Christmas Wailing - Beyond the Manger
Christmas 1a, December 26, 2010 Matthew 2:13-23 with Hebrews 2:10-18 in b.g.
How has your Christmas been? (OK, wonderful, difficult)
Carolyn asked me that question this morning. For me Christmas is always a mixed bag always. The excitement among worship participants is unparalleled on Christmas Eve. The building is packed and this Pastor's heart is warmed. There is no joy for me like having our kids home, in church and now bringing their significant others under our roof to remember Jesus' birth, to share gifts that are small tokens of His love. It is good.
I know that for many of you the celebration of Christmas has been good – because I have eaten at your table, or heard your relief at events in your life. But for me part of Christmas also means that people come into the church who are hungry or very lonely. Each Christmas I also continue to walk through hospitals with people laying on gurneys in hallways. There I hear both inward and outward cries.
Yesterday it was refreshing as we drove to some friends for Christmas dinner to hear a radio station proclaim that there will be no bad news bulletins today – just a wish for peace during these holidays. I felt relief for a moment and a sense of quietness.
But such a "news" flash is an interlude. Today we arrive to worship only to and hear of King Herod killing innocent children. Herod is desperate to maintain his grasp on power. To do that he feels that he must maintain the status quo at any and all costs. He stops at nothing to maintain "power" having already murdered his own son in the fear that his son might have replaced him. Herod is obsessed with the exercise of such power. To be sure, even during his murderous rant, the baby Jesus is delivered. But many others according to Matthew, many wee children, 2 years old and younger are killed. And the voices of mothers, the inconsolable voices of parents whose babies have been killed, wail across the universe. Can you hear them? Their crying rises up, unabated.
I remember my own Aunt Phyllis. We gathered at my parent's house the day of her son, Tom's funeral. Tom was 21 years old. He had died of an overdose of heroin in a Calgary hotel room. I will never forget that day. Nor can I forget my aunt's ongoing pain. Until the time of her death she missed him. Until her last breath she wondered, what could she have done differently to help him, to move him in a different path, with different friends, different choices. How she sobbed that funeral day! My friend, serving as her pastor for that day, told her that when your child dies, something within you dies and it doesn't come back.
I am thrust back there when I hear Matthew saying that Rachel's voice is crying in Ramah as her children, the babies of Israel are killed.
I remember my first funeral in our second parish. You know I always try to visit everybody in the first year I am in a new congregation. It takes a lot of time, but it's worth it. I try to make all these visits for two primary reasons. One is relatively selfless – I want to get to know people, at least a bit. I want to hear their stories so that I can actually be their pastor, one who cares about and for them. And I hope that in that process they can get to know me just a bit. Hopefully then they can see as a person, yes a person of faith, but a person like them, with flesh and blood, hopes and dreams, joy and disappointment, not above or below them, but with them. The second reason for making all these first year visits is much less selfless. It is my hope that I will have had an opportunity to be in their home before some tragedy or great loss besets them. I don't want the first time that I meet them to be when one whom they love has just died or been killed, or when their marriage is ending, or when they have received a pink slip. It's hard enough to trust anyone at such times, save someone they don't know.
But sometimes I don't get around to making all those visits in time. So it was then. Three months into that congregation our phone rang. One of our older members was on the line. She was sobbing. Her great granddaughter , born only 3 months before had just died – a crib death. "Pastor, will you go and visit my granddaughter? She doesn't come to church, but she needs God, she needs her pastor, now!" There was no question. Off I went to be with that young couple, as they wept, their new baby no longer alive.
They aren't alone. Many of us have stories of great loss. Even now they may move us to deep pain. And parents, particularly mothers around the world, wrestle today as their children are ill, starving, or are afflicted with some disease that may or may not have been preventable.
To all of that, to all of us, this Christmas comes Christ. We remember in these days as a babe himself. According to Matthew God protects him, delivers him from the wrath of a despot who will gladly kill others to maintain his position.
As a child and as an adult I have often wondered why God can't or won't spare these children, then and now. There is a massive mystery to suffering and death. To be sure, some of it is brought upon ourselves by our greed, our apathy, our stubbornness to do things our own way. There are systems involved, earthly and heavenly, that transcend our comprehension. But having said all of that – much of personal suffering just is – it comes like death, sometimes as a thief in the night – to children who sometimes find their ways to children's hospitals – to children and infants sometimes still in the wombs of their mothers, nevertheless afflicted with deadly viruses and diseases. Then the cry goes up from their mothers and fathers, from grandparents and all who love them. .. AND WHERE IS GOD?
To this question comes a baby, this God in the flesh, the one the Gospel writer calls, "God with us". Sometimes we are convinced and actually sense God's presence. But sometimes we cannot feel at all. The horror of the pain has washed away feeling. Is God with us then?
Then we must not only look to the wood of the manger that holds this baby. Then we must not only look to the Word become flesh, that we often think about as Bible. But then, as Luther said, we must realize that the wood of the manger leads to the wood of the cross. And there we see, in the midst of untold suffering and pain, that GOD IS WITH US. This one who take on our flesh does not abandon us in our suffering. This doesn't make our suffering easy. But our loving with such pain can also bear hope.
The cry continues to go up. This is not only the cry only of parents – but it is also the cry of God who is our Parent, our Father and our Mother. Someday God promises that the crying will cease. Then there will be a feast to which all are invited. There will be new life!