Christmas II

Christmas II (Matthew 2: 13-15; 19-23)
Out of Egypt have I called my Son. (Hosea 11:1)
Not all paths lead to God. But God can turn all paths back to him.

Jacob and his large family understood this when they left the promised land and settled in Egypt. At first it seemed to be their salvation from starvation, suffering and death. In a very few years it became a trap. The trap was the spiritual slavery to the false gods and goddesses of Egypt. That idolatry led to the economic slavery of forced labor to build the temples and tombs dedicated to those idols.

Through Moses, God called the descendants of Jacob, whose other name was Israel, out of spiritual and economic slavery into the new life and new way of living God offered them. It was a way of freedom and responsibility. It was a way of faith and hope. It was a way of unconditional love and compassion. It was not the way that generation wanted. And so, that generation never entered the promised land.
Their children inherited the promise. Sadly, their children and their descendants never fully claimed the promise. The promise is grounded in the personal relationship God offers his people.

God led the people out of Egypt but the people carried Egypt with them. They carried the attitudes and actions of spiritual and economic slavery into the Sinai. They grumbled, they complained, they rebelled against Moses’ leadership.

God told the people he would be their king. The people rejected God’s offer. They complained: why should we of all people not have a king of our own choosing? Despite God’s warnings that the kings of men dominate and destroy the people demanded a king. And, that king and his descendants abused their power as God had warned.
The greatest abuse of power is to reject the sovereign plan and purpose of God.
It doesn’t take a king to exercise this kind of power. We each have the capacity to rebel against God and to reject God’s plan and purpose. When a king, a ruler, does this the entire nation is affected.

King Herod had met with the Wise Men. He recognized their insights and discernment. He consulted his own wise men, the priests and scholars of his court. He formed an image of what they all told him. King Herod concluded that the child they spoke of was a real and present danger to his power.

King Herod believed the prophets could see into the future. He lacked the faith that the prophets spoke God’s sovereign and infallible word. He heard the prophetic message of salvation as a threat to his personal power. In his pride he thought he could eliminate this threat. He missed his moment of conversion. He missed his moment of salvation. He rejected the Way of divine love and compassion. He pursued the way of dominance and destruction.

King Herod killed many children in Bethlehem and its surrounding villages. His missed his target. It was not time. A descendant of that King Herod would participate in the murder of Jesus Christ. He too would meet his moment of grace and reject the invitation to salvation.

Our Heavenly Father wove the events of the past into the present. As Jacob, also known as Israel, had taken his family into Egypt for safety, so Joseph took his family into Egypt for safety. As God had revealed to the prophet Hosea that he had called his Son, Israel, out of Egypt so in the fullness of time God called Joseph to bring his family back from Egypt into the promised land.

By these events molded in the crucible of absolute power and violent death, God revealed how his Son, Jesus Christ, was the pattern, the plan and the purpose of God.
Jesus is Israel. Jesus is a particular person. In his humanity he is the descendant of Judah and the line of kings descended from King David. In his divinity he is the one true and eternal king whom the people of Israel had once rejected.

Many centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, Israel had rejected the kingship of God. They demanded and received human kings who brought high taxes, war and oppression to the nation. In Jesus Christ, God healed the covenant Isreal had broken. In Jesus Christ God united the human line of kings with the divine kingship of the Plan of Salvation.

As an infant and young child, Jesus relived the experience of his human ancestors. He fled death in the promised land. He lived in exile in Egypt. He experienced the exodus from Egypt in his return to the Promised Land. He lived with the threat of arrest and execution as an exile in his own country.

In Jesus, God took the many detours the people of Israel had embraced and wove them back into the Plan and Pattern and Purpose of the Way of Salvation.

There is a way that seems right to people. It is the multi faceted way of self will, pride and fear. It goes by many names and offers many promises. Whatever it is called and whatever it promises it cannot deliver what people truly desire. It can only deliver temporary pleasure. It can only follow the path of command and control. It can only lead to murmuring, grumbling and the non negotiable demands and threats of the will to power.

This is not the way of salvation. This is not the way of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God offers a very different way. It is the way of reunification. It is the way of conversion.

Conversion does not happen once. Reunification with the Father through the Son in the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit takes place once in a moment of time. Conversion is a life long process.

Jesus lived that process. He relived the process for Israel and offered to that nation what they themselves refused to accomplish. He lived that process for us.
The process is the way of salvation.

The moment of salvation is the real choice we make to receive Jesus as our personal lord and savior. That choice reunites us to God the Father. That choice allows God the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. That choice gives us a new life which is eternal.
The process is the new way of living that proceeds from the new life, the eternal life. Every day we live God invites us to make choices about the path we follow in this world. The one true way of eternal life is Jesus Christ. All other ways lead to suffering and death.

The Way of Jesus Christ for humanity is the way of daily conversion. Every day in every way Jesus invites us to give our sins to him. As we give our sins to him he transforms them back into their original blessing.

The choice is always ours. The way of the world ( our culture) is the way of self will and pride. The way of the flesh ( our sin nature) is the way of self indulgence, demand and rebellion. The way of Satan ( the angelic being who presumes to set himself in God’s place) is the way of the exaltation of the will to power.
Jesus relived the ancient history of his people in his own life. He took the failure of that history and healed it. He restored the Plan, the Pattern, and the Purpose of God to Israel and offered them a second chance to enter into a personal relationship with God.

Jesus does the same for us. There is only one way to God. There is only one way that brings forth eternal life here and now. It is the way of Jesus Christ. Jesus meets us on the detours we have taken and offers to help us return to the way of divine love and compassion.

That way is the way of personal daily conversion. That way is formed and directed by the questions the Holy Spirit encourages us to ask. The sign posts on that way are the Bible, the Sacraments, the saints, the liturgy, and the lives of other believers.
On this second Sunday of Christmas Jesus is asking you: where do you need to experience conversion? Where have you taken a detour off the way of eternal love? Where do you need to make a course correction and a change?

Those who live the old way live in slavery. Those who live in slavery are those who symbolically live in Egypt. God calls you out of slavery. God calls you out of Egypt even as we hear this day that God called his Son, his only begotten Son, out of Egypt in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Plan and Pattern of Salvation.

As it was for Jesus so it can be for you. Out of Egypt have I called my sons and my daughters.