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"Rachel Wept"
Matthew 2:1-23
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
January 6, 2002
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
The three kings, the Magi, as they are called, followed a star and came to worship Christ Jesus. They gave him gold, frankincense and myrrh. And for a moment, the whole world stood in awe of the wonder of the birth of the Christ child who would make us free. But even as the wise men were kneeling in worship of newborn life and of newborn hope, King Herod was preparing to make sure history remembered himself, not some poor homeless child.
I would like to focus today on the often-untold part of the Christmas story which I believe is equally vital to our faith. And I would like to put the whole story into our present-day context as people living in North America two millennia later.
When his plan to determine the baby Jesus’ exact whereabouts was foiled by the wise men’s snubbing of Herod by returning home without betraying Jesus to the government, Herod instituted plan B. He sent out his troops into the town of Bethlehem and they murdered every single child under the age of two in hopes of killing the one whom he though might take his power away. Joseph, being warned in a dream fled with his family to Egypt until Herod died.
The slaughter of the innocents is one of the most disturbing stories in the Bible. It is state-sponsored terrorism. No one who reads this passage can truthfully say that religion and politics do not mix. From the very beginning of Jesus’ life, he was an enemy of the state and in Matthew’s account, an enemy of acceptable religion. King Herod actually foreshadows the feelings of the Jewish leaders and Pilate about Jesus. They feared he was going to take over and therefore must be stopped.
State-sponsored terrorism still happens today. The result is the slaughter of the innocents.
When someone is beaten in a hate crime, it is a slaughter of the innocents.
When an airplane hits a building not only are innocents slaughtered, but so is our innocence. We now have a deeper consciousness of everything around us. But this doesn’t make us stop the slaughter, does it?
When smart bombs are not smart enough to distinguish between soldiers and children in Afghanistan or Iraq, the innocents are slaughtered.
When we detain people because of their race or their accent, the innocents are slaughtered.
When this richest country in the world closes its borders to immigrants fleeing the countries where we are waging war, the innocents are slaughtered.
Where the gap between the rich and the poor grows exponentially and increasingly there is no longer a safety net for the poorest of the poor, the innocents are slaughtered.
When AIDS research or treatment are again under-funded because the people infected are seen by the powers that be as disposable, the innocents are being slaughtered.
And the list goes on.
The gospel of Matthew gives us a perfectly disturbing metaphor for this story by quoting the 31st chapter of the prophet Jeremiah:
At the slaughter of the innocents,
"A Voice was heard in Ramah: wailing and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children; She refused to be consoled, because they were no more."(2x)
Joseph, Mary and Jesus were safe in Egypt. They could have stayed there for the rest of their lives. But Jesus came, in part, to see that Rachel would no longer have to weep for her slaughtered children…that the slaughter would end.
The cry of a mother who has lost a child and refuses to be comforted is what burns in my mind today.
Mrs. Parmanand was a proud and humble mother of five whom I had the fortune of serving amongst at the Asylum Avenue Baptist Church in Hartford, CT. She had a quiet dignity about her which was infectious. People were drawn to her by her shy smile and her accepting demeanor. The telephone shattered that facade one night. Her prodigal son, Tony, the apple of her eye, her youngest was murdered in a bar fight in New York City. When I got to her home, she was wailing. She was enraged at the murderer, but also at God, "how could you take my Tony. How could you leave me without him?" Mrs. Parmanand refused to be consoled. One born again brother of hers tried to soften the blow with sticky worn out platitudes which sounded like a lot of quasi-Christian mumbo jumbo. It only made her angrier. He couldn’t handle her weeping and wailing. No one had seen this side of her. This pillar of strength for the family refused to be consoled, for her son was no more. I think of her and I think of Rachel.
Rachel, we remember, was the wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the sister of Leah who was also married to Jacob and who was the mother of seven of Jacob’s 13 children.
Rachel was unable for years and years to have children which incited quite a sibling rivalry between her and her fertile sister Leah. The birth of her last son was more than her body could bear and she died in childbirth.
In Genesis 35, Rachel’s midwife told her, "Do not be afraid, for you will bear a son." Angels told Mary the mother of Jesus the same thing, "Do not be afraid for you shall bear a son."
But Rachel refused to be comforted. She cried out and wept and in her dying breath she named her son Ben-o’ni, which means "son of my sorrow". Rachel refused to be comforted, knowing her own pain, but also knowing the family violence which had been a part of her married life and would be passed down to the next generation. Her other son, Joseph would later be sold into slavery by his own step-brothers. So wise Rachel refused to be comforted and named her son, Benoni, son of my sorrow.
Her husband Jacob could not stand such a depressing name and changed it to Benjamin which means "son of my right hand."
