Friends,

I celebrated Christmas as always with my niblings, siblings, and parents. We cook together on Christmas day, this year opting for a simpler charcuterie dinner.

We got snow, played games together. I hope that your Christmas was equally peaceful and comfortable.

Liz

Slaughter of the Innocents

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (~1527-1569) was a Flemish painter, popular in his time, and ever since. His painting The Massacre of the Innocents moves the Matthew Matthew 2:16-18 text to a wintery Netherlands scene. Herod's soldiers are replaced by Spanish soldiers and German mercenaries, all carrying the Emperor's Seal.

Bruegel's son (Pieter Bruegel the Younger) made and sold many copies and variations of the painting. The original was acquired by the Roman Emperor Rudolph II and was in Prague by about 1600. But Rudolph didn't like the implications of the painting--it was his seal shown--and had the dead children over-painted with food and animals.

And that matches my experience with this text.

We almost never tell Matthew's Christmas story on Christmas eve, and if we read Matthew Matthew 2:13-23 at all we focus on Jesus' identity as a refugee in Egypt, on the Wise Guys refusal to cooperate with Herod, or the value of dreams for hearing God's word. We don't, and we can't makes sense of dead children. Personally, I almost always take the Sunday after Christmas off, and many simply preach on other parts of the lectionary.

Part of my problem is that I get caught up in the question of why God didn't warn all of the Bethlehem parents, or I argue with myself that Josephus doesn't mention the murder, so it probably didn't happen, or I stay away from birth stories completely, given they were probably added to make a theological point.

It's kind of like sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling "I can't hear you."

Of course the preachers I know are, like me, white, middle-class, serving mostly white congregations. I wonder if preachers in congregations that deal often with the death of young people, or that are near schools that have dealt with gun violence, or that are in countries where vaccinations are not readily accessible, and so are having children dying around them, I wonder if they preach this text more readily.

The fact that I refuse to face the violence of our age does not make it go away. Painting over dead babies does not make them alive.

This story reminds us that the reason we needed Jesus two thousand years ago is because the centers of power thought nothing of the people on the margins. Suffering, escaping, food shortages, maternal deaths, childhood death, none of these are not the concerns of the political leaders of that time. And this story reminds us that we need Jesus today because the centers of power are still not concerned with the consequences their actions have on ordinary people.

The Christmas story really only makes sense in a world of suffering and oppression. We do not need a savior to let the oppressed go free if we, as a nation, as a people, are willing to do that ourselves. But we have shown, over and over, that humankind as a whole is not willing, or not able, to make healing on the margins, and care for the margins, our priority. Some of us engage in charitable acts and in fighting for systems change, but it is not enough of us. The violence against the margins continues.

Where is our hope in this story? Our hope is in the God who sees what is happening. Our God is spending their time with the weeping mothers, with refugees, with the poor, and with those suffering. And God provides the gift of Jesus, the Christ, to walk with us in the tragedies of life. This is the good news we have been offered.

What are you preaching on December 28? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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My home parish sang Hope Will Not fail by M. A. Miller at worship for Advent 4. "Anguish and apathy seem to prevail, Hope will not fail"

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Priscilla Herdman, Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen Voices of Winter Album. "You will not be injured by this dark and troubled time."

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