"Widest Extremes to Join"

The Slaughter of the Innocents - Carl Heinrich Bloch

Merry Christmas!  We are, of course, smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season. I preached this sermon today at Hay Street United Methodist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  It's never been an easy Sunday, the first one after Christmas Day, and the lectionary texts for the day don't make it any easier, but here is what I said.  I hope it was faithful to the One who inspired it.

“Widest Extremes to Join”
29 December 2019
Matthew 2: 13-23/Hebrews 2: 10-18
Hay Street UMC

I’m a big fan of religious art – paintings, photograpy, and so forth possibly because the sanctuary of the church I grew up in had beautiful stained glass windows of scenes from scripture.  I especially enjoyed looking at the one of the Nativity. Sometimes I compared the illustrations in my grandfather’s big Bible with those windows, but they weren’t always the same. His Bible had a Nativity scene, too, but the facing page depicted the horrible story we just read, and the contrast could hardly be greater.  In the foreground, a prostrate mother weeps in disbelief over the still form of her murdered infant while a soldier with sword in hand is already halfway out the door, ready to rejoin his comrades in Herod’s murder squad. The title of this nightmarish picture is, of course, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and December 28 has been set aside to remember the Holy Innocents since at least the 5th century. The intent is not to throw preachers a curve ball or to bring churchgoers down during the holidays but simply to tell the truth about the kind of world into which Jesus was born, the world Jesus came to save.  The Church is being faithful to the gospel story as it unfolds, following a tradition that is rooted in scripture and hallowed by centuries of observance in sermons, art, and song.

December 26 is the festival of another martyr.  We remember St. Stephen whose death by stoning is recorded in the book of Acts as one of the first Christian martyrs. You probably know the line from the carol "Good King Wenceslas” “Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen...”  Likewise, on December 28 we commemorate the politically-motivated slaughter of the holy innocents, over whom Rachel weeps inconsolably.  The mournful “Coventry Carol” recalls this story of Herod’s murderous rage with the deceptive beauty of a lullaby.

It’s heavy stuff. There is major dissonance between the joyful carols we raise at Christmas and this grim story, but it is important not to shy away from this part of Christmas.  We already know how the Jesus story goes, after all.  We already know what’s going to happen to Jesus and how he will end up.  He will spend a few years teaching and preaching and healing and loving and challenging and inviting – and then he will be executed, not by a sword, but nailed to a cross, lifted up for all the world to see, as a criminal between two other criminals. We catch glimpses of this from the very beginning, as the shadow of the cross lies across his manger bed. We sing about it in “We Three Kings”with its reference to myrrh, a preservative used in embalming. We hear echoes of it in a mournful Appalachian carol  –  “I wonder as I wander out under the sky, how Jesus our Savior did come for to die, for poor ornery people like you and like I, I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.”

I wonder, too.  I wonder about the brutality of petty rulers who lie and bluster and plot and scheme.  I wonder about paranoid tyrants who will stop at nothing to consolidate their hold on power.  I wonder about a world in which the most vulnerable suffer terribly, a world in which babies become collateral damage, a world in which Caesar’s military might seems to have the edge over the Savior’s cross. I wonder, because the corrupt and broken world into which the Christ Child was born is the very same one in which you and I live, the arena where the Empire of force and violence goes toe to toe with the in-breaking of a different kind of kingdom, the coming Reign of the Prince of Peace.

Our scriptures today give us a glimpse into the reality of what is often called the mystery of suffering, that is, if God is loving and good, why is there evil in the world?  Why were those babies killed, and what about the suffering of children and innocents in our day?  We don’t get easy answers; instead, we get Jesus, God-made-flesh, the Pioneer of our salvation who was himself made perfect through suffering. We may not get answers, but we have an assurance that no tragedy goes unseen and that no horror can befall any one of us without the loving presence of the Holy Spirit continually struggling alongside us to strengthen and comfort and encourage.  Instead of platitudes, we get the bedrock truth which John Wesley proclaimed on his deathbed, that the best of all is that God is with us.

We need to hear that today – in today’s scriptures, children are murdered, a Savior suffers, and the children of Israel are oppressed under the bloody rule of a foreign invader.  We still need the assurance of an ever-present, loving God because the slaughter of innocents didn’t end with Herod.   Rachel is still weeping for her children in a world where human trafficking is big business right here in our own backyard, and too many children have nightmares that come in the daytime and whose monsters are all too terrifyingly real.  Unless you deliberately shut your eyes, you can’t escape the images of Kurdish refugees fleeing for their lives or Guatemalan asylum seekers escaping gang warfare or of parents weeping inconsolably outside yet another American school shattered by gun violence.  Rachel is still weeping, Rachel is still mourning, Rachel still cannot be comforted as her child lies motionless on a concrete floor, inconvenient, forgotten, expendable, dead.

