we are really looking in the wrong place or seeking the wrong kind of evidence for believing. We want so much for the promises of peace, love, and justice to be fulfilled and we can't understand why, if the Prince of Peace has already come, those problems haven't disappeared. Well, the fact is that Jesus didn't come to erase all the problems and cure all our ills. He came to be with us right in the midst of it all. Immanuel -- God with us. Because
of the commitment of God to us at Christmas we can say to Christ, "I'm
lonely. Death has taken all my loved ones. I feel all alone in the
world. Do you know what I'm saying?" "Yes," comes the
response from one born in a barn in Bethlehem. "I, too, have known
loneliness beyond your imagination, especially We can say, "Lord, I am despised and rejected by others. I feel unvalued, misunderstood. Do you know what I'm saying?" "Yes," is the answer. "I, too, have experienced every rejection and betrayal possible. I know how you feel because I went through the fear and pain of a cross on Calvary. Come and we will mend our grief together." Maybe our
plea is, "Lord, I'm unable to get along with others. I've made
a total mess of things. No one can ever forgive me -- not even my family.
Do you hear what I'm saying?" "Yes," comes the response, "But
I know also the redeeming power of love because, even in death, I have
never been lost to the love of So, that's it. Eye-opening messages this Epiphany day, messages saying to us that in that Nativity barn God was reaching out to everyone of us with words of profound, eternal, unconditional love. It can all be boiled down to this: FIRST:
God is with us, right here in the middle of all the problems SECOND:
We are called to be God's partners in the ongoing work THIRD:
God knows first-hand just exactly how hard life is and, Where is
the child? It's appropriate that we take the time to ask that question,
if only in our mind, to revisit that Epiphany stable -- not just once
a year, but weekly (yes, even daily) to remind ourselves of just what
happened there once-and-for-all. God came into this world in-person
and, from a barn in Bethlehem, brought the blessed message of eternal
life that is forever after Where is the child? The child is right here in this church, out there on the street, and securely within the heart of each one of us. Thanks be to God! Copyright 2002 Calvary Episcopal Church Gospel:
Matthew 2:1-12 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, |
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