Rachel Wept
Matthew 2:13-18
Today we remember the infant
and toddler children who were murdered by their king—King Herod over two
thousand years ago in Bethlehem. How their mothers and their fathers must have
grieved at this senseless, unjust loss of these holy, innocent children. To
lose a child before he is born or later from illness or accident or starvation
or war or poverty is the greatest sorrow a parent can feel.
My mother kept a journal from
the time she was eighteen until she died at age eighty. Her first journal was one of those “Day at a
Time” notebooks with a few inches of space to record the events of each day. It was given to her by her brother, my Uncle
Harold, when she left Northern
Indiana to become a nanny in
Chicago in 1926. She
had more to say than could be recorded in a few lines so she soon graduated to
steno notebooks where she could write as much or as little as she liked each
day. The first notebooks cost five cents.
The last one she recorded her thoughts in cost $1.50.
Although my mother appeared
to be an extrovert, both in her relationships with others and in her writing, she
occasionally revealed her deepest thoughts.
But her journal, for the most part, touched on the superficial aspects
of her life. She recorded the price of sugar and gasoline, birthday and
Christmas celebrations, the dates of family births and deaths, the weather and
the economy and the financial difficulties my family and many families
experienced during her lifetime.
Yet, every once in a while,
she revealed more than the surface aspects of her life as she wrote in her
journal. She wrote from her heart. She
and my father were married seven years before they were blessed with children—two
sons in three years. It was the birth of
the third child, a girl that brought my mother great joy and great sorrow. Anna
Marie was baptized immediately in the hospital because she was a “blue baby”,
born with a heart defect. She lived only
a few days. At that time women stayed in
the hospital for a full week after giving birth. My mother wrote of hearing the
cries of the other mothers’ infants during the night as she wept for her own
child, smothering her cries in her pillow.
My mother wept.
Rachel wept.
The mothers of the Holy
Innocents wept.
Mothers in Zimbabwe and Rwanda and Detroit and Eureka Springs weep.
Mothers and fathers
everywhere and in every time weep for the suffering and loss of their children.
The lessons for today are
full of suffering countered with comfort.
Jeremiah writes to all parents, not just to Rachel when he says: Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes
from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the LORD. They shall come back from the land of the
enemy; there is hope for your future, says the LORD: your children shall come back to their own
country.
And in the Book of Revelation
we hear: God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their
eyes. Death will be no more; mourning
and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.
The reading from Matthew tells
of the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt and the murder of the holy, innocent children in Bethlehem. His final words echo the words of Jeremiah.
There is a mystery in the
suffering. Rachel weeps for her
children; yet, we all are promised a new heaven and a new earth. Innocent children are massacred. Suffering
precedes the Good News. At some point in our lives, all of us weep for
suffering and injustice in our world. But God speaks in Jesus Christ that sin
and death will not win out. We will all be gathered in the New Jerusalem where
all tears and crying will be wiped away.
We believe and yet sometimes it is so difficult for us to deal with life
on this earth.
In WinterSong,
Madeleine L’Engle reflects on the birth of the Christ child that is for all
time.
This is no time for a child to be born.
with the Earth betrayed by war and hate.
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
that time runs out and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born
in a land in the crushing grip of Rome
Honor and truth were trampled by scorn—
yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time of love to be born?
the inn is full on planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn—
yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
The inn is full on planet
earth. It is estimated that one out of every five children in America lives in poverty. There is no room for them at the
inn. It isn’t just in foreign countries that children aren’t safe; don’t have
enough to eat and don’t have adequate health care. We must weep for all these children and then
we must wipe the tears from our eyes so we can make a difference.
We began to make a difference
this year at St. James’. We opened our eyes to see that poverty and hunger
exist right here in Eureka Springs. Our overflowing Christmas food baskets went
to eight families. Only one of those baskets went to a traditional family of
two parents and four children. Some of the others were two grandparents raising
four grandchildren, a single mother who is a full-time student raising two
young children, and an elderly woman who struggles to make ends meet. Our
Silver Tea proceeds went to the Carroll County Unit of the Salvation Army to
assist the poor in our county. The Flint
Street Food Pantry benefited from our cash, food and volunteer donations to
feed the hungry. We supported ECHO to
address the medical needs of many babies and children, in addition to adults. We supported the prenatal and infant care of
two mothers in Guatemala. Babies no longer need die as “blue babies” but they
must receive the benefits of current medical knowledge. We provided warm
clothing for an entire class of needy pre-school children in Eureka Springs.
We can be proud of all we
have done but there is so much more we can do.
If any child goes to bed hungry; if any holy innocent is abused or
neglected; if any child is sick and does not receive medical care, we are
called to open our eyes and our hearts and to respond in love.
May we all be given the grace
and the wisdom to turn weeping into joy.
Amen.
The Rev. Betsy Porter
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
December 28, 2008