Jubilee in a Wounded World

Jubilee in a Wounded World

Jubilee in a Wounded World

Jubilee Preaching Aid for December 28, 2025

Christmas, for many of us, arrives wrapped in images of angelic choirs, warm lights, and promises of peace. By the time we reach the First Sunday after Christmas, we often want to remain in that gentleness. We hope to ride the lingering glow of Christmas Eve candlelight a little longer, to stay close to the manger, to hold onto the tenderness of the Christ Child. But the Revised Common Lectionary does something unexpected and unwelcome this week—it places before us one of the hardest stories in Scripture, a story we would rather not read at all, and certainly not during Christmas: the massacre of the innocents and the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt.

Matthew 2:13–23 interrupts our preferred Christmas narrative. It pulls us from the quiet of Bethlehem into the terror of a world where despots guard their power with violence, where families flee fearfully into the night, and where innocent children become targets of brutality. It is a text that feels far too close to the world we know—a world marked by war, displacement, political turmoil, and the vulnerability of the innocent. And yet, the church asks us to hear this story precisely now, because the truth of Christmas is not that God came to us when the world was calm and beautiful. The truth of Christmas is that God came into a world already broken—and came to redeem it from within.

This is where Isaiah’s words speak so powerfully. “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord,” Isaiah writes, “the praiseworthy acts of the Lord… For he became their saviour in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel, but his presence that saved them” (Isaiah 63:7, 9). Jubilee begins with remembering—remembering who God is and how God has acted in the past. In remembering, we discover again that God’s grace is not abstract. God’s compassion is not distant. God “carried them all the days of old,” Isaiah says. God enters the distress of the people—not to watch, not to judge from afar, but to carry and sustain.

This deep, restoring presence is the heart of Jubilee. In Scripture, Jubilee is God’s vision for renewal—where debts are forgiven, captives are freed, land is restored, and communities are healed. Jubilee is not a fantasy about a perfect world; it is God’s insistence that suffering, injustice, and sorrow do not have the final word. Jubilee is God saying, “Let my people start again. Let what has been broken be made whole.” It is radical, restorative justice grounded in compassion.

When we place Isaiah and Matthew together, the message becomes even clearer: Jubilee has come in the person of Jesus. But its coming does not avoid the world’s pain—it confronts it. Christ is born—and immediately he becomes a refugee. Christ is born—and immediately the forces of fear and tyranny react. Christ is born—and the world’s suffering rises to the surface. And yet this does not defeat the promise of Christmas. It is the reason for Christmas.

A Saviour who enters a world without suffering may bring beauty, but not redemption. A Saviour who remains untouched by human pain may bring poetry, but not liberation. Jesus comes into the fullness of the human condition—into danger, displacement, grief, and fear—so that none of those places remains beyond the reach of God’s redeeming love.

Matthew’s Gospel forces us to see that Christmas is not the story of escaping the world’s sorrow; it is the story of God stepping directly into it. The flight into Egypt is not an interruption of Christmas; it is the revelation of why Christmas matters.

And if we listen carefully, we hear Jubilee echoing yet again. In Egypt, the Holy Family finds shelter in a foreign land—a reminder that God always stands with those who flee. In the midst of political oppression, God preserves the vulnerable. In the face of cruelty, God’s promise continues. Even in unspeakable tragedy, God is at work, bending the story toward deliverance.

Isaiah tells us, “In all their distress, he too was distressed,” and Matthew shows us what this looks like in flesh and blood. God does not watch from a distance; God comes into the world’s distress and sorrow as a fragile child. God shares our vulnerability so that we might share God’s restoration.

So, what does this mean for us, on this Sunday after Christmas? It means that Jubilee always begins in the real world—in the places where we carry griefs too heavy to name, in the places where injustice has taken root, in the places where fear resides. Jubilee begins when we dare to believe that God’s compassion is stronger than the worst of what we see.

It means that the presence of Christ is not limited to our brightest moments. Christ is Emmanuel—God with us—in hospital rooms, in refugee camps, in communities torn by violence, in households weighed down by worry, and in hearts that carry quiet anguish.

It means that even after the glow of Christmas lights fades, the Light of the World does not. The same Christ who was born in Bethlehem walks with us on every road—even those that lead through Egypt, even those overshadowed by loss, even those we had hoped never to take.

And it means this: wherever we find ourselves today—joyful or weary, hopeful or heartbroken—God is here. God carries. God restores. God brings Jubilee.

Thanks be to God.

Rev. Marianne Emig Carr is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC), serving the two-point Brockville-Caintown Pastoral Charge in Eastern Ontario. Prior to becoming a minister, Marianne was a corporate lawyer for 19 years at General Motors of Canada. Marianne serves on the Steering Committee of KAIROS, is a member of the PCC Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Committee and has been actively involved in refugee sponsorship efforts.