"The Egyptian Pilgrimage"

Matthew 2:13-21

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

January 9, 2005

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

It’s the end of the Christmas season. No longer are there lights blazing on street corners in the one upmanship of lawn displays. Many of the Christmas cookies are gone and the tinsel and ornaments are stowed away for another year. This afternoon, we’ll take all of these sanctuary decorations down, too. I’ll miss it. I always do. I’ll miss the smell of pine, the carols, the eggnog, the warm fuzzies. I like the sentimentality of Christmas. I need that good feeling. And yet the story drags me in.

Shortly after that first Christmas, it came to pass that the serenity of the stable was shattered by heart-breaking reality. The shepherds were back in their fields. The Magi were on there way back home. The census was done and Herod was back to being Herod.

Herod wore the mantle of benevolent king, but the reality was brutal. He thought nothing of slaughtering people in order to achieve his despotic ends. Evangelical Covenant Reverend Dr. Michael Van Horn calls him Ebenezer Scrooge without the conversion, the Grinch without the change of heart." He slaughtered the innocent children of Israel just like he had slaughtered innocent adults before. It was what he did. Jesus entered the bloody history of Israel and the human race.

Joy Caroll Wallis, wrote in a recent on-line edition of Sojourner’s Magazine that in the midst of our sentimental nostalgia and affluenza that surrounds Christmas, we ought to remember to put Herod back into Christmas. Herod represents worldly powers that are offended by words such as "peace on earth good will toward all people." Herod wants us to buy things and plunge ourselves into debt so that we won’t recognize his brutality. Herod wants us to forgive and forget so that he can go on raping and pillaging with abandon. We need to be careful not to get too sentimental about Christmas. When we gloss over the less comfortable Christmas stories, Herod gets permission again to be Herod.

Today’s scripture doesn’t appear in many Christmas pageants for a reason. It’s too real, too uncomfortable, too messy. Giving birth in a barn is about as messy as we’re willing to get. But at what cost?

Think about this other offensive part of the story. As Joy Wallis puts it,

"Most scholars suggest that in Luke's account it's not just that the inns were full but that Mary and Joseph were forced to take the barn because their family had rejected them. Joseph has relatives or friends of relatives in Bethlehem. So rather than being received hospitably by family or friends, Joseph and Mary have been shunned. Family and neighbors are declaring their moral outrage at the fact that Joseph would show up on their doorsteps with his pregnant girlfriend." No room at the inn? How about no room with family or friends?

Some of us know what it’s like to not be accepted by family, to be shunned. Some of us know what it’s like to give birth in a stable surrounded by the manure of life. And many of us know how to thrive despite all of the rejection. That’s part of the Christmas story, too. Messy as it is.

Let’s face it, it wasn’t a pilgrimage to Egypt as much as it was a flight. Mary, Joseph and Jesus could not go home to Nazareth. They had been rejected by their family. They fled to Egypt, not unlike another holy family fled to Egypt centuries before. It was an exile they were experiencing.

Here’s the question I have. How can we find ourselves and preserve our souls when outside forces send us into exile? How do we sing the sacred songs in the strange land of Egypt? How do we find home in the midst of our Egyptian pilgrimage?

We are fast approaching exile in our denomination. Amidst all of the calls for unity, the denomination seems to be coming apart at it seems. Just in the past few months, a number of things have happened which will shape our denomination.

This get’s confusing, so let me try to unpack it a bit for you.

A year ago, our region took the unprecedented move of refusing to recognize the ordinations of Lynn Welton, Ross Aalgaard and anyone else who dared to reveal that they were gay or lesbian. Our Region is studying this, thanks to our own Bill Allen and will make a final decision about the recognition of the ordinations of gay and lesbian clergy in October.

This past summer, the Pacific Southwest region tried to unseat a Minister’s Council Senator from Massachusetts who happened to be lesbian who legally married her spouse this past year. The Minister’s Council thwarted that effort and is presently engaged in a "Jerusalem Council" process across the denomination addressing how we can stay together when we have such divergent beliefs. This process will conclude in the summer and the Minister’s Council will vote on whether to let openly gay and lesbian people to serve in leadership positions.

This past November the Regional Executive Ministers overwhelmingly agreed to send out a pastoral letter which called on regions to voluntarily refrain from appointing openly gay and lesbian people for regional and national positions; to voluntarily refrain from conducting same-sex marriages; to voluntarily refrain from making stereotypical statements about homosexuals, participating in homosexual behavior, making uninformed assumptions about homosexuals, or from participating in public demonstrations on one side or the other. Apparently they see no contradiction between the latter and the former. They also included an agreement to voluntarily refrain from withdrawing funds, resources or fellowship. Most of you have seen my open letter to the Executive Ministers. One Executive Minister responded by saying that they had to pass this otherwise Indiana and Kentucky would make a motion to disfellowship the Minister’s Council.

Apparently the agreement was short-lived. For in December, churches in Indiana and Kentucky received a letter from their Executive Minister encouraging them to petition the General Board of the denomination to change the Standing rules of the denomination in order to dismiss Welcoming and Affirming congregations and to install a theological litmus test in order to be an American Baptist Church in good standing. These bylaws changes will likely be voted on at the April meeting of the General Board.

In addition, the American Baptist Churches of the West and the Pacific Southwest are calling together a group of at least 10 regions at the end of January to form a new body called The Great Commission Network. This network will include a confession of faith and will include a condemnation of homosexual behavior. They base this on what they call Baptist orthodoxy. They say this with a straight face, even though it’s an oxymoron. It will likely siphon funds from the denomination in favor of their own exclusive and orthodox aims.

