December 1: Christmas in Dangerous Times
♫ Music:
Day 5 - Thursday, December 1
Title: THE PROPHECY OF JEREMIAH & HOSEA
Scripture #1: Jeremiah 31:15
Thus says the Lord: “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”
Scripture #2: Hosea 11:1
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.
Poetry and Poet:
“Nativity”
by John Donne
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
CHRISTMAS IN DANGEROUS TIMES
“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15
Look at the sketch, Woman with Dead Child. Listen to the woman. We can hear her wailing, “My child, Oh Lord, my child!” Her child is gone. Grief ascends to the heavens like smoke. Rachel refuses to be comforted because she is no more.
This is the world into which Jesus comes.
It is a dangerous world. Families are driven to despair. Hints of a New King that must be destroyed. The New King must not come. There can be no New King. A ruler slaughters the innocent. Herod clutches desperately to power. Such megalomania makes the world a dangerous place.
Matthew chose the weeping of Rachel for her children to punctuate the insanity of Herod. Wherever there is the rabid lust for power, women always weep for their children.
The most powerful man in the region spent all his strength to eliminate the New King. He could not. Within a year or two he was dead. Opposition to God comes to nothing in the end. The New King came. Herod futilely clutched power. God himself went to greater lengths to lay aside power––to come in the form of a baby.
Matthew chose the weeping of Rachel in part because it is embedded in a larger story.
The nation is going into exile. Rachel weeps.
The thrust of the passage, however, is the promise of restoration.
God will bring his people out of exile.
God will bring them to the promised land.
Matthew chose this passage, in part, with this very promise in mind.
Weeping and restoration together.
Sorry and joy.
God will turn our mourning into joy because redemption is here.
God comes in dangerous times. He comes in the chaos and weeping of real-world events.
This is not a sentimental––warm, fireplace Christmas. No one sang, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”
God continues to enter the Danger and Chaos of our lives
Is my world too dangerous for Jesus? Is my sorrow too great for him to enter?
Sometimes I feel as if my world is too chaotic for the work of God. But, I am reminded in Advent that he comes. He comes in dangerous times. He comes to bring hope and life. He rolls back the evil. He enters with us and he brings us out.
Rachel weeps but she will not always weep.
Prayer:
Lord,
We weep for sorrow, but you come into our pain.
We are driven into exile, but you call us out to our homeland.
We are trapped in our lostness, but you liberate us.
Help us remember Rachel who weeps and your people in exile.
Help us remember your coming to us in our dangerous times.
Amen
Dr. Greg E. Ganssle
Professor of Philosophy
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork #1:
Frau mit Totem Kind (Woman with Dead Child)
Kathe Kollwitz
1903
Soft-ground etching and engraving with green and gold wash
39 × 48 cm
British Museum
London, England
This etching is one of a series of drawings, charcoals, and etchings titled Woman with Dead Child, all produced in 1903. Kollwitz began the series with works she called "Pieta"—Mary mourning her dead son. German artist Kathe Kollwitz, in Mother with a Dead Child, understood all too well the heartache of both individual and collective Rachels weeping over their dead children. In 1914 this became reality for the artist as well when her younger son Peter, the model for the dead boy, died at the age of twenty-one in the early months of World War I. Later, her grandson died in World War II. Kollwitz creates a powerful print that captures the gut-wrenching grief of every woman who weeps for her children. In Mother with Dead Child, Kollwitz creates a figure of a grieving woman passionately embracing the corpse of a young boy, drawing the viewer to the place where the two faces meet. The shallow depth of field and plain background force us to acknowledge this mother's tragic loss and anguish.
