The Holy Innocents

Traditionally on this fourth day of Christmas the church has remembered the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem, which Matthew's Gospel reports after the story of the visit of the Magi:

After they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Get up! Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt. He stayed there until Herod’s death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I called my Son.

Then Herod, when he realised that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage. He gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men. Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;
and she refused to be consoled,
because they are no more.

I find this one of the most disturbing episodes in Holy Scripture.  Of course, the content is horrific - mass murder of babies and toddlers, driven by the king's paranoia and malice.  But it isn't just the content but the context.  This is the Christmas story, the story of the nativity of Christ.  It's a story full of light dawning, of salvation coming.  And yet right in the middle of the story is this darkest of episodes.

The way Matthew tells the story is striking.  The main perspective, if you like, tells the story of the deliverance of the infant Jesus from Herod's power.  It is primarily the story of God driving his salvific purpose despite the opposition of the wicked.  The flight into Egypt recalls the patriarchs journey to the same country - in their case not to escape persecution but to survive famine.  The main perspective is the thwarting of Herod's evil plan by God's providential care.  It's a story of the light continuing to shine against a terribly dark background.

But the citation from the prophet Jeremiah initially invites us to take a second perspective: that of the bereaved mothers of Bethlehem.  Herod's plan to murder the Christ is thwarted, but his malice is instead spent on unrelated children.  Taking this perspective is disturbing on two counts: firstly, could not the God who warned Joseph to flee also have preserved these other children? and second, was it not God's own salvation plan which led to this act of mass murder?  The text does not invite us to blame the evil on God, for it was Herod's sin which led to the massacre.  But if the Christ had not entered the world in Bethlehem, wouldn't the children have been safe from Herod?  They seem to have been collateral damage in the great war in the heavenlies, and that hardly seems acceptable.   I am reminded of Kirkegaard's question about Abraham: wouldn't it have been better for him not to be the chosen?  Would it not have been better for the little town of Bethlehem if the Christ had not been there?

The context of the Jeremiah quote points to a third perspective, to my mind even more challenging.  In its original setting, the first reference of this prophecy is to those bereaved by the catastrophe of the exile from Judah; and Jeremiah, on behalf of the Lord, promises comfort.  God's love for his children is still there, despite all appearance.  Indeed, the very exile is shown to be the work of his love, his discipline.  He will have a people for himself.  The best thing for them - the only true good - is to belong exclusively to him, and he will make it so, and in so doing he will turn their lament into joy.  Matthew, then, invites us to step back.  At the centre is the story of Christ, rescued and preserved.  On the periphery is the terrible story of the massacre and the suffering of Bethlehem.  But in the widest perspective, is there hope in the story?  Are we to see comfort for this grieving?  If so, for Matthew that comfort will come through the preserved child.

And here we perhaps hear another echo.  Long ago, another Joseph had been driven into Egypt by persecution.  And in time, that Joseph was able to say that although there had been evil intent on the part of the human actors, God had intended good through the evil.  We are invited, then, to see God's providence in the dark as well as the light in the story.  Not equally, not in the same way; not so that Herod is in any way absolved, not so that grief stops being grievous.  But that somehow, through this infant, even the evil will be turned to good and the darkness overwhelmed by the light.

Hope, despite everything

I've copied below a long paragraph from Church Dogmatics IV/3, on the subject of hope.  The wider context is the doctrine of reconciliation as that relates to Christ's role specifically as Prophet and therefore the one who bears witness to himself and brings his people to faith in him (and incidentally, it seems to me that in comparison with the roles of Priest and King, this part of Christ's triple office is typically neglected; it gets a brief paragraph in Letham's Systematic Theology, for example, compared to chapters on the priestly and kingly roles).  The narrower context is the work of the Spirit in awakening the church and the individual Christian to hope.  And the immediate context is the three great challenges to hope: firstly, that the Christian finds him- or herself outnumbered and the message of Christ sidelined in the world; second, that the Christian is confronted continually by his or her own continuing sinfulness, which stands in contradiction of the great hope; and third, that the Christian still awaits Christ's judgement, and so cannot pronounce on the righteousness or the fruit of his or her labours.  This paragraph addresses the first challenge.  I've broken it up and added some commentary.  If you want to read the context, you'll find this paragraph on pages 917-919.

