On suffering and loss and the Holy Innocents

     In some preparation for this service, I did some extra reading on the Feast of the Holy Innocents and its place in the Church.  Some of the things I read were unsurprising.  There is thought that the day was remembered with the Feast of Epiphany for the first couple centuries, but by the fifth century, the feast was celebrated on its own.  The babies and toddlers slain by Herod in an attempt to keep the king of the Jews from usurping his place were considered by the early Church to be the first martyrs for Jesus.  Because of their deaths, Herod presumed he’d gotten the child the wise men sought to visit, so he was able to drop his guard.  They were not martyrs of the Church, like Stephen on Wednesday, but they died all the same for Jesus.

     Some of the traditions around the feast did surprise me.  In monasteries and convents, the youngest monks and sisters ruled for the day in place of their abbots and mother superiors.  Bishops took to selecting a youth to serve as the diocesan for the celebration of the feast – sometimes this seems to have gone on for a week.  Of course, sin being ever present, these ideas of elevating the ministry of children were corrupted.  What was meant to honor these slain children and Christ’s teaching on children eventually became a mockery.  By the time the 15^th century rolled around, the Council of Basel had to outlaw the practice.  Another practice that has fallen by the wayside, thankfully, over the years, was one developed by our British ancestors.  Parents or pastors would wake the children this day by beating them in their beds, thereby putting them in the appropriate somber and reflective mood of what had been suffered by the Holy Innocents so many years before.  Yep, like y’all, I’m thinking maybe there’s a place to revisit that practice!  For some reason, my kids disagree.  They’d much rather serve as bishop, rector, or parents for the day!

     In the modern Church, and in particular our Anglican church, the day is increasingly being used to remember those children or youths who have died untimely deaths.  I know my sermons and Randy’s on Job this past fall caused the subject of miscarriages and stillbirths to be discussed in many quarters.  A few Adventers even lost growing children due to accidents or diseases.  I know my pastoral conversations that month convinced me that Liturgy & Worship had done a great thing in adding this feast to our parish calendar.  I had hoped two or three dozen folks would come tonight.  I certainly figured it would be far better received than a Bible study on Job.

     In other corners of the Communion, the feast is used to commemorate those who suffer any injustice in the world.  I can well imagine our brothers and sisters lamenting the deaths of two children in our custody while their parents tried to claim asylum.  I can certainly imagine our brothers and sisters around the world using a similar liturgy to mourn those who lost their life due to natural disasters such as floods, fires, or tsunami.

     What we celebrate tonight was approved at General Convention this summer and, for what it is worth, has intrigued the bishop.  If you are new to us tonight, the idea of complaining to God and lamenting before God may seem out of place in a church service.  Many in the wider church community buy into that narrative that everything that happens to us God planned for us.  It may seem a subtle difference to some, and crazy to others, but God is working to redeem us and all that we suffer.  He is not some omnipotent monstrosity sitting up in heaven saying “Billy needs to lose his job today at Christmas so that he learns to trust Me,” “Susie needs to come down with cancer so that she learns to worship and pray to Me,” “Fred failed as a husband so I need to punishing him by doing this to him.”  Those things happen, as part of life, but only because we rejected God and allowed sin to enter into us and the world around us.  The Litany of Complaint reminds us that we can rail at God about our life’s circumstance.  Not only is such complaining NOT a sin; God encourages us to complain to Him.  Think of the psalms of Imprecation.  Think of the complaints of the prophet.  God has given us those examples in Holy Scripture Himself.

