KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 January
Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they are not.
The story of the flight into Egypt was read in Chapel this week (Matt. 2.13-18). Central to that story is the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem. It is a shocking story, perhaps made even more shocking when you realize that it is actually a Christmas story! Christ is God’s “great little one,” as Richard Crashaw says, whose “all-embracing birth lifts earth to heaven and stoops heaven to earth” God becomes a child to remind us that we are all the children of God. But at what cost?
This story challenges all the sentimental emotions and feelings of hyggelig, of cozy cheer and comfort which seems to overwhelm the celebrations of Christmastide. It does not simply negate such things but deepens our understanding of the radical nature of God’s engagement with our humanity in the birth of the child Christ. It speaks directly to our divided and violent world in the oppressor/oppressed framework of our current ideologies. The story of the death of the little ones of Bethlehem stands as a striking indictment of the powers of this world, past and present, who out of fear and resentment destroy innocent lives. It is also a story that speaks to the griefs and sorrows of our wounded and broken hearts and points us to the greater comfort that can only come from God to us.
The hymns and carols of the Christmas season do not conceal this side of the Christmas story yet it often gets overlooked and ignored. It also challenges and corrects a mistaken view of the Incarnation. It signals in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ in the Christian understanding is the God who becomes human to redeem and save. The Incarnation, God made flesh, is not the affirmation of our existential lives and aspirations, of ourselves in all of the conflicts and divisions of our self-interests. The wonder and mystery of Christmas does not hide from view the world of sin and evil, of violence and death, of sorrow and loss both within and without. “Jesus Christ was born for this.” For what? To overcome the darkness of our hearts and world. He comes to redeem and save by means of his sacrifice on the Cross. His life was “a continuous cross,” as Lancelot Andrewes notes; “his Christmas Day and his Good Friday were but the evening and the morning of one and the same day,” as John Donne puts it, reminding us that his whole life was but “a continuall passion.” This is the necessary corrective. It means seeing the centrality of the Passion, the suffering of Christ, in the mystery of Christmas.