Making Room: Majoring in the Margins (Matt. 2:13-23) Chris Altrock – December 18, 2016

An online journal called “The Richest” posted an article on the most expensive places to give birth.^[1]

1. There is a clinic in Switzerland that costs $2,140 per night.^[2] It is the most popular private clinic in Switzerland. Among the many services they offer, they take pride in a chef with a Michelin star offering 24-hour room service to your private room.
2. The Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles costs $4,000 per day.^[3] Offering deluxe maternity suites, you get a three-room suite with two bathrooms, fresh fruit, muffins, and chilled juices. In addition, they offer bedside salon services, like hairstyling, manicures, and pedicures.
3. And the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York charges $4,000 per day.^[4] The luxury suites offer views of Central Park and Manhattan. They include blankets made from Muslin cotton and massage therapy. They have bathrooms with Italian glass tiles and include tea and cookies served in the afternoons.

These are some of the most expensive places to give birth.

But Matthew goes to great lengths to reveal how Jesus chose to be born in radically different circumstances:

13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” 16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: 18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matt. 2:13-18 ESV)

Jesus had every right to be born in a place like Jerusalem and in the equivalent of luxury suites in the ancient world. He could have chosen to be born into the ancient equivalent of the Switzerland clinic, Cedar-Sinai Hospital, or Mount Sinai Hospital. That’s what he deserved.

Instead, Matthew draws our attention to three radically different circumstances into which Jesus chose to be born. We already know Jesus chose to be born in a manger. But Matthew gives us far more detail and tells us much more about the circumstances into which Jesus chose to be born. Matthew tells us three more circumstances beyond the manger into which Jesus chose to be born.

 

Jesus Born as a Victim

First, Jesus was born as a victim.

Herod was known for his violence in the ancient world.^[5] Here are six examples of his violence:

1. When Herod’s brother-in-law was becoming too popular, he had a “drowning accident” in a shallow pool, presumably arranged by Herod.
2. Herod was known to falsely accuse officials and then have them bludgeoned to death.
3. Wrongly suspecting two of his sons of plotting against him, Herod had them strangled.
4. Five days before his own death Herod, on his own deathbed, had a treacherous son executed.
5. In a fit of jealous rage Herold had his favorite wife strangled–she turned out to be innocent of the crime of which she had been accused.
6. Fearing people would not mourn his death, Herod reportedly ordered that nobles throughout the land be executed when he died so that that there would be mourning.

Herold wielded the worst form of power in the ancient world. Thus it is certainly within his character to have all of the young male children of Bethlehem killed who were two years old or younger. Scholars tell us that, based on the demographics and population of ancient Bethlehem, this probably amounted to about twenty young boys. Herold probably dispatched soldiers from his nearby fortress-palace called the Herodium. It was four miles from Bethlehem. Just a single command and his soldiers would have marched from the Herodium to Bethlehem and carried out this unspeakable deed.

And although Jesus escaped this slaughter, he was still the target of it. He was the aim of Herod’s hatred. All of Herod’s power was aimed at eliminating Jesus. When Jesus landed on earth, he landed square in the hands of one of the most violent men on earth, a man who had the power to squash his life when it had barely begun. Jesus was born the victim of violence.

Have you or someone you love ever been a victim? A victim of a violent crime? Sexual abuse? Home invasion? Car break-in? Bullying? Discrimination? Identity theft? Jesus chose to be born into that.

Memphis is mourning a record number of homicides this year.^[6] In early December 214 people were victims of murder, the highest ever in a year. And the number has continued to climb.

Jesus deserved to be born in the Switzerland clinic, the Cedar-Sinai, the Mount Sinai of his day. But he chose to be born as a victim of violence.

 

Jesus Born as a Refugee

            Second, Jesus was born as a refugee.

As a result of this violence, Joseph had to flee with Jesus and Mary to Egypt. Throughout Scripture Egypt was the place of shelter for refugees. Now, it was the home for the ultimate homeless family, the refuge for the ultimate refugee–Jesus himself.

In the late 1800’s, French painter Luc Oliver Merson painted this image of Mary, Joseph and Jesus as they entered Egypt, fleeing from Herold’s powerful army.^[7]

1. Notice how light they are traveling. They had to flee for their lives with hardly anything except the clothes on their backs.
2. Notice the darkness in the painting–how foreboding this journey into the unfamiliar would have been for a family with a young child! Matthew tells us they left at night–they couldn’t wait for the day and they had to take advantage of the cover of the darkness.
3. Notice how alone they are. No family. No friends.

They are leaving livelihoods and food and culture and places and people they’ve known and fleeing for their lives to another country hoping for hospitality and for refuge and for asylum. They are refugees.

The number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people around the world has topped 65 million–the highest in history.^[8] Many of them, recently, have been associated with the conflict in Syria.^[9]

1. This means that 1 in every 113 people on Earth has now been driven from their home by persecution, conflict and violence or human rights violations.
2. Each minute, 24 people around the world flee their home because of violence or persecution.
3. And if the world’s displaced people were their own nation, it would be larger than the United Kingdom.

Jesus deserved to be born in the Switzerland clinic, the Cedar-Sinai, the Mount Sinai of his day. But he chose to be born as a refugee.

Jesus Born as a Nobody

Third, Jesus was born as a nobody.

Upon returning, from Egypt, Jesus was resettled in a tiny town called Nazareth.

19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20 saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” 21 And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. 23 And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. (Matt. 2:19-23 ESV)

If you weren’t going to live in Jerusalem, and you had to live in Galilee, there were two major cities in Galilee: Sepphoris and Tiberias.^[10] Sepphoris had as many as 15,000 people. It had an outdoor theatre that sat 4,000 to 5,000 people. If Jesus wasn’t going to resettle into Jerusalem, the least he could do is resettle into Tiberias or Sepphoris, right?

