1-2-11, Christmas II: Gospel Matthew 2:12-23; hymns 544, 19/2, 596/1
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
“It came upon the midnight clear” -- you know the hymn? I like it – I think it
has an good melody and a good message – but from seminary on I’ve read
passionate arguments that it’s not a “suitable” hymn at Christmas (or any other
time) because it mentions “sin and strife, suffering, wrong, war, life’s crushing load,
toil, pain” – not “nice” thoughts at Christmas, certainly not in a “feel-good” church.
Well, we’ll sing it here today anyway, but first I want to consider what we
might call the “anti-midnight-clear” mindset. You know that I don’t take my
opinions from The Washington Post, but I’ll take illustrations from wherever I find
them and last Thursday’s op-ed page provided an antithetical-but-matched pair.
Side-by-side on page A-15 were articles by Colman McCarthy on “Why ROTC
shouldn’t be on campus” and by Carl Gershman entitled “No holiday from
tyrants.”
Mr. McCarthy is a Roman Catholic pacifist of the Dorothy Day Catholic
Worker school who “teaches non-violence at four area universities and two high
schools.” He believes that no Christian should study “a way to kill civilians in the
name of Jesus” and that “ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of
a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the idea that nations can kill and
destroy their way to peace.”
Side-by-side next to Mr. McCarthy’s opinions Mr. Gershman cites facts that
tyrannical regimes often wait to perform enormities until Christmastide when
Western government and media members are on holiday, the airwaves are full of
seasonal specials and music, and few people are paying attention to international
events: it was Christmastide in 1979 that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; in
2009 China sentenced Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison; and just
this year Russia postponed sentencing Mikhail Khodorkovsky from December 15
until the 27th; this week Belarus cracked down very hard on anyone protesting its
palpably stolen presidential election; and in Venezuela Hugo Chavez praised
Belarus’s police-state tactics while presenting himself with “decree powers” for the
next 18 months and ordering strict media controls.
Democratic and dictatorial governments seem to have different ways of
observing Jesus’ Nativity, we by taking time off and they by working harder than
ever. I’m not clear how Mr. McCarthy proposes to deal with the sort of actions his
page-mate Mr. Gershman enumerates. I realize that many people agree with
whoever edited The Diary of Anne Frank that “I believe that everyone is good at
heart,” making the Rodney King plea, “Can’t we all just get along?” But, as
Chamberlain found after Munich and well-meaning diplomats continually rediscover to their astonishment, there are situations in which ‘further discussions’
won’t bring peace – the idea that everything can we worked out between people of
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good will, depends on the inaccurate presumption that everyone is “of good will.” As
with Hitler, sometimes only raw force, military force, can defeat Evil, because Evil
knows only power and therefore will not and can-not respond except to power.
Diplomacy can be effective only if it’s complemented by willingness to take action if
prevention fails.
Why do we Christians need to know that Evil exists? Because until we do, we
can’t recognize it as qualitatively different from ‘bad behavior’ and until we do that
we can’t deal with it effectively and accept our need for God to help us.
What’s this got to do with Christmas? Quite a bit, as the Gospel we just
heard spells out in Matthew 2 verses 12-23. On Christmas God’s power comes into
this world as the weakest of humans, an infant baby – and God’s Power is
immediately discerned as a threat to the power of worldly Evil epitomized in King
Herod – correctly perceived as a threat, because the good of God is a threat to all
that is evil.
Now, I’ve just used abstract words like “good” and “evil” because we’ve
learnt many of our thinking habits and vocabulary from pagan Greek philosophers
who (being teachers) thought that teaching was the answer, taught that better
education would solve all humanity’s problems – concerning which I accept Bill
Raspberry’s dictum, that “Education is the answer only to the extent that ignorance
is the problem.” The Bible, however, is not a philosophical treatise but history and
holy revelation – the Bible is concrete, not abstract. The Bible knows nothing of our
‘intellectual’ questions as to the ‘origin’ of Evil – from first to last, from the serpent
in the Garden of Eden right through to the false prophet and the AntiChrist and the
beast from the sea at the end of the Book of the Revelation to Saint John, the Bible
deals with the fact of Evil without theorizing about the “Why?” of it, much less our
modern debates on “Whether it exists?” The Bible is existential in the best sense,
fact-based: Evil exists, period, and we know it in practice even if we deny it in
theory.
Evil at Christmastime? Certainly. The historic Church knows much more
than the church-of-what’s-happening-now: evidence? From ancient times the
Church kalendar has bracketed Christmas with doubt, distress, and death – just
before Christmas the 25th comes the 21st and Doubting Thomas – the 26th, the day
immediately after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day remembers the first martyr to die
for being a Christian – two days later, on the 28th, King Herod’s butchery of every
male in Bethlehem under two years old trying to kill the infant Jesus – precipitating
the Flight into Egypt, Joseph and Mary homeless refugees, displaced persons,
spiriting Jesus to safety, saving the Saviour of this world from the duly-constituted
authorities carrying out the Evil of this world. The very word ‘saviour’ means that
there’s something from which to be saved – right?
Evil at Christmastime? You bet – any time – read the Book! Authentic
Christianity teaches, not that there is no such thing as objective Evil with which we
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can make peace, but that despite and in the midst of the reality of Evil, God is going
to win. The glory of Christian Faith is that despite the very real existence of Evil,
and the very worst it can do, the good of God will triumph – and you and I, flawed
as we are, can follow in His train, can serve His purposes. Remember that as we
sing It came upon the midnight clear, facing the facts In the Name of…..
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