CHRISTMAS. REALTSM
December 31, 1989
8:30 and -11:00 a.m. (Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, .Chicage
_- Scripture»
~ Isaiah 63:7-9.
; Matthew 2:13-23 0.5

“A: voice was. “heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping

-for- her ehildren;.. on acres Matthew 2: 18 RSV)

“Tt's $ “a peculiar. time, these. days following Christmas. For’ weeks ‘all:
roads” have: led: to Bethlehem. “In fact, for those. ‘ofsus who live and move aS
and have- our - being here, on “Michigan Avenue, Christmas was coming for. eae
months,. and for: the: past month it has been omnipresent, twenty-four: hours» A
day, seven days. a week. And: ‘then ‘in the twinkling: ofan eye it was over:
The very day after it's gone: The retailers put out the ® spring clothes~ and
while. the: celebrating will linger, it will be with Less: enthusiasm cand: <
anticipation... Even the carols, which continue on the Muzak systems of

“hotel: elevators and department ‘stores, sound jess: Joyful.

Throughout Advent and Christmas I. have been using:a major piece: of

poetry, For The Time Being, A~ Christmas Gratocrio, by Woo Auden, as:

counterpoint: to the traditional Biblical accounts” ‘of the nativity. the oe
concluding section, bythe narrator, catches the spirit of the peculiar time
after: Christmas. - :

"Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle. the tree,
‘Putting. the decorations: back :-into. their cardboard. boxes ~
Some ‘have: got. broken.— and carrying them.up=to the atti
-The-holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. oS
~ There: are..enough :
-Left=overs:to do, warpmed- “UD; for the pest“ at the: week =
- Not: ‘that. we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up'so-late,attenipted-- quite unsuccessfully -
To love-all of our relatives, and in. general:
Grossly overestimated our. powers, Once again - ET
Asin previous. years we have seen the actual. Vision and failed—-
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable:
: Possibility, once again we have sent- Him “away ,~
Begging. though: to. remain. His disobedient servant..."

“However, before: Wwe lake the tree down: and pub away the or naments

: before we dismantle Christmas, aesthelically, emotionally; commercially;

“= Aher e is another smal. -bil-of-business locattend to. a eis a part of

a the: Christmas $lLory. we: haven MW heard yel which: makes ditficull, “OHICE |

~ having: heard it, to dismiss ‘the Christ. child: quile. $0. voaaitly. ‘This ‘part.of:.

-. the story has the hard edge: of reality: fo uit) There: are-no Hallinark cards
_ celebrating it... Sit-ds mentioned: only in’remote ‘and: usually -very ancient

earols.: In fact, we don't hear it often and when we do we wish we hadn't.

eet is not exactly consistent with-the love and: peace and goodwill; warmth,
7 generosity and sentiment. which characterize, exclusively, our celebration of

othe birth. But it is there, nevertheless, in the second chapter of the

- Gospel of St. Matthew, right after the visit ofthe | Magi. -

; It is the story of how the birth of..Jesus Christ was received by the
political establishment of the day. It is a-story of how. entrenched:

- political: power deals with a-new-idea: the age-old: tragedy of: geriatric

_.. tyranny. doing .whatever.-is: necessary. to hang on to: power. But that getseus
“ahead: ‘of ourselves. Let's ‘just say that. Matthew. has preserved: ‘the story.)

“for a reason: that the Christmas story is really not complete without it;

- i that nobody wants to hear it, particularly in that pleasant afterglow of an

“absolutely lovely Christmas. celebration. That includes the world which

“never even heard of: it::-the: church. which tries: to ignore. ity. the: people

Who, on this. particular. Sunday would: like. to revisit the: manger, Ory
perhaps, hear. from: the young. people; -something light and- breez BT

‘The: preacher. is:not erazy: about ‘the ‘text. ‘either. because if we: cheareite se

