Christmas 2, 2010 Year A,
Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84; Ephesians 1:3-6; 15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
In this Second Sunday of Christmas we are reminded of the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem. The story of the one little baby, out of so many innocents, who managed to escape death only to be become a refugee in exile in a strange land, is one that resonates all too deeply with our present age.
It does not fit well with the cheerful spirit of the Christmas season if by that we mean eating cookies and drinking hot punch and singing, “God rest ye merry, Gentleman, let nothing ye dismay.†Mostly we like to turn our backs on the darkness of the world at this season of light and joy. But darkness is very much a part of the story of this child born in Bethlehem. Despite all its real beauty and goodness, there is never a moment in this world in which there is not, somewhere, pain and suffering and injustice. There is never a moment in which innocents are not being slaughtered at the command of the callous, the cruel, the indifferent. Indeed, if it had been otherwise, if our world were not a place streaked through with heartrending sorrow and undeserved suffering, there would have been no need for the Incarnation.
Christ entered this world to experience everything we humans experience. He is truly our brother, and we are truly his sisters and brothers, because he shared every aspect of human life with us, in all its joys and terrors. And because he shared our flesh and blood existence, we share in his divine existence.
So wherever in the world we hear of the slaughter of innocents, wherever there are refuges flooding over borders in terror of persecution, this story of the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem and the flight of the Holy Family serves to remind us that Christ has been there too. The evil that pursued him and sought his life as an infant is the same evil that still cuts young lives short, that still treats human beings with hardhearted indifference.
Every year, we mark the coming of Christmas with lights, in part from joy at the coming of the Light of the World. But this is also the darkest time of the year, and we also light our lights in defiance. We know, even as we seek for a few days to try to forget, that the lights of Christmas shine in the still-real darkness of the world. Evil–terrible, crushing evil, evil in human hearts, evil in circumstances and situations, evil in human systems and governance–is still all around us.
But we Christians hang up our lights and sing our songs of hope and joy because we are utterly certain that evil will never have the last word. That God’s promises will be kept.
Even the dreadful story of the flight of the Holy Family from slaughter and persecution, is filled with reminders of God’s promises to humankind. The angel who appeared to Joseph gives him counsel of hope and salvation. When Joseph heeds the angel, and flies with the infant and its mother to safety, he takes same the long road into exile and uncertainty in the Land of Egypt that another Israelite named Joseph had taken many, many long years before. In that Egypt the descendents of Joseph and his brothers had lived for centuries, first as welcomed guests, and then later as slaves under a Pharaoh who, just like Herod, had ordered their children slain. But the child Moses had escaped the slaughter, in his basket of pitch and reeds, and had been rescued and protected by the daughter of the Pharaoh. Moses had grown up to lead his people out of exile and slavery in Egypt and back to freedom and safety in their own long-promised land.
So in the flight into Egypt and his return, the child Jesus and his parents retrace the whole story of the Israelite people. The invincible power of the saving hand of God that had lain on the Israelite people in their going into exile and their return is thus also made a part of Jesus’ story from the very beginning.
Jesus was relentlessly pursued by evil all his life. He knew danger and sorrow and want and terror from his earliest days, but he never let his deep awareness of the evil of the world corrupt his spirit.
Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when they came for him in darkness, Jesus submitted only to God’s power and to God’s goodness: “Father, not my will, but your will!â€
There is a beautiful carol which illuminates perfectly the strange place in which we find ourselves when we contemplate the  story of the Slaughter of the Innocents in the context of Christmas. It begins at the stable, and ends at the cross, and it goes like this, in part:
A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry…
This Child though David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry…
Yet he shall be forsaken
And lifted up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry…
But now as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the Child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconcilled.
This is the meaning of Christmas: that a light shines in darkness and will not be overcome.
The light of the Christ child burst upon our dark world, and despite everything—despite corruption, callousness, cruelty, misery, heartbreak, injustice–we ourselves are called to resist the darkness, and to be beacons of light to those who have been tortured and brutalized by those who have fallen into the embrace of darkness.
Christ took on human flesh that he might be like us in every respect, and as we eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist, we are once again offered the opportunity to be refashioned in his image, and to show forth the light of Christ that has been kindled in our hearts ever since that first stable light was lighted, 2000 years ago and more.
Judy Buck-Glenn