Instead, he got Nazareth. Nazareth had a population of about 500.^[11] If you lived in Jerusalem or Sepphoris or Tiberias you were a somebody. If you lived in Nazareth you were a nobody. This is why the following interaction happened:

45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  (Jn. 1:45-46 ESV)

If you lived in Nazareth you were a nobody.

One year ago, as summer heat and humidity began to give way to fall coolness and colors, I spoke to a crowd at Harding University about Dime Box, TX. The story came from a book by William Least Heat-Moon entitled Blue Highways. It’s featured in my book Newsworthy from which my message at Harding came that morning.  In his book, Heat-Moon chronicles his trips to small towns as he traveled the “blue highways” in the old Rand McNally U.S. map. One of those small towns was Dime Box, TX.^[12] It’s the tiniest of towns. A middle-of-nowhere town. If you live in Dime Box, you’re a nobody.

Heat-Moon wandered over to the Post Office in Dime Box and the Postmaster said this:

“City people don’t think anything important happens in a place like Dime Box. And it usually doesn’t unless you call conflict important. Or love or babies or dying.”

The point? Most think nothing significant happens in small places like Dime Box. But in reality, perhaps the largest things of life–conflict, love, babies, dying–actually can be found in the littlest of places. We’re more likely to think that the big stuff happens in places like Dallas, TX. We’d drive right past Dime Box, TX. But perhaps there’s more going on in the small places than we think.

In my message at Harding, I used Heat-Moon’s story about Dime Box to talk about Nazareth. In Jesus’ day, people felt about Nazareth the way we feel about Dime Box. If you live in Nazareth you’re a nobody and nothing important ever happens there. But maybe there was more going on in Nazareth than we think because after all that’s where Jesus was.

 

The God of the Margins

            Jesus deserved to be born in the Switzerland clinic, the Cedar-Sinai, the Mount Sinai of his day. But he chose to be born as a victim, as a refugee and as nobody.

And the question is why?

I think it’s for this simple reason–to show us that Christmas is the story of a God who majors in the margins. Jesus chose to be born as a victim, as a refugee and as a nobody because these are some of the most marginal places of life. And Jesus wanted to identify with the marginal. He wanted to experience life at its most marginal so that we would have a Savior who would know what our life is like when life is at its most marginal.

If you’ve ever been a victim, if you’ve ever been without a home or a country or have been unwelcome, if you’ve ever been counted as a nobody, you have a Savior who knows exactly what that’s like–because he was born into those experiences. He chose to do that so that he could identify with you when you experience that.

And our message to the world is that there is a Savior who knows what that life is like. He is not aloof from the pains and disappointments of life. He knows that life is like at its darkest and hardest. He was born into that. That’s a message of very good news.

But it’s also a statement of where and how God chooses to work. Jesus chose to be born into these circumstances because he wanted us to know that God works in these marginal situations. God works in these circumstances where people may assume he is absent. God works in these situations where people may assume he has nothing going on. Just when you think you’ve come to a point in your life, or in the life of others where it seems God won’t or can’t work, that’s exactly where he is working. He majors in the margins. He chose to be born into life as a victim, a refugee and a nobody to show that God works in the most difficult of life’s circumstances. He did then and he does now.

Last September, I spoke to seventy-five church leaders in New England. It was the closing session of three days together and I had decided to end our time by returning to Dime Box, TX.  Most were ministering in small congregations in communities that were hostile or hardened to the Christian faith. I wanted to remind them that Jesus was from that small town and was considered a nobody–yet God did amazing things through him. God majored in the margins. And God could still do great things through their small churches in the northeast, even if the people around them considered them to be nobodies. So I told them that story about Dime Box, TX and Nazareth.

I finished and my friend Gareth rose to lead a final song. Then a hand went up in the back. At each previous session we had ended with a time of questions and answers. But Gareth and I had decided not to end the final session in that way. We wanted to just go out on a high note. A word of encouragement and a song of inspiration. But as Gareth got up, a hand in the back went up. “I’ve just got to say something,” the owner of the hand said. Gareth and I looked at each other. We didn’t know what he wanted to say. We really didn’t want to end with a time of comments. But the owner of the hand was passionate. “I know you said you weren’t going to take questions or comments. But I’ve got to say something.” The look on his face was so earnest, there was simply no way to say “no.” I’m glad we didn’t. Because every one of us needed to hear what he had to say.

His name was Ray. And Ray shared this:

“I obeyed the gospel in Dime Box, TX.

I led my first hymn in Dime Box, TX.

I preached my first sermon in Dime Box, TX.”

No lie. No exaggeration. Ray had come to faith and had his first taste of congregational leadership in a tiny church in Dime Box, TX. That nowhere-good-for-nothing tiny town was where Ray met Christ and nurtured leadership skills. And today he’s a church leader for a church in Nashua, NH.

As I talked with him after our closing song, Ray was still shaking. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that a preacher from Memphis had traveled to Maine to tell a story about Dime Box, TX as an illustration of a God who does the large through the little. Because Ray was that illustration. He was living proof.

I couldn’t believe it either. Meeting Ray and hearing his story was a stunning reminder to me of how often God still majors in the margins.

That’s what Matthew wants us to know about Christmas. Jesus deserved to be born in the Switzerland clinic, the Cedar-Sinai, the Mount Sinai of his day. But he chose to be born as a victim, as a refugee and as nobody. Why? To show us that God majors in the margins. And these marginal places where it may seem God isn’t up to anything may be