Christmas 2A + Outsiders + 1.5.14
M.
Campbell-Langdell
All Santos, Oxnard
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| Flight into Egypt by Eugene-Alexis Girardet (from redeemerokc.org) |
(Jer. 31:7-14; Ps.
84; Eph. 1:3-6, 15-19ยช; Matt. 2:13-15, 19-23)
When I got to Oxnard, some
folks said to me, “Welcome to the boonies!” Because there is a sense that, out
here with the fields about sixty miles north of the big city of Los Angeles,
some folks think we are really in the boondocks.
But this past year I had a
chance to go to a conference put on by the Mixteco Indigenous Community
Organizing Project, MICOP, and there I learned about the Mixteco and other
indigenous cultures of many of our folks here in Ventura County. For many of
them, this is the big city. Because they come from much more rural, remote
parts of Oaxaca. You might say that they
are the outsiders even in the boonies, because they are not always culturally
accepted here and their work in the fields demands a kind of nomadic lifestyle.
Folks begin in Oaxaca or a nearby state and travel north working in fields in
Mexico and then here in Oxnard and then up to Salinas, often uprooting their
families a few times a year. Most Mixteco folk have a village that they come
from and to which they are culturally required to return to help out by
fulfilling specific roles during the religious festivals once every couple of
years. These community-based volunteer
jobs often last a few months and take some financial investment in their
ancestral town. But though these ancestral homes are clearly vital to the
families that hail from them, they cannot remain there due to lack of
work. Hence the nomadic lifestyle.
All this brings to my mind
today’s scriptures, as you have here an interesting contrast between the
beautiful imagery of homecoming that we see in Jeremiah and the stark reality
that the Holy Family basically lived as nomads for the first part of their life
together. First they were in Bethlehem
to get registered, and Jesus is born, now they are called out to Egypt, and
then they will make their way not home but to Nazareth. Matthew tries to spin
that last bit into prophecy, but as far as we can tell, there was no holy
scripture that said “he will be called a Nazorean.” In fact, Nazareth was
barely a hundred years old when Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus set up a home there
with that carpenter’s shop we hear about, hardly an established town to be
prophesied about. It’s like saying “He will be called an Oxnardian” (is that
word?) So Joseph, Mary and Jesus were also a nomadic family during this early
period. They also had an ancestral home
to which they basically only went to perform their civic duty and then, off
they went, compelled by the political and other pressures of their own time,
less economics than physical safety compelled them, but otherwise the story
doesn’t look too different.
This is interesting to
think of the Holy Family as a group of marginalized, nomadic immigrants. But
the reality is often slightly different than we picture it, isn’t it, and we
feel this never more deeply than in the New Year’s breath of fresh air that
whooshes in right after the sugar high of Christmas. Jesus and his family, for
example, plan to head home but that plan is intercepted by a dream from the
Lord and God’s guidance. We might
experience God’s re-direction in a more subtle way. For example, after the
festivities of Christmas, many people experience a chastening call to create a
more disciplined life for the new year, often crafting some New Year’s Resolutions.
These come from a marvelous impulse to live a healthier and better life, but
many of at least my resolutions have turned out to be very individualistic. I
am going to eat better and/or do more exercise. These are good goals. But I
think to these we might consider adding goals that also benefit others or are
more communally oriented.
What do I mean by that?
Well, speaking of today’s passage from the letter to the Ephesians, commentator
William L. Self says that “we are here for more than our own comfort and
pleasure. We are part of God’s great enterprise of redemption, reconciliation
and the healing of God’s broken world.”[1]
When
we step back from the Christmas festivities, we begin to remember that this
baby, this Christ child, who came, came not just to give us a good time, but
actually to save the world. And because we have, in our baptism, been adopted
as heirs in Christ, we live no longer just for ourselves or our tribes but for
the whole world.
In today’s gospel we are
reminded that Jesus is for the outsider since he is born on the margins and
finds his freedom, his life, in Egypt, ironically the same place where his
people were historically held in captivity.[2]
And then, just like Moses, Jesus will be called out of Egypt to save the
people. Jesus was born at the edges to identify with those of us from the
boonies, and with others who find themselves in tenuous places. And in our
baptism, we are reminded that we strive for “justice and peace among all
peoples” and we are to “respect the dignity of every human being.”[3]
So New Year’s Resolutions
like getting more exercise are good. But what if we added community-based
resolutions to strive for a better, more loving and just world for all? Well,
we are beginning the journey. We are feeding and clothing people in need as we
are able. But perhaps each one of us can strive to go that tiny bit further
this year for just one person on the margins. Because those of us in the “boonies”
know what it’s like to not feel you have opportunities. And this gives us
compassion for others. Compassion for people like Joseph, Mary and Jesus and
for the nomadic and marginalized peoples of the earth, in Oxnard and beyond.
And perhaps in sharing compassion and the good news, we, too, will help build a
better world for all. And perhaps in
this we will get a glimpse of this salvation we all have a share in, as
children of God.
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