Holy Innocents and the Lutheran Book of Worship

Schmidt, Gail Ramshaw

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 8 | Issue 4 Article 310-1-1982The Word in the worldGail Ramshaw SchmidtFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationSchmidt, Gail Ramshaw (1982) "The Word in the world," Consensus: Vol. 8 : Iss. 4 , Article 3.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol8/iss4/3THE WORD IN THE WORLDGail Ramshaw SchmidtI wish to approach the topic of “The Word in the World,” by talking aboutsomething seldom pondered by most of us: the slaughter of the innocents.I recently visited the town of Siena in Italy. While it is hardly my favourite city, itsworst feature in my view is in Siena cathedral. Indeed, one reason to visit thecathedral is to get a sense of how brutal and wretched European life was in the middleages. For at the cathedral one still sees the construction site stopped midway. Thewalls were meant to double the Duomo’s size, but then the Black Plague struck andSiena was decimated. The walls stand there abandoned, a kind of mammoth tomb-stone to the thousands killed by the plague. Inside the cathedral are more signs ofdeath, great mosaic floor tiles depicting Old Testament battles—though of course thesoldiers’ dress and weapons are period to the cathedral itself. It looks as if the part ofthe bible which was known best was its warfare. And there, nearby the pulpit, is ascene in floor tiles, perhaps six by ten meters in size, a depiction of the slaughter ofthe innocents. Herod is enthroned, ordering a dozen medieval soldiers to their task;fifteen women wail, contorted in their sorrow, already twelve babies lie dead underthe soldiers’ feet, and several more are being tossed on swords’ edge, being eternallykilled there on the floor tile of the Siena cathedral.Why? Why would anyone dedicate in their church such a grotesque depiction of2324 Consensussuch a wretched story? And of course the Siena floor tile is not the only piece ofmedieval art in which the children are being slaughtered. In the Cloisters in New YorkCity there is a set of wood panels, carvings from a fourteenth century abbeychurch—perhaps the wainscotting in the choir—and there too is a slaughter of the in-nocents: two cruel soldiers’ faces, the baby dead in the air. Not only art, but alsopoetry seemed intrigued by this story. In a poem from the Byzantine liturgy, thenumber of dead infants has escalated to 14,000, the grim tale growing in horror. TheOxford Book of Carols boasts seven carols specific to this day.Let us recall the story, told by Matthew (2:16-18), after he says that the wise mentraveled for miles to adore the child:Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men,was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children inBethlehem and in all that region who were two years or under, ac-cording to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:“A voice was heard in Ramah,wailing and loud lamentation,Rachel weeping for her children;she refused to be consoled,because they were no more.”On these few verses rest the grotesque art which leaves us wondering. However,these verses give us not only a history of art, but also a contemporary liturgical obser-vance, indeed, a “lesser festival,” as the Lutheran Book of Worship calls it, onDecember 28. In the years 1986 and 1997 December 28 will fall on a Sunday, andthe lessons of the slaughter of the innocents will be read throughout Christendom.Choirs will sing the Coventry Carol, of “Herod the King in his raging.” So close uponour cultural oogling over the infant in the manger comes this story of screaming in-fants and wailing parents. We call these children martyrs, those killed for the sake ofChrist. We dress in red, not for bows and Christmas berries, but for flowing blood,and remember the death of the infants near to the life of the newborn Jesus.Why? Why the Siena floor tile? Why this observance in the Lutheran Book of Wor-ship and its proximity to Christmas? A few years back several articles in the LutheranForum discussed this festival, and those who object to the observance have somepersuasive arguments. Ought we celebrate such brutality? How can we makq afestival out of the murder of children? How, four years hence, can we commemoratethe slaughter with Christmas trees still up?There is the further question of historical accuracy. Some biblical interpreters pro-vide ample discussion of the difficulties in this story and make us question whether iteven ever happened. How can we jive Luke’s history with Matthew’s? What is ourcontinuing debt to old stories we no longer wish to believe? Even Raymond E.Brown, in his massive study The Birth of the Messiah,^ who tries valiantly to give thestory both historical credulity and religious meaning, admits that in Bethlehem and itsenvirons there were at most twenty boy children, twenty at very most.Let us leave this question for a few moments to talk about something else. I would1. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1977).The Word m the World 25like to tell you now about a new novel by D.M. Thomas entitled The White Hotel.