Holy Eucharist at 9:30 am
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Fax: 201-863-1474
This page
revised 04 Jan 00
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
The Church of
Our Saviour
in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey
Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin
Bookshop | Stewardship | Community | Links
A long journey
from anywhere to holiness
Reflections on the lessons
for the Second Sunday after Christmas
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15,
19-23
This holiday season -- really since before Thanksgiving -- has been a hard time in my family.
A milestone death in October left us without our matriarch, my aunt. And the ensuing months have been filled with odd shifting of roles and relationships.I have been surprised to learn all kinds of things, that old rifts that seemed to be facts of life to me weren't really that deep after all, just bad habits that are now being broken. And that one family member, at least, seems to have been itching to get out of our family for decades and now feels liberated. We always thought my uncle liked us.
But it turns out that he didn't all those years and in a couple of weeks will put all our family heirlooms on the auction block and take off for the west in his brand new travel trailer.
One magical thing about the Bible is the way it can become a mirror reflecting all different kinds of situations that crop up in our lives. I can't help but think about my own family when I read today's gospel about the Holy Family and their forced flight into Egypt.
This little band of people was called in the Middle Ages the "earthly Trinity". Like the heavenly Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus certainly did stick together. And they certainly did have individuality galore at the same time. They followed their own paths, together, with respect for each other even when they didn't always understand each other.
By the standards of his day, the Matthew was going as far out on a limb as he could. He was trying to tell the world what kind of family God might choose to use as a picture of the most stunning love.
If Matthew were alive today, he'd probably produce a new edition of the birth narrative and center it around a Holy Family that would make your eyes pop. One that would shock us in its unconventionality combined with its dramatic connectedness.
As it were, Matthew's Holy Family is very striking, even 2000 years later:
Here's a girl -- too young to marry yet,
but betrothed
and waiting to grow up a little more.
She's pregnant, uh-oh.
Can't tell who did it.
Doesn't know who did it.
Can't remember doing it.
Her cousin Elizabeth had become
inexplicably pregnant
six months ago.
And Elizabeth was married -- to a priest,
yet and they hadn't been "together" in years.
Elizabeth said it was an angel.
Yeah, an angel.
Well, if it worked for Elizabeth .
. . .
It was that same angel here, too.
Well, Mary thought, might as well live with it.
What choice did she have?
Mary ran away from home.
And went to find Elizabeth who was in the same boat.
And they had plenty to talk about, believe me.
Elizabeth said: "Mary, that baby you're having is going to be a good kid regardless of what the neighbors think."
Mary answered by singing a song:
"God is what's important here.
God fills the hungry with good things
and tells the folks who love-to-judge others to clam up."
And it was three months before Mary felt safe enough to go back to her parents' house.
Mary's father is not mentioned one
time in this story.
If you want to think that she ran away from home
the day she found out she was pregnant
and didn't come back for three months
because her daddy was so very understanding,
then suit yourself.
Joseph was considerably older than
Mary,
already out in the world with a house and job of his
own,
maybe a first wife who died or,
perhaps, an ex-wife whom he had divorced.
Divorce was far easier and almost as common in biblical era
Palestine
as it is in our country today.
In any case, Joseph was through with Mary.
He didn't need a teenage runaway (runaround?)
moving into his life to mess things up.
Not with somebody else's baby in tow.
But time, and a dream, softened him.
And he remembered that he did want to be with Mary,
and that meant taking her along with her whole history
and uncertainties
and baggage
and anything else that would come along with her.
The Bible takes a lot of poetic
license with this story.
Matthew wasn't writing history.
He was writing a teaching document for people who wanted to
learn things about God by looking at Jesus.
Dates and times don't mesh.
He describes a highly unlikely census that probably never
happened.
Most likely, Mary just moved across town to the carpenter's
shop with Joseph
and the baby was born a few months later right at home in
Nazareth.
But, as the story goes, they traveled to the suburbs of
Jerusalem,
to a little town only a couple of miles outside the big
city
where their designated census taker had his back office
and where the hotels were cheaper than in midtown
Jerusalem.
Hey, Bethlehem is Secaucus.
Joseph messed the trip up.
He didn't have reservations.
The baby is born in the barn.
Shepherds come hanging around.
And everybody knows how shepherds are.
Shepherds are shiftless, and socially volatile.
But, Joseph and Mary still try to do the right things.
They get the boy circumcised on time.
Later, they take Mary to the Temple
for her ritual thanksgiving.
And while they're there, they get a surprise.
An old blind guy comes up and tells them that the child is
precious,
and that they are lucky to have him.
But, on the other hand, an old lady
-- the type that hangs out in the Temple night and day
--
starts talking about the family to anybody who will
listen.
And the Bible says not a word about what she was saying.
Scandal? Gossip? Scorn? Who knows? Maybe none of the
above.
But this holy family had become the talk of the town.
It isn't long before there's
trouble with the law
and they have to get out of town with the baby.
They skip the country, go to Egypt and stay there for quite
awhile.
As a rule, most upright citizens don't have to go to such
lengths to avoid arrest.
Life finally returns to normal.
The boy grows up.
The boy tends to wander away from his family in crowds.
He snaps at his mother.
As he gets older,
he quits his steady job and takes up with a band of
friends
who toy with the law, embarrass people,
and seem to love hanging around
with the lowest elements of society.
But the family can't help but notice
something magnetic about Jesus,
in spite of the way he's acting. And looking.
Inevitably, the boy winds up tried, convicted,
and on the wrong side of the death penalty.
However, he's still looking out for his widowed mother
to the very end.
And she never gave up on him.
What makes a family holy?
You'll have to answer that for yourself.
There are as many answers as there are families.
It probably has to do with sticking together.
A holy family will have found a way of life
that works for its members
without worrying much about pleasing judgmental outsiders.
Probably, families that cut one
another down,
exclude members who don't seem quite "something" enough,
or those that are fragmented by grudges could use a bit more
holiness. (I hope I can
hear this advice to myself.)
It's a long journey from Nazareth
to Bethlehem to Egypt and back. A long journey from anywhere
to holiness.
But, every family can be a holy family,
or be on its way there.
Just one interested member has to take a step in that
direction
and the journey has begun.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
© 2000 -Church of Our Saviour Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Community | Links
http://www.secaucus.org/oursaviourWebmaster - DRoberts@Secaucus.org