CHRISTMAS CATASTROPHE
Isaiah 60.1-6 Psalm 72.1-7, 19-14
Ephesians 3.1-12 Matthew 2.1-18
December 16, 2012
Rev. Dr. Warner M. Bailey
The Wise Men stopped for directions at the palace of Herod. They caused a Christmas catastrophe. They were following the movements of a mysterious star, and their interpretations of the appearance of this star and its movements led them to believe that it announced the birth of a new king of a people called the “Jews”.
It’s always been a curiosity to me that even though the wise men were following a star, they had to stop at the palace to ask for directions. It has only recently dawned on me that the star actually led them to Herod’s palace. You see, the story says quite clearly that after they had found out from Herod the correct information, when the wise men left the palace “the star moved before them until it stopped in the heavens and hung over the place where the Christ child was born.” That piece of information has led me to the clear conclusion that the star did in fact lead the wise men to the palace. The star did not move once it hung over Herod’s palace. They had to ask for directions.
If you will entertain the thought, that the wise men were still trusting fully in the star when they paid a courtesy call on Herod, then we have this growingly uncomfortable realization that they were being led through the heavenly body to announce the birth of Jesus first to Herod. And, of course, you think about God directing the heavenly body, so they were being led by God. They were being led by God to the very man who caused the catastrophe. This conclusion makes the story of Christmas into a God-caused catastrophe, the murder of innocent children.
In due time I will talk about the relationship between the catastrophe in Newtown Connecticut and the catastrophe in Bethlehem of Judea. But first let us listen to the Bible’s story.
How shall I say it any more delicately? Christmas begins with a catastrophe; Christmas begins with the wailing of the childless mothers in Bethlehem. Christmas begins with the slaughter of babies who were simply out playing in the yard and were caught up by Herod’s troops.
Now what do we make of that? The wise men boldly and naively announced good news to the one person for whom this news would be the worst news—the birth of a new king of the Jews. Herod is in his palace at the express direction of the Roman occupying authorities to pacify Palestine and to insure that Palestine kept producing grain without any insurrection for the benefit of Rome. So to hear from these three mysterious, well-thought-of, outside consultants that a new king of the Jews had been born was not the answer he wanted.
And God has a hand in this, you see. The star leads quite deliberately the wise men to tell this troubling news to Herod. By so doing, even though Jesus is but days old, God has already thrown down the gauntlet of revolution before the representative of the world’s superpower. Through the words of the wise men, God is saying to the world’s superpower that God has made a fresh break out into the world to establish God’s kingdom against all kingdoms of the world. A kingdom that will challenge and confront and convict and, hopefully, redeem all the kingdoms of the world. Herod, God confronts you first. Christmas begins with a confrontation that ends in a catastrophe.
So Herod feigns genuine interest and pious attention to this news. He forms an alliance with the wise men that they unwittingly enter, and he supplies them with the correct directions that they need. His directive to them is to “Go and search diligently for this child” and to report back to him so that he might, under the ruse of worshiping the child, actually kill him.
But our story does not tell us that the wise men went and “searched diligently for the child.” It says, instead, that the star moved and stood over the house where the young child lay. The wise men rejoiced in the star’s leading, and they merely followed where the star led. There was no searching from house to house for this child. The wise men rejoiced and followed and worshiped and were generous.
Herod spoke the directions, and the star moved just like the directions said. But God tells the wise men through a dream not to return to Herod, but to go home undetected by Herod’s intelligence. Another way. And God tells Joseph in a second dream to pick up and flee in the dead of night with Mary and the young child Jesus to Egypt. Another country. Dreamers and star gazers outwit the power and cunning of Herod.
So God fully sets the stage for the Christmas catastrophe. Listen, my friends. The Bible gets this one right. Catastrophe will always break out when God confronts worldly power that seeks to sustain itself by force and arrogance. How cruel is this catastrophe, but how true to life! One mother celebrates the 25th of December as the day her child was born, and we celebrate that as well. But many mothers bewailed and lamented December 25th as the day their child was killed. And there are many of us who bewail and lament that still. There are many of us for whom Christmas is more a catastrophe than celebration.
What about mothers and fathers in Bethlehem who live the rest of their lives with a black square around a date on the calendar? What would mothers and fathers think if they but knew that God had a hand in their suffering, the God they worshiped every Sabbath in the synagogue? What about the mothers and fathers who do not get the dream that says escape, and do not get away?
For us, what sorrow can be like this sorrow? Our gospel struggles to find words adequate to express the tragedy. Finally, we can do no better than to borrow words from that great prophet of sorrow, Jeremiah, to convey the depth of this catastrophe.
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children
because they are not.
Only such simple and stark words can convey the depth of such suffering. But even as we look backwards to the prophet Jeremiah, we also look forward to the last days of Jesus’ life. In Bethlehem, young boys were taken in such innocence and gave up their lives for the sake of one who got away. However, we know that the one who got away also will be led by God to a cross and will be taken in the prime of his manhood. The mothers of Bethlehem shrieked through the night refusing to be consoled over the slaughter of their children. They cried in the place of Mary who got away. But later it will be Mary who will bear the sorrow of watching her own son be put to death.
You see, the Christmas story is painted with the colors of the Cross.
The boy babies of Bethlehem paid the price to satisfy the rage of a tricked king in Jerusalem. God’s Son escaped his clutches, but oh at what a cost! Much later on a cross the opponents of God will be more successful. I can imagine the Roman authorities, after coming down from Calvary’s hill, calling a press conference and saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him.”
We talk about new life at Christmas, but we cannot honestly talk about new life without also talking about it in the world of death in which the new life bursts forth. Any celebration of new life that is genuine is accompanied by the crying of the catastrophe. And oh! Do we know that to be the case on this third Sunday of Advent! We stagger under the shock of the schoolhouse murders of 20 children and 6 teachers! We cower before the evil power that so consumed the shooter that in addition to taking his own life, he also shot dead his mother. The background against which Christmas lights shine and Advent candles flicker is made all the more dark by the blood of the innocents and the deranged.
You and I want to know: What could be the relationship between Newtown, Connecticut and Bethlehem? They both are catastrophes, but there is a big difference. God plunged into the Bethlehem catastrophe that ran on and on until the Cross so that in the Newtown catastrophe God could weep and hold close, soothe and uplift.
There is a basic truth about God’s plan for our salvation. Only that which God takes on can God redeem, make right, fix, or heal. In Jesus Christ God takes on our world of catastrophe, first by arranging a catastrophe that attends the birth of the Christ child, and second by suffering death on the Cross. The incarnation means, God knows all about living in the world of catastrophe. Remember: Only that which God takes on can God redeem, make right, fix, or heal.
Why the catastrophes in the Bible are told the way they are, I don’t know. God’s ways are not my ways and God’s thoughts are not my thoughts. Finally, the only thing that keeps me sane is this: God triumphs over catastrophe! At Christmas God got away. And on Easter Sunday God has the last word. Resurrection of the dead. God lives through and beyond catastrophe because God will not allow a catastrophe to define who we are. Every innocent death God redeems; every heart broken God heals; every soul scarred God soothes. Every sigh too deep for words God perfectly understands. The gift that God gives us at Christmas is not finally the Christ child, but it is the gift of the resurrection from the dead. This is the word of Christmas comfort that steals away in the middle of the night as an infant, carried on the bosom of his mother, who is destined to emerge triumphant on the bright day of Easter. So, raise your candles high. Your light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome you.
[1] I want to express indebtedness to James E. Dittes, Driven by Hope, Men and Meaning (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), pp. 80-93, for provoking these thoughts.