We light these candles to remember the spiritual traditions out of which we came.

Like spiritual children we were born both of Jewish and Christian lineage.

From our spiritual ancestors the Jews we were bequeathed the revelation that God’s activity in this world is freedom, and all that would seek to be free, seek to walk towards truth and towards God.

And from our spiritual ancestors the Christians we were bequeathed the revelation that each human being bears a divine likeness, and like Jesus, all souls are to be loved for that divine kinship; for God is love and they who love dwell in God and God in them.

Every moment of our living is a preparation for the next.

Every moment of our living is a leaning forward towards the future.

Every moment of our living is a hope in what tomorrow might be:

A time of Peace, Justice, Human Fellowship, Love.

Every moment of our living is a hope in what tomorrow might bring:

The cries of a newborn child, reminding us of the divine miracle of creation;

The cries of a brother or sister in need of liberation;

Cries of humanity that call us to fulfill the hope and promise of creation;

Cries that emanate from a world not yet redeemed of its darkness, for it does not yet see through that darkness to the blessing on the other side.

Let us open our hearts to Christmas. Open them to all the hope that stands against a world that wastes with evil things; open them wide enough for gentleness in a world that is bitter and harsh; for loveliness in a world that is desolate; for faith and its joy and the song of its joy, singing in the presence of all humanity and all creation. Let us open our hearts to Christmas and its hope.

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son." When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

"A voice is heard in Ramah,

weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more."

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord 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 trying to take the child's life are dead."

So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.

O thou who has called us out of the darkness and into the marvelous light of life and love, help us to find our way through the noise and turmoil of the days ahead to the true meaning of Christmas, to its quite joys and to its peace.

Teach us that we cannot hear the songs until our own heart learnt to sing them, and that the most important gifts which we can give to one another cannot be wrapped and put under the Christmas tree.

Show us, whose needs are so great, how close we are to what we seek, and how often the things we want most desperately are ours already, if we will only stretch out our hands to one another and to thee.

Help us to be brave enough for life and love, and guide us in our search through doubt and darkness until we find the faith which knows no place or season – until we learn at last that though the very stars may wander, there is that within us which need never lose its way.

-A Powell Davies

To many scholars the two stories that form the foundation of the Christmas story, found in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, are of later origin. By the reckoning of scholars the earliest gospel account is Mark, written in the early 70’s A.C.E., 72 years after when we surmise Jesus was born. It has no birth story in it. The early Jewish and Gentile communities that arose as followers of Jesus of Nazareth after his death apparently did not know the circumstances of his birth or deem them important. The gospels of Luke and Matthew are composed in the latter part of the first century, probably in the 90’s, and its only then that stories of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth are offered. We can only speculate as to why it then became important to compose stories concerning his birth. Some more reasoned speculations point to possibility that four generations after his death, the obscurity of Jesus’ birth needed some clarification to give his life meaning within the context of Judaism, and in a manner not inconsistent with Roman society. Reading through Jewish eyes does not repudiate the centuries of loving customs within which Christianity has wrapped these birth stories, but deepens our appreciation of them.

We have been handed down two stories that the centuries have elaborated into the great event of the Western calendar and Northern Hemisphere, a time when the harshness of winter’s mantel becomes lovely and warm in the story of the birth of a peasant child in a manger, attended by shepherds, angels, and Wise Men; this peasant child whose life would reveal the God of love conquering the very real evils attending the world of men and women. The story of Jesus’ birth, as told in the gospel of Matthew, with the visit of the Wise Men following the star, is itself preparation for the later revealing of the God of love inside of our world of destructive forces and maniacal motivations.

As the story is told, after Jesus’ birth and the gift-giving visit from the Wise Men, the three Wise Men are warned not to return to Herod on their journey back to their homes. Herod has wicked designs on this birth. His court prophets have warned him that an adversary to his crown is to be born, and Herod has feared that the appearance of these Wise Men portend the truth of this prediction. So, as the story is told, Herod “was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.” (Matt 2) The murders emanated from no racial motivation as Herod himself was a Jew. But, he was a ruthless tyrant who ruled through fear and intimidation. According to the story it is thus that before Herod orders the murders, Joseph and Mary and their newborn babe follow the instructions given to Joseph in a dream, and flee into Egypt. They stay there until the death of Herod and their safe return.

