December 28, 2025 — Sermon Manuscript for the Last Sunday of 2025

The Way God Opens

Matthew 2:13–23

Gratitude at the End of the Year, and Time to Prepare for the Next Step

1. Today is the last Sunday of 2025. In a few days, we will wrap up the year and welcome a new one through the Watch Night Service (Songgu Yeongsin Worship).

2. This last Sunday is not merely a day to organize the time that has passed, but a transitional time to prepare for the next step before God. Standing where the end meets the beginning, we look back once again at our hearts and the direction of our lives.

3. Many people consider the period from Christmas to the end of the year as an extension of the holidays and spend it as their most relaxed time. They understand this season as a time to put down the tensions of daily life and enjoy rest and pleasure.

4. However, for me as a pastor, this is actually the busiest season. There is the busyness of wrapping up one year while simultaneously preparing for how to live out the new one. Beyond Sunday worship, there is also the busyness of preparing for the pastors' retreat and the Watch Night Service.

5. Looking back, 2025 was a year that passed exceptionally fast in my life. It was the first full year since moving the church; we had to re-establish the community in a new region, and there was a ceaseless stream of events, decisions, and concerns, both large and small. Perhaps that is why the turning of the calendar pages felt faster than in any other year.

6. Nevertheless, there is clear gratitude. It is the fact that Yeollin Church (Open Church) is gradually finding its place as a Korean church within this Orinda and Lamorinda area.

7. We connected with the community through the Egg Hunt on Easter, and we are continuing preparations to start an English worship service. Although there is still much to do, it was a year that confirmed the fact that the mission God has entrusted to our community is clear.

8. Therefore, looking toward 2026, I am praying with the hope that rather than achieving more, it will be a year where our congregation becomes a little happier and recovers a little more margin in their lives. In particular, we will be facing the special occasion of the church’s 40th anniversary. I hope that this time of remembering and celebrating will not be a burden that we "must do something," but a time of gratitude for God’s presence with us and anticipation that He will continue to be with us—a new year that is special, yet more peaceful than ever, where deep relationships with God are restored.

The Last Story of Christmas, Yet the Most Uncomfortable Text

9. Today’s text corresponds to what is essentially the final scene among the stories read at Christmas. We have heard this story many times, and it is a familiar text.

10. However, if we look closely at this text, this story never ends with a warm or romantic atmosphere. On the contrary, it is a very uncomfortable and suffocating story.

11. Hearing rumors about a baby to be born as the King of the Jews, Herod feels his power is threatened. To eliminate that threat, he issues a command to kill all male children two years old and under in Bethlehem and its vicinity. This was not individual anger or impulse, but organized violence committed by state power.

12. This scene naturally reminds us of the event Pharaoh committed ahead of the Exodus. Pharaoh also tried to kill Hebrew male children, and in the midst of that violence, God saved Israel through the blood of the lamb. Matthew intentionally summons this memory of the Old Testament.

13. Jesus also goes down to Egypt to escape Herod’s violence and then returns. This story poses a very important question to Jewish readers.

14. “Then who is this Jesus?” Matthew clearly reveals through this text that the One who has passed through the path of the Exodus again, the One who has relived the history of Israel in His own body—He is precisely Jesus Christ.

The Gospel That Does Not Remain Silent Before the Question of Theodicy

15. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, people generally hold specific expectations about God. It is the expectation that God will not leave the wicked to prosper and will not neglect innocent people to suffer.

16. However, when reality fails to meet these expectations, we naturally ask a question. It is the question of whether God is truly just.

17. We call this the question of theodicy. In the Gospel of Matthew, the scene where this question can be raised most clearly is the Massacre of the Innocents in today’s text.

18. Jesus’ life was preserved through God’s intervention, but other babies were all killed simply because they were born at the same time. This fact leaves a deep question that can never be taken lightly.

19. Matthew describes this tragic event very calmly. There are no descriptions stimulating emotion, nor does he directly raise the question of theodicy.

20. However, I read Matthew’s clear attitude within this calmness. The very fact that he recorded this event can be seen as a careful but clear accusation against the violence of absolute power.

21. The determination not to let it be forgotten by recording it, and not to remain silent, is contained within this text.

“Rachel is Weeping” – Calling Forth the Voices of Forgotten Mothers

22. In this scene, Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15. “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” This citation is not a simple insertion of a Bible verse. It is a theological act of bringing past weeping into the present.