I am aware that as I preach this sermon, it is not enough to make Rachel stop her weeping. We need to first hear her weeping. In a patriarchal society, women who weep are often put down for being too emotional or making too big a deal out of something. We men tend to take weeping as a sign of weakness. Like Jacob, we want to rename it, candify it, ignore it. But if we truly listened to Rachel’s weeping and wailing, if we not only listened, but also respected her and took her seriously, then we might have some different priorities around here.
She refuses to be comforted, for comfort often means placating.
Comforting often means belittling.
Comforting and consoling often means that you don’t take her pain seriously enough.
Rachel was buried at the place she died, a place called Bethlehem.
1500 years later, Rachel’s weeping and wailing are remembered once again as the death-squads moved across the land to decimate or disappear another portion of the population. And Rachel wept and refused to be consoled. She refused to hear, "It’s all right." "It’s not so bad. You can have another child. Dust off your feet and move on."
No, in a mother’s grief, Rachel wept and refused to be consoled.
She doesn’t want to be comforted for she fears if she is comforted, if she does become a little numb to the bloodshed, then the evil would have won.
Rachel wants us to see the bloodshed.
She wants us to have an epiphany—a sense of reorienting our world-view.
She wants us to do the hard work of defying the Herods around us.
She wants us to open our eyes and open our hearts and open our mouths when people slaughter the innocents in the name of government, in the name of greed, in the name of God.
Rachel only stops her weeping when the slaughter ends.
Until then, "a voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children because they are no more."
Rachel wept because innocent people were being sacrificed on the altars of worldly powers.
Today, children of Rachel: Muslims, Jews and Christians kill each other over the right to occupy land adjacent to her tomb. And Rachel weeps.
I admit that I do not want to read news stories about people being killed in other parts of the world. I hurry to the comic pages before I will look at the pictures of the victims of the fleeing Taliban or the homeless Palestinians or the shell-shocked Afghanis, Israelis and Iraqis. Perhaps, like Jacob, I am eager to rename suffering into something more palatable.
But Rachel is weeping and she refuses to be comforted. And she beckons me to read the front pages. She beckons me to read about the slaughtering of the innocents. She beckons me to live into my Christina duty so that no more innocents will have to be slaughtered.
So as Rachel and I read through the newspapers together this week, we saw list of events in 2001. We saw tons of relief supplies being sent to Afghanistan along with the cluster bombs. We saw flags everywhere and people saying "united we stand". It struck me that it is safe to send relief aid to Afghanistan. It’s the compassionate thing to do. It comforts Rachel. The problem is, that Rachel refuses to be comforted. She longs instead for the bombing to stop and the innocents to stop being slaughtered. She longs for the presence of justice, not just the annihilation of a perceived enemy.
But it feels so good. It feels good to wave a flag and say "united we stand." In what Ched Myers calls our national chauvinism, we don’t want to hear Rachel’s weeping for it might just call into question our own actions. We want to rename it, to minimize it. But Rachel, God bless her, refuses to be comforted.
During the 80’s, when the US was hotly waging war in Nicaragua, people began to hear Rachel’s weeping. Because she refused to be comforted, church people began seeing first hand what was happening. We set up sister churches with Nicaraguan churches. We saw first hand how our government slaughtered the innocents. And more importantly, we met the humble innocents themselves. Those who went to Nicaragua during that time had an epiphany. And many, including me, were never the same again.
I do not mean to suggest that alone any of us can stop the cycle of poverty and vengeance which is pervading our world community. But we can provide an environment here at this church where people are respected and affirmed and challenged regardless of their circumstance….I hope and pray that this year will see our church adopt some new ways that we can reach out to our community as a way to both name Rachel’s weeping and to help find a solution.
When we do that, then we have seen a new light shining. We have experienced what the wise ones did. And we will go home a different way for WE HAVE BEEN CHANGED. And we might have even been changed by Rachel’s weeping.
Rachel is weeping and refuses to be comforted.
Like the prophet Amos, she refuses to be comforted and become a statistic. Instead, she weeps and wails until the day that justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Rachel weeps and refuses to be comforted until all God’s children have a place in the choir.
Rachel weeps and refuses to be comforted until good Christian people stand up and take notice of the fact that our communities are falling apart and that unless we do something, another generation will be slaughtered and they will not have the opportunity to learn from our mistakes.
Rachel wept and refused to be comforted a few days or weeks after Jesus’ birth, in order to tell us that God being born and becoming human does not erase all of the woes of this world. In fact, it makes them more pronounced. But thank God there are people who believe in the one who came that we might all have life and have it abundantly. The one who said that when one of us hurts, we all hurt.
The one who said that whenever you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me…. And when you have not done it unto the least of these you have not done it unto me.
That one, that Jesus Christ is the one who has come to show us the way to make Rachel stop her weeping.
But until the slaughter of the innocents cease, Rachel will refuse of be comforted.
Rachel is weeping.
She refuses to be comforted.
She demands a change.
In this new year, how will we respond?
Amen.