     The same is true of laments.  An entire book, albeit rather short, is devoted to lamentation.  It is more than appropriate that we share in deep sorrow with God with the events that beset His beloved children.  Laments recognize at a fundamental level that things are not as they are supposed to be.  And so, tonight, we use a liturgy that formalizes that understanding, encourages us to cry out to our Father in heaven to make it right, whatever the right is, and to remind ourselves to trust in His grace.  The liturgy we celebrate tonight is specifically designed for those who suffered the loss of children, in that we share with the Psalmist and the prophet, but there may be lots of other appropriate losses or sufferings that cause deep suffering within us.  We are reminded this night that our Father, Whose only Son we killed, knows all too well our pains, our hurts, our anger, our raging impotence, and our need.  Like all those who suffered before us and threw their cares on God, we, too, will ask God for the grace the bear the cross we have been given. 

     One such corporate suffering is the loss of babies.  We live in a culture that takes for granted the idea that women get pregnant when they want and have babies when they want.  I shared with Adventers over the readings on Job how that illusion was smashed by my experience in seminary.  I think at one point seminarians had suffered something like fourteen miscarriages.  We also had a couple babies die at birth.  I shared at the time how one of my children refused to get excited about pregnancies because “what’s the point, they are going to die anyway.”  I think the stories resonated with Adventers because ordinands, those seeking to become priests in Christ’s church, ought to be the ones most protected by God in the minds of many.  Yet here seminarians were, toiling for God and suffering similar loss.

     The wider Church and the wider world makes it even harder, doesn’t it?  When folks find out a lady has suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth or some other tragic loss of a child, what’s the response?  My guess is that many of you gathered here tonight have heard those cruel words of comfort: “It’s just as well.  There was probably something wrong with the baby, and you would not want THAT burden.”  “At least the child is no longer suffering.”  “God needed another angel,” as if angels and human beings are interchangeable and God could make the heavens and earth out of nothing but He couldn’t make one more angel?  And my personal favorite: “You are young.  You have plenty of time to try again.”  I see that some of you have heard those words.  No doubt some of you have heard worse.

     And, although only one Y chromosome is represented among you tonight, men have shared with me here at Advent their lack of outlet to mourn that loss.  In some ways it is harder for women, as you ladies feel the new life getting active within you.  For us, it’s a theoretical experience until a doctor places that infant in our arms.  But some men begin dreaming and making plans the moment they find out their wife is pregnant.  Some men begin to plan out sporting events, hunting trips, fishing trips, and all kinds of bonding experiences for that life growing within our beloved wives.  And when that life is lost, what do we do?  Our friends say even meaner things to the guys.  We know intuitively that our wives often feel guilt and worry they did something wrong.  How can we add to her burden?  And so we suffer.  In silence.

     And in that silence, the voice of God’s speaks to our hearts.  “Father, do you think this was God’s way of punishing me for sleeping around when I was younger?”  Father, do you think that was God’s way of trying to get my attention when I was younger?”  “Father, do you think that was God’s way of telling me I really shouldn’t try to be a father?  I mean, it turns out I was not as good at it as I thought I would be.”

     We gather tonight and remember the Innocents who died while the Holy Family fled to Egypt for both comfort and encouragement.  Some theologians and ancient historians like to debate whether the events described in Matthew’s Gospel really happened.  I get the questions.  I understand how some of us might wish there were more sources that described the events of that time.  But God is famous throughout His Scriptures in lifting up the marginalized and working through the lowly.  I read a couple articles this week in preparation for this service that figured fewer than two dozen babies or toddlers were killed by Herod’s men.  Given the size of the town of Bethlehem and human statistics, it is likely no more than 24 toddlers around Jesus age existed.  The killing of them in a backwater province, in an Empire which routinely extinguished lives like we do candles, such deaths could pass relatively unnoticed.  Yet here’s Matthew spending a few lines of his Gospel and relating to us the unimaginable horror experienced by those families at that time.  Could it be a fanciful retelling of Pharaoh’s edict in Exodus 1?  It’s possible.  Once you have accepted that God can create from nothing and raise a dead man to life, though, what need has He of such fanciful stories?  Given that Herod killed three of his own sons, is it really that hard to accept he killed another 15-20 infants and toddlers to ensure that he remained in power?