^Last year D.M. Thomas, a little known British poet, published a novel which bothas hardback and this year as paperback was a bestseller in the States for months. Thereading public devoured the book, and literary critics as well raved about the qualityof the writing. The novel is about a twentieth century woman named Elizabeth Erd-man who in 1919 sought psychiatric assistance from Sigmund Freud to deal with hersevere neurotic symptoms. The book begins with records of her wild sexual fantasies,but always her ecstasy is held parallel to the horrendous suffering of those aroundher. We then read Freud’s diagnosis. Not surprisingly, he analyzes her neurosis asrelated to her parents’ sexual problems, but even he admits that his theory cannotprobe the deepest level of Elizabeth’s suffering.The novel goes on. In 1929 Elizabeth, much improved, meets and marries anolder Jewish man. She has a new light on her past, for, devout Catholic that she is,she suspects that she is really half Jewish. Her suffering is then placed in the broadercontext of global anti-Semitism. But she becomes a loyal wife and mother in theJewish quarter of Kiev.But the novel goes on. Kiev in the 1930s was no place for a Jew to live. Elizabethfinally joins the rest of Kiev’s Jews, herded towards the ravine, machine-gunned intoa mass grave at Babi Yar. She could have saved herself, with that crucifix around herneck, but she chose to stand by her Jewish stepson. She dies at Babi Yar, reciting theAve Maria.But the novel does not conclude with the Nazi soldier raping this old woman with abayonet. There is a final chapter—wonder of wonders!—the Jews really did take thetrain to Palestine! Elizabeth and all of Europe’s Jews are in a refugee camp styledParadise, where spayed cats give birth, but where human beings still bear their earthlywounds.This novel is a picture of this century: our obsession with the meaning of sex; ourfocus on the individual neurotic; our interest in cultural roots; our struggle with familysystems; our history of anti-Semitism; our recognition of global evil; the fact ofgenocide; our partial images of the resurrection. This book of death and life is wellworth reading.This novel talks about the world. The truth of this novel describes individual,familial, social, and global agony. Our word “agony” comes from the Greek wordagon, meaning struggle. No matter how effectively Elizabeth can conquer one strug-gle, another harder one is forthcoming. We too turn from private pain only to en-counter familial and social and global agony.The question for the liturgy is how to offer that pain to God. How can we make theliturgy open to such pain as Elizabeth knew? Ten years ago we tried by writing newliturgies filled with versicles about Viet Nam and responses about world hunger. Mostof these liturgies are now lost in file cabinets, for the language we wrote was simplynot accurate enough, not deep enough to bear the weight, not open enough to in-dividual suffering. We wrote labored confessions of sins in which we confessedeverything from nuclear stockpiling to migrant worker oppression. We prayed in-2. D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel (New York: Viking, 1981).26 Consensustercessions that were really “smartass prayers,” in which we told God in careful detailhow to solve all the problems of the world. It was not wrong so to do. But it fell farshort.Lutherans have another way in which death enters their liturgy. We, people of thetheology of the cross, are fluent with imagery of death. We mourn the wounds ofChrist or the wounded world and then, by changing our tone of voice, proclaim thatthe cross is different, death made into life. This is familiar talk to us, but how convinc-ing is it to the world? We must examine whether our use of the theology of the cross issomething other than maudlin meditation on the passion or revelries on death.The question stays with us. Can the liturgy in the Lutheran Book of Worship carrythe weight of the world? How can the ancient words and the classic texts and thehistoric festivals offer to God the terror of our hearts in this age ?We come to the other word in our title, “Word”. We Lutherans know that “Word”never means merely words, not even the good words about forgiveness, the words ofthe liturgy spoken responsively, or the words of the gospel faithfully proclaimed. Weget our use of “Word” from John’s gospel. The Word is not words, but Christ. It is notthat the liturgy of the Lutheran Book of Worship bears the world on its shoulders, butthat Christ does, and has, and will. If it is our conviction that the Word in the world isChrist, then our liturgy must proclaim that Christ is in the world. Let us look at severalfamiliar parts of our liturgy, examining their images, to find the Word in the world.