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Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas – January 3, 2009
Hodan Mawlid is an eighteen year old woman with a beaming smile that shines like a beacon through her black headdress. She has spent almost all of her life in a dusty and desolate refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia, born there after her parents crossed from neighboring Somalia in 1991, fleeing the chaos that followed the collapse of the government. They were among more than 600,000 people who fled into Ethiopia and sought safety in one of eight refugee camps.
“I have led a very painful life,” Hodan told a visitor from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, or UNHCR. “But I always find solace in my belief that the best way to prevail over the cruelties and ills of the past is to forget them altogether and start all over again.”
She’s going to get her chance to live out this resolution. In September of 2009, Hodan came to live in the United States. Her youthful, positive attitude should come in handy as she faces the challenges of carving out a new life in an alien land and culture.
Hodan was among a group of 23 particularly vulnerable Somali refugees, including her uncle and his family, who were accepted by the U.S. under a UN organized resettlement program and flown to Denver, Colorado; hard to imagine a location more unlike that of Somalia, is it? They cannot return home now, nor do they even wish to any time soon, because they come from the volatile southern area of Somalia where people continue to flee their homes to escape conflict.
Before leaving Ethiopia, Hodan said she knew there would be tough times ahead, especially at the outset as she struggles to learn English. But she’s had a lifetime of preparation for tough times. “I’ve known suffering all my life,” she said. “Compared with what I’ve endured, language and cultural barriers will be nothing to worry about.”
It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Growing up, when Hodan was old enough to ask about her parents, her uncle, who took care of her in the camp, told her that her mother had died as a refugee when Hodan was four years old and that her father returned to Somalia some months later and was never heard from again.
This news was a devastating blow to the young woman, especially as she had no siblings to share her grief and provide comfort. Her uncle and aunt and their children became her surrogate family, but Hodan had to drop out of school after the fourth grade and work as a housemaid in a nearby town to supplement the family’s monthly food rations.
The Somalis still living in refugee camps in eastern Ethiopia are caught in an ongoing exile for which no end is in sight. In an effort to help the situation, the United States government has agreed to receive thousands of Somali’s for resettlement.
And yet so many thousands upon thousands remain. In 2008, the last year such statistics were compiled, nearly 25 million people – 10.5 million refugees and 14.4 million IDPs, or internally displaced persons – were receiving assistance from the UN High Commission for Refugees. Women and girls constitute 47 percent of refugees and asylum seekers and half of all IDPs. Forty-four percent of refugees and asylum seekers are children below 18 years of age.
“A voice was heard in Ramah,” quotes Luke from Jeremiah in a section of the Gospel deleted for some unaccountable reason from the lectionary reading for today. “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
Do you know the story of Rachel? Because Jacob loved her more than Leah, the sister he did not want to marry, God closed Rachel’s womb, says Genesis, while Leah bore many sons. Eventually, Rachel confronted God and Jacob demanding, “Give me children or I’ll die!” When she finally bore Jacob a son, she named him Joseph, which means “Let there be another.”
When Rachel was about to give birth a second time, the family was in transit and something went wrong. Rachel died in childbirth, the only woman to do so in the entire Bible. With her last breath, she named the baby Benoni, “Son of my sorrow.” This name was too much for Jacob, so he renamed the boy Benjamin, “Son of my right hand,” which made the father feel better but effectively silenced the mother’s voice.
For a thousand years Rachel lay in silence in a makeshift tomb along the roadside near Bethlehem. Then, one day, the prophet Jeremiah was watching as Babylonian soldiers marched the people of Israel, Rachel’s children, along the same road to exile far, far away. Seeking company to his sorrow over this sight, the prophet called on the mother lying in her tomb and Rachel’s voice was heard again.