What is hope, and what does it mean for the Christian who, since Jesus Christ has not yet spoken His universal, generally perceptible and conclusive Word, finds himself in that dwindling and almost hopeless minority as His witness to the rest of the world?

Barth is clear that Christ has spoken, but he has not yet spoken in such a way that everyone will hear; that awaits the final coming of Christ.  In the meantime, how is the Christian who looks around the world and finds himself, as someone who has heard that word of Christ, in a minority to maintain his hope?  What does gospel hope mean for the Christian in a world where that hope seems to reach so few?

If the great Constantinian delusion is now being shattered, the question becomes the more insistent, though it has always been felt by perspicacious Christians.  What can a few Christians or a pathetic group like the Christian community really accomplish with their scattered witness to Jesus Christ?  What do these men really imagine or expect to accomplish in the great market, on the battle-field or in the great mad-house which human life always seems to be?  "Who hath believed our report?  and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" (Is. 53:1).

'The great Constantinian delusion' is the dream of a church triumphant in this world; of the normalisation of Christian faith as the pattern of this age.  If it was being shattered when Barth was writing this in the 1950s, it is well and truly gone now.  Christendom is in the past.  And yet, even at the height of Christendom, when it seemed the world was, or would shortly become, wholly Christian, there were those 'perspicacious Christians' who saw that all was not well - the reformers of the church, who regularly saw themselves as in a minority even though they were surrounded by professing Christians.  The point that Barth is making is that the church is, generally speaking, small and weak - too small to compete in the marketplace of ideas, too weak to triumph on the ideological battlegrounds, too insignificant to make much of a difference to the madness of the world.  That this was also the experience of the prophets and apostles (as shown by Barth's quotation from Isaiah) may not make us feel much better.

And what are we to say concerning the countless multitudes who either ante or post Christum natum have had no opportunity to hear this witness?

Perhaps the most acute form of this problem: how is gospel hope to be maintained for the world when so many have never heard of him - and many of those came and passed before his nativity?

Hic Rhodus, hic salta!  The Christian is merely burying his head in the sand if he is not disturbed by these questions and does not find his whole ministry of witness challenged by them.  He buries it even more deeply if in order to escape them, forgetting that he can be a Christian at all only as a witness of Jesus Christ, he tries to retreat into his own faith and love or those of his fellow Christians.  Nor is there any sense in trying to leap over this barrier with the confident mien of a Christian world conqueror.

Three useless responses to the problem: firstly, to pretend that is isn't there, to ignore the questions - a useless response, and a damaging one, because it exposes the Christian's hope to ridicule; second, to retreat into pietism, of an individualistic or a communitarian sort - a response which denies the Christian's character as a witness, and which smacks more of self-interest and self-preservation than hope; and third, to continue to imagine a revived Constantinianism, perhaps in a very different form, in which the church triumphant will indeed be seen in this life, to be a world-changer, a history-maker - a response which perhaps appeals to self-confidence or youthful exuberance, but which I would guess is often actually founded on insecurity rather than gospel hope, and a sense that we have to do Christ's work for him.

The meaningful thing which he is permitted and commanded and liberated to do in face of it is as a Christian, and therefore unambiguously and unfalteringly, to hope, i.e., in face of what seems by human reckoning to be an unreachable majority to count upon it quite unconditionally that Jesus Christ has risen for each and every one of this majority too; that His Word as the Word of reconciliation enacted in Him is spoken for them as it is spoken personally and quite undeservedly for him; that in Him all were and are objectively intended and addressed whether or not they have heard or will hear it in the course of history and prior to its end and goal; that the same Holy Spirit who has been incomprehensibly strong enough to enlighten his own dark heart will perhaps one day find a little less trouble with them; and decisively that when the day of the coming of Jesus Christ in consummating revelation does at last dawn it will quite definitely be that day when, not he himself, but the One whom he expects as a Christian, will know how to reach them, so that the quick and the dead, those who came and went both ante and post Christum, will hear His voice, whatever its significance for them (Jn. 5:25).