“The sign of the cross may be made.” So we begin. This is no petty gesture, plac-ing ourselves under the sign of Christ’s cross, donning that death, recalling that livingwater. It is a more radical gesture than kneeling, which all religions prescribe; moresurprising than the kiss of peace, a cultural tradition turned Christian. No. The sign ofthe cross is an act of faith in the horror and the glory of Christ’s cross. The cross saysboth holocaust and paradise. It says, in this sign I conquer: I die in the water and riseto dance. This is no small thing. It is Christ dying and alive, the word in the world.We sing the Gloria, an exuberant hymn of praise. But here too the song hears thewretched cry of the world. The call of the angels, “Glory to God!”, greets theshepherds, the poor of an oppressed land, begging for a Messiah. Some lines furtherwe sing another Kyrie: Lamb of God, slain for our safety, your blood on our door,have mercy on us. We are only lowly petitioners before the divine throne. We thencall Christ the “Holy One.” Remember who also did that? The demoniac, the mad-man looked at Jesus and named him the Holy One of God. So in the Gloria we keepmotley company: magnificent angels, grubby shepherds, terrified Hebrews, lowlypetitioners, screaming wildmen. With them all we praise Christ, the word of Godalive in such a world as this, for such people as this.Then there are the intercessory prayers. It seems that if we really believed in the ef-ficacy of prayer, we would spend a good deal longer praying. And we need not feelrequired to tell God the way to solve the world’s problems. We need only to hold iipbefore God the wretched of the world and to plead for God’s grace. We can be farmore inclusive than we usually are. D.M. Thomas’ novel would remind us to pray fortormented and lonely people; for wretched family situations; for ghetto people andfor refugees; for those who are persecuted; for those who today will die. Look onthem, O God, with tearful eyes, and grant your grace to all.We come then to the eucharistic prayer. My favorite in the Lutheran Book of Wor-The Word in the World 27ship is the translation of the Hippolytus prayer, written in the second century. “He isyour Word,” we pray with the ancient Hippolytus. “It is he,” we acclaim, who inorder to destroy death, to break the bonds of the evil one, to crush hell underfoot, togive light to the righteous, taking bread and giving thanks, said. Take and eat. Notehow this grand sentence says “the Word in the world.” Christ said take and eat, andso destroyed death and crushed hell. The life of eating and the death of Christ areheld together, even in one sentence, the Word in the world, the bread of life sharedin the face of death.Finally let us return to our beginning, to the festival of the holy innocents. Hereagain is the Word in the world, the birth of God next to the slaughter of theBethlehem children. Christmas is, after all, not about Santa Claus, but about God’shearing the cries of wailing Rachel, God’s hearing that cry in Christ. “Rejoice insofaras you share Christ’s suffering,” says the second lesson for the day, as the death ofthe toddlers, and our death, shares in the death of Christ.Let us hear the prayer of the day:We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents ofBethlehem by order of King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the armsof your mercy all innocent victims, and by your great might frustratethe designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, peace,and love, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.There is a lot in this prayer: we recall a holy story; we plead for God’s mercy on allwho suffer; we plead for God’s might to bring on the kingdom. Those words containthe woes of countless human predicaments. We remember the infant boys killed bythe Pharaoh of old. We know that Herod ordered his soldiers to murder various pro-minent citizens at the moment of his death so that there would be grief in the land.There was Mary, holding her dead Son. Thousands died with bullets in their back atBabi Yar, and today innocents are being slaughtered in Iraq and Lebanon. For allthese we plead mercy. We know the injustice and hate and war which describe thehuman race: against all this we plead God’s might.Much of the language of the liturgy is like this: it is metaphor. Metaphor is bothsimpler and deeper than descriptive and analytical language. It says less and coversmore. It offers an image, a picture, a story into which we exert ourselves, our praisesand our pleas. One could call the liturgy a corporate recital of images of the faith inpraise of God. We assemble under the cross. We sing with the angels, at the Exodus,in God’s throne room, with the demoniac. We are the soldiers and the wailingwomen, we are even the dead babies. We use these images to say that we are theworld, and we hold these images up to Christ for rebirth, for new life from the Wordto this world. The Word speaks in the world because, while the baby Jesus escapeddeath this time, a later Herod condemned him to a death for us.And so while I would vote against a grotesque floor tile in any church depictingbleeding babies, I admit that such an image has more to do with the Christian faiththan many of our sappy pictures of Jesus or, worse yet, our ignorant pictures of God.Our God, says Hebrews, is a consuming fire; therefore we are to worship God withreverence and awe. The Word Christ in the world, the holding together of life anddeath in God: the liturgy can help us to this endeavor, the liturgy with its texts, itslessons, its festivals.

