“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.” St. Mt. 2:18 (13-23)
Some years ago, we were in the Smokey Mountains for Christmas. Someone suggested we check out the theme park, Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, TN. They put on some marvellous Christmas shows there. The glitz and glamour of a “down-home,” Nashville style, country-Christmas was quite mesmerizing. The park itself was covered in Christmas lights and decorations; it was beautiful, but left me wondering about how much society has glamourized Christmas. It has become sugar-coated season and over the course of the holidays, we’ve been bombarded with sugar-coated songs like the familiar Jingle Bells and Rudolph, and if those aren’t sweet enough for you, how about, “It’s A Marshmallow World,” “Strawberry Snow,” and Rosemary Clooney’s, “Suzy Snowflake.”
Sugar-coated or not, I have always loved Christmas. I think it was the presents that got me in the early years. They always make a child smile. In my early teens, British television got me. The BBC and ITV really cranked things up from Christmas Eve ‘til Boxing Day with hour upon hour of specials. For a nation that, at that time, only had three channels, that was a real treat. Then again, it may have been the food of Christmas. My mother is a fine cook and she always put out a big spread on Christmas Day. With the turkey and with the happy buzz of everything around Christmas, I managed to develop a taste even for Brussels sprouts. I’m sure they’re good for you, but the taste, yuk! But Brussels sprouts were a part of Christmas and everything else about Christmas was good. So now, even though I have a choice, Christmas dinner is just not Christmas dinner without a few Brussels on my plate.
Christmas is a popular time for most people. In Church, we sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” Things are no less positive in the Gospels. Luke begins with joy at the announcement of John the Baptist’s birth (Lk.1:14). When a pregnant Mary met a pregnant Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb is said to have, “lept for joy (v.44).” There is joy at the birth of John (v.58). Zechariah praises the Lord (v.68). When the angel makes the announcement of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds he brings, “good news of great joy (2:10).” The event was such that the multitude of the heavenly host broke out in praise of God (v.13). Over in Matthew’s Gospel, the wise men, when they finally found Jesus, they were “overjoyed,” by what they found (2:10). Praise and joy are predominant themes in the Gospels around the birth of Jesus.
So when I read the lectionary text for this Sunday, the fifth day of Christmas, I was shocked. O, I knew the story. I had come across it before, but I must have glossed over it in my mind. I hadn’t really given it any thought. Blood, infanticide in Bethlehem! This bit gets left out of the Christmas pageants. We like the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, the angels, the shepherds, and the wise men; we never mention Herod killing the babies around Bethlehem.
The story itself ties in with the wise men. Unlike most guys, they actually stopped to ask for directions. Maybe that’s why they are called the “wise” men; they saw the star in the east announcing the birth of the king of the Jews. Assuming they would find him at the palace, they stopped off there first to ask of his whereabouts. When they mentioned a king being born, Herod was “curious.” “What’s this?” he asked the priests and scribes. “Where is this messiah to be born?” “In Bethlehem of Judaea,” they replied, and so Herod sent the wise men off to Bethlehem, asking that when they found the child, they would come and tell him, so that he himself might go and “worship” as well.
You probably know the bit about the great offerings to Jesus, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but then we read that the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and as time went by, Herod realized they were not coming back. The last thing he needed was a usurper to his throne, so he commanded his troops and sent them to Bethlehem to kill every male child under the age of two years. Joseph, however, had been warned in a dream about Herod’s intentions and he fled with Mary and the young baby to Egypt. And then it happened, murder, blood at Bethlehem!
It’s not very nice, is it? It’s not a nice story at Christmas time. It’s quite outside our sugar-coated, Christmas ideal; but there it is, the real world.
Two things stand out here. One is the disruption. If Joseph and Mary’s lives hadn’t been disrupted enough, now they were forced to flee to Egypt. We’ve had a bit of disruption here in Toronto over the last eight days because of the 2013 Ice Storm. Initially well over one million people lost electricity. It’s been horrendous for a society that has become dependent on power. Especially at this time of the year with temperatures plummeting below zero, many have struggled. I had no electricity for 48 hours. For me, the worst of it was just not knowing – not knowing when the power might come on and what to do while waiting. I suppose if it had gone on for some time, I would have developed another lifestyle, but with the expectation of power at any time, I just sat around and stared at the fire that kept one room in the house warm. The preparations for Christmas, for today, the doctoral paper I had to finish required power and I had to just wait. Life was disrupted.
Yet, in the middle of the disruption, we have had Christmas. Many have had to make do without much of a “Christmas” this year or, at least, less of one. Some had to alter plans, some had to stay with family or friends, some were in community centres. Our Christmas was disrupted but the first Christmas brought another level of disruption to Mary and Joseph. They had to flee to another land and live for several years among strangers.
