Sermon delivered 12/27/09 at Wicker Park Grace
Reflection (transcribed)

 The Escape to Egypt                        

(Matthew 2:12-16)

 12 The wise men, having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, left for their own country by another road.

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, 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 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

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I was thinking about how in some ways we’re always running from the jealous king. I was thinking, who is this jealous king who tries to kill the innocents, who tries to kill the baby of hope, the baby who is promised to be a king in a new way, a leader of justice.

Who is the jealous king who kills the innocence?

I think that jealous king appears in my life in very many ways. Killing the vision and the hope in the sense of possibility. Sometimes I even struggle with it when I read these stories in the biblical text and I’m trying to understand them and explain them and I can’t quite fit things in boxes. And somehow the hope and the innocence and the possibility and the dream kind of begins to dissipate and I feel burdened and befuddled.

Sometimes the jealous king comes in my life when I start to think that I really am in control of things and I really need to accomplish everything and I find myself working and working and working and working so hard that all the magic kind of disappears out of my life.

I think there’s a jealous king who wants a status quo of despair, who wants all the hopeful babies dead. He wants any possibility of a baby of hope or a king of justice to be dead, so that king of the status quo can maintain power and domination.

The jealous king comes into our lives in so, so many ways. And then all of our imagination and our dreams, our poetry and the way we engage story, the way we get inspired and reshape our lives and develop a perseverance with possibility and creativity—that all can be undermined by the jealous king.

When I was home in Tennessee this last week with my parents, my father handed me an editorial that he was reading in the paper. It was written in 1897 the first time. It’s very famous by now, and maybe you’ve read it, or heard of it. You’ve probably at least heard the phrase, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” That statement came out of this editorial, because this eight year old girl wrote to the editor of the New York Sun.

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.(The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.) Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

This editorial argues that Santa Claus is “real.” Not by saying that Santa Claus is a physical being who moves about the world, dropping presents into children’s rooms. But by saying that imagination is real, that poetry is real, that love and generosity and devotion are real. And we see the results of these very real things in the world and in our relationships. These real things—love, devotion, poetry—they change our lives and they change the world. The stories of Santa Claus make these things real, or they can, if we choose to respond with imagination and vision.

There are some who would be horrified that I seem to be comparing Santa Claus with Jesus. I’m not saying that Jesus is Santa Claus, or is the same as Santa Claus. What I’m saying is when we think about what is real, we have to expand our ideas about how we even think about that question. What is real is not just what is tangible and what is physical. But what we imagine and what we hope for and long for, that is real too. And that really changes the world.

So, when we hear a story, like the baby Jesus is born. And the angels announce him. And wise men from afar dream of him and go to find him. And his mother sings a song about Justice coming into the world through him. There is hope in this story. A very real hope. Not an instant solution. Not an instant transformation of the world. We still see injustice, right? But there is real, true hope and possibility that changes our lives and changes the world. And there is, in that way, a new king, who will be a king in a different way, who will rule our minds, our imaginations, our hearts, our hands, and our feet in a new way in this world.

At the same time, there’s a king who cannot allow this to be. A king, the jealous king—who makes us run away in fear, who makes us doubt what is real. Who makes us think that our visions are not valid; that our hopes and dreams are not real; that the baby is not holy, is not a king, not chosen, not anointed.

That king will try to kill the childlike innocence in you and in me, and in everyone around us.

But this story tells us: we don’t have to let the king kill the baby. We can relocate the baby. We can go home by another route. We can realize that the baby can’t be killed through a simple refutation of fact; that imagination is stronger and that possibility and love and connection and hope and dreams and vision—those are stronger than the jealous king of the status quo, of the enlightenment era, who wants everything mapped out, and categorized, and contained.

You can tear apart the theology, like you can tear apart a baby’s rattle to see what makes it rattle. You can tear apart the pieces of the Christmas story and say that it is not unique, it’s irrational, but you’re only tearing apart the decoy—the words and the tangibles. And if you let this destroy the power of the story, then you have let the king kill the baby. You’ve stayed in the hometown of the king and given him that power, to kill.

But we don’t have to stay in the realm of the king. We can take the baby to a different place of reality, another realm, a deeper reality, a place where there is “a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest [person], [which not] even the united strength of all the strongest [people] that ever lived, could tear apart.” That veil is indestructible.

And that veil between the worlds protects the infant Jesus and “Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real?”

I say, Yes, Virginia, there is a Jesus. There is a Christ. There is a light of the world that is not consumed by the darkness.

There is nothing more real and abiding than that.