The Word in the world

Scholars Commons

Consensus
Volume 8 | Issue 4 Article 3
10-1-1982
The Word in the world
Gail Ramshaw Schmidt
Follow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus
This Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation
Schmidt, Gail Ramshaw (1982) "The Word in the world," Consensus: Vol. 8 : Iss. 4 , Article 3.
Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol8/iss4/3
THE WORD IN THE WORLD
Gail Ramshaw Schmidt
I wish to approach the topic of “The Word in the World,” by talking about
something seldom pondered by most of us: the slaughter of the innocents.
I recently visited the town of Siena in Italy. While it is hardly my favourite city, its
worst feature in my view is in Siena cathedral. Indeed, one reason to visit the
cathedral is to get a sense of how brutal and wretched European life was in the middle
ages. For at the cathedral one still sees the construction site stopped midway. The
walls were meant to double the Duomo’s size, but then the Black Plague struck and
Siena was decimated. The walls stand there abandoned, a kind of mammoth tomb-
stone to the thousands killed by the plague. Inside the cathedral are more signs of
death, great mosaic floor tiles depicting Old Testament battles—though of course the
soldiers’ dress and weapons are period to the cathedral itself. It looks as if the part of
the bible which was known best was its warfare. And there, nearby the pulpit, is a
scene in floor tiles, perhaps six by ten meters in size, a depiction of the slaughter of
the innocents. Herod is enthroned, ordering a dozen medieval soldiers to their task;
fifteen women wail, contorted in their sorrow, already twelve babies lie dead under
the soldiers’ feet, and several more are being tossed on swords’ edge, being eternally
killed there on the floor tile of the Siena cathedral.
Why? Why would anyone dedicate in their church such a grotesque depiction of
23
24 Consensus
such a wretched story? And of course the Siena floor tile is not the only piece of
medieval art in which the children are being slaughtered. In the Cloisters in New York
City there is a set of wood panels, carvings from a fourteenth century abbey
church—perhaps the wainscotting in the choir—and there too is a slaughter of the in-
nocents: two cruel soldiers’ faces, the baby dead in the air. Not only art, but also
poetry seemed intrigued by this story. In a poem from the Byzantine liturgy, the
number of dead infants has escalated to 14,000, the grim tale growing in horror. The
Oxford Book of Carols boasts seven carols specific to this day.
Let us recall the story, told by Matthew (2:16-18), after he says that the wise men
traveled for miles to adore the child:
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men,
was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in
Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years or under, ac-
cording to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.
Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.”
On these few verses rest the grotesque art which leaves us wondering. However,
these verses give us not only a history of art, but also a contemporary liturgical obser-
vance, indeed, a “lesser festival,” as the Lutheran Book of Worship calls it, on
December 28. In the years 1986 and 1997 December 28 will fall on a Sunday, and
the lessons of the slaughter of the innocents will be read throughout Christendom.
Choirs will sing the Coventry Carol, of “Herod the King in his raging.” So close upon
our cultural oogling over the infant in the manger comes this story of screaming in-
fants and wailing parents. We call these children martyrs, those killed for the sake of
Christ. We dress in red, not for bows and Christmas berries, but for flowing blood,
and remember the death of the infants near to the life of the newborn Jesus.
Why? Why the Siena floor tile? Why this observance in the Lutheran Book of Wor-
ship and its proximity to Christmas? A few years back several articles in the Lutheran
Forum discussed this festival, and those who object to the observance have some
persuasive arguments. Ought we celebrate such brutality? How can we makq a
festival out of the murder of children? How, four years hence, can we commemorate
the slaughter with Christmas trees still up?
There is the further question of historical accuracy. Some biblical interpreters pro-
vide ample discussion of the difficulties in this story and make us question whether it
even ever happened. How can we jive Luke’s history with Matthew’s? What is our
continuing debt to old stories we no longer wish to believe? Even Raymond E.
Brown, in his massive study The Birth of the Messiah,^ who tries valiantly to give the
story both historical credulity and religious meaning, admits that in Bethlehem and its
environs there were at most twenty boy children, twenty at very most.
Let us leave this question for a few moments to talk about something else. I would
1. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1977).
The Word m the World 25
like to tell you now about a new novel by D.M. Thomas entitled The White Hotel.