I don’t like to use the liberal or conservative labels, so let’s use inclusive and exclusive. One way or another, I think the exclusive group will either win and disfellowship those who are not willing to sign onto their orthodox statement, or the exclusionists will lose and then will leave the denomination. My heart breaks for all of this disunity and exclusion. My heart also breaks for our missionaries and all of the good work they do which end up being pawns in this denominational chess match. Whatever happens, the American Baptist Churches, USA will be different after this summer.

We may find ourselves with Mary and Joseph and Jesus on a pilgrimage to a place we did not choose. We may find ourselves strangers in a strange land. The question is, how do we find the ability to sing the sacred songs when we are on a pilgrimage that seeks to send us into exile?

We have a couple of options. The first is to not go into exile. We know what we need to say in order to stay in the denomination. The exclusionists say they have the votes to sustain the purity of the denomination. All we need to do is to sign onto their covenant and we’ll be able to preserve this sinking ship. We’ll be able to patch some of the holes. But other holes may develop somewhere else. Maybe we will be like Sisyphus and our duty is to repair the ship forever. We might also have to ignore and appease Herods out there, too.

The second option is to simply leave and go somewhere else. We can surely find a welcome home somewhere else. We ought to surely find other like-minded folk who would take us in. There was a time when the Israelite people were encouraged by no one less than the great Prophet Jeremiah to depart from Jerusalem and to accept their fate in Babylon.

I served a church in San Francisco that was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention and never allowed into the American Baptist Churches. We were invited to be part of the UCC and the MCC. But ultimately, we decided that we were Baptists and we wanted to remain Baptist. It made little sense for us to join a nonbaptist group. It just didn’t seem like home.

When I became an American Baptist minister, I signed a code of ethics. Part of that code said that I would not lead a congregation out of the ABC. So I could not ethically remain your pastor if the church was to leave the denomination. Of course, the code of ethics doesn’t mention the denomination ceasing to be American Baptist.

The third option is to stick it out, even if that means we are heading to Egypt. Marshall Peters told us a year and a half ago that what we needed to do as a church was to keep doing what we are doing. If we are going to be persecuted, than it might as well be for the right reasons. Mel Roy told the story once of the person who was brought up on charges of being a Christian. If someone was brought up on such charges today, if one of us was, would there be enough evidence to convict us?

So, we can appease, we can flee or we can bear the faithful witness knowing that we might end up in exile.

If we end up in exile, in Egypt, then the world might look different. It might not, too. We will certainly continue to be UBC. We’ll continue our local, national and international mission. We will still be a voice for the voiceless, and a thorn in the side of those who dominate by force.

I find myself wondering what we might find on our Egyptian pilgrimage. I imagine that Mary and Joseph and Jesus spent a bit of time in terror and despair. But they could not remain there. None of us can and thrive. We need to find a way to move beyond the depression that sets in when our known world is shattered. Many of us know what that’s like. And many of us know that it can’t be done alone. A good therapist and responsible pharmacology help here, too. Eventually we need to connect with people who have been through what we have been through. I imagine Mary and Joseph found themselves a support group of parents of children under two. They were in the land of Egypt where the land and people remembered a similar slaughter of the innocents a millennia before. Maybe there were agencies poised to deal with the fallout of Pharaohs and Herods.

I know that when broken people gather together, there is a recognition of the truth which washes over them like healing balm. Some of the greatest laughter comes from 12-step groups when the people see themselves for what they truly are. They see the ways they have given their lives over to another power which is not God. They have gone through their own tears of despair.

And on the other side of it is laughter, mostly at themselves and the ways that they get sucked into the seductive power of a destructive view of reality.

In exile we need to find friends. Many of us come to UBC because we have already experienced exile: from God, from church, from family, from the red and blue dichotomy of our world. And here, we find a respite for our weary souls.

If we do it right, we’ll also begin to relearn what it is to trust. What it is to trust people. What it is to trust God. Remembering that our jobs, our denomination, our families, our government, none of them are God, even though we have given over godly power to them from time to time. In exile, we find our voices, we regain confidence, we remember who to trust and we see God.

Hear what Joy Wallis says about our mission in midst of this seemingly insurmountable and all-powerful empire:

"Mary's "Magnificat" tells us that this new king is likely to turn the world upside-down. Mary's declaration about the high and mighty being brought low and the lowly exalted is at the heart of the Christmas story. The son of God is born in an animal stall. Mary herself is a poor young woman, part of an oppressed race, and living in an occupied country. Her prayer is the hope of the downtrodden everywhere, a prophecy that those who rule by wealth and domination, rather than serving the common good, will be overturned because of what has just happened in the little town of Bethlehem. Her proclamation can be appropriately applied to any rulers or regimes that prevail through sheer power, instead of by doing justice.

This story that begins in a smelly barn finally ends on a cross. By human standards it is a message of weakness. Christmas reminds us that our God has come into our broken world, and that human judgments are not the last judgment, human justice is not the last justice. The power that humans exercise over us is not the last power. As we enjoy our caroling, let's remember to put Herod back into Christmas."

Sisters and brothers, sometimes we go to places we do not choose. We are forced to go someplace in order to live. The key is for us to find something to give us life even in the exile.

When we go into our Egyptian pilgrimage, remember that we will find there new friends. As we lick our wounds, we will find those who will midwife us into the rebirth of our souls. As we find these new friends and connect with those who need hope just as much as we do, we’ll find again our purpose, our mission, our vision and our passion. We’ll cry, we’ll laugh and most importantly, we’ll have God at our side—not a bad travel companion, if you ask me.

And ultimately, if we are defined by our commitment to God and doing God’s work among the people of the world, we will find community, home and joyful purpose. Thank God for being with us on the pilgrimage, wherever it takes us.