She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.
She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars,
The baby was God.
And she jumped in the air
whirled round, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.
John Shea wrote down this smiling observation over forty years ago and he called it Sharon’s prayer.[1] Not many of us, I suppose, dove into the sofa in response to the good news of the word become flesh, and yet, I hope, we each entered, however briefly, that moment of wide-eyed wonder that, when entered fully, washes us with joy like a shower of stars. The baby was God—Sharon, sure of the facts, couldn’t say another word after announcing the Christmas gospel.
We told the story and we heard it, we sang the carols, and we lit our candles, little flames held high in the silent night to greet the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. In the morning, surrounded by the joyous rumpus of children and a sea of gift boxes and wrapping paper and years of memories, we laughed and talked, we watched the Christmas movies, we played and ate the casseroles and the cakes, and eventually we all fell asleep, the little ones dreaming about their new toys, and the grown ups still humming the tunes that make us happy with tears in our eyes.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Matthew tells us Christ was born in the days of king Herod, and he leaves little room for sentimentality. Here we are on the first Sunday after Christmas, and Matthew reminds us how very vulnerable human babies are and how very ruthless human rulers can be. Matthew makes sure we won’t sit too long in a warm, nostalgic tub, forgetting that Jesus wasn’t born in a little village of collectible, Victorian houses. Matthew tells us that a king was born, but there already was a king, and there is always only room for one on the throne. It doesn’t get any more unsentimental than that. The birth of Christ truly took place in our world, and so the little town of Bethlehem lies still only until the shouts of soldiers and the cries of terrified children break the silence. The streets are dark and they are filled with the wailing and loud lamentation of mothers and fathers.
Stanley Hauerwas writes,
Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children. Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants.[2]
Jesus was born into a world of terror and tears—a world whose rulers recognize few if any limits when power is at stake. Herod the king, in his raging, the Coventry Carol goes, chargid he hath this day / his men of might / in his owne sight / all yonge children to slay. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and Herod was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, and in his fear the king unleashed brutal violence—and still the world out-Herods Herod.[3]
“What could be more innocent than the birth of an artisan’s child?” Auden the poet has Herod ask himself, and the king continues,
Today has been one of those perfect winter days, cold, brilliant, and utterly still, when the bark of a shepherd’s dog carries for miles, and the great wild mountains come up quite close to the city walls, and the mind feels intensely awake, and this evening as I stand at this window high up in the citadel there is nothing in the whole magnificent panorama of plain and mountains to indicate that the Empire is threatened by a danger more dreadful than any invasion of Tartars on racing camels or conspiracy of the Praetorian Guard.[4]
A danger more dreadful than an enemy invasion or a military coup — that is what the dawn of God’s reign represents to the power arrangements of the Empire. And so Herod and his death squads take centerstage, but the little Messiah slips through on the edge of the scene, a child of refugees, fleeing the terror and the violence.
Matthew tells the story so we hear clear echoes of another: Pharao, king of Egypt, was building an empire on the backs of slaves and wanted to keep it that way. Afraid that the Hebrew slaves might become too numerous to control, he told their midwives to kill all Hebrew boys at birth and let only the girls live. But the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, obeyed God rather than the calculating king, and many boys lived—among them Moses who grew up to lead his people from slavery to the promised land. Moses had to flee, and he lived far from his people as a refugee until the Lord said to him, “Go back …, for all those who were seeking your life are dead.” Moses returned, and the liberation of God’s people began.
Jesus and his parents were refugees in Egypt, when an angel of the Lord said to Joseph, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Matthew wants us to hear these resonances between the story of Moses and the story of Jesus—he wants us to know that God is putting an end to the persistent story of terror and death to bring about liberation and life.
We all know that those sitting on the thrones of power did eventually have their way with Jesus and his proclamation of God’s realm. The ultimate confrontation between God’s way of ruling and the world’s was the cross, erected not very far from Bethlehem. Another Herod was on the throne, yet the methods of oppression hadn’t changed; Jesus died because Herod was frightened and all the occupants of earthly thrones with him. To their take on power—to our take on power—the life of Jesus poses a danger more dreadful than an enemy invasion or military coup: a world where love reigns and righteousness is at home.
Pam Fickenscher says about today’s passage from Matthew,
You could make a good argument that we should save this story for another day—Lent, maybe, or some late night adults-only occasion. But our songs of peace and … displays of charity have not erased the headlines of [terror and persecution and parents fleeing with their children crying in their arms, clinging to their backs, or gripping their hands]. This is a brutal world.[5]
Christmas and the cross belong together, and the dark streets are very dark indeed in which shineth the everlasting light—but shine it does.
There is another memory Matthew stirs up with his story of the massacre of the infants. Jeremiah comes to mind, and the days when the Babylonian army sacked Jerusalem and the inhabitants of Judah were sent into exile.
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.
Rachel was the mother of Israel, one of the great matriarchs, and her tomb was on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem.[6] Rachel weeps for her children who have been persecuted, murdered, exiled, sent to death camps, and crucified—and she weeps inconsolably. In Jeremiah, God addresses Rachel, but Matthew doesn’t quote those lines here—it is too soon. But he doesn’t want us to forget them, either; perhaps he wants us to carry them with us, hidden away in our hearts like seeds of hope in this brutal world. According to Jeremiah, the Lord said to Rachel, Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; … they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future; your children shall come back to their own country.[7]
Nothing less will do. They shall come back from the land of the enemy. The enemy shall not keep them, not one of them. Jewish mystics taught that only one place on earth would be suitable for the coronation of God’s Messiah; not a high place like Jerusalem, but that lonely place by the road, where Rachel weeps for her children.
The exile of God’s people would come to an end when the Messiah would come to lead them home.
Where shall this be?
On the way to Ephrat
At the crossroads,
Which is Rachel’s grave.
To mother Rachel he will bring glad tidings.
And he will comfort her.
And now she will let herself be comforted.
And she will rise up
And kiss him.[8]
Nothing less will do, and Matthew knows it. He wrote his Christmas story long after Easter. He wrote his Christmas story with the bold hope that the Messiah who was born in Bethlehem and crowned on Golgotha, is Immanuel, God with us until the end of the age.
We have heard the story. We have sung the carols with joy and longing. And we let our candles be lit, little flames held high to greet the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Little flames held high enough to see his face in the faces of the hungry and give him food, his face in the faces of the thirsty and give him something to drink, and his face in the face of the stranger and welcome him.
[1] John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected (Allan, TX: Argus Communications, 1977), 68.
[2] Matthew (Brazos 2006), 41.
[3] Robert Lowell; the phrase may be Shakespeare’s (Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2)
[4] From Herod’s soliloquy in W. H. Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, in: Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Vintage, 1991), 391.
[5] http://www.danclendenin.org/Essays/20071224JJ.shtml
[6] Genesis 35:16-19
[7] Jeremiah 31:16-17
[8] Zohar 2.7-9; quoted by Fred Strickert, Rachel Weeping (Liturgical Press 2007), 32.