     I think Matthew includes the story because it is true and it reminds us of the heart and attention of our Father in heaven.  In an Empire where life was cheap, of what value are a few more?  In a kingdom where a king killed his own sons, why do our modern sensibilities find these deaths so shocking?  God, of course, misses nothing.  God sees and knows all.  In His kingdom nothing is beneath His notice.  There may have been as few as a dozen children killed, yet God caused their deaths to be memorialized in the Church as a reminder that He never forgets, He never does not pay attention.  And so we who see or experience such sufferings can take hope and encouragement.  We may have felt alone when we lost a child, but we are reminded in this story that God most definitely was paying attention.  We may think our personal tragedies irredeemable, but God reminds us, through the work and Resurrection of His Son our Lord that nothing is beyond His power or will to redeem.  And, just as significantly in these stories, we remind ourselves that this, all that happens around us, be they good things or bad, are not what He intended for us.

     And so, once again this night, we cast our fears, our hurts, our failures, our anger, and everything else that works to enslave us, that works to seduce us from His fatherly embrace of each one of us, on His most capable shoulders, knowing that He who redeemed sin and death can redeem whatever evil brought us to this service tonight and bend that event, no matter how terrible its impact on us and others in our lives, to the point that He is glorified.  Make no mistake, you will likely still bear some sense of loss.  You will still bear some possibilities of “what if.”  Until our Lord calls you home or until He returns and re-creates everything as it was supposed to be, you may suffer moments of melancholy.  That’s ok.  There’s nothing wrong with your faith.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting God to fix everything.

      But that same God who sent His Son so that we might experience the wonder of that Silent Night Holy Night of Monday night, and the hope we should feel when we recount the story of Easter, is the same God who promises to redeem all things in your life, even that unimaginable hurt you bear this night, that in the end, He may be gloried in you and you in Him.

In His Peace,

Brian†

The Birth story of all birth stories . . .

    I learned a couple valuable lessons at the earlier service tonight, the 4pm family service that I hope will make this a better sermon.  One, I think I will avoid all but one attempt at stupid jokes.  One of the great things about working with youth is that they are so trusting and so literal.  One of the bad things about youth is that they are so trusting and so literal.  Imagine this scene, I’m standing at the rail and going to offer a young boy a blessing, his mom and dad to his right, and he stops me and asks if I really almost dropped my son but then gained control and spiked him like OBJ catching a touchdown pass.  Now I have your attention, right?  Spiking babies like OBJ in a Christmas sermon?  Who does that?  In my defense, I did not name a receiver.  Was I to name one, I would have naturally gone with a past or present Steeler great like Lynn Swan, AB, or even JuJu.  But we will get to that in a moment.  The other lesson was the nearly singular focus on the Incarnation.  Christmas and Easter sermons are tough on preachers.  Many feel incredible pressure at those times to wow the folks present.  Vestries are always looking to add new members.  Members want their families to be impressed with their choice of church.  And, let’s face it, for many preachers, those two services are their opportunity to preach to the most people.  So, next time you suffer through a theology dissertation disguised as a sermon or have to put up with some horrible out of touch jokes from a pulpit, show some grace.  I hope you won’t have to tonight, but if you do, please show some grace.

     What is the story of your birth?  If we were sitting over in the parish hall finished with tonight’s liturgy and I asked you that question over egg nog, what would be the important notes about your birth?  What, nobody warned you I made those gather participate?  Ok, I get it, y’all are far too modest to talk about yourself.  Let’s try something easier.  If you were sitting around the dinner table tomorrow afternoon and your kids asked you about their birth or your grandkids asked you about the birth story of their parent/your child, what details would you share?

     We all have birth stories, don’t we?  Those of us of a certain age grew up listening to stories how a prior generation had to go up hill through snow over winding mountain roads both ways to get to and from the hospital.  I’m not wrong.  I see your faces and hear the chuckles.  It looks like a few of you have heard those stories, too.  Those of us from a younger generation, particularly after they let dads in the room during the birth, may have different details to share that stories than those told from the perspective of a waiting room.  Am I wrong?  Who does not laugh at the stories of Dad passing out?