As if disruption was not enough, there was also the blood-letting. In Bethlehem? In the place of Jesus’ birth? Yes! Blood! Terrible though it may seem. Bethlehem was a small town, so it is probable that around ten or twenty, young children were killed by Herod’s men. It was a slaughter of innocents. Much as the Herod of the Timothy Eaton Christmas Pageant is a little warm and cuddly, the real Herod was neither warm nor cuddly. He was a leader and leaders in those days “removed” anyone who might have even the slightest pretension or claim to the throne. We see it today even. In the past few weeks, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has executed his powerful uncle and some of his aides. Only a few months ago, an ex-girlfriend was sentenced to death by firing squad as well. Herod was that sort of guy. During the first ten years of his reign, he did away members of the former ruling, Hasmonaean family. They and the strongest members of the Jewish court, the Sanhedrin, were put to the sword. Sometime later, he murdered his wife Mariamne and her mother Alexandra. Even his sons were not exempt. Three of them were killed. Thus, for Herod, what are a few provincial babies over in Bethlehem? He was that kind of guy.
But what about their poor mothers and fathers? The first Christmas comes. No “bells and bobtails … making spirits bright.” There’s weeping, and wailing, and loud lamentation, says the text (v.18).
I racked my brain about this text, but maybe that’s the point. It’s telling us that Christmas comes and life isn’t always that good. Christmas comes and some people are struggling. Some are grieving. Some are hurting. Some are facing difficult health concerns. Some are worried about the next house payment. A few are worried about an unwanted pregnancy. Others are suffering pain and injustice. Some haven’t been in their houses for eight days now and don’t know when power will be restored. It’s Christmas in the real world.
I’m not one to blame God for Herod’s actions. I’m not one to blame God for not even acting to stop Herod. From my experience, life sometimes isn’t fair. There are bad times even at Christmas and, sometimes, life can be so difficult and horrendous, it takes the feet right out from under us. I think that’s what the families in Bethlehem felt. That’s how some among us feel even at Christmas. What possible meaning can we offer them? What possible hope can we offer those who are in the midst of crisis, suffering, and difficulty this year?
I think the answer is not so much in this text itself but in the rest of the gospel story. I read about a pastor lately who had encountered a great deal of personal suffering because of a nervous breakdown. He was struggling in life. People were struggling with him, he found that he prayed and prayed and yet, it seemed, all he got from God was silence. He wrote of the long way back to health. It took several years of counselling and medication. But, eventually, he made it through and found life and God again. In time, he re-entered the ministry and in the midst of getting to know his new flock, tragedy suddenly struck his family. A young grandson died. The pastor was feeling confusion and grief. The Sunday after the funeral, he began reading his text from the pulpit on Psalm 145. He tried to focus but his grief got the better of him. He set aside his sermon notes and with a choked voice, he began to tell his congregation about his grandson. His mind was flashing back to a former congregation and his difficulties with depression. He was afraid of what might happen with a new congregation but he kept going and expressed his feelings of helplessness and failure. This time, things were different. “As people left the church,” he remembered, “they said two important and helpful things to him.” 1. Thank you for sharing your pain with us, because they too were people who had experienced pain. And, 2. Some said, “I grieve with you.” These simple statements, he said were so helpful. They were meaningful. He felt that he was not doing it alone this time. Over the ensuing weeks, the congregation continued to show their care. They were being the body of Christ, the arm of God to him in those moments.
We are called to be the body of Christ, here and now, to love and help one another. Henri Nouwen asks about meaning in the midst of suffering in his little book, The Wounded Healer. Nouwen writes that no one does well when there is no one to help, or, to be there for them in the midst of struggle. We need people, he thinks, especially the people of God to bring God’s compassion to our situations. Nouwen thinks that just being there, can make all the difference to the sufferer and give them a sense of life and meaning and continuance in the midst of their struggle. What hope is there? There is hope in the people of God.
It’s not only in people, hope is also in God himself who is with us. That is what Christmas is really about, God joining himself to the human condition. In the second reading today, Hebrews tells us that Christ was made “like his brothers and sisters in every respect… to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. And because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” Jesus has experienced it all. As the UCCan “New Creed” says, “We are not alone.”