All well and good, but who wants to hear this sorrowful voice at Christmas time? We’ve still got the sounds of “unto us a child is born” and “Joy to the World” echoing in our heads and we have to hear about weeping and loud lamentation? We’re basking in the glow of generosity and piety, feeling righteous about the gifts we’ve given and cozy about our prayers for peace on earth when, like a blast of the frigid air we’re experiencing this weekend, we’re brought back to the shivering reality that we live in a world in which mothers grieve and children die. We still live in a world in which fathers and uncles hear the words that the angel of the Lord told Joseph, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee…for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”
Perhaps in a desire to prolong the Christmas spirit, the event that follows – known variously as the massacre of the innocents or the massacre of the infants – is deleted from the lectionary reading. Matthew says, “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under…”
Now, at the time, it is estimated that Bethlehem was a town of about 1,000 people and probably contained, at most, 20 male infants. A number which, while scary enough, especially for the children’s parents, only grew larger over time; later legends expanded the number of infants killed to 14,000 in the Byzantine liturgy and 64,000 in the Syrian calendar of saints. Some say that the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation as “standing with the lamb” and being “blameless” represent those slaughtered by Herod.
No one knows for sure how many were killed; in fact, there is considerable evidence that such a mass killing, no matter what the number of victims, never occurred at all, perhaps accounting for its omission from our reading for today.
There are no other records of such a massacre occurring; no other writing in the New Testament mentions it. While the Roman historian Josephus tells us that Herod ordered the execution of three of his sons, he says nothing about the Bethlehem killings. Although, ordering such an outrage was something that Herod certainly could have done. Indeed, stories of kings feeling their power threatened who seek to kill possible usurpers were quite common back then, in Greek and Roman mythologies as well as in Babylonian and Egyptian folklore. In the Old Testament, remember, Pharaoh ordered all the boys born to the Hebrews to be throne into the Nile, leading to Moses’ being placed in a basket and floated down river.
Possibly Matthew wants to make a point of connecting Moses and Jesus, just as he, rather loosely, connects the Israelites’ flight from Egypt with the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. Whatever the case, Matthew could have taken such a story of outraged kings reeking havoc and incorporated it into his account of Jesus’ early life.
In his two volume opus, “The Birth of the Messiah,” the late Father Raymond Brown, considered the pre-eminent New Testament scholar of the last generation, says this: “There are serious reasons for thinking that the flight into Egypt and the massacre at Bethlehem may not be historical. Yet, at the same time…a story of a massacre, based on the Pharaoh’s massacre of the male children in Egypt, could plausibly be attributed to Herod, especially amid the horrors of the last years of his life.”
Father Brown then outlines those horrors: “To ensure mourning at his funeral, Herod wanted his soldiers instructed to kill notable political prisoners upon the news of his death. His goal was expressed thus: ‘So shall all Judea and every household weep for me, whether they wish it or not.’” In that remark, says Father Brown, we can understand Matthew’s use of Rachel’s lament over her children. As for the flight into Egypt, he says, “Egypt was the standard place of refuge for those fleeing the tyranny of kings in Palestine.” All in all, Brown concludes, “Matthew’s story would not be fantastic to the reader who knew the history of (King Herod’s) time.”
Unfortunately, it does not sound fantastic to us, either, does it? For, whether it happened or not at that particular place and time, the fact is that such events have happened, are happening, and, alas, will continue to happen.
Rachel’s voice is still heard but so is the voice of another young woman, the one I started out with, named Hodan, one who, on faith, is venturing far from her home, guided by the promise of a new life, free of pain, fear and tears. Such a life was also promised to Rachel.
After Jeremiah speaks of this young mother refusing to be comforted because her children are no more, the next verse reads, “Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears…there is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.”
Why this voice of comfort coming so closely on the sound of sorrow? Some rabbis said that God called Abraham and Moses to share in his weeping over his children but they refused; only Rachel would share in the divine grief, prompting the promise of hope.
Later some taught that when the Messiah came, only one place on earth would be suitable for his coronation, not a high mountain like Zion, but a lonely place on the road where Rachel lies in the dry, dusty ground. “To mother Rachel he will bring glad tidings. And he will comfort her,” says the Zohar, a collection of commentaries on the Torah used by Jewish mystics. “And now she will let herself be comforted.”
Yes, despite the fact that life after Christmas does not seem all that sweet, there are still tidings of comfort and joy to be found. Despite the fact that those in power still seek to exploit the weakest among us, we find our home, our promise, and our peace in the one who had nowhere to lay his head but whose kingdom will have the final word; the one who will reign forever and ever.