     Adventers know I have seven children.  That means I have seven different birth stories.  I shared with the kids at the earlier service a couple of them.  My oldest, a daughter, was for the first and only time in her life, I’m pretty sure, was early, 3 ½ weeks early to be exact.  She was so early that I had not yet gotten a crib, a changing table, or diaper genies or whatever else I had to get.  And poor Karen had to trust her nerve-wracked husband would buy the right stuff with only her mother to check my naturally wrong impulses.  Hmmm.  That story must resonate on some level with the moms here, given the murmuring.  I’m guessing it’s the “early” comment and not the purchasing habits of their husbands.

     My second son also could not wait to get here.  We had a nurse who, for the first time, was working without a net in a birth in L, D, R.  Once you pass three kids, you find that hospitals love to use you for training purposes.  Karen went from 4cm to Robbie crowning in a split second.  The nurse could not get the doctor to come because he’d just checked Karen and the baby.  So, I had to catch Robbie.  If you have ever seen a newborn baby, they are quite messy and bloody or amniotic fluidy or whatever.  That white stuff that helps them come out is probably the best lubricant I have ever encountered.  Why is it not used in engines?  Wait, y’all are laughing before I get to the joke!  Robbie came out into my hands, I nearly dropped him, but I finally controlled his little body in my hands.  Adventers who know me know I played football for fourteen years, including a couple years at a D3 college.  You don’t know how deep muscle memory goes until you are fumbling a kid, you gain control, and then you go to spike your newborn son while doing your best Billy “White shoes” Johnson imitation!  Those faces that are nodding thoughtfully are simply acknowledging that now they know why Robbie is the way he is.  I should add, the real joke was on me.  When the doctor arrived, I told him that would be $6000 please.  He said, “what?”  Back then a birth cost around $6000.  Since I had done his job, I figured I deserved his pay.  That joke, of course, was on me.  Somehow, Karen did the hard work, I did the doctor’s job, and he still got paid!

     David was our child born in an actual blizzard and the one whose birth impacted church services.  He was born in the middle of a Saturday night .  A couple of my kids came out sunny-side up, with one breaking the tip of Karen’s tailbone with his face.  One was born in Dallas, three in Des Moines, Iowa, one outside Pittsburgh, PA, two in Davenport, Iowa.  One had perhaps the absolute worst neonatal attending in the world.  It’s possible there may be worse ones, but he wins the “worst bedside manner” trophy, for sure.

     You are intrigued, aren’t you?  If I showed up at your celebration dinner tomorrow unannounced, we might avoid that uncomfortable silence we both get when I, or any other pastor or clergy, is present for social functions.  Now we have something about which to talk, something that allows us to relate to one another.  Now you know part of the reason why you and I are given so many details tonight.

     The feast of the Incarnation, the Nativity of Jesus, is a story that transcends reason and predictability.  What we know of God, His character, His power, His mercy, and all those other attributes, we know through His revelation.  The Bible exists to teach us about God and about ourselves.  What would cause such a God to become fully human?  Is becoming fully human important in the narrative of salvation history?  To be sure, part of the remembrance tonight is mysterious—we call it a holy mystery—and the angles testify to its supernatural root, but the details are recorded, as the births of nearly every baby born into a loving, cherishing family for two important reasons, reasons which are as important to those who heard the story for the first time more than 2000 years ago in Bethlehem as they are in modern Nashville.

