A Family Freed From Fear - Sermon for the First Sunday After Christmas (December 28, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 63:7–9 | Psalm 148 | Hebrews 2:10–18 | ​Matthew 2:13–23

“Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
 
Another Christmas Day has come and gone.
New Years and Epiphany are right around the corner, and soon enough we will be packing up all our lights and putting away our special decorations… and settling into the regular rhythm of winter in New Brunswick: shovel snow, and repeat.
 
On this, the first Sunday after Christmas, it’s hard not to feel a little bit of a letdown. I mean, after all the anticipation… and all of the carols and celebrations, we turn on the news again and see a world still off-centre… still filled with violence, and unrest, and oppression, and wickedness at work. And even after a brief respite of hope, and peace, and joy, it can be really tempting at times to let fear and despair creep back into our hearts… to start to think that our frightening circumstances must mean that we’re somehow out of favour with God… that all the of suffering going on  means either that God cannot do much to stop evil, or that He just doesn’t care enough to do so. 

And if we conceive of Christmas as merely one special day full of hope, and peace, and joy, and love… then it’s kind of easy for us to imagine that it doesn’t have much to say about what happens afterwards… about the days and seasons of deep apprehension, and suffering, that often follow it.
 
But Christmas is not just one special day. It merely marks the start of a whole new movement in God’s unfolding story… a story that holds together the hope and peace and joy of God’s Kingdom even in the face of all of the uncertainty and suffering that we still face in the world.
 
And so, even though we will soon pack up our Christmas lights, and put away our trees and greenery… the great gift of Christmas… the Good News of Jesus Emannuel… God our Saviour here-with-us… remains ours always… and this Good News remains the sure anchor for our faith in our times of suffering. Right from the very beginning, the story of Christmas has been an invitation offered to God’s people to see His loving and saving hand at work setting us free and leading us together through all the darkness and into the light of life. 

In our reading today from the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 2, we are reminded of just how quickly the story of the first Christmas turns from hope, and peace, and joy to darkness and death… as the Holy Family, Joseph and Mary, and the infant Jesus the Messiah are forced to flee their home, and live as refugees in Egypt to escape a tyrant’s jealous rage… and Herod’s subsequent massacre of innocent children. 
 
This part of the story never makes it into our Christmas pageants, and for good reason. It is another horrible but by no means isolated example of how fear and the thirst for control so often leads us humans to do truly hellish things to one another. In recent days of course, we can recall similar stories out of Gaza and Ukraine… alongside atrocities of the past century like the Armenian genocide… the Holocaust… the genocides in the Balkans and Rwanda… and tragically many more besides. And the tyrants of our day continue to toy with the threat of death… wielding this fear and increased suffering over all sorts of innocent people in order to get what they want… to keep their own people in line, and to crush anyone else who stands in their way.

But the whole story of Christmas… the Gospel story about the child born in Bethlehem… reminds us that the tyrants of the world will not have their way in the end… and that against all their bloodshed and scheming, the Living God remains at work remedying the poison of fear with His love… setting us free from its power, to share God’s holy love together. 
 
In Matthew Chapter 2 we heard how Joseph and Mary get swept up into God’s great gift of life: Mary gives birth to a Son, Jesus… the long awaited Messiah, but are suddenly warned to flee… to live as refugees in Egypt, because King Herod of Judea had become just like Pharaoh of the Exodus story… eventually slaying innocent Israelite children… his own subjects… to keep hold of his own power.  
 
But just like Moses escaped from the wrath of Pharoah to one day return to set His people free, Jesus is whisked away out of King Herod’s reach… in order to return one day as the Saviour of His people… and the world! To rescue both Jews and Gentiles alike… breaking the power of the fear of death… and overthrowing our real enemy, the devil.  

But this victory was achieved not by somehow undoing death… by magically waving his hand and keeping its horrors from happening… but by enduring it… by experiencing death for us and with us. Jesus joined us in all the frailty of life in-the-flesh, and faced the full horrors of the grave… sharing completely in our sufferings, in order to save us from death’s grip… dying at the cross, but rising again as One set free from death’s power forever… so that all those who follow Him can also face and come through death too… and live as those sanctified… as a holy people set apart to share in the new life of God’s holy love here and now… transformed by Christ into God’s holy family… as brothers and sisters with One Father over all.
 
This is what the author of Hebrews is getting at, making the case that far from being a sign of God’s displeasure, or failure, it was precisely through His sufferings that Jesus became our Saviour, and united us in God’s family. Hebrews 2:10-11, “It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

Jesus our Messiah may have been spared Herod’s wrath as a child, but at the proper time He willingly chose the path of suffering for us… taking on Himself not only the worst the world’s tyrants could throw at Him, but also the consequences of all of our sins… dying at the cross to secure our forgiveness, and rising again to break death’s hold over us… offering us through the gift of His own life adoption into God’s holy family… united to God, and to one another through the love of our Saviour, who united Himself to us… first of all at the manger, and then finally at the cross.
 
So today, when we are tempted to spend our days driven by the fear of death, or despairing over the power of tyrants… the story of Jesus that flows out from Christmas offers us the remedy of faith. We are invited to believe the Good News of the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, and that through Him… through His sufferings and saving love, we can now be called God’s own children… His holy family set free from fear because of what Jesus our brother has done for us, and for our world. A holy family, beloved, and open to all who entrust themselves to the loving arms of God’s Son.

And even long after all our decorations are put away, and the lights are dimmed… and when our days seem to grow dark, may the joy, and hope, and peace, and love of the Christmas and the Christian story… the Good News of Jesus Emmanuel give us cause to rejoice, and resist the power of fear, entrusting ourselves and our world to the saving power of God’s resurrecting love… and doing all we can to share the light of this love with those around us.  Amen.