Scripture Lessons
From the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 2:
13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’ 16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18‘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 Threat of Peace"
A
Sermon Preached by
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
at
the First
Congregational Church of Stoughton
United
Church of Christ
I can only imagine what went through your heads a few minutes ago when you heard Lizzie read this morning’s scripture lesson. This horrific passage from the Gospel of Matthew has been variously referred to as “The Massacre of the Infants” or “The Slaughter of the Innocents.” And you just might be thinking: what kind of scripture choice is this for this Second Sunday in Advent, the Sunday of Peace? Why must we be subjected to one of the most appalling stories in our Christian scriptures when the rest of the world is awaiting the meek and mild baby in the manger? What could Jean be thinking?
And yes, I can understand why you might consider this an odd bible selection, but it is important to remember that the Christmas story is not all light and joy, and to skip over some of the more distasteful aspects of the narrative might leave us with a Christmas too sweet, too lovely, and too gentle to be true.
It's not that we are unaware of the hard edges of Christmas. Every year we sing carols about the Christ Child shivering in the cold because there was no room at the inn, and we draw meaningful parallels between the experience of the characters of the Christmas story and the hungry, homeless, exhausted and unwelcome peoples of the earth, then and now.
But none of these hard edges has ever prevented us from romanticizing Christmas; some of us even manage to find ways to make the shivering of a child seem benign in the glow of candles and the scent of evergreen. But there is no way to romanticize the slaughter of infants. So it is no wonder that this is the one episode of the Christmas story that is most often ignored or deliberately silenced.1 What, after all, does Herod’s killing of baby boys have to do with us, and with the practice of our faith, and with how and whom we worship?
I invite to listen to these words from poet Mary Elizabeth Coleridge:2
I saw a stable, low and very bare, a little child in a manger.
The oxen who knew him had him in their care; to people, he was a stranger.
The safety of the world was lying there; and the world’s danger.
Did you catch that last line? Here it is again:
The safety of the world was lying there; and the world’s danger.
This poem starts out gently enough, but that last line is a little jarring: can a little child in a manger be a danger to the world?
King Herod thinks so. He feels threatened by this baby who rivals him for the title of king, and in typical Herod-like fashion, this master of murder and violence arranges to kill all the little boys because he doesn’t know where to find the one he seeks.
Herod understands that this child could grow into someone who might bring an end to deceit and corruption and brutality as the world knows it and which Herod has made a way of life. And so, in the silent night of Christmas Herod comes, reminding us that the nights following Christ’s birth were not so silent. They were pierced with the sound of mothers weeping.
And mothers – and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters – are still weeping. More than 2,000 Christmases have come and gone, and peace on earth is not yet here – wars still rage, political rhetoric continues to divide, and justice, love and forgiveness between people remains elusive.
And if we are honest with ourselves, there may be a little bit of Herod in all of us; anger, resentment, and indifference may lurk in the shadows of our own hearts. But I think we also hunger for peace – not just the peace which is the absence of war, but also peace in the way we relate to others, and to the earth, and to ourselves.
In the Christmas story, we are reminded that the light continues to shine amid the shadows where the Herods of the world lurk because the Christ Child shows us a better way -- that peace doesn’t come through strength; strength comes through peace. Nations live peaceably because of justice, understanding and acceptance, not violence. The earth sustains life when it is treated with awe and respect, not with assault and savagery. Family differences are resolved by love, patience, and forgiveness, not by hostility and aggression.
Herod feels threatened by peace, and because he doesn’t know Christ’s address, he goes hunting all over trying to find the God hidden inside the baby boys of Bethlehem.
And what about us – do we know where to find Christ? Do we know where the God dwells? A woman named Wei-Ling knows. She lives in a tenement building in a crowded, poor part of a city in southeast Asia. Her apartment is about twelve feet square, the size of an average bedroom in one of our homes. Her family’s only source of income, Wei Ling works all day cleaning; and she keeps her own home neat and peace-filled.
Eight people live in that small apartment: she and her husband, their four children, and two others she has taken in. One is a mentally disabled cousin whose family is not willing to care for her. The other is a polio victim, left in the streets by his parents who felt he caused them to lose face. “I couldn’t leave the boy on the pavement, could I?” says Wei-Ling.
One day, Wei Ling, who practices no religion, goes to a Christian friend. She is concerned about one of her children. “Pray for us,” she begs. “I am useless, good for nothing. But you are a Christian. You know how to speak to God.” Wei Ling thinks she can’t reach God. And yet she is one who shows us where God lives: right there, in her very own heart.
God’s address is with Wei Ling, who welcomes those no one else wants. And God’s address is with us whenever we choose inclusion over exclusion, acceptance over rejection, compassion over criticism, harmony over aggression, persuasion over antagonism, serenity over anger. God is where peace is; God is where justice happens; God is wherever one human being responds to the need of another.
The brutal face of Herod hangs over the Christmas story like a funeral pall, bringing a dose of grim reality to our romanticized images of lowing cattle and sweetly singing angels. The message is not that God summons evil to accomplish divine purposes. Rather, the message is that not even evil – evil in its most catastrophic form, evil as cold and merciless as the murder of innocent children – not even that kind of evil can overcome the light of Christ.3
This Christmas and always, may the peace of Christ’s light shine into the shadowed corners of our hearts, that we may serve as the dwelling place of God. Amen.
1Adapted from J. Mary Luti, “A Voice in Ramah,” January 5, 2003, First Church in Cambridge (MA), Congregational UCC.
2 I am indebted to Rev. Janice Springer, whose sermon “Poor Herod” inspired, and serves as a basis for, this sermon. I recommend visiting her website at www.janicespringer.com for sermon and worship resources.
3 Adapted from Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), p. 22.
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