     So often, when folks speak of God, they speak of Him as an external force or external presence.  It is, understandably, hard for us to get our finite minds around the existence of an infinite being, so our language tends to increase the chasm that exists between us an God.  God knew even before the events in the Garden that sin would be the real barrier between us.  So, His great rescue plan, which was conceived before He even made the cosmos, all that is, seen and unseen, reached the beginning of its end during the events of this night.  Before the beginning of the service, I read what is known in the Church as the Christmas Proclamation.  The Proclamation is read as both a transition from the season of Advent into the season of Christmas and as a reminder that this event occurred in history.  What we celebrate and remember tonight is not a theoretical event.  It really happened.  After Creation, after the Flood, after Abraham and Moses and David, in the 194^th Olympiad, in the 752^nd year of Rome, and in the 42^nd year of Augustus’ reign, Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem.  It really happened.  We know this from both Church historians but also ancient, secular sources.  It happened.

     Luke, of course, fills in other details for us.  We know that Joseph and his fiancé are traveling to Bethlehem late in her pregnancy because the emperor has ordered a census.  We know Mary gives birth where the animals are kept, likely beneath a family dwelling.  I know, many of us grew up on the “full inn” story.  It makes for great theater and plays.  But how many of you know a Jewish or other Middle Eastern matriarch that would not make room for a pregnant “daughter”?  I’m trying to picture our Armenian sisters telling a “daughter” she had no room for them.  Such a notion flies in the face of their devotion to family and hospitality.  Besides, the animals would be protected and provide some extra heat for the dwelling, but that’s another suggestion.  The baby is born, wrapped in bands of cloth, foreshadowing for some the purpose for which He came into the world, and placed in a feeding trough (a foreshadowing of “bread” of life, as one Adventer asked earlier?).

     Meanwhile, angels appear to shepherds to announce the birth.  The bands of cloth figure prominently again as they will be the signs of the Child which they will seek.  Then the angelic choir signs, and the glory of God is, for a brief time, perceivable by those present to their voices.  The shepherds go to see this sign made known to them—it’s always a good idea when God or His angels tell you to go see a marvel to do as He or they instruct--, and then they share what was told them by the angels.  The crowd is amazed, and Mary ponders these things in her heart.

     The story is well known.  Folks who do not come to Church, who count themselves among atheists and agnostics know this story well.  Those of us who are fans of Peanuts probably hear it in Linus’ voice telling the story in our own heads.  Yes, the story is as well known to us as our own birth stories or those of our children or grandchildren.  Why?  Why, do you think, are we given these details?  Why, if Scripture is God breathed, are these details considered so significant?  What is it about this story that causes our hearts to long, that causes our imaginations to dream?  A significant reason is that the story helps make God more relatable to us.

     I said earlier that there are a couple reasons upon which I want to focus our attention this Holy Night.  The first is that the story teaches us a great deal about God’s character.  Those Adventers who come to church regularly get a dose of Ancient Near East cosmology all the time.  The gods of the ANE were every bit as capricious and unpredictable as human beings.  In fact, the gods are often portrayed as human beings with greater powers.  If you or I or any typical human were going to be born into a world, how would we go about it?  If you could be God for a second, what details would you have caused to attend your birth?

    The children at the earlier service were not at all bashful about how they would have been born.  They would have been born in a palace or big temple.  All the important people would be there.  They’d have a real crib and they’d have those soft footy/onesy things rather than a manger and bands of cloth.  They’d want it to smell nice, too.  My guess is that those children, who have not yet been conditioned by society to hide some of their selfish impulses, speak for most of us.  Even those of us who are faithful, or those of us who struggle with trying to be faithful, have ideas as to how the story could be tweaked to make it easier to believe.  Maybe we want more folks to see and hear the angels?  Maybe we think the Babe should have been born in Caesar’s palace or the Temple.  Maybe we just want the night to mark that exact moment when all the evil, all the injustices, all the broken relationships, all the diseases, and all the tears in this world stopped.