- Carefully it reminds: us of- things’ none of. us. wants to think about.’ Teo

looked: it-up- and. discovered that. I: preached: on it several times” in: the

first part-of. my. ministry, back. when. I. knew.alot-more-than I: do™ ‘now. And -

oo thatthe: last time:was°1970, and-in 1970 the story of. what: ‘Herod™ did: ‘tothe
. innocent. children of: Bethlehem seemed to me-a lot-like: what= we: ‘were doing © =

to the children of Vietnam, at -Mylai, for instance. So, I've: never

os Tedalted the text because. ofthe. incredible part it evoked . And. evokes |

ee “Herod. the. Great" WAS “the. King. The ‘Herod: “Dynasty. ruled Jewish
Palestine from 37 B.C. to 70-A.D. ‘The Herods were Jewish-by birth, “but “not
“by. commitment. Herod the Great, according to Matthew, didn't care “much
about: Judaism although he-did- rebuild. the Jerusalem: Temple: ¥ Secular
; “history judges that he was: an. unexceptional. king; no worse, -no better- than
= most of the monarchs of” the. day. He. was particularly skilled:in “dealing
with the Romans at whose.pleasure Herod -rémained.on the throne: -He-had ten
wives’ cand at least fifteen children, a number of -whom wanted “to: be King.
also. Herod the realist, did what he had to do — executed. three-of=his
children and one of his wives... His final years were difficult and bloody,
“- filled with intrigue, assassinations and a -diminishment of -higs: popularity.
At the end, he was loathed. by- his own people,-sa much so°that to-insure:
mourning: at his funeral Herod left instructions: that other notable. ae
political figures were to be put to: death when he died.: eee

‘So that's the person ~ aging, threatened, frustrated, enraged old
man-- who receives the Magi and hears confirmation of -a- rumor he's’ been
‘hearing a lot recently, namely that a new King has been born, a ‘new-dynasty
to replace his own. What he decides to do when he finds ont the location of
the birth, is, actually, perfectly consistent with the way he makes

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decisions. He is a consummate realist. lie orders the death of ali the
babies in and around Belhlehem under iwo years of age, which is how Jonp
(he Magi have been follewing the star.

Wo OH. Auden pertrays him, not as a tyrant, which is tuo simple, but a
realist... a politician who knows what's whal.

“Today, apparently, judging by the trio whe came Lo see me this
morning with an eestatic grin on their scholarly faces, the job has been
done. ‘God has been born! they cried. ‘We have seen li ourselves. The
world is saved. Nothing else matters.’

"One needn't be much of a psychologist to realize that if this rumor
is not stamped out now, in a few years it is capable of diseasing the
entire empire, and one doesn't have to be a prophet to predict the
consequences if it should...

“Naturally this cannot be allowed to happen. Civilization must be
saved even if it means sending for the military, as I suppose it does. How
dreary. Why is it then in the end civilization has to call in these
professional tidiers...? 0 dear, why couldn't this wretched infant be born
somewhere else? Why can't people be sensible? I don't want to be horrid.
Why can't they see that this notion of a finite God is absurd?"

So, history records that he did it... ordered the death of the
babies... the slaughter of the Innocents. In the High Church tradition
either the 27th or the 28th of December is Holy Innocents Day, or the
Feast of the Holy Innocents. The Middle Ages celebrated it as part of
Christmastide, being generally a lot less squeamish about such things, and
celebrated them, the babies, the first Christian martyrs. The old
Byzantine Liturgy set the number at 14,060. The Syrian Church said there
were 64,000. Some have used the cryptic numerology of the Book of
Revelation to deduce that Herod killed 144,000. Raymond E. Brown, the
definitive New Testament scholar of the Nativity, a Cathelic who teaches at
Union Seminary in New York City, doing his usual careful research, loeks at
the population of Bethlehem and the surrounding area and discovers it is
less than 1,000; discovers its birth rate and normal infant mortality rate
and says there were twenty children under two in Bethlehem.

Of course, the number is not important. One is too many... one child
sacrificed because a frustrated old man is scared ~ ane baby napalmed to
save a village from Communism - or Anne Frank — one Chinese student - one
Romanian child. It is a distressingly familiar dynamic. Who will ever
forget what happened outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, when three young
civil rights workers were murdered; or on the streets and in the parks of this
city in the summer of 1968; or on the campus of Kent State University when
the Nationa] Guard opened fire on the students? Who will ever forget the
reasons the politicians gave for killing our young and the stern response
of many that unfortunate as it all was, that's reality, and besides they
asked for it? John Bodo suggests that of all the characters in the
Nativity, we should recognize and understand Herod most readily.

