| It's Christmas at last and the world is afraid |
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| Written by Jessie Shuman Larkins | |
| Thursday, 27 December 2007 | |
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Matthew 2:13-23 Christmas 1—Year A It’s (Not) Just a Baby! It was about a year ago that my husband David and I announced to our family and friends that we would be adopting a child. The reactions to this news were varied, ranging from the supportive and excited to the violent and reactionary. It is the latter reactions that concerned me most. What could be so scary and threatening about a baby to provoke such hurtful declarations as, “We will not let that child into our home,” or “That child cannot take the family name”? Speaking out of the fear of the unknown and hoping to protect us from the difficulties of raising a child with “issues” (as if our biological child would be free of “issues”!), these family and friends’ reactions baffled me and sent us into a tailspin. When I read the gospel lectionary text for this weekend, I begin to understand a bit better the reactions of my family and friends. Here we find Herod, ruler of Judea, threatened by a baby! What about a poor baby born in a stable could cause a king with all of his armies and vassals to quake in his boots and react with such violence and insecurity? It’s just a baby, after all! It is precisely because this baby, poor and inconsequential as he may appear, threatens everything that Herod holds dear. This “King of the Jews” might usurp the worship of the Jews under his rule…or, worse, might rise up and seize the power that Herod so fragilely maintains through his reign of terror. Herod’s actions are quick and decisive—eliminate, immediately, anything or anybody that stands in the way of maintaining and securing power. The slaughter of the innocent children of Bethlehem is a reaction of fear and insecurity; a pathetic attempt to maintain control at the mere mention that his power might be threatened.It’s just a baby, whether black, brown, white or yellow. It’s just a baby, whether born of a woman with a college education or a poor, uneducated teenager on welfare. Yet, it is a baby that threatens how my family defines family. It is a baby that distorts the perfect family portrait and eliminates their sense of control and protection of everything they believe is important about family life. Isn’t that what children do, though? Innocent and powerless as they may be, they disrupt our lives and demand our time, affection, and energy. As Stanley Hauerwas notes in his recent commentary on this chapter of Matthew, “children rightly frighten us, pulling us as they do into the unknown future. But that pull is the lure of love that moves the sun and the stars, the same love that overwhelmed the wise men with joy. It is the love that makes the church an alternative to the world that fears the child” (Hauerwas, 2006, 41). This week we celebrate the birth of Jesus of Bethlehem, God’s child sent into the world to thoroughly disrupt and, indeed, to threaten everything the world holds dear about power and control, and to adopt us all into a family that is not biologically our own. Like Joseph, whose reaction was to embrace and protect this child adopted into his line, we too are called to embrace and protect all children knowing that this acceptance threatens what the world understands about family and worth. Submitting ourselves to the working of this God-made-baby, allowing our notions of family, bloodlines, power, control, and ownership to be transformed by the gracious gift of the Christ-child, we open ourselves to that alternative vision of family and community created by Christ’s birth. Christ our Lord invites us to welcome all children in his name as a declaration that our God rules the world from a manger and invites us all as children into God’s family by assuming the humanity of us all (“issues” included). I guess it’s not just a baby when it threatens to change your world!
(Editor's Note: bLOGOS will try to feature a reflection on the common lectionary most weeks of the coming liturgical year. This will be an experiment which we hope will promote increased readership and use of this and other features of the EP website. Comments are, as always, welcome!) |
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