Where has Christmas gone?

Today’s lectionary Gospel  in church was the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod. It isn’t easy to read on into Matthew’s Gospel after the promise of Immanuel and the visit of wise men, as the story becomes dark with themes of unstable leaders, threat, murder, genocide, and innocents becoming refugees. I feel for Joseph. Another angel comes and tells him again not to be afraid, but, um, Herod is out to kill your child so you had better take him and Mum to Egypt and stay there until I come and tell you it is safe. 

We didn’t sing about murder and genocide in our Christmas carols! 

Herod was a thoroughly unpleasant King. He inaugurated his rule by wiping out the entire Sanhedrin, the supreme spiritual Jewish Court. For afters, he slaughtered three hundred court officers, and for good measure killed his wife, his mother in law, two of his sons, and of course his eldest son also. From this I think it’s safe to say that Herod was slightly adverse to competition of any kind. So when he hears of another child who might be a threat to his rule, it is in character for him to try to eliminate this new threat. And they say there is nothing in the Bible about today! 

There is a wonderful fable, one of many which surround the early and unknown years of Jesus. 

As the Holy Family escaped into the hills on the way down to Egypt, they spent the night in a cave. A spider saw that the Son of Man was resting in the cave and wishing to do something to please and honour his king, wove an enchanting and complex web across the mouth of the cave. At early dawn, the Roman soldiers seeking for the child in order to kill him as instructed, passed the cave.

Their leader noticing the cave was about to search it, when he saw the spider’s web glistening in the morning hoar frost, and decided that no one could have entered the cave, since the web was unbroken and had clearly taken many hours to construct.

So the soldiers passed by and the family remained safe. And this is the reason given apparently for the way we decorate our Christmas trees with tinsel and sparkling decorations at Christmas time.

It was common for Jewish families to escape down into Egypt every time some bloodthirsty ruler made their lives unbearable. They escaped over the border into just about every major Egyptian town, all of which had their Jewish quarters. So Mary and Joseph would have had friends there already who would understand their plight and help them settle in on their arrival.

Matthew is of course using this passage to demonstrate that Jesus not only fulfils the Old Testament, but that he has endured and shared in the sufferings of his people, who were also driven into exile in Egypt, and who only returned home later after receiving a message from God.

In later centuries modern theologians would use this to remind us that our God does not stand aloof from our sufferings, but shares them, and has been down into them on our behalf, and describes us as His own people. And we need to know that I think more than ever as 2019 ends and 2020 arrives. 

The innocent are still slaughtered. We still have war, unstable leaders who throw their weight around getting people to submit to them, we have seen parents bereaved through bombings on bridges even in this country this past year. 

There are people even now forced to flee to preserve life. There are people suffering through circumstances beyond their control. We should not need food banks in the second decade of the 21st century. We should not have people scared of the future because they face benefit reassessment. We should not have people with mental illness waiting months for any attention because there isn’t the provision to get them the help they need because we have cut the resources. We can name innocents who just find themselves in another world because suddenly dark things have engulfed them. 

Where has Christmas gone? 

Maybe we need to make sure this bit of the story is always included! I need a God who is in the dark things of life. Nowhere does my faith say that bad things don’t happen. Nowhere does Christian experience say I’m suddenly cocooned from crappy stuff if I believe. Maybe I need a Jesus who is born in poverty, who is a refugee while still a toddler, whose future for a while was uncertain. Maybe the cross is in Christmas earlier than we would like it to be. 

These Christmas blogs have been written on Holy Island where we’ve been for the last week or so. It’s been a gift to receive Christmas here, not just in worship but in the reminder of the presence of God in creation. Our favourite spot in all the world has spoken again to us over the last few days but most powerfully today.

Here’s a picture of Lis on “our bench”...

I proposed to her in front of it three years ago. Since then we’ve been through some tough stuff. We go back tomorrow and are needing some stability after a lot of moves. We need to know there is light in the darkness. We are enjoying the Fens and the involvement as I’m much better than everyone imagined i would be, in the churches of the local Circuit. Then we have a new beginning in Ripon in August to look forward to. We have also been given the opportunity to return here in February and for Easter. Someone sent me a picture the other day about if you are still here at the end of a difficult year, well done, you’ve held on. Faith is about holding on to that glimmer of light when everything else feels extremely dark. 

As the famous concentration camp prayer found on a wall says “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when I feel it not. I believe in God even when I feel him not.”

I’m wondering what the Church’s task is as we enter 2020 and so much is slaughtered around us? Surely it is to point people to the light, however dim it feels and however far away it feels. Surely it is to remind us all of the good news of God that while today it feels like Herod and others like him will win so there is no point, there is every point. We know the end of the story: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not put it out. How do we do that? Well, I think we need an attitude shake up. We need to behave differently. We need to be kinder. We need to be more prepared to enter people’s darkness. We need to shout when dark forces appear to have the upper hand, by protest and making ourselves a nuisance, we need to believe the message ourselves! If we really know the light shines in the darkness, shouldn’t our worship and our life together as God’s people be more positive? And can we embrace the innocents into our life who are being battered about and life slaughtered all around us? 

Answers on a postcard or in comments welcome! 

Almighty God,

who wonderfully created us in your own image

and yet more wonderfully restored us

through your Son Jesus Christ:

grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,

so we may share the life of his divinity;

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.