January 4, 2009 - Christmas 2 (RCL)
Last night
when I turned on the TV news,
the screen was filled with images of war in Gaza.
Hamas militants firing rockets,
Israelite bombs followed by troops.
It doesn’t matter which side you think is right, if any;
either way,
the scenes are devastating.
It seems it’s always at Christmas,
that bad things happen,
or at least, far too often
at this time of year.
Bad news.
It was just four years ago
that the tsunami hit on the day after Christmas.
Hundreds of thousands of people dead.
It was unthinkable.
And last night there was news
of another two earthquakes in Indonesia,
no tsunami this time,
but devastating nevertheless.
And if you’ve been watching the news, you’ll know that there have been a series of deaths these last few days.
Some of them famous, like Eartha Kitt,
others less well known, like the little girl who died when a TV fell on her.
And of course we here at St James are mourning Marc De Simone.
We think of Christmas as a time of great celebration,
but in reality, for many of us,
it can be difficult.
Which is why, I think, it’s important for us to read the whole of Matthew, chapter 2.
We normally just read the first part,
the story of the wise men, following the star
to find the new born king
and kneeling
to worship him.
But we miss out
on the whole story.
Because this isn’t just a fairy story,
but a story of a child born
into the same world that we live in.
A world where bad news
comes alongside the good,
and tragedy alongside
joy,
and to make sense of it all
we need a faith
that deals with reality.
This year, as a kind of Christmas gift to myself,
I brought a pop-up book of the Nativity.
It’s beautifully illustrated,
and ends with a glorious scene,
Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus,
angels hovering protectively in the background,
richly dressed kings offering gifts
and shepherds
watching
with their sheep.
But I have a suspicion
it wasn’t
quite
like that.
The wise men
have been traveling, traveling a long distance
with only the unpredictable direction of a bright-shining star,
and a detour to the palace of the wrong king
where they are challenged and questioned and eventually released
to an uncertain destination
Tired, battered, those wise men finally
come upon the holy family
and fall on their knees to present their gifts to the child.
The journey was not what they expected, much harder it is,
and nor is its destination, not a kingly palace but a struggling family,
and yet,
in spite of it all,
here is the child, word made flesh, hope of the world.
But that’s not the end
of the story.
The baby is in his cradle, yes,
but all around him is fear and intrigue.
It begins when Herod hears of the wise men's search for the child
who is born to be
King of the Jews,
and is filled with fear.
He calls those wise men to him, and with all apparent innocence tells them,
"Go and search for this child, and when you find him,
send for me, so that I too can come and honor him."
But a dream warns the wise men
that Herod's words
are not as innocent as they seem
and they return home
by a different way,
avoiding the palace of the King.
And it is clear in the gospel of Matthew
that this is only the beginning of the danger.
Another dream
has Joseph
hurriedly gathering together his new little family with their few belongings
and heading into the night
towards Egypt, a country that in the biblical tradition
has been more often associated with danger than safety.
But it is the only place out of reach
of the murderous hands of Herod,
and so Jesus begins his childhood as a refugee.
The baby is in his cradle,
but the fairytale
is fast becoming a nightmare.
Because Herod does not give up.
The wise men might not have brought him news, but he knows they were heading to Bethlehem.
He is determined to find this baby, this threat to his throne,
and deal with it once and for all.
And so we come to one of the most horrifying stories of the Bible,
the massacre of the innocents.
Herod sends out his soldiers, and tells them to kill
every baby in Bethlehem. Just to make sure, he includes all children
up to two years old
anywhere in or around the village, all the babies
who had the bad luck to be born in that village at that time,
the first martyrs
for Christ.
Medieval paintings imagined it in graphic detail,
and whether the babies who died were two hundred
or twenty
it was a horrific day
in the history of Israel.
"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."
The baby is in his cradle,
but too many other cradles lie empty.
Eventually Herod dies,
dies with the blood of children
staining his hands.
But even then, the danger is not over.
Joseph brings his family back home to Israel, but it is still not safe
to settle in his ancestral home
of Bethlehem. Herod's son, Archelaus,
is set to follow
in his father's footsteps.
And so the holy family make their home in Nazareth, in Galilee,
a place of no importance
but of relative safety,
and it is there that Jesus grows up,
word made flesh, hope of the world.
The baby is in his cradle,
but this has been an ugly story.
Not just shepherds and angels and wise men around a manger,
but a tyrannical king, horrifying death, escape into poverty,
resettlement
as refugees.
The world that Jesus was born into
is the very same world that we live in.
He didn't live a charmed life any more than we do.
His growing up was surrounded
by the same struggles and violence and pain
that surrounds our lives.
From the very beginning
his life was overshadowed by death.
Until his death.
Christ was spared death
only to die.
Alone, on a cross,
crying out to God
hod forsakenness.
“My God, my God, why...”
Recently someone asked me
how to answer the questions that come with tragedy.
“Why
did this happen?”
And I don’t have an answer.
Or at least,
I have many answers.
Because Herod was power hungry
because the wise men were naive
because Joseph was warned by an angel and escaped with baby Jesus, leaving the other children
to be slaughtered.
Because earthquakes can cause tidal waves
and because houses were built too close to the ocean
and because the people didn’t know what the warning signs meant.
Because smoking causes cancer
and because icy roads make for dangerous driving
and because gravity mens that when you drop an old TV
it can kill a child.
Because the Holocaust displaced millions of Jewish people
and because those people have come back to the promised land
and displaced the Palestinians,
and because poverty breeds anger.
THey’re all answers,
and yet none of them are answers.
Because the weeping
doesn’t cease
just because there is an explanation for tragedy.
Knowing why
helps a little
but not a lot.
Because tragedy
is not something
that can be answered.
We can only live through it, live through it
and find meaning
in the midst of it.
Waiting
and praying
for the comfort of the one
who died on a cross
and the comfort of the father
who watched his Son die
for our sake,
the comfort of the one
who lives in us
even
to the end of time,
God
with us,
the hope of the world.
Wait. And pray.
Pray for peace in Gaza,
Jerusalem,
Bethlehem.
And in New York,
in the lives
of those we love,
and in us.
Pray for peace.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009