I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas day. One of the neatest things for me was that I realized that all of my family was together. I doesn’t seem to happen that often any more. I think this might have been our first year that all of the children were old enough that none of the presents were toys. Now I think toys are as much for the adults as for the kids.

My thoughts went back to probably the funnest Christmas present I ever got, one of the few I really remember. It was a water gun which came with this bottle of bright purple liquid. You filled it up and squirted it on someone and it made this terrible looking purple stain. But in a minute, it would fade and vanish. Really neat stuff. So I squirted everyone and went looking for bigger and better targets. Then I remembered. It was Thursday! Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Mrs. Phillips next door hung out all her white laundry on Thursday. Sure enough, it was all there from sheets to unmentionables. All of it got a big dose of purple stain. I laughed and waited for it to turn. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Then I got nervous. It never took this long before. Then I ran! But it wasn’t hard to find the culprit. What I didn’t know is that on the instructions it warned in bold letters against diluting the liquid with water. I had used up half the bottle then filled it back up, and suddenly it did not work so well. Actually it did fade, but about an hour later, much too late to save my, um, pride. Funny, they took that stuff off the market not long after that. Probably because one too many laundry lines got stained.

We don’t like things which are stained, things which are contaminated. Often for good reason. Purple stains on white sheets don’t look good. One spoiled ingredient will your favorite dish. Unsanitary conditions can lead to the spread of disease. So we in America are probably the most sanitary society in history. It is that way with American Christianity as well.

The story we read just a moment ago from Matthew is one which we don’t like to read. It is not part of our usual Christmas story. It is one of the most gruesome parts of the Bible, but it part of the story of Jesus. We sanitize our Christmas story. Think about all of the manger scenes you have seen this season. How many of them smelled like a barn which was down in a cave with little or no ventilation? How many of the Marys looked like they had just given birth? How many mangers were filled with germs from animals licking all over them?

Well, you get the point. We have sanitized the picture of the birth and childhood of Jesus until it no longer belongs in this world. We have removed Jesus from the dirt and the threats and the hurts and the abuses which are a part of real human life. But the Bible does not! Perhaps we need to go back and look at just what kind of world it was into which Jesus was born. And we need not sanitize it. In the dirt will be the gospel.

Some time after the birth of Jesus the magi, or wise men arrived to ask Herod the King where the new King of the Jews was. They had seen His star. This troubled Herod to no end and he found out that the messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. Then he puts together the story of the star with the information and tries to bribe the wise men. But God intervened, as happened often for Jesus, by warning the magi in a dream. So they returned a different way home. About that same time Joseph is also warned in a dream by an angel to flee with the child to Egypt, else Herod will kill Him. So, as had been prophesied by Hosea, they lived in Egypt.

Not finding the child sent Herod into a rage and he went and slew every male baby near Bethlehem who could even remotely be the King. Put yourself in the place of those mothers and fathers. Can you imagine the utter horror, as soldiers broke into the house, examined your children, and ripped open your baby with the sword simply for living near Bethlehem and being born at a certain time? Jeremiah described it:

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Friends, Jesus was born into a violent world. Herod died and here comes the angel again in a dream, speaking to Joseph, saying it is now safe to return. Apparently, however, this rage in Herod’s family was passed down to his son, Archelaus, who is reigning in his father’s place. So God warns Joseph again in a dream (angel?) to go to the region of Galilee where it would be safe. So Joseph settles in the town of Nazareth to blend in and work as a carpenter. And there he raises the boy Jesus and the rest of the family after fleeing for his life again and again.

So often we have this mistaken picture of Jesus, since He was the Son of God, as having a serene, placid, uneventful childhood. I am glad it was not that way for Him, because for most of us it was not that way. I remember one time when I was chaplain for Brackenridge hospital and a terrible situation happened which had us all up nearly all night. It was a terrible accident, made even worse by family violence. One family member was killed. Others were hurt. I am not at liberty to tell you all the details, but rest assured, this was a bad situation. The family was Catholic and so one of my jobs was to get a priest to come and help. I finally found one who would come over in the middle of the night, and we sat in my office and I told him the whole story he would be walking in on. When I finished we both sat there in silence for a minute and he said words I will never forget. With tears in the corner of his eyes he said, "We live in a broken world." Somehow it made sense then and it still does. Sin is a reality.

In one sense I look at the world into which Jesus was born and I say, nothing at all has changed. All of the so called ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, as horrific as that may be, is nothing new. History repeats itself. What about Hitler who would senselessly kill a whole race of people for personal gain? In my life I have stood over the graves of those who just shouldn’t have died, and struggled to find words to say. I have held the hands of those racked with pain. My shoulder has seen the tears of those betrayed by their own spouse or family members or friends. I have seen the effects of senseless violence and stood with the innocent victims and wondered, "Why, God!" Every one of us has been touched by the lunacy of our world . Has anything changed?

In the final analysis, yes. Something is very different. Into this dirty, messed up, murderous, sorrow filled world, a child was born. His name was Jesus. And the good news is that He got blisters on His feet from fleeing around the world. He felt the pain of friends and family members who had unexplainably lost children on that dark afternoon and told the story over the years. He knew what it was like to be betrayed. He knew what it was like to stare death in the face and question, "Why!"

This, my friends, is Jesus Christ. If we sanitize the life of Christ we miss the gospel. Into that world Christ came. The light shone in the darkness. And there was hope. And into our world Christ still comes, standing with us, understanding, unafraid of our questions, unsurprised by our stained laundry, able to bear our pain, even when it seems unbearable.
What do you see in these letters?    GODISNOWHERE

It can either be GOD IS NOWHERE  or GOD IS NOW HERE.   It just depends on how you look at it.

We can look at the pain and the dirt which is life and bemoan the absence of God. Or, we can see the world, just as it is, and say, Thank God for the fact that Christ came into this world!