I’ve told you before of some difficulties my mother had as a young woman and mother. She was essentially orphaned and had to make her way in the world alone from her middle teens on. As a sixteen year old she left school and took secretarial work. A little later she trained as a nurse and that gave her a place to live and small salary for the years of training. At 24, she married my Dad. They had three young children before he passed away at a young age. I remember the day, as an 8 year old. I didn’t know until after supper time. It was a little strange because a few women from the church were over making tea and cooking. My mother was upset but at that time, there was more separation between the lives of children and adults, I didn’t think it my place to ask. Then my mother took me upstairs and broke the news. I cried a bit but admit to not understanding the ramifications. I watched my Mum grieve and cry over the next few years but it was only some weeks after my Dad’s passing (I haven’t told you this piece), she tells that she was crying on the couch one evening and feeling sorry for herself and all that life had thrown at her. In the midst of it, she began thinking about God coming to us in the person of Jesus and all that happened to Jesus. She thought about the cross and the suffering and it suddenly came to her that God, Jesus, suffered too. He knows. He’s been there. And that enabled her to get up and trust that God would help her throughout life, raising three young children, and going back to a career of nursing.
So when life is disrupted and painful, not only do we have support in one another, we have support in Christ himself. There was pain even in the first Christmas, yet God was with us in a new, distinctive way – as one of us.
But there is more, the Christian has unique resources available to trust in when struggling. No matter how bleak things look, Jesus’ coming into this world reveals that God was at work and in Christ he showed that this isn’t all there is, that something good really does lie ahead.
One of the survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps acknowledged that hope translates into actual help. Bruno Bettelheim wrote that those who had strong religious convictions managed life in the camps much better than the rest. They had something that just kept them going.
Phillip Yancey tells a tremendous story of Martha who contracted ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Martha’s father had died of that disease a year earlier. Martha knew the stages and how it attacks the nerves. First, it’s voluntary movements that are lost over arms and legs, then hands and feet. It progresses to involuntary movements, and finally inhibits breathing enough to cause death. When Yancey met Martha in March one year, she was in a wheel chair and could only walk with difficult. By May, she had lost the use of her right arm, by June it was both arms and could barely move her hands to control her electric wheelchair. Soon Martha needed help with every move, getting dressed, arranging a pillow for her head, cleaning a bedpan. When she cried, someone else had to wipe the tears from her face. Sometimes she talked about her life and death. She wasn’t a Christian and told Yancey that she would never turn to God now out of fear for her life, but only out of love.
As Martha entered the final stages of ALS, she needed full care, but what she wanted more than anything was to spend a few weeks in her own apartment in Chicago in order to say goodbye to her friends. It was a difficult request, because government health aid may keep her in a hospital but not at home. It was then that a Christian community called Reba Place Fellowship decided to adopt Martha as a project and care for her. Sixteen women rearranged their lives for her, divided into teams, and adjusted their schedules while others prayed for her. Martha could still talk and these folk listened to her, bathed her, helped her sit up, moved her, and sat beside her all night long. As they were ‘there’ in the midst of her suffering, Martha became aware of the love of God and because of what they were doing, she became a Christian and gained a hope that saw her through the rest of her time on earth. She was baptized in October.
Let me loosely quote Yancey. On the day before Thanksgiving, Martha died. Her body, crumpled, misshapen, atrophied, was a pathetic imitation of its former beauty. When it finally stopped functioning, Martha left it and now lives, in a new, transformed body, in wholeness and triumph. Martha lives because of the victory Christ won. Yancey goes on, “If we do not believe that, and if our Christian hope, tempered by sophistication, does not allow us to offer that truth to a dying, convulsing world, then we are indeed, as the apostle Paul said, ‘of all men most miserable’.”
Christmases come and go, and sometimes in the midst of the happiness, there is disruption, and sometimes life is barely tolerable. It’s into real life that God has come and where life is marked by tragedy and pain, it is in God’s coming we find hope. It shows that he cares and is involved in this world. He is with us still in the love he instils in his people. He is with us still, in the Spirit of Christ who knows what we go through and has suffered greatly himself. And through Jesus, he offers the greatest hope of all – because he is risen.
Let me end with the words of a song from the award winning band, The Fray.
"Be Still" – The Fray
Be still and know that I'm with you
Be still and know that I am here
Be still and know that I'm with you
Be still, be still, and know
When darkness comes upon you
And covers you with fear and shame
Be still and know that I'm with you
And I will say your name
If terror falls upon your bed
And sleep no longer comes
Remember all the words I said
Be still, be still, and know
And when you go through the valley
And the shadow comes down from the hill
If morning never comes to be
Be still, be still, be still
If you forget the way to go
And lose where you came from
If no one is standing beside you
Be still and know I am
Be still and know that I'm with you
Be still and know I am
He is the great “I am.” He has come, and there is hope.