If I ever get a chance to teach at a theological seminary, I am going to require that before those prospective shepherds of the flock of God are ever allowed to cross the threshold of a church that they receive a mark as a reminder of their new responsibility -- a mark in the form of a tattoo.  Don’t worry!  In my mind it will be very subtle but strategically placed -- right over the heart.  I even have a design that I might have to get a patent for.  It will be a manger under a halo with the wording around it reading -- “Don’t Mess With Christmas!”

 

Even though we have been taught in seminary “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable”, the wise pastor will tread lightly during the high holy days staying close to the traditional themes of faith, hope, love, babies, and presents.  Therefore, it may have been a jolt for you to have listened to our Gospel lesson on this first Sunday of Advent.

 

Besides if we are going to be literal and linear, aren’t we supposed to be prepping for the birth of Jesus rather than thinking about this awful event that happened after he was born.  Well, I suppose my argument has to be that it is a seamless world out there and the world into which Jesus was born wasn’t a whole lot different than the one described in this passage.

 

While I know that this season evokes a lot of feelings in all of us and not all of them positive, perhaps this is the wrong time for Christmas.  Perhaps things are so frantic and disjointed this year that we should postpone it or at least not make such a big thing about it.  Clearly, the world is not as we want it and all Christmas can do is remind us that we live more in a world of Herod than of Jesus.  The slaughter of the innocents may have happened 2000 years ago but we still recognize the world of Herod all around us as a world where evil crowds out the good and where faith gives way to cynicism.

 

I.                 Jesus entered a world where evil crowds out the good and

where faith gives way to cynicism.

 

Those of us who love this time of year love it for many reasons, one of which is that it gives us an excuse for denial.  It is a time for us to retreat behind the frosted windows of nostalgia, to remember the sights and smells of Christmas’ past, to sip our eggnog while thinking with gratitude of loved ones who enriched those times of tinsel and light and special events.  And in a time of Biblical illiteracy, it is somehow comforting to us to hear those words of prologue, “And in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”

 

But then the headlines of the evening news jolt us back into reality as death and destruction seem to be everywhere.  Suddenly this is the world of Herod where evil crowds out the good!  Still, what are we to make of this one, Herod, who took dead aim at the Son of God.  Even evil has its limits.  How could he have done such a thing?  And a verdict of insanity is not a sufficient explanation.

 

W.H. Auden makes this effort to get us into Herod’s head as he introduces us to what may have been the stream of consciousness that was motivating him.  Consider that Herod may have been thinking these thoughts, “O dear, why couldn’t this wretched infant be born somewhere else?  Why can’t people be sensible?  I don’t want to be horrid.  Why can’t they see that the notion of a finite God is absurd?  Because it is.  And suppose, just for the sake of argument, that it isn’t, that this story is true, that this child is in some inexplicable manner both God and Man, that he grows up, lives, and dies, without committing a single sin?  Would that make life any better?”

 

Of course, Herod had never known a life any better and he couldn’t imagine one any better.  Like many of us, he felt that his job was to make the best of it without acknowledging his own complicity.  Of all of Michelangelo’s powerful figures, none is more poignant than the man of the last judgment being dragged down to hell by demons, one hand over one eye and in the other a look of sudden recognition and awful understanding.  He understood but it was too late.

 

It is a familiar and sad reality of the human journey.  Rarely do we see the truth that stares us in the face until it hits us in the face.  A crisis is seldom a crisis until it is validated by disaster.  Michelangelo was right, “Hell is truth seen too late!”

 

So we have to ask the nagging question that plagues so many of us this time of year, “Is it the wrong time for Christmas?”  There is death in Iraq.  There is destruction on the Gulf Coast.  There is no peace in the Middle East.  Could there be any greater disconnect between the poverty and homelessness of the hurricane victims, and our families gathered to enjoy a sumptuous holiday meal.  Herod’s world was reductionistic.  Since his world was without faith and hope, why allow any in?  It wouldn’t make any difference anyway!

 

When we truly face the significance of the slaughter of the children in Bethlehem, we are forced to make one of several choices.  We can simply say the world and the society in which we live are meaningless and we should expect tragedy and mayhem.  Then we are justified in grabbing what we can in any way that we can as we wait for extinction.  Another choice is to deny the reality of evil.  According to this view, tragedy is just a fantasy our minds have created.  Evil then is just in the minds of those who believe it is real; as we become more mature we see only love and good.

