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St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
January 4, 2026
The Second Sunday after Christmas (5:00 pm)
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
The Unsentimental Story of God With Us
I know that I keep going on about how wonderful this Christmas has been here at St. Thomas’ – and that’s because it really has been wonderful!
The Christmas flowers and greenery looked great, and Jon has led the choir to make extraordinarily beautiful music.
For me, seeing and hearing the Junior Choir was one of the best Christmas gifts. The other day, I went on YouTube and pulled up the video of the 4:00 service. When the kids began to sing “Away in a Manger,” Sue, who was sitting across from me, said, “They sound so good!”
They sure did.
And, of course, there were lots of people in church, including many people we may only see once or twice a year.
But they were here, thank God!
Yes, thanks to the hard work of many, our Christmas celebrations were beautiful.
And let’s admit it, our Christmas celebrations were also sentimental – the carols, the Christmas Pageant, the candlelight singing of “Silent Night,” all of that and more is quite sentimental.
And there’s definitely a place for sentimentality. (I’m sure it’s one of the big attractions for all those people who came to church on Christmas Eve!) But, if we’re not careful, sentimentality can easily smooth the hard edges of the Christmas story.
The sentimentality can hide the great Christmas truth that God is now with us in a new and unexpected way.
Emmanuel means “God with us.”
And, in and through Jesus, God is with us, right here in our messed-up world.
So, on this Second Sunday after Christmas, let’s strip away some of the sentimentality from the Christmas story:
Mary gives birth far from home. There aren’t any older and experienced women present to see her through her first birth. She’s on her own, with Joseph by her side, which I’m sure was comforting but I don’t know how much help, how much expertise, he could offer.
And, of course, the Son of God isn’t born in a grand palace – there’s not even room for him at the Bethlehem inn. Mary and Joseph are forced to place the swaddled child in a manger, a sentimental word for a feeding trough meant for animals.
In and through Jesus, God is with us.
God is especially with the people struggling to provide for their families.
It’s still Christmas, but just until Tuesday!
By now, the crowds at church have thinned out…just a bit!
That’s too bad for lots of reasons, but especially because they miss out on the rest of the Christmas story, the parts of the story we say little about on Christmas Eve, the parts of the story much harder to sentimentalize.
We all know about the Magi, the mysterious stargazers from the East, who go searching for the newborn king. Logically enough, they first go to the capital city where Herod expresses, let’s say, “keen interest” in meeting his young rival, the newborn king of the Jews.
So, Herod tells the Magi to report back after they’ve found him.
And, of course, the Magi do find the king and present their symbolic gifts of gold for a king, frankincense for a god, and myrrh, which was used to anoint a corpse.
But, warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi bravely become fugitives, and return home by a different route.
An enraged Herod went on the warpath, slaughtering the children of Bethlehem, desperately and ruthlessly trying to kill the young king.
The murder of those children was both an incomprehensible and heart-shattering tragedy for the families of Bethlehem, and also a powerful sign that the tyrants of the world are after Jesus right from the start – and we know that they will eventually get Jesus and nail him to a cross.
In and through Jesus, God is with us.
God is especially with victims of violence; God is with all those who suffer at the hands of tyrants.
Finally, we come to today’s gospel passage.
In yet another dream, Joseph is warned about Herod’s murderous intentions, and so he and Mary take Jesus and flee for safety in Egypt, saving the Son of God’s life.
There are obvious Old Testament echoes in this story.
Think of Joseph with his famous coat of many colors. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt and then, years later, welcoming his people during a time of famine.
And then, as we heard today, eventually the Holy Family will make their way back out of Egypt, a reminder of Moses leading his people from slavery to the promised land.
Yes, there are biblical echoes but there’s also the stark fact in this story that we often forget, a truth that seems to surprise even regular churchgoers:
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were refugees.
Like so many people before and since, like so many people today, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus had to flee from oppression and violence, journeying from home to a foreign land, seeking a place of welcome and safety, hoping to survive.
In and through Jesus, God is with us.
God is especially with refugees.
So, later this week, we’ll take down the Christmas wreaths and flowers.
We’ll remove the lights from the Christmas tree out in the circle.
Next week, the church may look a little bare.
This can be a real let-down, a depressing time of year, even without the many troubles of the world.
But I hope we can hold onto our memories of a really wonderful St. Thomas’ Christmas: the flowers, the music, the children, the crowds.
More important than that, though, I hope that we can remain encouraged and inspired by this great and most unsentimental truth:
In and through Jesus, God is with us.
God is especially with people struggling to care for their families.
God is especially with victims of violence, especially with victims of state-sponsored violence.
God is especially with refugees.
In and through Jesus, God is with us, all of us, right here, in our messed-up world.
This is the unsentimental Christmas story, the story that should give us hope and courage.
Amen.
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