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“oA friend of mine, Professor Ed Barrett. at. Masking. college, was puest
professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: this. years. GneJune 1 he
“Was in. Beijing. He wrote a very moving account oof what: he owithessed For
~ journal, (Theology Today, October 1989), under. the ‘Little Beijing and
Bethlehem... He was: there: when:the thirty=foot- ‘high plaster and: styrofoam

7 "“Goddess- ‘of Democracy": appeared. on Tiananmen Square, saw the. students”

“- gathering, heard the. speeches, visited in the apartments of. university

“<- professors sympathetic to-the students, saw the® citizens of: Beijing

J) persuade . the soldiers not ‘Lo: move cagainst the students and; ‘then, was: at

2 chis® hotel. window at.dd: 30--psm. ‘when’ the tanks)” “armored personnel: carriers ~
O° Sand: ‘trucks moved in; listened to: gunfire, heard: sirens. The next: day. Ed:
“and his party found the taxi driver who had. been- transporting them. cand

: relates. how the .taxi driver, weeping, -told: him “the :tanks “ran: over <our ;
children." Ed. Barrett. “comments, "Herod: of) Jerusalem would: have. elt at.
ee home in: Beijing.” erate ae is : Sia

a

Both: the student. guides who had been working: with his group ‘were
shot. One. died... And: Barrett tells how the. Molotayv cocktails. which: Chinese
~ television said were thrown. by rabble rousers and: then used as: a pretext:

~ for: the: “slaughter, were- actually. thrown: by. the: people. of Beijing ate the:
army a enraged at.the. murder of their children: :

es “Barnett! 's summary: is: powerful: “The. pattern: of: Herod? s “slaughter of.
the: Innocents became. reincarnate ~ this time: ‘in: 20th century. ‘history. Deng”
Xiaoping, an oldman: clearly: din physical, ‘mental- and: ‘political: decline fas
- was Herod):-was troubled -and- all: the city with him. Fearing: ‘that the ae
‘mandate ‘of -heaven' was: about to be granted to. a younger. generation, ‘he
‘consulted: ‘with his advisers and decided on «death “and: deceit. There. was, of
“So course; no. ‘threat’ tothe: stability of: China, “only ‘to the Teputation and ,
authority ‘of its leaders."

“well, one - of the lessons we: can learn from. this. distressing story ‘is
oo that | birth is always:a struggle; that--there is pain and. agony and: always ”
; - the: possibility. of death-as birth is _ happening: - - the: birth: of al “child, the
“oo sbirth-of a new idea, the-rebirth ofa culture; “the birth of freedam,: the™:
birth of: a nation, the. birth-of God. — [See Edmund. Steimle, -The® Beating

of. Unseen Wings, Birth and Martyrdom] One of ‘the lessons: we can learn is
that where the new. appears you.can count on the old to. put’ UP ae 2» fight and
cong: to. give in without. a: Struggle. ;

= “Another lesson. is: that sooner or.later people in power: begin to -think
Uthat: ‘their exercise. of power: is: ordained by God; or> fate,-or determined by
~ the dialectic and, therefore, it’ is legitimate’ to do whatever, Ais’ ‘necessary.
Coe tol stay. in- control. The: sad. spectacle. of China, Romania, El Salvador,
Panama for: instance; os

“the, third lesson is” that God ison the side of the. new, even” 1 though
oe you ‘can. ‘count on the old to wrap itself in the cloak: of piety; religion and
=: “patriotism, -the: flag, law: and: order, ‘and tradition in order “to defend:

os itself.:. “Not that-every: new. -idea-is a ‘good one -— or: that tradition: dis: oe
“always: bad -~but. watch; -St.-Matthew -says,. for God ‘in the new, ‘in the young,
sin the brave challenges cof. young people in every culture and generation,
oto established procedures, in. the insistent questions, or the courageous
Se insistence of the young that” there are always. better ways.of doing: things

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aud a better workd of justice, kindness, equabily - worth working for,
striving for, fighting and dying for... count on God to be in that
insistent dynamic.

There is, of course, an even more perplexing issue and that is the
whole matter of God's relationship to events like the death of innocent
children. The sound of Rachel weeping was heard in the land, Matthew tells
us - Rache] weeping for her children who centuries before were hauled off
into exile. And so, for illumination 7 turned tou one of my favorites, a
wise theologian who happens also to be a mother and prandmother, Madeline
I'Engle. Not surprisingly, VEngie has written about it with great
honesty.