23. Here, Rachel does not refer to the actual historical figure Rachel in Genesis. In Jeremiah, Rachel is the figure of a mother symbolizing all of Israel who lost their children to the Babylonian Empire. By overlapping this symbol with Herod’s massacre of infants, Matthew shows that two imperial powers have trampled upon innocent lives in the same way.

24. This quotation goes beyond the level of complementing Matthew’s fulfillment theology. The Bible does not merely record the story of salvation. The Bible conveys the voices of victims that were not recorded. Through Rachel’s wailing, Matthew is calling the weeping of mothers, who were forgotten in history, back into the Gospel.

Justice is Unseen Now, But It Has Not Disappeared

25. Nevertheless, the uncomfortable question remains. Herod bore no responsibility for this terrible crime and lived a long and prosperous life.

26. Then where is justice? Matthew does not offer an immediate answer to this question. Instead, he takes the readers to the end of the Gospel.

27. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25, Jesus appears as the eschatological Judge. And the criterion for that judgment is a single one.

28. It is the criterion of how one treated the least in this world. The hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, and—as in today’s text—literally the smallest beings, the slaughtered infants.

29. From this perspective, Herod is clearly a figure who will stand before God’s judgment seat. Even if justice seems unrealized on this earth right now, justice has never disappeared.

30. It has merely been deferred. Through eschatological judgment, Matthew presents to the readers the hope that God’s justice will eventually and inevitably be revealed.

Personal Questions Raised Before Unjust Structures

31. As I meditate on this text, I find myself standing before a personal question I cannot avoid. I know from my own family’s experience that the stories of people harmed within unjust powers and structures are never just stories of the past.

32. My mother is someone who has lived faithfully all her life. She built the foundation of her life with difficulty and lived within the community working honestly. Thirty years ago, she purchased a shop with great difficulty, but not long after, she was notified that the sale was prohibited as it had to be returned to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and she had to sign a contract with the city.

33. She had purchased a shop thinking it was her own property, but it turned out to be a shop developed by the private sector with operating rights, which had to be returned to Seoul City after a certain period.

34. Not knowing this fact, there were many instances while doing business where she had to plead her case here and there. She begged, she insisted, she asked politicians for help, and through various efforts, she has endured well until now.

35. However, she fell into serious difficulty due to an unjust tenant. In a process where the tenant claimed rights without taking responsibility for the contract, holding out by exploiting loopholes in the system and structure, my mother had to bear economic and emotional pain for a long time.

36. As a son, watching this situation was very painful. Being far away, I felt frustrated that there was no way to help directly. It felt clearly unfair, and I wanted to ask God why this had to happen to my mother.

37. But at the same time, as a pastor, I stood in a place where I could not interpret this story solely emotionally.

38. So I asked myself this question: Is that tenant truly an unrighteous person? Or did he simply make a choice allowed within a structure favorable to him? This question made my emotions more complex, but it was a very important question.

39. Injustice is often repeated not just from the wickedness of a specific individual, but within structures that make injustice possible. Someone gains profit within that structure, and someone else endures pain in silence.

40. What was most difficult in that process was the fact that my mother’s grievance could not be easily explained. There was clearly damage, but the system, administration, and interests were too complex to fully reveal that damage.

41. So my mother’s pain was increasingly reduced to a personal problem, becoming something about which she had to remain silent for a long time.

42. At this time, I recalled Rachel’s weeping in today’s text again. Rachel does not scream in protest. She is simply weeping. However, the Bible records that weeping. The Bible does not forget and calls forth that weeping which no one else spoke for.

43. Through this illustration, I do not wish to condemn anyone. Rather, this story throws a question at us. Within the structure of the society we live in, isn't someone gaining profit in the name of what is legal, while someone else is silent amidst unexplained grievance?

After Christmas, The Direction of Life We Must Choose

44. Christmas is not an event that ends as a romantic story. Christmas is the day God decided to be with us on this earth. And that decision began not in tranquility, but amidst the reality of tension, threat, and violence. Therefore, life after Christmas does not automatically become peaceful.

45. Being salt and light is not about keeping neutrality, but a decision to stand on the side of the very least. It is the choice to stay beside the weeping Rachel, and a life that does not avoid discomfort or evade responsibility. I believe this is the place we must stand after Christmas.

46. On the last Sunday of 2025, and the first Sunday after Christmas, we ask again: After Christmas, in what place will we stand to begin 2026? Before this question, I bless you in the name of the Lord to welcome the New Year given by God not with fear but with hope, not with avoidance but with responsibility.