Matthew 2:13-23

On the Sunday after Christmas, we hear the story of how King Herod was so threatened by an infant who was supposed to be the King of the Jews that he took the drastic and horrific step of murdering children he knew had to be innocent. Even though I know this story is coming up in the lectionary, I agree with David Lose, who writes, “I feel just a little cheated, that Christmas has been abruptly shortened and that we have been shortchanged.” Couldn’t we have one more Sunday of carols and angels – angels who aren’t warning of impending disaster?

Each gospel has its own character, and scholars have found all sorts of clues that point to Matthew’s gospel having been written for Jewish Christians. Much of what we read in Matthew is there to support the ancient prophecies and connect Jesus with the lineage of King David. This passage not only shows how Jesus fulfilled the ancient prophecies, it also ties Jesus’ birth and life into the defining story for the Jews and their relationship with God: the Exodus.

In the Exodus story, Pharaoh ordered the death of all the baby boys born to the Hebrew slaves, because the Hebrews were becoming so numerous that they threatened the security of the kingdom, much as Herod felt threatened. Moses, like Jesus, was spared the fate of his generation when he was left in the basket among the bulrushes to be found by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10). Moses, like Jesus, grew to be the savior and liberator of his people; they were not only “saved from,” they were “saved for.” They were saved so that they could save their people.

After killing a man who was overseeing enslaved Hebrews, Moses escapes with his life. God instructs him to, “Go back to Egypt, for those who were seeking your life are dead” (Exodus 4:19). This is almost word for word the same as the passage in Matthew. After King Herod dies, an angel appears to Joseph, saying, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead” (Matthew 2:20).

But there’s a reversal. In the Exodus story, Moses and the Hebrews escape from Egypt to the promised land of Israel, while in this story, Jesus and his parents escape from Israel to Egypt. This signals a more important reversal, which is what all these parallels are pointing to in the first place: In the Matthew story, the cycle of retaliation and violence is broken.

Violence is a cycle. How many of you have told your child to quit hitting her sister only to hear, “But she hit me first!”? You hit me so I hit you. You hurt me, so I hurt you. It is the oldest, most primitive approach to justice: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The only problem is, as someone has observed, pretty soon the whole world is blind and toothless. Violence begets violence. Hurt people hurt people. A child from a violent home beats up the neighborhood kids. A bullied teenager takes an automatic weapon to school. A tyrant who rules with violence must fear he will be violently overthrown.

This story in Matthew shows us a new way. In the Exodus story, God retaliated for the violence against the Hebrews by sending the angel of death to methodically kill each firstborn son in each Egyptian household. But here in Matthew, God does not retaliate against Herod, but rather, offers us a new way. God resists the evil of retaliation by taking human form, and joining in solidarity with suffering creation as Jesus, the Christ, who brings with him the good news that the chain of retaliation is not inevitable; the cycle of violence can end. In his teaching, and in his very life, Jesus taught that the law of limited retaliation, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, doesn’t go far enough, because what the kingdom of God calls for is the law of unlimited love. This is the Savior who says love not only your neighbor, but also your enemy (Matthew 5:44). This is the Savior who challenges us to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-39). This is the Savior who refused to abandon this radical approach to love and even died for it as a way of showing us that the most important thing we need to know about God is that God loves the whole world and every one of us that much.

Besides the reversal of retaliation and the fulfillment of prophecies, there may be another reason Matthew messed up the Christmas story with dread, pain, and horrific loss. December may be a time of festive celebration, but it is also a time when students at Brown University and Jews celebrating Hanukkah on a beach in Australia were killed by gunmen. A beloved movie director and his wife were tragically murdered, apparently by their drug-addicted son. In addition to the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Israel-Palestine, the website World Population Review lists 37 other nations embroiled in violence caused by civil war, terrorist insurgencies, drug wars, or ethnic conflict. Non-white immigrants in this country are being terrorized by ICE. About one in seven U.S. households – 47.4 Americans – is food insecure, and food insecurity rose sharply in November of this year. The climate crisis is accelerating at a dizzying pace, and the planet is losing species at a rate between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.

We are a long, long way from peace on earth, goodwill to all. Whether or not the events in this story took place, and many scholars doubt that they did, the story reminds us of what we already know because we have seen it in real life: the most vulnerable suffer when the most powerful are irresponsible. We live in a time when all is not yet well, and we know it. Shannon Kershner writes that Matthew “must have felt it would be important for us to see and realize that Christmas, the birth of Jesus, is not just about God coming to be with us in the middle of joyful celebrations. Rather, by inserting ‘the days of King Herod’ into Jesus’ birth narrative every chance he got, Matthew wanted to make sure we would see and realize that Christmas is also about God coming into the midst of the worst places, into the most dangerous of times, and into the most painful circumstances of life in order to share in the suffering, to share in the tragedy, to share in the sorrows with us, beside us.” Maybe God becoming flesh is not “I have come to save you from suffering and pain,” but rather, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”

Matthew invites us to lean into, live toward God’s love for all of God’s creation, and lean away from the days of King Herod. And to trust that “Emmanuel,” God with us, means God is with us even in the darkest days we might face.

Resources:
Diane G. Chen, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas/commentary-on-matthew-213-23-7
Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas/commentary-on-matthew-213-23-6
Shannon Kershner, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2015/010415.html
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2016/12/christmas-1-a-just-in-time/
Eugene Park, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas/commentary-on-matthew-213-23-8
Purdue Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability, https://ag.purdue.edu/cfdas/data/food-insecurity-in-the-united-states-increased-in-2025/
Herman C. Waetjen, The Origin and Destiny of Humanness (San Rafael, CA: Crystal Press, 1976)
World Population Review, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-currently-at-war.