^
Last year D.M. Thomas, a little known British poet, published a novel which both
as hardback and this year as paperback was a bestseller in the States for months. The
reading public devoured the book, and literary critics as well raved about the quality
of the writing. The novel is about a twentieth century woman named Elizabeth Erd-
man who in 1919 sought psychiatric assistance from Sigmund Freud to deal with her
severe neurotic symptoms. The book begins with records of her wild sexual fantasies,
but always her ecstasy is held parallel to the horrendous suffering of those around
her. We then read Freud’s diagnosis. Not surprisingly, he analyzes her neurosis as
related to her parents’ sexual problems, but even he admits that his theory cannot
probe the deepest level of Elizabeth’s suffering.
The novel goes on. In 1929 Elizabeth, much improved, meets and marries an
older Jewish man. She has a new light on her past, for, devout Catholic that she is,
she suspects that she is really half Jewish. Her suffering is then placed in the broader
context of global anti-Semitism. But she becomes a loyal wife and mother in the
Jewish quarter of Kiev.
But the novel goes on. Kiev in the 1930s was no place for a Jew to live. Elizabeth
finally joins the rest of Kiev’s Jews, herded towards the ravine, machine-gunned into
a mass grave at Babi Yar. She could have saved herself, with that crucifix around her
neck, but she chose to stand by her Jewish stepson. She dies at Babi Yar, reciting the
Ave Maria.
But the novel does not conclude with the Nazi soldier raping this old woman with a
bayonet. There is a final chapter—wonder of wonders!—the Jews really did take the
train to Palestine! Elizabeth and all of Europe’s Jews are in a refugee camp styled
Paradise, where spayed cats give birth, but where human beings still bear their earthly
wounds.
This novel is a picture of this century: our obsession with the meaning of sex; our
focus on the individual neurotic; our interest in cultural roots; our struggle with family
systems; our history of anti-Semitism; our recognition of global evil; the fact of
genocide; our partial images of the resurrection. This book of death and life is well
worth reading.
This novel talks about the world. The truth of this novel describes individual,
familial, social, and global agony. Our word “agony” comes from the Greek word
agon, meaning struggle. No matter how effectively Elizabeth can conquer one strug-
gle, another harder one is forthcoming. We too turn from private pain only to en-
counter familial and social and global agony.
The question for the liturgy is how to offer that pain to God. How can we make the
liturgy open to such pain as Elizabeth knew? Ten years ago we tried by writing new
liturgies filled with versicles about Viet Nam and responses about world hunger. Most
of these liturgies are now lost in file cabinets, for the language we wrote was simply
not accurate enough, not deep enough to bear the weight, not open enough to in-
dividual suffering. We wrote labored confessions of sins in which we confessed
everything from nuclear stockpiling to migrant worker oppression. We prayed in-
2. D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel (New York: Viking, 1981).
26 Consensus
tercessions that were really “smartass prayers,” in which we told God in careful detail
how to solve all the problems of the world. It was not wrong so to do. But it fell far
short.
Lutherans have another way in which death enters their liturgy. We, people of the
theology of the cross, are fluent with imagery of death. We mourn the wounds of
Christ or the wounded world and then, by changing our tone of voice, proclaim that
the cross is different, death made into life. This is familiar talk to us, but how convinc-
ing is it to the world? We must examine whether our use of the theology of the cross is
something other than maudlin meditation on the passion or revelries on death.
The question stays with us. Can the liturgy in the Lutheran Book of Worship carry
the weight of the world? How can the ancient words and the classic texts and the
historic festivals offer to God the terror of our hearts in this age ?
We come to the other word in our title, “Word”. We Lutherans know that “Word”
never means merely words, not even the good words about forgiveness, the words of
the liturgy spoken responsively, or the words of the gospel faithfully proclaimed. We
get our use of “Word” from John’s gospel. The Word is not words, but Christ. It is not
that the liturgy of the Lutheran Book of Worship bears the world on its shoulders, but
that Christ does, and has, and will. If it is our conviction that the Word in the world is
Christ, then our liturgy must proclaim that Christ is in the world. Let us look at several
familiar parts of our liturgy, examining their images, to find the Word in the world.
“The sign of the cross may be made.” So we begin. This is no petty gesture, plac-
ing ourselves under the sign of Christ’s cross, donning that death, recalling that living
water. It is a more radical gesture than kneeling, which all religions prescribe; more
surprising than the kiss of peace, a cultural tradition turned Christian. No. The sign of
the cross is an act of faith in the horror and the glory of Christ’s cross. The cross says
both holocaust and paradise. It says, in this sign I conquer: I die in the water and rise
to dance. This is no small thing. It is Christ dying and alive, the word in the world.
