This is really not
appropriate Christmas scripture. I’m sorry. I don’t know what Matthew was
thinking. I don’t know why he didn’t understand that Christmas is a time for happiness,
a time to talk about the good things, to share memories, and, above all, to
relax and be comfortable. Matthew shows that he is out of touch with the
Christmas season by sharing this unsavory story of Herod killing the children
of Judea, the children of his own kingdom. No.
Matthew doesn’t get it. That’s not what Christmas is about.
It’s just
unfortunate that Matthew needs to be so… so… real.
…
Then again, I
suppose it is only a real world that
needs to be saved. Matthew picks up the words of Jeremiah, referring even
further back to Rachel in the book of Genesis, saying, “A voice was heard in
Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she
refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” If Rachel is this model figure
for the grief of incomprehensible loss, then it’s interesting to note that Rachel
is not told to pick herself up by her bootstraps, to get over her loss, and to
start living her best life now. She isn’t told it’s going to be alright, or is
somebody does tell her that she certainly
doesn’t believe it. She refused to be consoled. And Matthew seems to be
suggesting, along with Jeremiah before him, that this is the appropriate
reaction to senseless loss.
It’s a downer. It
reminds us that we cannot fix death, which we all know to be true, but it still
seems like Matthew is out of touch. Why bring it up? Why interrupt the scene in
the manger for this? Luke doesn’t. Why not to stick to the script? In Matthew’s
Gospel we get only a moment to enjoy the birth before it all goes to hell. Why
must Matthew do this? Why, again, must this be so real?
We like to ignore
grief. We turn away from it. We know people in town, even people in our
families, who are grieving recent losses, or even still in grief from losses
from years ago. We know what this looks like, and it scares us to death,
because, like Rachel, they are inconsolable. What can we say? So we say nothing. We turn away. We even openly
avoid them. If they’re in one aisle of the Farmer’s Store we go down another.
We don’t do inconsolable. That’s the
pastor’s job, right? It’s my job to say something wise. But Rachel reminds us
that there is nothing wise to be said. All we can do with the inconsolable is
to be there, to say nothing. We just need to be present. You can’t make it
right. I can’t make it right. So what can? What in this world can?
Well, maybe a baby
in a manger. Maybe that’s why Matthew cuts from manger to desolation. It’s
worthy of our remembering that Jesus makes things right not because God hits
the rewind button and changes the past. Even if God spares your child, as happened
with Jesus, it bears remembering that all of us are saved only to die again;
that Jesus is saved not for a death in the comfort of old age. God’s saving Jesus
to one day die on the cross. The Matthew story reminds us that even from the
beginning Jesus’ way to life is through death. Death surrounds the manger. In
spite of our best sanitizing of the Christmas story, death is creeping in. When
that third wise man brings myrrh—an anointing and embalming oil—you have to
wonder if the shepherds didn’t avert their eyes. How dare he insinuate death in this midst of new life? But those
who have experienced the loss of a child, or the loss of a spouse, or a friend,
a brother, a sister—they feel it this time of year. They live it this time of year. And they’ve probably stood with Rachel,
weeping inconsolably, because nothing will make it right.
What they need is
not wise words, or a silver lining; what they need is salvation that is bodily,
eternal, and leads us right through death, because their loved ones are already
there. You can’t change that. It didn’t happen because of some grand plan, God
didn’t need another angel, and more than likely it’s not going to make you
stronger—at least not before it makes you much, much weaker. There’s nothing
about Rachel’s response that suggests any of that to be true. What matters is
not that you become a wiser or better person because of your loss, or whether
there is a plan to make you better. What matters is that we have a God who
enters into suffering, and into death, with us.
God didn’t ordain that
Herod would kill all those children, but he did send Jesus so that all
death—and perhaps their deaths in particular—would not be empty; that the lives
of those children would not end on the whim of a tyrannical king. That king is
far, far less powerful than the king born in the manger. Herod could dole out
death, but only Jesus could offer life.
This is why
Matthew does this; it’s why he is so real, why he starts out Jesus’ life with a
story about death. Jesus wasn’t born to make everything magically great in our
daily lives. He was born to make all that is wrong in the world justified, but
the only path to justification leads through death. Christmas doesn’t ignore
death; it leaps right into it in the most brazen way possible—with the
senseless death of children. That’s the kind of God we’re dealing with—the kind
of baby born in the manger—one who deals in messiness, who points to a cross
and not a throne, saying I will be there. I will be there.
That might not
seem like a promise appropriate for the season, but, actually, it’s the only
promise that plays in every season of our year and of our lives. Why not at
Christmas? Maybe even especially at Christmas. God enters into death, bringing
new life.
Thanks be to God
for that.
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