"Wholly innocent"; St Peter’s Tewin, 30 December: Usha Hull
Hebrews 2: 10-end, Matthew 2: 13-end
The massacre of the Holy Innocents that we heard about in today’s reading from
Matthew comes with all the shock of a cold shower after the joy of Christmas.
In reflecting on it I recently came across this little poem. Called Winter
Song, and written by Madeleine L'Engle it pauses for thought.
This is no time for a child to be born,
With the Earth betrayed by war and hate.
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome:
Honor and truth were trampled by scorn –
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time of love to be born?
The inn is full on planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn –
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
True, we have no comet slashing the sky, at this present time. But just as in
the time of the Saviour’s birth we have an earth betrayed by war and hate. And
just like the author of this poem, we too might ask, when is the time of love
to be born?
In the space of less than a week we have two very different situations, two
very different nights. On Christmas night we celebrated the coming of joy to
the world. It was a holy night, a night full of light, full of love and hope.
And yet following close after that joy, that love, in today’s reading from
Matthew, we have a night of unimaginable horror, a night of bloodshed, of sharp
knives and the inconsolable anguish of parents who have had to witness the
murder of their children. And we too might ponder that even amid the carnage,
love still takes the risk of birth because here we are looking at a truth about
the nature of God.
To ponder this truth about the nature of God, we have to go back to Christmas
morning. It is a paradox that the joy of Christmas, the hope, the resplendent
love first shone on the world from a dark and dirty stable from amidst the most
demeaning poverty. Over the centuries we have tended to sanitise as it were,
the picture of the stable, but the reality must have been very different. There
must have been dirt and noise, darkness and smells.
For the adults involved, think about the extreme discomfort, the lack of
privacy, the anxiety about practical details. In the end the baby’s mother must
have been grateful to give birth in any warm, dry place. Yet to the baby lying
newly born in his mother’s arms, it wasn’t important whether his parents were
rich or poor. It didn’t matter whether those who cared for him had power,
wealth or prestige. What mattered was that he was warm and safe and loved.
This is the truth that the Christ child brings to us, that from the moment a
human being is born he or she needs love, needs warmth, needs food, needs to
feel safe. God’s power stems from the power of love. We are fragile beings,
made of stardust, here on planet earth for only a short while, and yet born
with a need for love and the need to love built into our very natures. And the
life of Jesus was to illustrate the power of this love, this paradox that
generations after would struggle to come to grips with, this reality that the
world with its own assumptions of power and grandeur still finds so hard to
really accept.
Because the night of today’s reading, this night of screams and anguish and
darkness, of hideous human folly and unremitting horror, embodies the reality
that millions of people in today’s world have to live with.
This night of the sharp knives has been repeated countless times in human
history. We face this reality nightly on our television screens in the world we
live in. In today’s world millions of children continue to be deprived of food,
shelter, proper medical aid and access to education. Every year more than 60
million children are caught up in emergencies. In Bangladesh, in the Congo, in
Peru, in South Asia, to give just a few examples, the innocent continue to
suffer.
We ourselves live fairly comfortable, affluent lives. Yet even among us,
suffering comes sometimes suddenly, sometimes almost insidiously, yet always
with shock and disbelief. Which one of us here here, faced with illness, loss
or tragedy, has not asked, how could God let this happen to me? Faced with
horror and evil, which of us at some point has not asked, how could God let
this be? And faced with suffering, has not asked of God, ‘Why, Lord, do you not
do something?’
Sometimes it seems as though trust in God provides no protection against
tyrants, against evil, against suffering. To the person suffering, at times it
seems as though God is powerless against the evil of this world. Yet is He? Or
does He have very different thoughts to ours?
The problem of evil is a perennial one. And it is one of the greatest barriers
to belief. Our difficulties with belief in an all powerful God who permits the
existence of evil spring from our assumptions about the nature of God. When we
address God as almighty and all powerful, we assume that God’s ideas of might
and power are the same as our own. After all, we say, if we were almighty and
all powerful, would we not do something to get rid of all this evil and this
suffering?
Let’s think for a moment about a world without evil. In our imaginary world,
when we got up this morning, perhaps there were teams of invisible angels
ensuring that every human mistake would automatically be corrected. They would
do away with hunger, disease, illness, poverty, crime. There are boundless
possibilities about what they might be up to. Did not the devil himself tempt
Jesus in the desert saying, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down;
for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their
hands they will bear you up”.’
At Christmas, the Gospel narratives are full of tales of angels. In the words
of the song, I believe in angels. I believe that God has given them charge over
us but not in such a way as would abolish the principle of cause and effect.
If there were indeed teams of angels to stop us from harming ourselves, to
prevent every evil act, this would take away our freedom and our free will. It
would take away from us something that God treasures and loves about us – our
individuality and the ability to say yes or no to Him. It would take away from
us the courage, the strength, the humility, the character that our pain and
suffering endows us with. The world would become irrational and the studies of
science would become impossible.
But no matter what we face, with the birth of the Saviour, God is here,
suffering with us. And so it has ever been. At the centre of the stories of the
Bible is not a God who looks down aloof on our human misery. Rather, He is here
as part of it, in the centre of it all. His providence is ever at work in our
lives. It is present throughout human history. And throughout history, although
there is a pattern of destruction in this world, there is also a pattern of
God’s providence that counters this.
Jesus began his life as a refugee. His parents knew poverty, fear and
uncertainty. And as the second reading from Hebrews says of Jesus, ‘Because he
himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being
tested.’
And as Christians, this is the challenge for us: in our suffering do we try to
see the hand of God? Do we believe that he is there with us, loving us, knowing
what we must be going through, because he himself has experienced it? Do we try
to bring this enlightenment to others in their pain, feeling with others,
reaching out to the innocent?
In seeing how the innocent suffer, I believe in the power of righteous anger.
Let us never underestimate the power of anger for it is anger that changes the
world. It was the anger of good men and women that forced an end to slavery,
that won the vote for women, that brought an end to apartheid. Compassion and
anger together can change the world. The old year is fast dying. As we go into
a new year let us do so with compassion and anger.
I began with a little poem and I end with a few verses from the Iona community.
A sound is heard in Ramah
the sound of bitter weeping.
Rachel is crying for her children...
A sound is heard in Gaza, the sound of bitter weeping
Pray for the holy innocents of the camps,
victims of displacement and injustice.
A sound is heard in Africa, the sound of bitter weeping
Pray for the holy innocents of Africa
victims of drought and famine.
A sound is heard in London, the sound of bitter weeping.
Pray for the holy innocents of Britain,
Victims of indifference and greed.
Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us.
Amen.