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<\/a>\u201cThey said there\u2019ll be snow at Christmas. They said there\u2019ll be peace on Earth. But instead it just kept on raining. A veil of tears for the virgin birth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n So sings Greg Lake, disaffected by Christmas\u2014and he\u2019s not alone. A season\u00a0so touched by light makes me even more aware of the depth of the darkness around us\u2013\u201cthe people who walked in darkness have indeed seen a great light\u201d (Isaiah 9:2). The contrast can be unbearable.<\/p>\n Even the secular world senses it. Even left with the paper-thin shadow of an absent faith marked by the dregs of a secular season, the world can still see, if not the hope of Christmas, at least the truth that there is something to be disappointed about.<\/p>\n Greg Lake\u2019s song may not be particularly good, but it\u2019s a cry of pain emerging from a long tradition of Christmas mourning, whether sacred or secular, kitschy or profound. Dickens saw ghosts, Elvis had a blue Christmas, and we all have our Grinchy moments. When we recall the hearty \u201cGood King Wenceslaus,\u201d we often forget that he was eventually martyred for trying to be a good Christian ruler.<\/p>\n Speaking of martyrs, what of Christianity? What does Christianity have to say about sadness at Christmas? Must it say what so many would have it say, that if we would only rediscover the \u201ctrue meaning\u201d of Christmas the darkness would just go away? That all we need is to put Christ back in Christmas?<\/p>\n Our\u00a0faith is deeper\u2013and our forebears in the faith wiser\u2013than this.<\/p>\n First, let\u2019s not underestimate the Church calendar, that Scripture-inflected wisdom passed on to us to help us to remember the right things at the right times, and to draw us into the redemption of time itself. And what we find when we look to the Church calendar is that the ostensible innovation of a hard, realistic, disenchanted perspective on Christmas is not in fact a modern innovation\u2014before the world got there, the Church was there first.<\/p>\n Before modernity, there was Advent, and it was good.<\/p>\n It was good because it was sober. The typical Christmas response to the kind of disappointment we see in Lake\u2019s lyrics is to get drunk so we can forget about the whole thing. It\u2019s certainly a film clich\u00e9; we all remember Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon<\/em>. But Christianity is more daring. Christianity insists we remain sober while looking darkness in the face. Traditionally, this is what Advent is\u2014a time of fasting and asceticism and looking reality\u2013death\u2013in the face.<\/p>\n Advent sermons often, rightly, focus on the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. A promotional poster at one Church I attended featured a large skull, staring out at me like Yorick in Hamlet. This is entirely consistent with Christian tradition, which celebrates Advent as a time of preparation for Christ\u2019s coming; the season of Advent awaiting His first coming also points toward His second coming, for which Christians are to be prepared.<\/p>\n But now to the narrative itself. The elements are familiar enough: a child is born in Bethlehem, and his parents know he is born for something special. He will grow up to serve the Lord, YHWH, the God who was there at the Exodus. And then something happens.<\/p>\n Throughout Bethlehem and the vicinity, soldiers knock on doors,\u00a0sent by King Herod, who has become obsessed with rumors of some rival toddler king. These parents know the story of Moses, how he was kept safe in a basket from the infanticidal Pharaoh. But theirs is not the story of Moses. There is not even time for shock. The soldiers swiftly kill the child and move on. And every year, against the backdrop of this story, we blissfully sing, \u201cTo us a Child is born\/to us a Son is given.\u201d<\/p>\n Because, of course, this child\u2014the one who was killed\u2014is not the One we are singing about. The Child we are thinking of has been safely transported to Egypt, His parents having been warned in a dream of Herod\u2019s plot. But back in Bethlehem, countless other sons\u2014helpless children\u2014are dead.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n How can\u00a0this be good news? How can we sing these songs? Is the kingdom of God just another game of thrones? What kind of faith can be perverse enough to have such a story as its backdrop? What kind of miracle would it take to redeem such a story? Those angels appear to the shepherds, singing, \u201cGlory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.\u201d Can we, in good conscience, sing with them?<\/p>\n There is a cry, and that cry is recognized in Scripture. The cry is Rachel, weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they are no more (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18).\u00a0Her cry echoes\u00a0throughout Scripture\u2013a cry for lost sons and daughters. It is the cry of Job for his children. It is the cry of David for his lost sons\u2014the one who rebelled, the one who died in infancy, and the one who turned to idolatry. It is the obscure and often-overlooked cry of Rizpah when her sons are handed over to the Gibeonites. It is the crying of Jairus for his daughter, and, yes, the tears of Abraham as he raises his knife to slay his son, his flesh and blood, on the altar. It is the weeping of Eve for Cain and Abel. It is YHWH weeping for His child, Israel; it is the Creator weeping over Adam.<\/p>\n God Himself is weeping\u2014can there be comfort for Rachel?<\/p>\n But then the\u00a0narrative takes an unexpected turn. The Messiah, Christ, does not grow up to become a force equal and opposite to the Herods, Pilates, and Caesars\u2014rulers who build kingdoms to hide the blood of their many innocent victims. Jesus\u2019 protection in Egypt is not simply an act of nepotism for a favorite son. No, He is protected in Egypt because the suffering reserved for him is greater. The weeping of Rachel must be answered, and He will answer with His blood.<\/p>\n The tender moments with His mother at the manger will eventually turn to that excruciating moment when He turns to her, shamed, naked, and contorted, and says to the beloved John\u2014and to us also\u2014\u201cBehold your mother.\u201d And we do. We look and find, here at the heart of history, Jesus\u2019 mother, aching with the pain of a sword-pierced soul. And Rachel continues to weep. And Mary weeps, because the Child she treasured in her heart is no more. Or so it seems. For in her Son, death\u2014the thing that we, with Rachel, weep over\u2014is overcome.<\/p>\n There is a wise rabbinic tradition that suggests that Job\u2019s children are not doubled like the rest of his possessions at the end of the book bearing his name because children are not possessions. You can\u2019t pay off the death of children simply by giving someone double the amount of children. As a solution, the rabbinic tradition suggests Job\u2019s children were literally resurrected, but there is another possibility. Job is only given seven more sons and three daughters at the end of his calamities because God has in fact doubled his children, but in an unexpected way: half of them are not with him in this world; they are awaiting the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.<\/p>\n And we, with Job, wait\u2014still with the tears of Rachel\u2014for the end of time,\u00a0when every tear will be wiped away. That time is not yet come, and so there are still tears. There are tears, and it is Christmas. But this\u2014this hope\u2014is why we sing. Not because there is no suffering, not because there is no Rachel, not because there are no slaughtered innocents, whose blood indeed cries out in their feast during the season of Christmas. No, it is not because these things are not, but because He\u2014Christ\u2014is, and He has done what is impossible, even more impossible than the alchemist\u2019s trick of turning lead into gold.<\/p>\n He is shaking, but it is no longer with mourning. He has turned mourning into mirth, death into life.<\/p>\n But not yet\u2014at least not for those of us still bound by this world of fallen history. For now, we can only wait, continuing to weep for pain and sing for joy, until we discover behind them the common ground of both.<\/p>\n Amen, come, Lord Jesus.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Coventry Carol also remembers the murdered sons of Bethlehem that we remember in today\u2019s Feast of Holy Innocents.\u00a0On Christmas Day 1940, the BBC broadcast the carol\u00a0from\u00a0the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, bombed in the blitz.<\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\nAnd indeed, how could Rachel be answered otherwise? What mother would be satisfied with anything less than the unworking of her child\u2019s death? Rachel refuses to be comforted, because comfort is not what she wants. She does not want comfort; she wants her children.<\/h3>\n