Sermon Christmas I, 28 December 2025
Readings: Isaiah 63.7-9; Hebrews 2.10-18; Matthew 2.13-23
Theme: The New Exodus
If on Christmas day our Gospel reading from the prologue of St John was a re-reading of the creation story of The Book of Genesis through the advent of the Messiah, Jesus the Word of God, on this First Sunday of Christmas, we now have St Matthew re-reading the story of Exodus as narrated in the five books of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). For the Gospel writers, Jesus is the key for unlocking the true meaning of the scriptures through the fulfilment of the covenant.
So, the flight of Mary, Joseph and Jesus into Egypt, the slaughter of the children, through Herod’s orders, in and around Bethlehem who were under two years old, and the journey out of Egypt to eventually settle in the provincial town of Nazareth, in Galilee, are all a re-reading of the journey of Israelites out of their bondage to slavery in Egypt to occupy the Palestinian promised land of freedom. Matthew quotes Hosea 11.1, “Out of Egypt I have called my son”, to indicate that the ‘son’ in question, Jesus, represents the salvation of Israel, the whole people of God. Allusion to the slaughter of the young children echoes that of the slaughter initiated by Pharaoh’s decree to kill all the male offspring of the Israelites in Exodus 1.16; and, at verse 18, Matthew quotes the moving passage from Jeremiah 31.15, the sorrow of Rachel at the exile of her two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, which draws a comparison of Jesus with Jeremiah as the suffering prophet of the new covenant. In journeying out of Egypt, on the death of Herod the Great, Jesus represents the new Moses leading his people out of the slavery of sin into freedom. The one through whom the new law of the covenant will be announced to God’s people.
All of these echoes of scripture in the account of the Egyptian sojourn of the Holy Family, following the visit of the three Magi, are meant by Matthew to identify Jesus as being Son of Abraham, Moses, and David. He is the ‘Emmanuel’. In short, he is the Son of God who will be the saviour of Israel and of all the nations. So, this new exodus will be a journey out of slavery and into freedom, but this time around, the journey will be led by the Messiah himself who will renew the covenant and liberate his people forever.
As we read these passages from Matthew and Isaiah speaking of the saviour, of the Messiah who has come to set his people free, we begin to see just what exactly is meant by referring to Jesus as the ‘saviour’. Salvation refers to the freeing of a people, a liberation of that people from bondage and for a life in the presence of God, as Isaiah notes at verse 9. God saves through his love and compassion, and he will lift his people up and carry them on this journey of salvation. This is what salvation means as portrayed in this account of the time just after the birth of Jesus. It is a journey to Life from death, from slavery to freedom in God’s abiding presence.
In our own situation, as we read these passages, we need to apply them to our own circumstances in order that they have real personal relevance. Consequently, we might first need to discover that we ourselves are in slavery; that we have been deported to Egypt because of a famine. If we live only for ourselves this is like being in captivity in Egypt, though we may be unaware of this at the time. Only when we experience a hardship, perhaps, do we come to see that this form of life is empty. The promise of God is to liberate us from this so that we can share in his abundance.
However, as the story of the time of the Holy Family in Egypt demonstrates, this liberation journeys through suffering. The slaughter of the innocents, in both Old and New Testaments, reminds us that the forces of negativity and death are horrendous. They resist Life and want to impose death on us. Only the mighty power of the saviour, Jesus, overcomes these forces. He is our new Samson, the strong one, who will dwell in Nazareth (consecrated ‘branch’), perhaps simply because this is where Joseph would have found ample building work, due to the new developments in that area undertaken by the son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas. So, we should not underestimate the forces of death unleashed when the Messiah arrives, because if we do, we fail to understand just why it is that we need saving and cannot do this for ourselves.
That is perhaps one of the hardest parts of accepting God into our lives because there can be a tendency to what we might call an ‘existential autonomy’. The experience of our freedom can create within us a sense of absolute independence; it is as if we need nobody and can go it alone. This is a deep illusion embedded within the unformed use of our freedom, detached from consequences and responsibility; detached, as it were, from its embeddedness in the fabric of society, of nature and ultimately of God. This detachedness is easily seen all around us in our world today with its wars and conflicts, environmental destruction and its lack of recognition of who God really is and hence who we really are. Salvation actually liberates our freedom from this cul-de-sac of illusions so that a directionless freedom begins to be oriented towards the goal of life. When this happens the journey out of our own ‘Egypts’ begins. A journey that is often challenging and full of wrong turns, but a journey nevertheless.
As we embark afresh on this new exodus again in this Christmas season let us be ever more aware that we do this in caravan. We do it together, in company, and perhaps at the pace of the slowest in the group. The consolation of this exodus is that, as Isaiah reminds us, God’s presence accompanies us, it lifts us up and carries us for all of the days of this journey out of Egypt.