It is the genius of the storyteller Matthew that he constructs a birth story that combines the magical charm of Wise Men following a star to the birth with the narrow escape from the ruthless brutality of murdering innocent children. The Jewish followers of Jesus towards the end of the first century would be well aware of their past and the stories of innocent children being slaughtered. It would recall the prophet Jeremiah’s declarations of Rachel at Ramah weeping for her murdered children, and the story of Passover itself. To flee to Egypt would be a well-known escape plan to the Jews of the first century, too, although they would also know its irony as trading one treacherous situation for another. Remember, it was out of Egypt that ancient Jews came, needing to flee from there and their enslavement. To the Jewish ears of the first century this part of the birth story was a way to engage the idea that through Jesus a new emancipation had occurred, not unlike that when Moses led the Jewish people from slavery to freedom.

And so hidden inside this lovely, frightening, marvelous, magical, and holy story is the story of liberation and freedom. That somehow, to the author of Matthew, Jesus’ life meant a liberation no less powerful, and a transformative emancipation of the spirit no less complete than that of Moses leading the Jews into the Promised Land. And the conditions for freedom construed in the story Matthew constructs, is the fleeing into Egypt.

Fleeing hardly seems a sufficient condition to solicit or begat freedom. The prospect of shopping crowds on Friday was enough to set my mind and body upon the prospect of fleeing, and I did not feel free. I know those situations wherein I might not have physically fled, but fleeing is the proper description of what I’ve done. Human beings flee what they fear, and running away is not commonly connected with being liberated. We flee a bad relationship, flee a failure, flee the law, flee a situation so unbearable for us to face that we do not want to return. A recent B-movie was called, “Fled,” a story of two convicts fleeing from their captors. But, rarely do we flee towards freedom. More often we flee away from something that subjugates, or oppresses, or yokes, or threatens us.

And sometimes there is wisdom in fleeing. In the story Joseph and Mary are good parents in taking their child away, fleeing from imminent and real danger. It is the pure and dangerous romantics in the world of human affairs who celebrate Christmas without reading this part of the story. One may be able to flee danger, but one cannot and should not flee the composition of human nature itself. What makes the Christmas season one of hope is that men willingly afflict one another, and we know this is not right and just and good, justify it as we may, as Herod certainly did! Hope is born out of that capacity within human nature. The songs we sing at Christmastide elicit the emotions we know so well because we are familiar enough with them to know when we stray from them. “Help us to be brave enough for life and love, and guide us in our search through doubt and darkness until we find the faith which knows no place or season – until we learn at last that though the very stars may wander, there is that within us which need never lose its way.” (Powell Davies)

The wisdom in fleeing is the realization that fleeing away from something is always a part of running towards something else. The philosopher Hegel talked about freedom as possessing a component of being free from something, and a greater and deeper understanding of freedom as being free for something. Those who look back constantly when they flee will surely be ensnared by what they are trying to escape from. Some flee the truth of human meanness, and search longingly for a romantic Christmas, a blind faith that in human living there is no pain or injury we inflict and afflict one another with. But, running towards Christmas is more than an escape out of the doubt and darkness that cloud our days, and we willingly engender and endure. It is a fleeing towards and for hope.

The holiday season is a season of hope not because of what we can escape from, because much of it we can’t. But it is the season of hope because of what we can flee towards and for. “Christmas is an invitation to come over on the side of the redeeming forces in human life.” (E. Burdette Backus) It is an invitation to flee, but to flee towards something, a freedom for something. Not to flee away from the dark part of the human heart, as if we could elude, evade, shun, or escape the reality of human existence and of part of human nature. Christmas is not an invitation to denial, romantic or otherwise. And it’s not an invitation to dwell in the land of darkness, to the Jew of the first century , in Egypt, although the holiday season is so full of the expectation of delight that for many it is a struggle not to be overcome by cheer. “Christmas is an invitation to come over on the side of the redeeming forces in human life.” Flee there. Be free for that. Flee your normal routine for a day or a certain part of the day, or for years, or stretching cycles of years, and run with all deliberate speed to the edge of a manger. This is the first Sunday to prepare for a hope that will hover over us in all this month’s doing, for it hovers over and among and within every moment of our existence. Flee with all deliberate speed to the edge of a manger and there you will behold a marvelous thing, a holy night, a rose e’er blooming, a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, a life we did not create but which we can hold in the palms of our hands. Life. Love. Abides. Be free for that Life and that Light that is the source of Hope.

AMEN.