Matthew 2:13-23
Weeping with Rachel… and God
James Sledge December
29, 2013
In
the church I previously served, we usually held a “Hanging of the Greens”
service sometime early in Advent. In one of the first of those services I
participated in, I leaned a wooden cross against the manger that sat in our
chancel area during Advent and Christmas. I also talked with the children who
gathered around it about how Jesus, whose birth we would soon celebrate, would
die at a young age on a cross. The choir sang an anthem called “Child of the
Manger, Child of the Cross.”
It
was all a pretty stark reminder that foreboding surrounds Jesus’ birth, a
foreboding that is picked up on one popular carol. The fourth verse of “We
Three Kings of Orient Are.” says, “Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a
life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the
stone-cold tomb.” The joy and excitement of Jesus’ birth is tempered by the
knowledge that Jesus is, in some sense, born to die.
Some
people found that cross against the manger poignant and meaningful, but others
were bothered and offended by it, even more so when I left it leaning against
the manger for the rest of Advent. Boy, did I hear about that. I learned my
lesson. I still brought that cross out sometimes during the “Hanging of the
Greens,” but then I put it away until Lent.
Very
often, people insist that Christmas be about pure unadulterated joy, but
apparently Matthew didn’t get the memo. Every year we hear from the gospel of
Luke a quaint tale of a babe laid in a manger, attended by shepherds who’ve
been alerted by angels. We even drag the Wise Men to the manger, appropriating
them from Matthew’s gospel, but in Matthew, the wise men never visit the newborn
Jesus.
Matthew
simply reports that Jesus is born. He tells of no angels, no heavenly choirs,
no nativity scene. No one in Bethlehem knows. But sometime later, maybe a year
or two later, foreigners show up. Tipped off by a celestial sign, they realize
that a new king has been born, and they come to pay their respects. They don’t
really seem to understand what is going on, something made all too clear by
their going to King Herod to ask directions. But their visit is a cosmic
signal. Creation itself has announced the birth of a new king, and,
symbolically, the nations have come to bow before their new ruler.
When
we take Matthew’s wise men and add them to Luke’s Christmas scene, we usually
don’t tell the entire story. We leave out the part about slaughtered children,
about mothers crying inconsolably. Not that we should be surprised at this slaughter.
A new king threatens those who claim such power for themselves.
Jesus
is no less a threat to the powers that be in our age, which is why such powers
have worked so hard to domesticate Jesus over the centuries. He’s been
converted into a sweet and mild teacher, a gentle soul who isn’t a threat to
anyone. King Herod knows better, and he acts to preserve his power, as power
usually does.
Strange
that a savior who scared the powers-that-be so much that they had to kill him
somehow evolved into the figurehead of a religion that so often guards the
status quo. But some still see Jesus for who he is. As C.S. Lewis once said, "Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has
landed and is calling us to His great campaign of sabotage."
When
Herod slaughters the innocents, Rachel is left weeping inconsolably. The line
about Rachel comes from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah saw Israel
taken off into exile by the Babylonians. He had warned Israel it would happen,
but that did not make it a happy sight, and Jeremiah employs the image of
Rachel weeping to express the sadness. Rachael was the wife of Jacob, the
mother of Joseph. Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, and now
his beloved wife weeps as their children are carried off into exile. A
voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for
her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no
more. (Jeremiah 31:15)
However,
there are words of hope in Jeremiah. God promises Rachel that she shall see her
children again. Perhaps Matthew expects us to hear that same hope as the
mothers of Bethlehem mourn their children. Perhaps we are supposed to know our
scripture well enough to realize that God will not allow weeping to be the
final word.
Yet
the comfort Matthew gives is not the kind we sometimes try to manufacture at
Christmas. It does not plaster a joyful happy-face over the horrors and pains
of the world. After all, the same fate that meets the infants of Bethlehem
awaits Jesus in due time. Mary will add her voice to those of the mothers
weeping now in Bethlehem.
Matthew’s
comfort and hope comes from announcing that God Godself has entered into the
suffering and pain of the world, that God will weep with those mothers, that
God will lose a son to the rulers and powers of this world who protect that
power at all costs and act with brutal ferocity against anyone or anything that
threatens it.
The good news of Christmas is that God
has acted, that God is working to bring an end to evil and suffering, but it
does not come in the ways we expect or even want. And as long as we look to
power and might to protect us and deal with the horrors of this world, we will
find it hard to see much comfort in Matthew’s Christmas story. We will find it
too disquieting to hear the voice of Rachel weeping, and we will attempt to
blot it out with manufactured joy and cheer.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The
other day I read a blog post about today’s gospel reading by Amy Merrill
Willis, a seminary classmate who’s now a religion professor at Lynchburg
College. In it she quoted an article entitled, “Fragments of a Vision in a
September 11 World,” which reflects on the horrors of the 9-11 attacks.
The divine
presence wept. And then I saw: in her strong brown arms she was gathering the
remains of her beautiful creation, all the maimed and the burnt, the dying and
the dead, the unborn, the orphaned, the lost, and those who inflicted loss… And
I saw that she was a woman in travail, desperate to birth new life, a child of
peace… Then I heard the voice of the divine presence saying, Who will labor
with me, and who will be midwife to life? Here I am, I said, I want to birth
life with you. And the divine presence said, Come, take your place beside me.[1]
Christmas is
much more than a brief explosion of light and joy that momentarily blots out
the dreariness of winter and the despair that grips too much of our world. It
is also an invitation to weep with Rachel, to weep with God, and to join with
God in the difficult and costly work of birthing something new.
Christ is born!
Hallelujah! A new king and lord has arrived who calls us follow him and so discover
just what it means to become a child of
God. Thanks be to God!
[1]
From Teresa Berger, “Fragments of a Vision in a September 11 World,” in Strike
Terror No More: Theology, Ethics, and the New War (St. Louis: Chalice
Press, 2002), reprinted in Claassens, Mourner, Mother, Midwife, 80-81.
Quoted by Amy Merrill Willis in “A Power
Hungry Politician and a Vulnerable God—The Politics of Matthew 2:13-23,” a blog
post in Political Theology Today,
http://www.politicaltheology.com
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