We sing the Gloria, an exuberant hymn of praise. But here too the song hears the
wretched cry of the world. The call of the angels, “Glory to God!”, greets the
shepherds, the poor of an oppressed land, begging for a Messiah. Some lines further
we sing another Kyrie: Lamb of God, slain for our safety, your blood on our door,
have mercy on us. We are only lowly petitioners before the divine throne. We then
call Christ the “Holy One.” Remember who also did that? The demoniac, the mad-
man looked at Jesus and named him the Holy One of God. So in the Gloria we keep
motley company: magnificent angels, grubby shepherds, terrified Hebrews, lowly
petitioners, screaming wildmen. With them all we praise Christ, the word of God
alive in such a world as this, for such people as this.
Then there are the intercessory prayers. It seems that if we really believed in the ef-
ficacy of prayer, we would spend a good deal longer praying. And we need not feel
required to tell God the way to solve the world’s problems. We need only to hold iip
before God the wretched of the world and to plead for God’s grace. We can be far
more inclusive than we usually are. D.M. Thomas’ novel would remind us to pray for
tormented and lonely people; for wretched family situations; for ghetto people and
for refugees; for those who are persecuted; for those who today will die. Look on
them, O God, with tearful eyes, and grant your grace to all.
We come then to the eucharistic prayer. My favorite in the Lutheran Book of Wor-
The Word in the World 27
ship is the translation of the Hippolytus prayer, written in the second century. “He is
your Word,” we pray with the ancient Hippolytus. “It is he,” we acclaim, who in
order to destroy death, to break the bonds of the evil one, to crush hell underfoot, to
give light to the righteous, taking bread and giving thanks, said. Take and eat. Note
how this grand sentence says “the Word in the world.” Christ said take and eat, and
so destroyed death and crushed hell. The life of eating and the death of Christ are
held together, even in one sentence, the Word in the world, the bread of life shared
in the face of death.
Finally let us return to our beginning, to the festival of the holy innocents. Here
again is the Word in the world, the birth of God next to the slaughter of the
Bethlehem children. Christmas is, after all, not about Santa Claus, but about God’s
hearing the cries of wailing Rachel, God’s hearing that cry in Christ. “Rejoice insofar
as you share Christ’s suffering,” says the second lesson for the day, as the death of
the toddlers, and our death, shares in the death of Christ.
Let us hear the prayer of the day:
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of
Bethlehem by order of King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms
of your mercy all innocent victims, and by your great might frustrate
the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, peace,
and love, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
There is a lot in this prayer: we recall a holy story; we plead for God’s mercy on all
who suffer; we plead for God’s might to bring on the kingdom. Those words contain
the woes of countless human predicaments. We remember the infant boys killed by
the Pharaoh of old. We know that Herod ordered his soldiers to murder various pro-
minent citizens at the moment of his death so that there would be grief in the land.
There was Mary, holding her dead Son. Thousands died with bullets in their back at
Babi Yar, and today innocents are being slaughtered in Iraq and Lebanon. For all
these we plead mercy. We know the injustice and hate and war which describe the
human race: against all this we plead God’s might.
Much of the language of the liturgy is like this: it is metaphor. Metaphor is both
simpler and deeper than descriptive and analytical language. It says less and covers
more. It offers an image, a picture, a story into which we exert ourselves, our praises
and our pleas. One could call the liturgy a corporate recital of images of the faith in
praise of God. We assemble under the cross. We sing with the angels, at the Exodus,
in God’s throne room, with the demoniac. We are the soldiers and the wailing
women, we are even the dead babies. We use these images to say that we are the
world, and we hold these images up to Christ for rebirth, for new life from the Word
to this world. The Word speaks in the world because, while the baby Jesus escaped
death this time, a later Herod condemned him to a death for us.
And so while I would vote against a grotesque floor tile in any church depicting
bleeding babies, I admit that such an image has more to do with the Christian faith
than many of our sappy pictures of Jesus or, worse yet, our ignorant pictures of God.
Our God, says Hebrews, is a consuming fire; therefore we are to worship God with
reverence and awe. The Word Christ in the world, the holding together of life and
death in God: the liturgy can help us to this endeavor, the liturgy with its texts, its
lessons, its festivals.


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