     In this birth story, though, we get wonderful insight into the character of God.  Truthfully, it merely confirms for us what we already know about God.  When God thunders about His power and magnificence, when God reminds us of all that He can do and has done, what remark appears on the other side of the descriptive comma.  I the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth; I love the widow and the orphan.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Nearly every time that God proclaims His might and majesty and power He proclaims His love for those on the margins of society.  Those of you who wonder whether you are beneath the notice of God, what does such a reminder do for you?  Does it not give you hope?  Does it not make you dream?  Does not your soul long in ways you cannot fully understand or discuss?  Some of you gathered here tonight have known the death of a loved one, a spouse, a parent, a child.  What does such a proclamation by God do for you?

     And it’s easy, right, in our separated-ness from God to say to ourselves or others, “yeah, right.  Sure He does” and try hard to maintain our cynicism and disbelief so that we won’t be crushed when we learn that such is not truly the case, that God just lies to us like politicians or family members or friends.  The Incarnation, my friends, is the exclamation point on God’s description of Himself.  How do we know He really loves us?  How do we really know that He has not forgotten us?  He came to live among us.  He really is the Emmanuel that He promised He would be.  Yes, the Incarnation serves other purposes, yes there is a systematic theology that flows from it, but this night we are reminded of the wonder and awe that love might cause God to come and to enflesh Himself among us!

     While the Incarnation teaches us much about God, it should have an incredible impact on us.  When a god is an impersonal force, beyond our ken and experience, how well do we relate to it?  That’s right, not very well.  But here, we are reminded that God became one of us, not one of the exceptional us, but one of the ordinary us.  There was no silver spoon in His mouth, though maybe there was some hay.  There was no paparazzi noting His birth and looking for that first picture, just marginalized folks.  He was not born anywhere near the cultural centers of the day.  It was worse than being born in West Virginia or eastern Tennessee or anywhere in the Appalachians in this country today.  Nobody in the civilized world wanted to live in Jerusalem, except the Jews.  The Greeks and Romans and Assyrians and Persians and Babylonians and even the Egyptians all looked down on them.  Yet God became human in an out of the way village in an out of the way province in the civilized world.  Dad was a carpenter; mom was a carpenter’s wife.  Is there anything or job more insignificant?

     And yet this birth is significant for us because it allows us to see that God really loves us and really knows, really knows, what our daily life is like.  In nine chapters or so, Luke will recount the disciples of the Babe asking Him how they should pray.  He will teach them a version of what you and I know to be the Lord’s Prayer.  And in that prayer you and I will be taught that we should have the boldness and shamelessness to approach our Father in heaven for whatever we need, be it just food for the day or something we esteem more significant for a time.  We can approach Him and complain of hunger, of poverty, of broken relationships, of injuries, of illnesses, of injustices, or anything else we feel the need, and the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, will listen to us as a Father.  Can you imagine the audacity?  Do you know the comfort of such shameless and boldness?  Why do you think the Lord’s Prayer is a part of our spiritual DNA, even those of us who long ago gave up on God?

     The scandal of the Incarnation my friends, and make no mistake it is a scandal, is that you and I learn a great deal about the character of God and, through that knowledge, become a bit more encouraged, a bit more emboldened, to seek Him and His will in our lives and in the world around us.  Birth stories are often passed down because they are so full of possibilities, of promise, and of roots.  Our birth stories remind us of our beginnings, our roots, and, if your dad spiked you, why you are who you are.  This birth story does the very same thing.  It reminds us who hunger for peace and long for justice and crave love that God is all about bringing those into our lives and the lives of all those around us.  True, He seldom acts in ways that we ask or imagine.  Who among us would have ever conceived of this story leading to the Cross or beginning its ending in the Resurrection and the Ascension?  This story serves as God’s most important reminder that He is always acting, always working, always redeeming.  And such makes marvelous and wonderful sense this night, this Holy Night, when we remind ourselves of THE birth story, the birth that makes it possible for us to be delivered from the bondage of sin and receive power to become children of God, and go even unto Bethlehem to hear again the story of the shepherds, the angels, and the marvel of God’s Son our Lord, coming to dwell among us as one of us.

In His Peace,

Brian†