 

A third choice is to act like Job’s comforters and tell people that any evil that befalls them is just payment for their sins.  According to this view people in trouble need to acknowledge their sins and get right with God.  Through suffering they are punished, corrected, and given growth.  But the truth is that all of these views make mockery of the enormous human pain and agony in our broken world.

 

If we follow any of these three choices, we are likely to deny the reality of human evil in ourselves, to blind ourselves to the Herod, Pilate, or Hitler within us.  If we refuse to see the dark stain within us, we give it power to act without our control, to act autonomously through us.  Fortunately, there is a fourth choice.  We can face the Herod within us, excruciatingly painful as that process is.  Those who are fighting evil in the world need to be particularly aware of their own evil, because if they are not, enormous evil can be done in the name of good intentions.

 

II.             Jesus was born into a world where the human spirit is

resilient and where faith opens the future.

 

But there is another kind of world out there, and it is a world that Herod to his peril denied.  I’m not talking here about just living as if the glass is half full or half empty.  It is not just a matter of perception or claiming human potential or the power of positive thinking.  For Jesus also was born into a world where the human spirit is resilient and where faith opens the future.  In short it was a world where miracles happen.

 

Just 160 years before the birth of Christ, it seemed that the Jewish faith itself would be extinguished.  It was a season of death.  For centuries the Jews had been persecuted.  But then the Syrian king, Antiochus, invaded Jerusalem, plundered the city and burned it, seized the livestock, and took women and children captive.  Great numbers of Jewish people were killed.

 

Antiochus then declared that all of his many conquered kingdoms should be one people and surrender their customs.  This meant that Jews would no longer be Jews.  It meant that they would no longer be able to practice their faith.  Any who would not accept the new orders would be put to death.  To enforce the new edict Antiochus sent his military into every town and village to make sure that it was being obeyed.

 

In December of the year 167 BCE, he committed the greatest sacrilege that any Jew could image by desecrating the temple in Jerusalem by making sacrifice to pagan gods within its precincts.  In most ways Antiochus was able to impose his will and quell any resistance.  However, there was a small and almost insignificant band of resistors that would not give in.  The resistance was centered in a man named Matthias Maccabee and his five sons who continued to resist against overwhelming odds.

 

At first they were nothing more than an irritant nipping at the heels of a great empire.  But even when Matthias was killed, his son, Judas, continued to give leadership to the cause.  Then something happened!  Miraculously they began to win, a battle here, a battle there.  Others joined their cause and they began to win victory-after-victory until at last they achieved their goal and retook Jerusalem.

 

Three years later, with the temple rebuilt and the altar reconsecrated, the Jews gathered to give thanks.  It was December of the year 164 BCE.  Judas Maccabee called for 8 days of celebration, beginning with the relighting of the temple candles.  But just one small flask of oil was found, just enough to last one day at most.  They decided to burn the oil anyway believing that it was important to light their sacred lamp if only for one day.

 

But then it happened!  The lamp burned through the first day and into the second -- amazing!  It burned through the second and into the third -- astonishing!  And then all through the eight days -- miraculous!  They took this as a sign of God in their midst.  They had known such darkness but now they saw a sign from God in just one light.

 

Of course, this has come to be known as the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah that parallels our own Christian holiday.  At sunset on the first night of Hanukkah, Jews all over the world light menorahs and begin the Festival of Lights.  You see, this also was the kind of world into which Jesus was born -- a world where the human spirit is resilient and where faith opens the future.

 

It is a nice story.

 

To return to our story with its horrific images flashing across our mind’s eye, I want to leave open the possibility that for some of us it may be the wrong time for Christmas.  This story reminds us that in many places in our world today children still die from bombs, racial strife, famine, and abandonment.  As a world and society we still have a long way to go and it may seem like a great disconnect when we bring out those nativity scenes as if the birth of Jesus took place by a peaceful fire with folks sipping hot chocolate.

 

But the truth lies somewhere in-between doesn’t it?  How can we avoid being overwhelmed when we look at the innumerable problems of the world?  How do we decide what is our calling in caring for others?  I think we can begin with Mother Teresa’s answer to the question, “How can you continue your work when you realize that you are reaching only one percent of the dying in Calcutta?”  She replied, “I was not called to be successful; I was only called to be faithful.”

 

Maybe you feel that it’s the wrong time for Christmas.  But it is the birth of the Savior, just the same.  The good news is that the one God, the Almighty, knows that we need a miracle.  Christians and Jews alike attest to the “shema” found in Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.”  This is more than enough for us because our faith is in the One who rebuilds what has been broken and re-lights what has gone out.  You see, it can never be the wrong time for Christmas because there is a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

 

Amen.