The Messy Reality of Christmas [and the Feast of the Holy Innocents]
Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. To be honest, before a few months ago, I’d never even heard of this particular feast day, but it’s one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this Christmas season.
The Feast of the Holy Innocents is a day to remember those–the young children, the babies–murdered by Herod the Great when he was trying to search out and kill baby Jesus.
I’ve always had a hard time with this story. Why did it have to shake out like this? Why did the coming of Jesus, our comfort and joy, our hope and light, have to involve such horrific darkness? Why couldn’t God have protected those children?
I wonder what Mary felt as she heard about the wails of the other mothers in Bethlehem. I wonder if she felt guilty that her son lived–while everyone else’s died because of him. I wonder if fear ran through her bones as she fled to Egypt with her baby. I wonder if her faith, her trust in the Son of God she bore in her womb was strong enough to quell that fear. Maybe there was a sliver of doubt in her soul, questions about how all these puzzle pieces would fit together. It doesn’t seem like the massacre of children should be part of that puzzle.
I don’t have answers. I have only questions. But those questions force me to return to a phrase N.T. Wright said in Evil and the Justice of God: “The only thing to do is to hold the spectacular promises in one hand and the messy reality in the other and praise YHWH anyway.”
Reality is messy. That’s probably a truth all of humanity can agree on. And in his sonnet, Refugee, Malcolm Guite beautifully captures the messy reality into which Jesus was born. Today, I’m sitting with this poem as I remember the children who died by the hand of Herod–the same Herod who will have to stand before the Lamb he tried to slaughter.
Refugee*
by Malcolm Guite
We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower
Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,
The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,
And death squads spread their curse across the world.
But every Herod dies, and comes alone
To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.
*This sonnet is shared with the author’s permission. It can be found in Sounding the Seasons, Canterbury Press, 2012. To listen to Malcolm Guite read this sonnet, click here.
