Whose Voice Do We
Hear?
Christmas 2C - Matthew 2:13-15,19-23
Amidst all the packages, wrappings, ribbons, get togethers,
cookies and whatever is left of the puddings and roast beast, Matthew’s story
of the first Christmas turns suddenly dark and foreboding. Above all the
comings and goings of Magi and shepherds, Matthew, and only Matthew, calls us
to pause in our celebrations and listen to a voice wailing and weeping
throughout the ages. There is an urgency in how Matthew tells the tale that
calls the listener to stop and listen. And yet, we can see that something is
missing. Part of the story has been left out that means to connect this infant
Jesus to the long history of his people, Israel.
In a dream, Joseph is warned that the infant Mary named
Jesus, “He who saves,” is in grave danger. Herod is going to seek out the child
to destroy him whom the Magi said is born to be King of the Jews, the very
title Herod carries on behalf of Caesar. Joseph is to take his family to Egypt, where
the story of Israel began. Egypt, where Pharaoh ordered the murder of all male
Hebrew babies. Egypt, where Moses was the only survivor of that first genocide
to save God’s people. We note the irony
that Egypt is now seen as a safe haven as Jesus and his family become refugees,
immigrants, seeking asylum from the violence and danger about to take place in
their home town of Bethlehem.
It is no coincidence that the stories of Moses and Jesus
have sustained the hope of oppressed peoples throughout the centuries: the hope
that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus will act once again on behalf
of endangered persons. Suddenly, however, we go directly from the Holy Family
fleeing danger to receiving a new message to leave Egypt and return home. An
angel of the Lord issues the “all-clear” signal. It ought to concern us when some
invisible-hand edits the story – in this case to remove the part we most need
to hear: the story of the danger they are fleeing in the first place:
“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. Then was
fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: "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 is the second wife of Jacob, named Israel by YHWH.
She bears two of Jacob’s sons: Joseph, who plays a key role in helping Jacob
and all his children and tribes to seek refuge in Egypt from a long drought and
famine. They arrive as refugees and remain as slaves. And Benjamin, whose tribe
is later carried off to Babylon as servants and slaves after the Assyrians
destroy the First Jerusalem Temple. Jeremiah imagines Rachel as the classic
mother who mourns and intercedes for her children, praying for an end to her descendants’
sufferings and exiles.
Matthew, then, reimagines Rachel wailing in loud lamentation
for all infant descendants mercilessly and needlessly slaughtered by Herod’s
Roman Legions in Bethlehem to keep the infant Jesus from usurping his job as
King of the Jews. Rachel continues to wail in loud lamentation for all persons
throughout history right up to our own time who suffer similar genocidal
violence and brutality of history’s endless succession of “Herods” who are
desperate to preserve their personal stranglehold on power: the Hitlers,
Stalins, Khemer Rouge, and all who continue to brutalize the “others” who, in
their paranoic rage, they believe threaten them.
Matthew does not shy away from telling the whole story, as
does our lectionary version of the story this Second Sunday after Christmas.
Matthew relates this tale to both connect the baby Jesus to the long and storied
history of his ancestors, and to foreshadow the rest of the story in his
version of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
It seems that Matthew means for us not only to hear Rachel’s
weeping, but to stop whatever we are doing and join in her lament – to weep for
all refugee and asylum seekers who today, at this very moment are in mortal
danger, like Joseph and Benjamin and Jesus before them, and for all those who
are “no more.”
As Joseph, Mary and the baby return, finding Bethlehem to still
be dangerous, they resettle in Nazareth in Galilee. It is easy to imagine that
as Jesus grows up, he will at some point ask why he never meets his cousins and
aunts and uncles in Joseph’s hometown. Surely, the story of Herod’s slaughter
of innocent children, and the adults who got in the way trying to protect their
infants, is told over and over again among whatever might remain of his earthly
family. Jesus, like Moses before him, was saved by the hand of YHWH, a survivor
of the Bethlehem genocide, so as to save us all from a sinful, broken and
dangerous world.
Each child under the age of two represents a poem never
written, music never composed, a book never written, new discoveries never made.
We will never know how many children actually died in Bethlehem in an effort to
thwart the will of God’s saving grace, love and compassion in the person of
Jesus, while more die in refugee camps every day all over the world. That is a
lot of human potential, culture and imagination mercilessly destroyed.
Matthew wrote this part of the story so that those children
might not ever be forgotten. That Rachel’s children might never be forgotten.
And to remember, that it is humans like Herod and Hitler who commit such
atrocities, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus. Just as God
intervened on behalf of Rachel’s descendant Jesus, so God intervened after the
Crucifixion by raising Jesus from the dead. Matthew, and only Matthew, reminds
us that the wood of the manger is the hard wood of the Cross.
We need to thank Matthew for not holding back the whole
story. In telling us what happened in Bethlehem, we are called to stop whatever
else we are busy with these Twelve Days of Christmas, to listen. When we do, we
can still hear Rachel’s lament; Rachel’s weeping for those who are no more;
wailing for all God’s children everywhere. Above the din of our holiday
activities, we can hear Jesus’s voice calling us to follow and join him as he
saves those who are still at risk. He promises us that we will do the works he
does, and greater things than these we will do, in his name. This is the Good
News of Christmas.
May we hear our Lord and Savior call us to take the time to
stop, and in the silence, to listen. Here and now, listen. What do you hear?
Amen.
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