Preached 12/29/2013
What does it take to make a
masterpiece? Or, more specifically, what
does it take to make a masterpiece of a violin?
Antonio Stradivarius knew something about this. He was an Italian violin maker who lived in
the 17th and 18th centuries. His violins are now the most prized ever made
because of the rich, resonating sound that they produce. Try as they might, no one has been able to
duplicate that sound throughout the years.
So what’s behind that incredible
sound? Obviously it’s a question that’s
been asked many times, by many people.
Some explanations that have tried and failed to answer the question are
that the climate had a unique effect on the woods in the forest around
Stradivarius, that Stradivarius had any number of different secret techniques
to mold his violins, even that the varnish he used was somehow special.
However, another theory seems to be
gaining ground in the scientific-musical community. It all starts with the fact that Stradivarius
was very poor. He couldn’t afford to use
the fine materials and treasured pieces of wood many of his contemporaries in
the violin making business did. So,
Stradivarius did what he had to do to make his violins. He used discarded lumber. Specifically, he often retrieved much of his
wood from the water of the dirty harbor near which he lived. He would take
those waterlogged scraps of wood to his shop.
He’d let them dry out, then clean them up as much as he could. And then he would take those scraps of
lumber—those pieces that others had discarded, and he would create his
instruments.
It has since been discovered that
while the wood floated in the dirty harbor water, microbes got into the wood
and ate the center out of the cells.
This left just the outer cell structure.
The wood was basically hollow fibers. The fibrous skeleton of wood that
was left created resonating chambers for the sounds of the violin. This was Stradivarius’ secret. From that wood that no one wanted, from that
wood eaten from the inside by microbes in dirty harbor water, Stradivarius made
his masterpieces, his violins that everyone now wants.
It seems like our Matthew reading
has us floating around in that dirty harbor water this morning. Right after
that lovely nativity story is over, Matthew gives us what we read today. Herod massacres all the babies of Bethlehem,
in what is usually referred to as the slaughter of innocents. It has to be one of the most awful things
that happens in the Bible, and certainly one of two in Jesus’ life. And Matthew feels the need to include it just
lines after baby Jesus is born.
Why in the world would Matthew do
this to his readers? This is right after
Christmas, when we read about angels coming in dreams and the birth of
God-with-us, God-saving-us. And instead
of reveling in wonder, or stories of a cute little infant, we have Joseph and
Mary and Jesus fleeing to Egypt for their very lives. Matthew gives us innocent
babies and toddlers slaughtered. In
stark contrast to the joy of the Christmas birth, this story is full of death
and grief. It’s ugly. It’s harsh. It seems very much like Matthew
just took us and chucked us into that dirty harbor, and we’re now floating
around surrounded by violence, and death, and destruction.
Except, to be fair to Matthew, he didn’t really throw us into anything. Matthew just kept going with the story. And we, his readers, kept going with him. As much as we might want to, we can’t stay by that manger, any more than the Holy family could stay there. So Matthew takes us out of that miraculous, heavenly, angel song-filled birth, and back into real life.
And as we all know, real life isn’t always pretty. In fact, it’s often pretty ugly. Some of you have shared parts of your stories with me, and I know you know this, so I don’t need to go too far into it. But it wasn’t just Jesus or Matthew whose worlds knew violence, and poverty, and fear, and hatred, and all the awful things that go along with them. We know those realities still.
Neither in Matthew’s Gospel account of Jesus, nor our real lives, do we get the luxury of a world where pain, death, and just plain bad things don’t happen. Those are like the microbes in the harbor water—they ate at the people and the society of Jesus’ time, and they eat at us too. We can’t get rid of them, and we can’t escape or stop them. We can however, decide how we’re going to respond to them, and the destruction that they do. In the face of sin, death, pain, grief, and all the other ugly realities of life, we do get to pick how we react. There are really only two choices, at the most basic level. Our first option is to turn away. To close our eyes and our ears and our hearts to the pain around us, because it’s just too much, and it’s too hard to bear.
