December 28: Who Will Comfort Us?
♫ Music:
The Feast of the Holy Innocents
Herod Kills the Male Infants of Bethlehem
Scripture: Matthew 2:13-18
Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, 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.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
For Max Jacob Who Saw Christ in Watercolors
by John Knoepfle
and christ is red rover
he blazes on the wall in watercolors
rachel dances in his brain
and her children trail her heels
in flickering pinks and blues
and the armies of the reich
shake loose from their graves
and they hide and seek
and search and destroy
and the wall is blown down
and christ is reeling in the streets
staining the gutters
with the colors of his blood
and the children are calling
come over come over
WHO WILL COMFORT US?
Post-Christmas Advent would seem to be sufficiently full with joy in celebrating the birth of the God-child. But the joy of Christmas is good news because a Savior is born. Today’s scripture makes clear that our world desperately needs this salvation. Both today’s carol and today’s poem play cruelly and holily on the tragedy of a feast day for murdered children. The Coventry Carol presents the lullaby of mothers who lyrically anticipate their grief. The grief the prophet Jeremiah attributes to Rachel who cries out from her own death in childbirth. The biblical resonance of birth and death call out for the resolution that Rachel’s offspring so hope for. Only a Christian advent hope could transpose so desperate a plight into song, but the carol is meditative, not glibly cheerful. Who will comfort us in the distress of a world where children are still killed - be it in Aleppo or on Lesbos, in Newtown or Nigeria, through tragedy or lifestyle choice? Truthfully, we do not always know how to sing these contemporary tragedies all around us.
Our gospel text reminds us that one way we cope with tragedy and pain is by clinging to our privilege and power. We see Herod’s craven clinging to power in the name of security that drives political bloodlust. We are told of Herod’s fury, Knoepfle’s poem tells of ‘the armies of the reich’, alluding to Herod’s soldiers as engaging in what propaganda presents as hide and seek, but is really search and destroy. The dissimulation by which power cloaks its murderous security beckons us to dwell on the failings of principalities and powers, as also the idolatrous and murderous security agenda of our own hearts. Does a Savior King threaten the law and order of our own life management, or will we, like the departing Magi humbly seek out majesty and bow the knee?
Advent will close for me with a chance to teach my favorite class on German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This man has captured the imagination of evangelicals of late. For his story we substitute Hitler for Herod. As a consistent pacifist, Bonhoeffer criticized the cries of ‘Security’ that led 1930’s Europe into re-armament, militarization, and war. He called for peace because he saw that Jesus Christ was all the peace the Church needs. In the light of our passage I am struck by the ways in which this mercurially gifted theologian found ways in his gospel calling to not build up the security of his reputation but commit to the least among us, directing a children’s Christmas pageant in Barcelona, teaching Sunday School in Harlem, or catechizing unruly boys in Berlin. For Bonhoeffer, the gospel’s kingdom reversal drew him to minister to the young. Many of his young ordinands, having passed through the illegal seminary in Finkenwalde, lost their lives in military service on the Eastern front.
As we consider the holy innocents murdered by Herod, the losses of fathers, uncles, brothers, and sons in war, the terror of genocides and holocaust, the routinization of abortion, we turn our eyes to the one who comes, like Moses, from Egypt to liberate and usher in rest. We continue to grieve in our world of violence, hatred, power, paranoia, and security, knowing that Rachel’s and our own comfort is still - another gospel reversal - yet through death – the death of this one whose coming we celebrate. A death that promises resurrection life. Post-Christmas we continue to await Christ’s second coming, crying out for the justice that children of Bethlehem, our hurting world, and we ourselves desire from Jesus who will come again as Ruler and Judge before whom every knee will bow.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, remembering your family’s traumatic flight to refuge under threat of death, we turn to you our own cries of grief and anguish. We cling to the hope of your coming for the judgment that will right all wrongs, and defeat death itself. We do so trusting in you for salvation and not in our own oft-consuming illusions of security. Grant us a measure of your Father’s eternal peace, in the power of your Spirit, to look to the least among us in sharing your good news in word and deed.
Amen.
Andy Draycott
Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies
Talbot School of Theology
The Holy Innocents
Tobias Haller
Pastel drawing
About the Artist and Artwork:
Tobias Haller is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a brother of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, a religious community of The Episcopal Church, founded in 1969. His Holy Innocents drawing is a haunting depiction of those young martyrs who gave their lives for Christ. Haller states, “Though it's the same year after year, I am always saddened and somewhat surprised that the feast days following the joyous celebration of the Nativity of Jesus include the feast of St. Stephen the First Martyr, and the feast of The Holy Innocents.”
About the Music:
“Coventry Carol” is an English Christmas carol dating from the 16th century. The carol was traditionally performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from Matthew chapter 2, the carol itself refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which King Herod ordered all the male infants under the age of two to be killed, and takes the form of a lullaby sung by mothers of the doomed children. The oldest known text was written by Robert Croo in 1534, and the oldest known setting of the melody dates from 1591.
Lyrics;
Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, Thou little tiny Child.
By, by, lully, lullay.
O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor Youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.
Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,
And ever mourn and say;
For Thy parting, nor say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.
About the Performer:
Libera is an all-boy English vocal group directed by Robert Prizeman. Most members come from the parish choir of St. Philip's Norbury in South London. The group usually consists of approximately 40 members between the ages of seven and sixteen, including new members who are not yet ready to fully participate in albums or tours. The group recruits from a variety of backgrounds in the London area, and does not require its members to belong to any specific denomination. In addition to recording albums, touring and, making regular TV appearances as Libera, the group sings on a weekly basis as part of the full choir of men and boys at parish choral services. Libera is run as a not-for-profit registered UK charity, "providing the opportunity for suitable boys to train as vocalists from any background.” Members are not paid for their work within Libera, but their expenses are covered when touring. The group's name comes from its signature song, "Libera," which is based on the Libera Me portion of the Requiem Mass. “Libera" is the Latin word for "free.”
|libera.org.uk/
About the Poet:
John Knoepfle (b. 1923) is the author of over 20 books of poetry as well as several prose pieces. He is Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of Illinois- Springfield. His awards include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the Mark Twain Award for Contributions to Midwestern Literature. Author Brooke Bergen writes "I would consider John Knoepfle one of those classic poets of place. His attachment to the midwest is a genuine attachment; it is the place that he inhabits, rather than writes about, and that is what makes the poems so lovely. I think it has to do with his sense of relationship of place to person and word."