Greetings,
Today is the feast of the Holy Innocents.
Gabe Huck said, “We take Christmas with lots of sugar. And take it in a day. Though we’ve been baptized into his death, we have little time or patience with how that death is told at Christmas, a death that confuses lament and praise forever.”
What do we really think of Christmas. Every birth is a miracle of God and a gift of life from God, yet every birth is accompanied by pain (which we men can never understand) and the bursting of waters, blood, pushing, cutting cord, and only then fondly wrapping. There is parting at the beginning, as at every beginning. There is not only the blood of birth, but other blood, the world’s most innocent blood. It is a true story being told because that is the way it goes, the way it went, the way it will go. The man Jesus would never hide the truth about the required sacrifices.
There is the escape into Egypt, the hasty retreat of the magi, the intrusion of the military into the village. The children are murdered and Rachel—the Biblical mother of Israel—weeps and laments. A comforter is sent by God, but she refuses to be comforted because he children are no more. The ending of the story is not happy, it is a great mystery. There is a great Te Deum sung: “We praise you, God, we confess you as Lord.” The great chant of praise is sung by Mary and Joseph, processing through their audience, joined in their song and procession by the animals, and the angels, by the shepherds, by the lamenting Rachel and the parents of Bethlehem, and they are joined by the soldiers and their victims and by Herod. They know, as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, that
“we are wound
With mercy round and round…”
they all, incarnate God and all creation, even death, tyrants and martyrs, all process and sing praise. And we find ourselves in the procession, and we sing too.
No wonder we are careful to keep Christmas at arms length. We keep it in nice neat boxes to be gotten out a few weeks before the date and to be put safely away again shortly thereafter, before it can do anything to us. We are very careful to not let the reality of Herod intrude on our celebration. But, what is Herod in these times?
O the night of the weeping children!
O the night of the children branded for death!
Sleep may not enter here…
Yesterday Mother still drew
Sleep toward them like a white moon…
Now blows the wind of dying,
Blows the shifts over the hair
That no one will comb again.
(Nelly Sachs , O The Chimneys)
Not about Bethlehem but about Auschwitz. Or about World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Or about Afghanistan. Or about Bosnia. Or about Rwanda. Or about Iraq. Or about homeless children in the U.S. Or about anyplace the world’s Herods (including us) have wandered. Listen to the year end reviews of the news: how many places, how many innocents?
I cannot forget that it was on December 23rd several years ago that our homeless friend, Mr. Yoshi Nakada was beaten to death on the streets of Washington, DC. He was a Japanese older man who spoke a limited amout of English. However, Yoshi was known to many of our volunteers as “Mr. Thank You” because of his constant expression of “thank you” to everyone who helped with the homeless ministry. For about 10 years I saw this gentle man virtually every week, and his quiet, self-effacing demeanor, his courtesy, his appreciation for any and every help, and his clear love of God was uplifting. He would sing snatches of songs, and when we had time he would sing in Japanese while I sang in English some of his favorite hymns, such as To God Be the Glory, Victory in Jesus, and Blessed Assurance. Whenever we gave him a book, booklet, or the weekly devotional leaflets, he would find me and ask me to sign the item. With his limited English, he still spent time trying to read our suggested Bible readings each day.
That followed on the heels of the severe beating two weeks before of another homeless friend, Bill from 21st Street and K Street. While Bill almost died, he fortunately is now recovering. Like Rachel of old, we weep for the suffering and deaths of the innocent.
On December 21st we remember 111 homeless or formerly homeless persons who died in 2011. Some had been able to work up to having a home, but the ravages of homelessness take a serious toll on the health and constitution of an individual, and they often die much earlier, even if they were able to get into a stable situation. A Christian cannot celebrate Christmas without also being very conscious of the deaths of the Holy Innocents – both those in Bethlehem and those in Baltimore, Beltsville, Manassas, Deale, Christiansburg, Laurel, Winchester, and Catonsville.
Where is the mystery in our Christmastide, the mystery that is the victorious cross? It is there in the stories we tell, the carols we sing, the cards we write, the gifts we give, and the time we take to process through the dozen days from Christmas to Epiphany, the many ways we have of whispering to one another that the days are numbered now for the world’s business-as-usual: somehow, some way we are going to have to join hands and take the procession all over the earth. We are called by God to bring the reality of Jesus, the Light of Jesus, and the Love of Jesus all the people of the earth, but especially to the poor, the needy, the oppressed, the sick, and the innocent. We are to bring Jesus, who came into being as the Life, and the Light of all people, shining in the darkness of the world, a Light that the darkness cannot overcome.
Yours & His,
DED
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