The detail of this sentence will not, of course, be acceptable to those who are committed to the doctrine of limited atonement, which is a shame for them; but the thrust of it is I hope broadly appealing.  Christ has spoken his word; astonishingly, by the power of the Spirit that word has reached even me; there is nobody who is therefore beyond the reach of this word, even in the passage of time and history in which we see such a small minority receive it; at the end of history Christ will speak his word in such a way that all will hear his voice 'whatever its significance for them' - and the context of Barth's reference to John's Gospel makes it clear we cannot prejudge what that significance will be.  I am reminded of the scene in The Last Battle when everyone comes face to face with Aslan, to head off to his left or right.  There is no need for anxiety about the progress of Christ's word; indeed, anxiety is ruled out by gospel hope.

This is what Christian hope means before that insurmountable barrier.  This is what the Christian hopes for in face of the puzzle which it presents.  But the Christian has not merely to hope.  He has really to show that he is a man who is liberated and summoned, as to faith and love, so also to hope.  And if he really hopes as he can and should as a Christian, he will not let his hands fall and simply wait in idleness for what God will finally do, neglecting his witness to Christ.  On the contrary, strengthened and encouraged by the thought of what God will finally do, he will take up his ministry on this side of the frontier.  He will thus not allow himself to be disturbed by questions of minorities or majorities, of success or failure, of the more probable or more likely improbable progress of Christianity in the world.  As a witness of Jesus Christ, he will simply do - and no more is required, though this is indeed required - that which he can do to proclaim the Gospel in his own age and place and circle, doing it with humility and good temper, but also with the resoluteness which corresponds to the great certainty of his hope in Jesus Christ.

To hope in this Christian sense is not a passive thing; it is not like hoping a bus will come along, just sitting and waiting for an event beyond one's control.  Rather, it is living as one called to hope.  Knowing that God has taken care of the end result, knowing that there is reason for absolute confidence - the Christian will bear witness to Christ.  Whether in the minority or majority, whether strong or weak, he will just do what can do in the place he is put; and all he can do is live and speak as a witness.  The humility in which this is to be done springs from the fact that nothing ultimately depends on his work as a witness, but everything rests on the One to whom he bears witness.

Safety, knowledge, faith

Sometimes you come across disagreements that seem to be totally intractable, things where the differences are so great that it seems almost impossible to discuss the issue.  Sometimes this is because we are emotionally invested in particular positions; sometimes, I think the disagreements cannot be overcome because we are not talking within the same epistemological structure.

For example, where Christian views of truth - which have of course been predominant in the West from late antiquity to the mid-twentieth century - think from the top down, beginning with God at the top and proceeding downwards via the concept of revelation, contemporary Western culture tend to think upwards, starting with the safety of the individual, and putting that at the centre of the epistemological world.  Whereas for the Christian view (which has its antecedents in, for example, Plato) there is inherent value in truth, a value which stands irrespective of the human effects of truth, for our culture certain opinions ought not to be held, certain beliefs are automatically invalidated, because they are considered to be harmful to the individual or society.

For Christians who are used to thinking primarily in terms of truth, real truth - what Schaeffer called 'true truth' - this can all be very disorienting, and can even appear so ridiculous as to be worthy only of mockery.  Truth, we know, does not bend to the individual; reality will not shift to make us comfortable.  But it really isn't ridiculous.  It is a move that is more or less required by the loss of faith in God.

If you don't believe in the Christian God, it takes immense courage to pursue truth, and it is not clear that it even makes sense to do so.

