In this way what the prophet Jeremiah had said came true: "A sound is heard in Ramah, the sound of bitter weeping. Rachel is crying for her children; she refuses to be comforted, for they are dead."
Here we are just a few days from Christmas Day and whoever chose the readings for today has inserted the horrible story of King Herod’s mindless massacre of baby boys of Bethlehem, the reading from Matthew’s Gospel.
Matthew’s version of the events of the first Christmas is quite different to that of St Luke’s. Matthew begins with the confused and bewildered Joseph planning to cut his loses and separates from his pregnant fiancé. Mary is pregnant. Joseph has nothing to sing about.
Matthew makes no mention of the census ordered by Caesar Augustus, the journey made by a heavily pregnant Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the lack of accommodation, a stable, or a manger.
Matthew makes no mention of angels announcing the Saviour’s birth to shepherds or of the shepherds visiting the newborn child and singing praises to God on their way back to their flocks.
In Luke’s account, there is room to imagine that "the stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay" or to picture the peace and joy that fell on Bethlehem the night Jesus was born.
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see you lie!
Above your deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by."
Matthew’s story is quite different. There is nothing sweet and gentle about his Christmas story. He sets the birth of Jesus on the background of treachery and murder. He tells us "Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the time when Herod was king" (Matt 2:1).
Immediately, those who read Matthew’s Christmas story would have gasped in horror. You see, Herod had a reputation for being a cruel and bloody king. It is well documented that Herod murdered his own wife, his three sons, his mother-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his uncle, and whoever else posed a threat to his throne.
Even on his deathbed, Herod plotted the murder of his son Antipater. Caesar Augustus once sneered that it would be safer to be a pig in Herod’s pen than a son in his Herod’s house. Everyone recognized the Herod was a nasty piece of work. The first readers must have gasped with horror when the Wiseman turn up at Herod’s palace to ask, "Where is the baby to be born king of the Jews?"
They knew how suspicious Herod was. He always suspected others were plotting against him, even when they weren’t. And Herod doesn’t disappoint us; he plots to get rid of this so-called King of the Jews. He asks the Wisemen to report to him when they have found the baby. He pretends that he too would like to go and worship him. His first attempt to get rid of this newborn king fails when the Wisemen are warned not to go back to him.
Herod would not rest. "He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood who were two years old and younger—this was done in accordance with what he had learned from the visitors about the time when the star had appeared." (Matt 2:16).
Herod left no stone unturned. Before the Herod’s soldiers arrive at Bethlehem, Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus, escape during the night and go to Egypt. In Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus, Bethlehem is known not only as the place where Jesus was born, but also the place where Herod’s soldiers slaughtered babies and toddlers.
This is not a place where, as the carol says, "the silent stars go by" but a place where the loud crying of parents is heard because their children, who had done nothing, were now dead.
Matthew’s Christmas narrative ends, with no angels proclaiming good-will, but with Rachel weeping for her slaughtered children. (Rachel, the wife of Jacob, believed to be buried near Bethlehem, is seen as weeping for her descendants).
What I believe is that Matthew has placed the birth of Jesus right in the middle of the real world where some rulers kill children for their own political ends. The baby Jesus has come into a world where children in Bosnia, Belfast, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Rwanda, Burundi just to name few are killed. Jesus has come into a world where many more babies than the babies of Bethlehem are aborted everyday, others are brutally treated and killed, and others are sold into prostitution or slavery. The baby Jesus came into a world where more children die of hunger, HIV, Aids every minute than the children of Bethlehem died at Herod’s hand.
This is the real world, and it’s into this world that Jesus Christ comes. It’s into a world of pain and sorrow, of political intrigues and deceit, of murdered children, and people who are imprisoned, tortured, and executed; for simply believing and saying "Jesus is Lord."
The baby Jesus comes into our own personal world of death, grief, sorrow, helplessness, and suffering. Matthew wants to make it clear that Jesus wasn’t born into a fairy-tale world where there is harmony and peace, happiness and angel choirs.
We leave Herod out of the Christmas story – he doesn’t fit with Santa and his commercialization of the occasion or with the baby Jesus in the sweet smelling hay. Matthew presents a story about Christmas that is far, far from the sanitized and often sentimental story that we are familiar with.
Jesus came into a world that is far from perfect, in fact a very evil world. Into the real world where we live, and work and struggle, and work, has come a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. He doesn’t remain above the trouble of this world. Rather he enters into the fray as a baby, he becomes as vulnerable and helpless as the baby boys of Bethlehem or Rwanda.
All this gives us an idea of how magnificent the whole idea is that God became a human. There is so much wickedness and sin that the holy God could have refused to send us his Son. And it’s only when we keep this context in the forefront that we can appreciate the reality of God’s entry into the world. Jesus Christ comes to us, not into a picture perfect peaceful world of serenity and tranquility.
No, Jesus Christ comes to us into the real world, a world of pain and death and suffering and evil. This is the world we all understand, in one way or another.
Matthew’s version of the Christmas story has a lot to say to us as we encounter adversity, suffering, grief and death in our own lives. This may not be Christmas story that we like to hear but it’s the Christmas story we need hear.
Remember, it is Matthew who reminds us that Jesus is Immanuel, which means "God with us". We need to know that God is with us even when we feel that he is a million miles away. We need to know that God is right here with us when things are getting us down, when our sorrow is overwhelming, when death stares us in the face.
We need to know that God will never consider us too sinful to touch or too far away from him. This is a story about God's love that will do anything to be with us and help us when we need him the most. Matthew’s Christmas story tells us that from the beginning there were those who opposed him. The death of the baby boys of Bethlehem remind us that death will be a part of the story of the baby for whom those boys died. Let us do some theology here: The Bible teaches that Christ purpose of coming was to die, you and I were born live.
Today we are celebrating the birth of our Lord as well as his gracious promise to be with us always in life and in death. We remember this day the children of Bethlehem and the children of every time and every place who are suffering. We remember those who are working to give these children a fair go in life.
As Christ’s disciples, we strive to make this world a better and happier place for the vulnerable and helpless. Jesus Christ walks with us in this violent, stark existence to suffer with us, walk with us and take us home.
As we celebration of the Eucharist, once again we hear God’s call of peace, love which welcomes each and every one of us to share in the reality of the Christmas story. The suffering and pain of our lives and in the violence of our world, Jesus is Immanuel - God with us – for always.
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
December 26, 2004