By H. Mark Abbott
But all of this is in the context of prayer. We don't literally go and smash someone's teeth. We don't go and complain into the teeth of one we think has mistreated us. Instead, there's an open, honest venting of feeling toward God.
There's lament in one part of the Christmas story we seldom tell. It's usually neglected in the wonderfully glad retelling of Jesus' birth. But I tucked it into our scripture reading this morning. Matthew tells us about the magi from the east, who follow a star to Jesus. They stop in Jerusalem to ask directions to where the new king of the Jews is born. But it's Herod, who bears the title "King of the Jews." And Herod is paranoid about anybody else being called king, even if it is only a baby. So Herod calls Bible scholars together and finds out where the prophets said such a king would be born.
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"Why, King Herod, your majesty, the King is to be born in nearby Bethlehem." King Herod calls the magi to him, puts on his most pious face, and tells them that he, too, would like to bow down before this newborn king. "So please do come back and tell me where he is when you find him."
When the magi disobey the king and return to their own country by another route, Herod flies into a fit of rage. He orders all the baby boys in the region of Bethlehem two years old and under slaughtered. And the cries of sorrowing mothers are lifted to God. When Matthew reports this horrible evil, he quotes from the prophet Jeremiah.
This prophet, known as "the weeping prophet," describes the grief of one mother because her children have been killed or carried into exile in Babylon: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more." (
Mat. 2:18). I can hear Rachel peppering God with questions -- "How long, O Lord, will this kind of evil continue unchecked? How long will I feel this pain and sorrow in my heart?" Somehow that doesn't feel like it belongs in a Christmas carol, does it! But it's a real part of the Christmas story.
Ann Weems, a Christian author, loses her 21-year-old son in tragic circumstances. She is devastated. "The stars fell from the sky," she writes. Caring people offer what help they can. But she feels she will never be comforted over this huge loss. One of her friends is a Bible scholar, who is writing a commentary on Jeremiah. As part of her mourning, he suggests that she write her own psalms of lament. They are poetic prayers full of pain and honest questions. But they are also prayers of faith. Ann Weems writes: "O God, what am I going to do? He's gone, and I'm left. With an empty pit in my life .... How could You have allowed this to happen? I thought You protected Your own! You are the power. Why didn't you use it? You are the glory. But there was no glory in his death. You are justice and mercy. Yet there was no justice, no mercy for him ...."1