While there certainly is value in self-preservation, our scripture readings are pointing us away from this option. After all, Matthew doesn’t turn away from pain, death, and sorrow. Instead of turning away from the pain, he looks at it, head on. And in that death and pain, Matthew sees something more than the microbes. Matthew sees God, still acting somehow, in the middle of it. No, God didn’t save the lives of the babies of Bethlehem. But God did save Jesus. And Jesus ultimately saved us all.
It may not be how we would want to write the story. I’ll admit that my choice would definitely be in favor of the babies. But what Matthew sees in the actual story is that God is still there, even in a horrible act of violence. God is still acting, still saving, even in the face of death. Matthew was able to see God’s continuing presence and action because he was not afraid to face the pain of the real world head on. He knew that all the problems we experience in our life are not a block for God’s presence, or God’s loving, saving power. Instead of turning away, he turned to the pain because he knew that there, he would see find the presence of God.
Sounds a lot like that Isaiah reading, huh? In the part of Isaiah Pat read for us this morning, Isaiah is with the exiles who are finally starting to return home. And, as much as they may have wanted to do this, it was hard. They were coming back to destruction and desolation. Their possessions were gone, their homes were ruined, their crops were long dead, and real life was really hard. They, too, had to leave the splendor of the manger—their idea of what returning home would be like—and face the real difficulties of the real world.
And because of those real difficulties, they were tempted to turn away. Many of them had started worshipping other gods, because they thought that in trouble, their only option was to turn away from the trouble, and away from God. And here’s what Isaiah reminds them—God is there in their trouble. God doesn’t live in their perfect, imagined, idealized life. God lives in their real lives. Listen to what Isaiah says “God became their savior 9in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but God’s presence that saved them; in God’s love and pity God redeemed them; lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.”
It is in all our distress that God saves us. And God is no messenger, who comes to give us some good news and then leaves, without ever really knowing the situation. God is no angel, who floats above and sees, but isn’t really affected. God is Jesus, and Jesus is God, living in our real lives. And saving us, in our real lives in this very real world. To quote Suzanne Guthrie, “Jesus enters a real world, like ours, where children are poor, malnourished, enslaved, and poisoned by greed’s numbing exploitations.”
Because this is the world we already live in, because we’re already floating in that dirty harbor water, we need a savior who jumps into that dirty harbor water of real life with us. If we attempt to ignore this grim part of Jesus’ story, this massacre of the innocents, because we only want the pretty parts, we defeat the purpose of the incarnation. Jesus was God incarnate to show us that there is no situation, no time or place, no event that is outside the reach of God’s loving and saving power. Remember, Jesus’ name means God saves. And in Jesus, God saves, even in the middle of the worst parts of life we can imagine.
I want to be very clear that I’m not saying that God intends for these hard and painful parts of life to happen. I honestly don’t believe that at all. What I do believe, and what I believe our scripture readings point out to us this morning, is that even in these most difficult and painful situations, God still acts.
The dirty harbor is a hard place to live. But that doesn’t mean no good can come from. Just like the return from exile of Isaiah’s people, just like the massacre of innocent children, God can still act in and through dirtiness, difficulty, pain, sorrow, and even death.
Think back to that wood that Stradivarius used. It has been basically hollowed out, eaten from the inside by microbes. If you didn’t know it could and has been used to make some of the best instruments in the world, you would probably think that the wood itself wasn’t very useful at all, and maybe should be gotten rid of. But, now you know the story. And you know that in the right hands, that wood became masterpieces. If Stradivarius can make masterful violins we’re still talking about hundreds of years later from discarded pieces of wood—from trash that he lovingly restored, how much more can God do with us? How much more can God take what we think are our most damaged places, in ourselves and in the world around us, and make something miraculous still.
In our distress, God saves us. Though we and our world may be eaten at by those microbes of sin and pain and death, God can still make masterpieces out of us. God can still sound through us in beautiful, resonant tones, turning even our scars and our pain and our fear into a way that beauty and faith and love show through.
So in this Christmas season, let us not be afraid of facing the real world, and real life, head on. Because it is in and through this real life that our very real savior will make us masterpieces, resonating with the sound of God’s saving love for all to hear. May it be so. Amen.
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