This is Christ the King
Matthew 2:13-23
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
January 4, 2026
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLfPYS4G6DM
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
Matthew is quoting Jeremiah. Writing at the time of the exile to Babylon, Jeremiah remembers Rachel. Rachel, the wife of Jacob/Israel, died in childbirth. As she died, she named her son Ben-oni, which means son of my sorrow. Rachel was buried on the road to Bethlehem, generations before the birth of Jesus. Ramah is the temporary gathering place for the people of Judah who are being deported to Babylon. Jeremiah recalls a matriarch of Israel, weeping for children she will not to live to see. In Jeremiah’s context, that ancient ancestor Rachel is remembered by the mothers weeping for all the children of Israel lost because of the conquest by Babylon. Matthew picks up the same imagery of great mourning as he tries to describe the havoc that Empire wreaks on the lives of innocent people.
Matthew reminds his audience that history repeats itself, that there will always be those who oppose God, who work evil. History repeats itself. Herod slaughtered innocent babies. Before him, there had been a Pharoah who felt threatened by the number of Israelites in Egypt and he ordered the execution of those baby boys. We know about one who escaped. His name was Moses.
Here is four-year-old Hudea.[1] In 2012, she was in a refugee camp for Syrian people displaced by war. When she saw a camera with a telephoto lens, she thought it was a gun and put up her hands. She knows things a four-year-old should not know.
Another Syrian child, about Hudea’s age, in a different refugee camp two years later. Like Hudea, she is terribly afraid. Different child, different photographer, same experience.
Two children, terrorized by war. I suspect they carry that trauma in their bodies to this day, if they survived. History continues to repeat, and so, there are children and adults in Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine and now Venezuela who have been terrorized or are being terrorized and they carry the trauma of what no one should have to endure.
Jesus’ family knew this pain. They packed up and left Bethlehem in the middle of the night, walking hundreds of miles to get to safety. In his body, from a very young age, Jesus knew the trauma of fleeing, he felt the fear of his parents.
If we are to speak of terror happening in Gaza or Venezuela, we must also recognize what is happening right here in the USA, right here in Albany.
In December, ICE abducted 10 Afghan men in Albany. Four of them were members of the Bakhtani family – the father and three sons. Two of them were taken as they left worship at their mosque. Yesterday, Jim and I and some of you attended a rally in support of this family and all those who are being held unjustly by our government. The father and one son have now been released, but two adult sons remain in detention.
The mother of this family went to the hospital on the day of their abduction, believing that she was having a heart attack. In a statement yesterday, she told a bit of her family’s story. She said, “We lived every day under the shadow of war. Simply surviving felt like a struggle for life itself. In 2021, our family was forced to flee Afghanistan due to Taliban prosecution. My sons’ longstanding work on American-funded projects as well as their involvement in teaching English and information technology left their lives in immediate danger. Leaving was not a choice; it was a matter of survival. Our journey to safety was unimaginably brutal. …We endured hunger, thirst, exhaustion and terror. We walked endless miles, went days without food and faced death at every step. We crossed oceans, confronted criminal cartels, and endured the unthinkable, driven only by the hope of freedom, peace, and protection of our children. After surviving all of this, we believed we had finally reached safety, but today my family is once again living in a nightmare, since December when my husband and three sons were taken away. I am living with constant fear and unbearable grief. . . . my heart is breaking. I have endured war, exile, hunger and loss, but this pain is beyond my strength.”
History repeats itself. The USA is empire, whether we like it or not, whether we support it or not. We are caught up in the ways of empire by default. And for many who have sought safety here, this land is now full of the very danger that they fled.
History repeats itself. One empire replaces another. When Herod the Great died, Mary and Joseph wanted to go home, to return to Bethlehem. We don’t know how long they had been refugees, foreigners, outsiders, in Egypt. Probably a few years at least. But as they were going home, they realized that Herod’s son, Archelaus, was likely as ruthless as his father. And so, again, their life plans were upended by Empire and they went to Nazareth instead. Even there, Jesus grew and was formed by the constant presence of occupying Roman soldiers.
Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way: “Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants. … The Herods of this world begin by hating the child, Jesus, but . . . end up hurting and murdering children. That is the politics, the politics of murder, to which the church is called to be the alternative.” [2]
At the Christmas concert this year, Barb and I sang the carol “Some Children See Him” which has long been a favorite of mine. The lyrics say “the children in each different place will see the baby Jesus’ face, like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace.” There is truth here. The incarnation means that Jesus came to be with us, came to be like us. But that truth can also be distorted until we remake Jesus in our own image. I have been struck this year, like never before, about the significance of the particular human being that Jesus was. God did not choose to put on the flesh of a person somewhat sheltered by wealth or power or privilege. The child Jesus knew the human experience in ways most of us in this room never will. He carried trauma in his body, years before he went to the cross. All the trauma he endured was at the hands of Empire.
You know all this already. I often feel that I am repeating myself and that can feel pointless, but today it is important that I say these things and that we hear them together because there are many who claim to speak for Jesus who are aligning themselves with Empire. Those who justify the terrorization of immigrants in the name of Jesus who was a refugee. Those who champion American exceptionalism as if we have most favored nation status with God, as if we are not among those who most fervently need the course-correction of repentance.
“The God who chose to become flesh and dwell among us is always, always standing with the vulnerable and is never celebrating the cruel.”[3] A colleague of mine said that in December and it has stuck with me.
Baptist theologian Ken Sehested says, that we “must sustain impervious resistance to imperial dominance.” Sehested writes, “In these days, here and now—at historic levels—the community of faith in the Way of Jesus is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. A current, prominent name for this corruption is White/Christian Nationalism.”
“Maybe the most distinctive calling we have in this season is to undermine this corruption of Christian speech. . . This is heresy and must be loudly denounced as such, not just with our words but with the very shape of our lives, livelihoods shaped and animated by the Beloved’s passion for the fate of those left behind, left out, left over.”[4]
History repeats itself, which means that Empire replaces Empire. But history may also repeat itself as the followers of Jesus in each generation rise to resist. Staring down the Nazi Empire, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even the greatest of evil. For that purpose God needs men [and women] who make the best use of everything.” [5] One might say that Bonhoeffer made the best possible use of his time in a Nazi prison cell.
Friends, we are weary, so tired, perhaps even numbed by the depravity of our political leaders. If some of us had allowed ourselves to think that maybe this year would be different, those hopes were crushed just three days in. There is no sugar-coating it. Jesus was born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants. But I pray that you and I will make the best use of everything at our disposal to join God in bringing good. We can be God’s alternative to Empire. We need each other and we cannot give up. Amen and amen.
[1] https://medium.com/on-human-rights/the-unfinished-story-of-hudea-ce62c1daa014
[2] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary Series, (Ada, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2015), p 41
[3] The Rev. Marcella Auld Glass in her sermon on December 14, 2025 https://irp.cdn-website.com/95473ce8/files/uploaded/Sermon+12-14-25+MG.pdf
[4] https://prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/its-a-sad-and-beautiful-world/?fbclid=IwY2xjawPKf6FleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETEzZ2ZWNzBUd1hMM2R5bWpOc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHlx48ympS3D3CSmUfxdUDZ5GxbrcnJNfz91gW81L5r2m2RxigRB2-voLnbjJ_aem_GnNiwwW7uhYNRBN6LutBAg
[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “After Ten Years: A Reckoning Made at New Year 1943” in God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas (Louisville: WJKP, 2010) p. 79.