Christmas and Tiny Coffins

Every adult American who does not live under a rock knows about the tragedy in Connecticut last week. The sheer brutality is appalling. For twenty-seven families, Christmas will never be the same. But according to Matthew's gospel, slaughter of the holy innocents was part of the very first Christmas. Herod, in his attempt to kill the baby Jesus, has all the boys aged two and younger in Bethlehem slaughtered. I can't imagine the depth of grief a person experiences upon losing a precious child, the searing silence unpunctured by laughter, a Christmas tree with far too few gifts beneath it... God, I'm watching my baby sister play in my room as I type this and getting a lump in my throat imagining what the big sisters in Bethlehem experienced, and what the big sisters of Newton must be going through right now...
I like knowing why something happens, but there really is no answer to why a horror like the Sandy Hook shooting happened. Yet it comforts me to know Matthew does not say God caused that to happen. He quotes a passage from Jeremiah about Rachel weeping for her children, but refrains from saying that the slaughter happened to fulfill that OT passage, like he does with his other OT quotes. Implicitly, the gospel tells us that God did not cause those children to die. I think that should be a comfort. Our God is neither a master puppeteer nor a murderer. Instead, he weeps beside us in our suffering. I don't believe anyone, not even the most distraught, grief-stricken mother, is more upset about Sandy Hook than God is.
I think the slaughter of the holy innocents has an important function in the Christmas story. Even though God's Son has been born, the eternal Word become flesh, bad things will still happen. We cannot pretend that Christmas means the end of our suffering. Only Jesus' second coming can give us that. But in light of Christmas, our suffering should be transformed. Matthew says, "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted, because they are no more," quoting Jeremiah 31:15. But this is in the middle of a long chapter of God's promise to gather the people of Israel and issue a new covenant in which God forgives Israel's sins and writes his law on Israel's hearts. 
Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and establishment of the church is the beginning of the answer to the promises laid out in Jeremiah 35. "He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd to a flock" (Jer 31:10)-- Jesus shepherds his church by his earthly example and gift of the Holy Spirit. He gathers all his people into one Israel and casts out those who are not the true Israel based, on the basis of accepting or rejecting Jesus, the stone over which many stumble and many others are saved. "The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD... It shall never again be uprooted or overthrown," proclaims Jeremiah. Jesus is returning, and he will build a new earth, and every holy innocent will be resurrected to new life. 
By describing the grief of the mothers in Bethlehem with a verse in this context, Matthew illustrates the way Christmas transforms grief. Because of Christmas, we should grieve in expectation of Jesus' return and establishment of a holy kingdom wherein we will all live together, forever. And we should grieve with the knowledge that in Jesus' saving death and resurrection, he is our shepherd right now. Like Rachel's tears, our tears should be in the context of the kind of hope celebrated in Jeremiah 31. Cry we will, and must, when sad things happen. But because of Christmas, we must not despair.
Now I'd like to move on to another interesting thing in this section of Matthew-- the many parallels to Moses' early life. Jesus and Moses are both in Egypt, both protected from evil powers. There are places where the Greek wording is the same as in the LXX (Greek translation) of Exodus. Thus, Jesus is a prophet like Moses, as was promised. Again, God fulfills his promise. Another fascinating book on the Bible I was reading entitled The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel explains that Moses' early childhood illustrates a biblical tendency to intertwine home and exile, to obscure any simple answer to the question of where the character in question is from. I think this OT tendency paves the way for eschatology. Jesus isn't really from anywhere-- not truly from Bethlehem, nor Egypt nor Nazareth, spending his years of ministry wandering Israel-- but from God. 
I remember meeting the principal of the elementary school where I went to third grade while enrolling in late August with my parents. Unfortunately, he asked, "Where are you from?" I froze, stared at my shoes, and said nothing. Later, my mom told me I could have just said I was born in California, but that didn't seem to cover all my bases. Moses and Jesus would have the same problem. Transiency, rootlessness, a spiritual homelessness...these feelings occasionally tug on the hearts of even the lucky souls who lived their whole life in the same county. These feelings are part of being human on our unredeemed earth. They remind us that we are not home; our home is with God, just like Jesus.
It is said of Jesus, "He shall be a Nazorean." This refers to more than simply Nazareth. A Nazaritie in the OT was a person who was specially dedicated to God from birth, and as a symbol of this commitment could not drink alcohol or get a haircut. Hence Jesus, too, is specially dedicated to God. Matthew helpfully uses a category of reference his Jewish readers knew well yet was still ancient and slightly exotic-- this Nazarite vow-- to highlight Jesus' special relationship to God. That's a lesson that emerges again and again throughout the Bible: the importance of using contemporary idiom to explain eternal truths. It's something the church today would do well to remember (tough for this traditional worship gal!)
But the phrase can also be traced to Isaiah 11:1, "There will come a shoot from the root of Jesse, and from his roots a branch (Heb: Nazir) will blossom." God has kept his promise to send a Davidic Messiah, and Jesus is the most high, beautiful, important result of that tree. There is something deliciously arrogant about what Matthew is saying here. The centuries of Jewish history are just preparing for Jesus, the ultimate branch out of the tree. I pray for the similar, single-minded conclusion that Jesus is the branch in my life, in the life of the church, that we are just the roots setting the stage for him, our crowning glory and best part. 
Well, there was a lot to be said here. If Christmas cannot speak to these deep questions of language and identity, to the profound sorrow of tiny coffins, it is meaningless. But it can, and does, if only like the magi we are willing to seek and find.