The Grief in the Gift

Sitting Ducks.   The infant sons of Bethlehem were sitting ducks for Herod’s army, that infamous day the soldiers of the puppet King carried out the Slaughter of the Innocents.  How quiet, and for how long, can you keep a baby, when the streets fill with screaming  and terror is racing through your heart as you cradle that child?

It was not the first time Jewish people had been sitting ducks.  There had been other slaughters of male infants, in Egypt long before, ordered by Pharoah to quiet unrest through heinous acts of intimidation.  And it was not to be the last time, God knows, as small pogroms rose to Hitler’s infamous crescendo of extermination.

Getting rid of future terrorists while they are toddlers, is a strategy of dictators still.  Ask the people of Somalia and the Congo, ask Druze women today. 

What is it about the mighty, that makes them murderously terrified of the weak, the few, the different?  And you don’t have to cross an ocean to find people who know themselves to be sitting ducks.  Black people, here in the US, know that danger is only a moment away all their lives long.  In our time, it isn’t their infants they fear for, but their teenage sons, every time they leave the house.  White parents’ fears are many for their teenagers, but the choices that will keep their young men safe can be taught, and can be considered.  Black parents’ principle fear is that their son will be descended upon, swept away in a moment in which no one has more than a nanosecond to consider what to do.  

These past months we have seen protests across the nation, raising questions about the enforcement of law, about the nature of order, about the pain of being black in America.  About freedom.  About justice, mercy, truth.  About power.  About laws that say that just being afraid for your own safety is reason enough to kill the one you perceive as dangerous. 

The beginning of Christmas is the greeting of the angel:  Be Not Afraid.  For people of God, to be God’s is to leave off being fearful, to breathe deeply and shift your mind to something holy, even though that holy thing will be something very hard to carry out, requiring that you turn your spirit away from fear again and again.  Be not afraid.  That’s the take away, and the angel makes it clear that there is no justice, no truth, and no blessing, in fear.  So fear isn’t a good enough reason to justify anything.  Fear is a bad place to be, in spirit, and leaving that place is the beginning of holiness.

Anger, therapists and behaviorists tell us, is fear-driven action.  Anger is where fear goes when fear takes over – our minds, our hearts, our heads, our nation.  Just about all kinds of mental illness can manifest in anger:   paranoia, delusions of grandeur, domestic abuse, PTSD.  And from a biblical point of view, self-righteousness manifests in this way, too. 

And here we are, at Christmas 2014.  The Browns have no son to open presents at their tree, the Garners have no father to put up a tree for his children,  Officer Ramos’ two teenage sons have no dad to celebrate anything with anymore, and Officer Wenjian Liu’s wife of two months will now spend Christmas alone.    All of this is tragic, deeply painful, and there is no justice here.

Sitting ducks – the New York City officers, sitting in their patrol car, dressed in their uniforms, were sitting ducks.  As are black people every day of their lives.

Who is responsible for the slaughter of the innocents?  If the Magi had not come . . . if the Angel had warned everyone . . . if Herod had been less craven . . . if the Star had not risen . . .  if Caesar had not set up the Herods as his puppet rulers . . . if the Child had not been born . . . if only God had intervened . . . .  perhaps the better focus is on dispelling our fear.

How shall we tell this story in our own time – and who should be the judge – and what is the moral – and why do we so rarely tell it, so rarely that many, many, churchgoing people do not know it.  How shall we live in deep darkness, the kind of darkness that hangs over so many parts of our world . . . perhaps the better focus is on bringing life out of the shadows and into the light.

How shall we not be afraid?   And where is the angel?  Where is the angel now?

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

–G.K. Chesterton  A Child in the Snows

________________________________________

Illustrations:

1.  Slaughter of the Innocents, by Guido Reni, detail.  Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.

2.  Slaughter  of the Innocents, by Fra Angelico.  Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.

3.  Guernica, by Picasso.  Depicts German bombing of the city of Guernica, in the manger.  1937.  Museo Reina Sofia.  Wikipedia, Picasso page.

4.  Bethlehem Mourns Children Killed by Herod.  1319, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Siena, Italy.  Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.

6.  Massacre of the Innocents, Giotto di Bondone, 1304-1306, Padua, Italy.  Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.