“This is a festival? This remembering the slaughter of all those
babies - whose only wrong was to have been born at the wrong time?” [The
Irrational Season, p. 28]

So let Rachel's weeping stand for all the mothers who have wept over
the unnecessary deaths of their children.

The sound of Rachel weeping is still heard in the land...

-~in the weeping of the Romanian mother leaning over her ten-year-old
son's coffin,

~-in the weeping of the Hispanic mother whose Marine son was killed in
Panama,

-in the weeping of the Afro-American mother whose teen-age daughter
was killed in a project last week by a stray bullet from a gang skirmish
over drug territory,

~in the weeping of the mother of a fireman, who died crawling through
the burning church building last week, leoking for people who might have
been trapped.

That weeping is one of the most insistent sounds in human history and
Matthew knows it and tells about it because he knows it represents the most
profound theological issue of all... What kind of love - what kind of God
allows that weeping?

Matthew includes this incident as part of the birth narrative
intentionally, I believe, to keep us from missing the point in the midst of
the sentiment the birth evokes. The point is that God so laves the world
that God becomes subject to the same suffering, pain, the same
unnecessary dying of Innocents. God shares it. God has become part of
this world. The prophet Isaiah, writing centuries before the birth,
anticipates it.

“IT will recount the steadfast love of
the Lord...

“In all their affliction he was afflicted...
and the angel of his presence saved them."

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| ee

The birth of this child means something almost indescribable...

“Funtannel” — God is wilhous. There is nothing that can happen Co us -
nothing - which God does not experience too. And that makes all the
difference. “The angel -of> God's presence saves - " ms

Thirty-three years later, this child, now a young man, will die _
because another set of rulers are frightened to death of a new :idea... but
in that dying, you and I-will see again how deeply and profoundly God is.
in this life with us: not only how God sides with the new emerging out-of
the old, but also something powerfully persuasive - namely how knowing that
we are never and will never be alone. Knowing thal - knowing that
Gad dives our Jife and. dies our death - will save us, toa.

: “My friend, Ed Barrett, asked it about Tiananmen Square, “What is God
doing in this situation?" and answered, “Suffering, of course. ~But° that is
nothing new. The lamb is at. the center of the universe."

And so - because of this birth and, particularly ‘this hard, realistic
‘but very precious part of the stery - you and 1° know. again that. God is with
“us and will be with us:

— Madeline L'Engle says that Jesus was particularly loving and gentle
With children because he knew about the Holy Innocents, the ones: who. died
because of his birth, and that when he went to heaven he hurried past. Moses
and Blijah and Abraham and found them. I think she's right.

Well... so that is that, now we must dismantle the tree... take down
the gariands and banners. coop TE

“But near the end of the Christmas Oratorio, W. H. Auden pushes us
forward... ; oo

"The Christmas feast is already a fading memory
And already the mind begins to be
vaguely aware
of. an unpleasant whiff of apprehension
~ at the thought
° of Lent and Good Friday which
cannot, after all, now
Be very far off."

“The challenge is to bring the lovely celebration with us as we move
ahead - into a new year - a new decade - into a world that is very real,.

a sometimes lovely world. ‘but also tragic world where people are: stricken
with premature illness, where innocent children suffer, where everything
doesn't always go the way we planned... where dreams have to be altered and
laid to rest. ee

. The good news of Christmas is that God dearly loves this world, and
lives in it with us and will walk shoulder to shoulder into the future,
will hold us up, encourage us, give us strength, and that nothing that can
happen to us will ever separate us from that love which we first saw at a
manger:

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So we are invited, finally, not simply to look backward in
nostalgia, but to Jive Faithfully, joyfuliy, courageously in the future.

W. H. Auden closes the Christmas Oratorio with that in mind:

“The happy morn is over,

the night of apony stil] to come..."

He is the Way...

He: is. the Truth..

He is the Life...

Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You. will see rare beasts and have unique
-adveritures."

Amen.

0° ‘God of love, be with us now in days ahead .as we live out of this
love we have witnessed and celebrated and experienced in Bethlehem. Be

with us° and make us your faithful people, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

=I]

12/31/89 ©