Tragedies don’t take a break for “the most wonderful time of the year,” and they never have.  The life of the infant Jesus was truly endangered.  His tender flesh was just as vulnerable to a sword’s sharp point as theirs, something Mary would learn all too well. That is, of course, the point, that Jesus became as we are; frail and subject to death.  He was born in a barn and cradled in a feeding trough in a country overrun by an occupying army and governed by a ruthless despot who sought the wholesale slaughter of little children in a desperate bid to keep his throne.  When the Magi come seeking the newborn king, the current king pretends to share their joy, all the while sharpening the bloody edge of an axe.

At the heart of Christmas is the Incarnation, the mystery of mysteries, that the Second Person of the Trinity entered into human history as a helpless child, not as a conquering hero.  Christ instead chose to become a human being like us, to share our flesh and blood.  It is impossible to wrap our heads around, yet this lies at the very core of our Christian faith.  The language of poetry and hymns is our best way of entering into this awesome truth because prose alone simply can’t express the depth of wonder that it inspires.

Charles Wesley wrote dozens of Advent and Christmas hymns besides “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” and “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”  He was a powerful, passionate preacher, but he turns to poetry to express his amazement at the news of God made flesh. In one hymn, he calls upon angels and people to marvel together at the mystery of God dwelling with us:

Let earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span, 
Incomprehensibly made man.

He doesn’t try to explain but simply invites us to gaze in awe and wonder, as we join in adoration of the Word made Flesh, bridging the gap between us and God, the widest extremes rejoined –

See in that infant’s face
The depths of Deity,
And labour while ye gaze,
to sound the mystery;
In vain: ye angels gaze no more,
But fall and silently adore.

He deigns in flesh to appear,
Widest extremes to join,
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine;
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.

Charles invites us to rejoice that in Jesus Christ, the “widest extremes” are brought together and reconciled.  He helps us to see that in Christ, God is with us, in the messiness and confusion of our daily lives, in the darkness and the gloom, as well as in the sunlight and the celebration.  Contrary to what we’d expect, Christ chose to be tiny and helpless in his mother Mary’s womb and arms. As an adult, he walked a dangerous path as his very existence threatened the powers and principalities who menaced him and ultimately took his life.  He did not pretend to take on human flesh that could not bruise and scar; he was not playacting when he was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights; he was not making believe when he was mocked, scourged, and died in agony on a cross for all the world to see.  His flesh was as vulnerable as ours; he knew the depths of sorrow and pain, as well.

We look around us and hear rumors of wars, see people without health care, families broken by alcoholism or abuse, politics grown sour and mean-spirited, children neglected and abused, situations as old as humankind itself, and we may wonder why Jesus didn’t he gallop in on a white charger to put everything right? Why did he “empty himself of all but love” and humble himself unto death?  Why not come in power and majesty?

Yet it was in his vulnerability and death that he established for once and for all his dominion over death and our deliverance from the darkness that cannot in the end extinguish the light.  Jesus can help us in times of trial and sorrow because he shares our pains and temptations.  He strengthens and preserves us in the midst of life’s tragedies, and that is how it is is possible to look for good news even in this story.  That is how we can proclaim good news in the chaos of a world broken by divisiveness and intolerance, a world drunk with hatred and destruction, a world hellbent on building walls and keeping people out.  Jesus came to tear down barriers, to extend the table that has been set for all, to turn us into that good news, to empower us by the Spirit become Light in those dark places.

In the end, we have a choice.  We always have a choice.  We can take our stand with the bloodthirsty Herods, arming ourselves to the gills and trusting in their violent power, or we can walk with the vulnerable Jesus, pledging allegiance to him above everything else and trusting in the power of love.  Today and in the coming year, we can choose to reflect the Light which the darkness can never put out, and to even (as Ephesians tells us) become that Light.  Jesus, both human and divine, joining the widest extremes, holds out his nail-scarred hands to us in invitation and welcome, not promising safety or reward but guaranteeing us Light and Life.  And he calls upon you and me to show his Love, to be his Light, and to share his Life wherever we may be and whatever our circumstances are, especially to the vulnerable and weakest among us.

Methodists have a long tradition of holding Covenant Renewal services, especially at the close of one year and the beginning of another, and John Wesley adapted a beautiful prayer to be used at that service as a way for us to recommit ourselves to Christ, to the One who is with us in the shadow as well as in the sun.  In it, we pledge all that we have and all that we are to our gracious and loving God. I pray it twice daily, and if you make resolutions this time of year, you might consider making it part of your daily routine in 2020.  Let us all pray it together now, as a way to symbolize our response and to witness to our faith as we pledge to be Light in the world’s darkness –

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
Exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.