https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/10388
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/woman-with-dead-child-244043
http://artandfaithmatters.blogspot.com/2016/12/rachel-weeps-art-lectionary.html
About the Artist #1:
Kathe Kollwitz (1867–1945) was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including The Weavers and The Peasant War, depict the effects of poverty, hunger, and war on the working class. Though Kollwitz studied both painting and printmaking, she turned exclusively to the print medium in the early 1890s. Influenced by fellow German artist Max Klinger, she saw the potential of the print for social commentary. For the next fifty years she produced dramatic, emotion-filled etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs—generally in black and white but sometimes including touches of color. Initially, working-class patients of her husband, a doctor, proved worthy models and subjects. Beginning in the teens, Kollwitz’s subject matter came to reflect her experience as a witness to both World Wars. She was devastated by the suffering and loss of human life, including the loss of a son in the first war, and a grandson in the second. Although Kollwitz’s wrenching subjects and virtuoso technique soon made her work popular throughout Germany and the Western world, they also generated controversy. In 1933, the Nazi government forced her to resign her position as the first female professor appointed to the Prussian Academy (in 1919); soon thereafter she was forbidden to exhibit her art. During her final years, Kollwitz produced bronze and stone sculpture embodying the same types of subjects and aesthetic values as her work in two dimensions. Much of her art was destroyed in a Berlin air raid in 1943. Soon thereafter, Kollwitz evacuated to Moritzburg, a town just outside Dresden, where she died two years later.
https://nmwa.org/art/artists/kathe-kollwitz/
About the Artwork #2:
The Flight to Egypt
Paula Rego
2002
Watercolor and ink on paper
21 × 29 cm
Belém Palace
Lisbon, Portugal
In 2002 Jorge Sampaio, then President of Portugal, commissioned artist Paula Rego to create eight images based on episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary, to be placed in eight existing flat wall coves in the chapel of the presidential palace, Palácio de Belém or Bethlehem Palace, in Lisbon. The result was a Marian cycle entitled Nossa Senhora (Our Lady), which included images of the “Annunciation,” “Nativity,” “Adoration,” “Purification at the Temple,” “Flight into Egypt,” “Lamentation,” “Pietá,” and the “Assumption.” In these works, Rego emphasized the fragile human aspect of the Virgin Mary—as opposed to the special or approximately divine—which created a great deal of controversy in the highly Catholic country of Portugal.
https://books.openedition.org/obp/9781
About the Artist #2:
Paula Rego (1935–2022) was a Portuguese artist who lived most of her life in Britain, where she became one the UK’s most renowned and inventive artists. Drawing on myths, folk tales, and her own upbringing under a dictatorship in Portugal, Rego made paintings and drawings that were often mischievous, menacing, and psychologically complex in nature. Rego's style evolved from abstract towards representational, and she favored pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects feminism, colored by folk themes from her native Portugal. Rego studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and was an exhibiting member of The London Group, along with David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. Queen Elizabeth II named her a Dame Commander, one of the country’s highest honors, in 2010 and in 2021 the Tate had a comprehensive retrospective of her work.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/09/artist-paula-rego-dead/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Rego
About the Music #1:
“The Coventry Carol” from the album Christmas
The "Coventry Carol" is an English Christmas carol dating from the sixteenth century. The carol was traditionally performed in Coventry, England, as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew; the carol itself refers to the massacre of the innocents, in which Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed, and takes the form of a lullaby sung by mothers of the doomed children. The author is unknown; the oldest known text was written down by Robert Croo in 1534, and the oldest known setting of the melody dates from 1591.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Carol
Performers #1:
Formed in 2005, VOCES8, an a cappella octet from the United Kingdom, has a diverse repertoire ranging from early English and European Renaissance choral works to their own original arrangements. The ensemble is dedicated to supporting promising young singers and awards eight annual choral scholarships through the VOCES8 Scholars Initiative, at which amateur singers of all ages are invited to work and perform with the ensemble. VOCES8 tours extensively throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, and their artistic collaborations have included the Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, period ensemble Les Inventions, violinist Hugo Ticciati, and cellist Matthew Sharp. The octet won the Limelight International Artist of the Year People's Choice award at the 2021 Limelight Awards.
http://www.voces8.com/
About the Conductor #1:
Barnaby Smith is the artistic director of the internationally renowned vocal ensemble VOCES8. He is in demand as a conductor, choir trainer, teacher, counter-tenor, and arranger. With a schedule that takes him around the world, Barnaby has performed at many of the world’s prestigious festivals and halls and has conducted orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, Australian National Academy of Music, English Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Monte Carlo Symphony. Barnaby’s collaborations have included projects with Rachel Podger, Roderick Williams, Masaki Suzuki, Ola Gjeilo, Eric Whitacre, Jonathan Dove, and Christopher Tin, among others. A passionate pedagogue, he has taught at academies and universities across the world, including co-curating the masters course in ensemble singing at the University of Cambridge. Smith completed his studies in specialist early music performance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
https://voces8.com/barney
https://www.barnabysmith.net/
About the Music #2:
“La Huída” from the album Lupe Rios: Songs of Advent and Christmas
Lyrics #2:
La Huída (Spanish)
¡Vamos, vamos! ¡burrito apura!
