How much did your loved ones spend on you this Christmas? Well, if your true love has been giving you the gifts demanded by the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, then your true love is either very rich, and you should marry them immediately, Unless, of course, you are already married to them, in which case you should be really nice to them and smother them with gratitude for the rest of the year.
Or, your true love by now is in a whole heap of debt. Today is the eleventh day of Christmas, so your true love has given you eleven pipers piping. Now, as it happens, this is one of the cheapest of the 12 gifts. 11 pipers cost just under $4 ,000. Along with the other performers, the drummers drumming and the ladies dancing, they have received a pay raise this year of just 2 .2%.
According to PNC Bank's Christmas Price Index, yes, if you're like me and bank with PNC, they are spending your money researching the price of the song's 12 Christmas gifts. The price of the birds in the song has remained stable. There is no inflation in the turtle, dove and partridge markets. Thank you for watching.
But the five gold rings cost 35 percent more than they did in Christmas 2024. The most expensive item is, surprisingly, the ten lords -a -leaping, which doesn't seem fair. They don't need paying. I mean, they're, you know, lords. Overall, buying all the gifts in the song would cost $218 ,542.98. A 4 .4 percent increase over last year.
And of course, your true love would be stuck with 178 birds, which may well stop them being your true love. But let's not talk about Christmas in the past tense. Christmas songs may cease on the radio on December the 26th, but here in the Christian Church we keep going until January the 5th. So pour yourself another non -alcoholic eggnog and enjoy day 11 of Christmas.
When I was a child, I believed that Christmas was perfect, that whatever I wished for would be granted, that miracles occurred on every street, not just 34th. But the Christmas story we tell each other every year, the stable, the shepherds, the angels, the magi, the holy family in the stable, it is... How shall I put it?
Incomplete. And because it's incomplete, it's misleading. It lacks something. Without him, the Christmas story is missing some context. He's there in the Gospels, but he's never in the pageant. His shadow lurks over the manger, but you never see it in the Advent calendar. His power hovers over the stable, seeps into its wooden walls, but he never gets a mention.
Now if you're thinking, it's church, so I must be talking about God, and I'm about to use some well -meaning cliché like, keep Christ in Christmas, then I'm going to surprise you. The someone whose presence is all over the Nativity story, but whose name is seldom uttered, is the antidote to the sentimental season.
If you want Christmas reality, put the Herod back in Christmas. And when we do, we see that the birth of our Saviour with new perspective. We balance the hope and the wonder and the glory of God's incarnation with the horrific truth that in Matthew's gospel, this quickly becomes a murder story of children.
We've just read now the violent clash of kingdoms. The Prince of Peace is born, but with a target on his back. Herod's attempt to assassinate him leads to the murder of an unknown number of babies. In the depths of indescribable pain, the healer of mankind is born. After the wise men had left, says Matthew, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.
And said, get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This is a text that elevates and dignifies people on the move.
Now, I'm not a politician, and even if I were, I wouldn't share my analysis of global migration from a pulpit. It's not my role to comment publicly on whatever policies governments might apply to try to solve the problem of mass migration around the world. I'm a pastor. All I can do is read today's gospel lesson and say that 2 ,000 years ago, the baby who grew up to be our savior was himself a person on the move fleeing for his safety in the arms of his parents. And that fact makes me kneel in humility. Whatever you think the government's policies should be, the fact that God incarnate fled his home forces us to take an interest, to learn, to have compassion. And to pray for our leaders whose task it is to work for the global solution to this tragic feature of our modern world.
The place of refuge Mary, Joseph and Jesus go to is Egypt. That's ironic. Until now, Egypt was a symbol of slavery. Their own people's slavery many years earlier. And now, Egypt is a place of safety. The sanctuary for the Holy Family. This infant is transforming Egypt from a land of captivity into a new place of liberty.
He is only a few months old, but he's already redeeming the past. Imagine what he'll do when he grows up. Our pasts can be redeemed. Places where we fear to go can become sanctuaries of peace. Where is the place you fear to go? In your mind or in your physical world? Maybe this eleventh day of Christmas, God has one more gift for you.
Not Piper's Piping, but the transformation of the painful place, the cruel place, the place of captivity, the place where the Saviour lives. There's something about this baby. People eagerly seek him, some because they want to pay homage and some because they want to kill him. This child is already becoming a stepping stone to heaven for some and a stumbling block for others.
Even now the wheat is separating from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. The mere presence of Jesus brings out people's true colors. And the true colors of Herod were a tartan. Of green for envy, yellow for cowardice, and red for blood. So narcissistic and paranoid was Herod that he killed one of his nine wives, her mother, and two of his own sons, whom he suspected of plotting against him.
He built fortresses throughout the kingdom, so he would never be too far from a place of shelter if someone tried to overthrow him. He even gave orders that when he died, all his political prisoners should also die, so that the entire nation, even those who despised him, would mourn. In the Chronicles of Twisted Sovereigns, Herod the Great has a chapter all to himself.
In the English county of Northamptonshire, there are several ancient parish churches that have been decorated with wall paintings. These murals depict biblical scenes, and they were a great teaching tool in times when people were illiterate. There, on the wall, is a scene from scripture. Now, these paintings have eroded and faded over time.
I was fortunate to be the rector of one parish who had a mural, and over 500 years it lost so much of its pigment that unless someone told you what it was, uh, you really wouldn't be able to say what scene was being depicted. Nearby, though, there is one that has kept its paint very well, and the picture is still clearly recognisable.
It's in the village of Croughton, and the mural is the scene of today's Gospel reading. Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus making their journey to Egypt. Of course, it's impossible to date these murals with complete accuracy, but art historians reckon that this mural was painted shortly after the year 1310.
Why this scene? Of all the stories in the Bible you could paint on the wall of your church to teach and encourage the congregation, why would you choose the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt? There are a thousand more inspiring scenes. So, I did a bit of research on the decade that began in 1310 And I discovered that, uh, in the middle of that decade, Northern Europe was struck with a terrible natural disaster.
It's called the Great Famine. A succession of cold winters and cool, damp summers wreaked havoc on the food supply. The average life expectancy in England fell from 35 to 29. The Great Famine. The price of food doubled, crime and disease rocketed, and desperate people were driven even to cannibalism and infanticide.
And I thought, this must be the reason for the mural. If you are unable to feed your children, if you have lost one to malnutrition, Of course you would want a picture on the wall of the parish church depicting the parents of Jesus fleeing with their infant from Herod's infanticide. You might see in the tender nursing of Mary as she sits on the donkey, and the courage of Joseph as he strides ahead of the animal, a reflection of your own desperate love for your child.
That painting of the church wall preached a sermon more powerful than any sermon we've ever heard. It is a reflection of your own desperate love for your child. The God of Justice gets it. The God of Suffering understands. He knows what it's like to be us, and has taken decisive action in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son to end the suffering of humankind.
Are you on the move this year? I don't mean are you relocating your home, I mean are you moving ahead, going somewhere new in your life, opening a door to a relationship, a job, a new stage of life, even a time of suffering and loss. 2026 is a closed book. Certainly the events of the first three days were on no one's bingo card.
Who can safely predict what awaits us the rest of the year? But as we stand at the door of this year, there is so much to scare us, so much to make us run. And so know this, you are on God's heart. Your name is marked on Christ's hands. You are the apple of God's eye. Even if you are scared, even if your fear is shouting at you to get up and go and leave this place of pain and grief, Jesus has gone before you.
Amen.