Christians have often tried to make the case that without the existence of God the very concept of truth is hard to maintain.  I agree with that, but it's not the point I'm making here.  What I'm saying here is that without the love of God, it probably doesn't make sense to pursue truth at all.  Because the Christian knows that God is love - and the Christian knows what that love means, because it has been demonstrated at the cross of Christ - it is possible to approach reality with a confidence that what is true is also good.  Truth may be hard to take; the truth may hurt me in many ways.  But I can be sure that ultimately the truth is good for me, because the Person who defines truth and creates reality is my Heavenly Father, the God of love.  Therefore the Christian can pursue the truth, with the knowledge that nothing ultimately harmful to me lies there.  I can be safe in the pursuit of the truth, not because every truth that I find will be comfortable, or because there will be no pain in the truth, but because behind every fragment of truth stands The Truth personified - Jesus Christ, the revelation of the love of the Father.

Now take away faith.  There is no reason to believe that truth and reality are good; there is no reason to believe that there is safety in the truth.  It may be that you nonetheless conclude that you want to know the truth.  You may decide to face the potentially very bleak reality.  But why?  What is the value of so doing?  In an atheistic world, what is at stake in pursuing the truth - why is it better to know than not to know?  If knowing the truth is harmful - and we have no reason whatsoever to believe that it will not be - why should we want it?  Shouldn't we value human comfort and safety, which are real, concrete things, which make life more bearable, over the abstract value of truth?

It is only the Christian, who knows that truth is not abstract but personal, who can therefore trust that truth is good, that Truth and Love are essentially the same - the same Person.  Out of this faith can come a genuine pursuit of the truth, in the confidence that however hard the truth is, we are ultimately safe with God.

Who was, and is, and is to come

 God describes himself in Revelation as the one who was, and is, and is to come.  There are all sorts of things that could be unpacked out of this (about God's relationship with time, about the nature of eternity, etc.) but I have been thinking this morning about the importance for the Christian life of keeping these three dimensions in mind.

If we forget that God is the one who was, we will tend to lose touch with the objective, once-for-all, foundational works of God.  This is a particular danger in our culture, which lives very much in the present (and perhaps to an extent in the future) but tends to regard the past as dead.  For the Christian, the past lives - because the God who was also is.  Moreover, the past - unlike, in our human experience at least, the present and the future - has a fixed character, a decided shape.  (This is true despite whatever attempts at revisionist historiography we might make; revisionism only appeals because it claims to account for more of the actual shape of things, to incorporate more of the evidence).  As against the subjective moment of the now, and the necessarily somewhat imaginative view of the future, the past is laid down.  It is therefore a solid rock for our faith.

If we neglect that God is the one who is, there is a real danger of a sort of functional deism.  We will live as if God wound up the universe, and perhaps also the church, and then left it to run.  We will tend to forget that Christ is presently reigning, that God is presently active.  Our worship will become all about remembering, rather than receiving.  We will typically not expect much now from God.  We may well neglect prayer, particularly that important prayer in the NT for the giving of the Spirit in greater measure.  We will tend not to pick up on those little signs of the kingdom , the shoots of grace growing in a generally barren world.

If we neglect that God is the one who is to come, it is likely that we will over-invest in the present.  That may look like settled, comfortable, compromised Christianity, which replaces the future hope of the kingdom with a paid off mortgage and foreign holidays.  But it may also look very zealous, a life lived in expectation that the kingdom of God can be ushered in by our efforts, prayers, whatever.  If the former, there is a real danger that - when it comes to the crunch point of realising we cannot serve two masters - we will choose to serve comfort.  If the latter, there is a real danger that we will be disappointed, perhaps disappointed enough to abandon the life of faith.

Is it pressing things too much to align those three great aspects of Christian discipleship - faith, love, and hope - with these three temporal dimensions?  To think of faith based on who God has shown himself to be in the past; of love as driving communion with God in the present; and of hope as reaching out for his future coming?  Of course they don't map on perfectly, but it seems to me there might be something there.

The key thing - and it is perhaps the main point of the biblical use of these descriptions - is that he is the same God.  The God of the past, of creation and of incarnation, is God in the present, and it is the same God we await in the future.  He is himself, perfectly himself, at all times.  He has not changed, nor will he.  Whether we look back, or up, or ahead - there he is.  Great is his faithfulness.