¡Vamos, vamos! ¡burrito apura!
Si no te apuras los van a pillar
Largo el camino, largo el salitral.
Ya tocan a degollar!
Ya esta sangrando el puñal!
Si no te apuras los van a pillar
Vamos! vamos! burrito apura!
Vamos! vamos! burrito apura!
Niño bonito, no lloris mi amor
Ya llegaremos a tierra mejor.
Duérmete ya, no lloris,
Cuna en mis brazos te hare.
Bombos legüeros en mi corazón.
Vamos! vamos! burrito apura!
Vamos! vamos! burrito apura!
Come on, come on! Little donkey, hurry!
Come on, come on! Little donkey, hurry!
The Flight (English translation)
If you don't hurry, they will catch them
The way is long, and so is the salpeter deposit.
They are already blowing the horn to slit their throats!
The dagger is already bleeding!
If you don't hurry, they will catch them.
Come on, come on! Little donkey, hurry!
Come on, come on! Little donkey, hurry!
Pretty boy, don't cry, my love
We will arrive at better lands.
Fall asleep now, don't cry
I will make you a cradle in my arms.
Drums in my heart.
Come on, come on! Little donkey, hurry!
Come on, come on! Little donkey, hurry!
Performer #2:
Lupe Ríos comes from Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, México. He is one of twelve brothers and sisters born to a poor but happy family full of dreams and ambitions. When Lupe was a young boy, his family immigrated to the United States. In the United States, he immersed himself in religious music. Rios attended the University of Washington, where he studied political theory and economics with minors in human rights, religion, and music. He has served as the director of worship for Mission San Luis Rey Parish in Oceanside, California, and is currently director of music at Mary, Star of the Sea Catholic Church in La Jolla, California, where he is involved in a variety of music projects, including composing and recording.
https://www.lupedifranco.com/
About the Composer #2:
This is a traditional folk song collected by Ariel Ramírez (b. 1921) who is one of Argentina’s most loved choral composers. As a young man, Ramírez traveled all over rural South America, studying and collecting folk music. After studying in Buenos Aires, he traveled to Europe, where he studied first at the Institute of Hispanic Culture in Madrid, Spain, and then at the Academy of Music in Vienna, where he concentrated on Central European folk music. In 1954 he returned to Argentina and completed his musical training in Buenos Aires. His politically inspired popular songs soon earned him fame as a leader of the Nueva Canción Movement, which began in the 1950s and early 1960s as a movement contesting the political dictatorships of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Ram%C3%ADrez
https://www.oldies.com/product-view/41170O.html
About the Poetry & Poet:
John Donne (1572–1631) was an Anglican cleric and one of England’s most gifted and influential poets. Donne was so respected by his followers that they thought him “a king that ruled as he thought fit, the universal monarchy of wit.” Raised a Roman Catholic, Donne later converted to Anglicanism, though his sensibility, as indicated perhaps in his late Christian poetry, always seems to have remained with the Roman Catholic Church. Unable to find civil employment, Donne was eventually persuaded of his calling to the church and took Anglican orders in 1615. His work is distinguished by its emotional intensity and its capacity to deeply delve into the paradoxes of faith, human and divine love, and personal salvation. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and contain a variety of forms, including sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires, and sermons. His poetry is noted for its eloquent language, fusion of intellect and passion, and inventiveness of metaphor. In 1621, he was appointed the dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and also served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and again in 1614. After a resurgence in his popularity in the early twentieth century, Donne’s reputation as one of the greatest writers of English prose and poetry was established.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-donne
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Greg E. Ganssle
Professor of Philosophy
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
Gregory Ganssle is a professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. His interest is in the philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy. His latest book is Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspiration (IVP, 2017).