The Gray Monk

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

The early church fathers who set up the calendar that we still follow for the major feasts and commemorations, set us an interesting reminder that, even at Christmas, there is pain in the world. Herod the Great’s slaughter of the Innocents of Bethlehem is a part of the Christmas story which we tend to gloss over, if we remember it at all, hiding it behind the story of the Magi and the general razzmatazz of the Christmas celebration. We generally lose sight too, of St Stephen, whose feast is marked as “Boxing Day” – the day when we give presents to the servants and give them a day off! As for St Thomas Beckett, well, Thomas who?

Why do we need to remember such painful things as the martyrdom of Stephen and the Innocents – within the twelve days feasting of Christmas? Because, we need reminding that Christ’s coming into the world did not bring the completion of our salvation, it was merely the start. There is a long and sometimes hard road to be walked between the manger and the cross on Calvary for us all.

In our Gospel reading this morning, St Matthew is quoting and interpreting a passage from the Prophet Jeremiah who is in turn using the death of Rachel, wife of Jacob in childbirth at Ramah en route to Bethlehem, as his image of suffering. As Jacob mourned for Rachel and the stillborn child, so, says Matthew, did the mothers of Bethlehem. Nor should we forget that the event described here really happened, it is not some fairy story to frighten us – Herod the Great was just this sort of monster. His excesses, including the murder of children in Bethlehem around the time of Christ’s birth, are recorded by Josephus, giving independent corroboration of the Gospels.

Why would Herod have done this? Precisely because certain signs which appeared in the heavens in 4 BC were widely interpreted by astrologers and “seers” in the near and middle East to signal the birth of a new Jewish King or leader. These included a great conjunction between Venus and Mercury that occurs precisely every 480 years – significantly also coinciding with a number of other major Biblical events, which, taken with the appearance of Jupiter three times in the constellation of Leo (Associated with the Jewish nation) waswidely interpretted as meaning a new King being born to Israel. Such news would have been more than enough for Herod to act – he was completely paranoid about being overthrown.

For the first century reader of this account, it would have served to confirm the significance of this birth among all others that occurred within that period. If Herod could react in this way, then something very significant must be presaged by this birth in Bethlehem. Then, as now, the joy would have been mitigated by the tragedy. On the one hand we have the joy of knowing that our Saviour has entered the world in human form, on the other, we have the innocent slaughtered as the forces of corruption, greed and sin attempt to destroy him.

These same forces are still at work among us, still determined to undermine and overthrow the grace that God has bestowed in sending his only begotten son as our Redeemer. Nor has it ceased yet. We cannot forget our fellow Christian’s struggling to keep the church and the faith alive in the war torn and damaged streets of Bethlehem. We cannot ignore the pain of both Jew and Palestinian as each bomb and bullet tears yet another family apart, destroying lives and hope in the very land that gave us the Saviour of the world. Sometimes, of course, it is a lot subtler. In some places the innocent are no longer slaughtered, much more profitable to poison minds and lives by sowing doubt and playing up the things that the Church has got so very wrong in its history.

Whenever you hear of Nativity Plays banned from schools, or the banning of religious messages or images from Christmas Cards sent by public servants, you are hearing a new version of Herod and his desire to remain in control. To these and others who wish to compromise the very essence of the Christmas season I would say this, that I receive Christmas cards from Muslim friends and colleagues every year. This year I even got two from past students who are practicing Buddhists, if they can honour my celebrations, surely it cannot offend them if I celebrate something so fundamental to my faith as this? Does it compromise my faith, to acknowledge their festivals? Of course not, but it causes me great offence when those who are ignorant of everything to do with my faith, or for that matter any other, suggest that my celebration should in some way be hidden lest it cause someone else offence. Certainly we need to be aware of the sensitivities of others when it comes to religion, but we must never compromise our faith, and that faith contains both the joy and the sadness.

In Christmas we have the joy of the birth of the Saviour, but this is also a birth that leads inexorably to the destination of Calvary and the Tomb, and thence to the joy of the resurrection by which we are all made one in Christ. So, as we celebrate the joy of Christmas, our founding fathers of the church, have given us the commemoration of the martyrdom of Stephen and of the Innocents of Bethlehem to remind us of the pain to come.

The journey begins at Christmas and continues through all the trials and tribulations, the joys and the triumphs to reach its painful, yet triumphant, conclusion at Easter. Faith means embracing this and sharing in the joy and in the pain until we can also lay down the burden and rejoice in union with our Saviour at the journeys end.

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

As our Collect reminds us, we need to be working always to frustrate the triumph of evil and to work in faith and prayer for the coming of peace and justice to all nations and to all God’s peoples, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu. We are all part of God's creation, and we are all redeemed by his Son's death on a hill in Palestine 2,000 years ago.