The Grief of Bethlehem

I can’t imagine the grief. I simply can’t.

I’ve been reading and studying about David, one of the most complex and human characters in the Bible. His story is told in 1 and 2 Samuel, as well as in the Psalms he wrote. David came from Bethlehem, and Bethlehem is (and was) known as the city of David.

David is one of three kings most directly associated with Bethlehem, the other two being Herod (“the great”) and the King whose kingdom was not of this world. David and Jesus were born there; Herod committed a crime there that was (and is) almost beyond comprehension.

The account of what is known as the slaughter of the innocents is found only in the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter two, Joseph is warned by an angel in a dream to escape to Egypt, because Herod was going to be searching for the child to kill him. Joseph listens, he takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and the family spends an extended period there, likely some years. (Novelist Anne Rice, who had best-sellers on vampires long before anyone had heard of "Twilight" and "New Moon," wrote a wonderful story imagining this time, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.)

After the family leaves, according to Matthew, Herod – always insecurely paranoid when it came to his throne – orders the murder of every male child under the age of 2 in Bethlehem, to make sure the so-called king he had heard about was destroyed. There was room for only one king in Judea.

It was a brutal time, but this act stands out even for that era.

A number of scholars today discount the story. Only Matthew records it; Josephus doesn’t mention it in his histories; and so on and so on. (I have to remind myself that the Gospel of Matthew will still be read long after these scholars are forgotten.) But it is an act perfectly in keeping with what Herod was like and known for. If he didn’t hesitate to kill his own children, why should he worry about the children of people he didn’t know and for whom he cared nothing?

The movie The Nativity (2006) has a glimpse of the slaughter, but it’s only a glimpse. It’s hard to fathom the scene in Bethlehem. Very young children and babies struck down by soldiers, most likely with swords, along with anyone else who tried to protect them – fathers, mothers, siblings, relatives. The stories that died with those children; all the hopes and dreams replaced by unhealing wounds; the chaos as the attack occurred. How did the soldiers do it? Order all families out into the streets? Strip the children to identify gender? How many “mistakes” were made?

The mind reels and goes numb. And then the aftermath – the wails, the crying, the shock, the horror at what had happened. How do you survive seeing the murder of your child? And the question few if any in Bethlehem would have known how to answer – why was this happening? How did this happen in the city of David? How could it?

The contrast between what had just been and what came to be is enormous – the miraculous birth of the promised Messiah, and the slaughter of innocent children. Two poles of human experience. Two extremes of reality that happened in the same place, very close to the same time. The most extraordinary good, and the most extraordinary evil.

Because of the escape of his family, Jesus may well have been the only survivor of the attack – the one who was the intended victim.

And yet, in a way he wasn’t. Some three decades later, another innocent fell victim to a barbaric regime – the only survivor of that massacre at Bethlehem. And like those innocent children, the innocent man died in front of his mother.

I don’t know how to comprehend such grief. I’ve experienced the deaths of loved ones – a niece at age 2, my grandmothers in their 90s, my father at age 70, aunts and uncles, good friends. But I’ve never experienced what those families did in the city of David, and what the mother of Jesus watched happen in front of her – the grief of Bethlehem.

I can only be horrified by one, and grateful for the other.

(To read more about the topic of grief, visit the blog carnival at Peter Pollock's Rediscovering the Church.)

Post on Performance Reviews at High Calling Blogs

My post here on "Performance Reviews: The Good" has been published at the High Calling Blogs today. This is the followup article to my post on "The Bad." (The Bad are always more interesting to talk about, and the Good more difficult to pull off.)

And the post is illustrated with a photo from nAncY at Just Say the Word.

Thanks to HCB and my friend/editor Bradley Moore for the posts.

Link to Last Week

So I didn’t read what was plainly stated and more than obvious in the ongoing book discussion at the High Calling Blogs, and posted my thoughts on chapter 8 of Gerald May’s The Wisdom of Wilderness last Monday. (We were supposed to take a week off for Thanksgiving.) Here’s the link to that post, "Biking with an Eagle," and I’ll get back in line.

This will not surprise my wife.

The discussion at the High Calling Blogs continues here.

Shammah's Psalm of Lament

He does not choose me.

He comes up the road, up to Bethlehem,
The old man with fire in his breath.
The holy one, they call him, the
One who talks with God, walks with God,
The judge.
He smells of dust and olives.
The elders tremble as he comes, because
They do not know if he comes
In peace or judgment, or both.

I have come, he says, to
Sacrifice to the Lord.
Selah

My father and my brothers and I
Stand before him, in awe
Because he asks us to stand,
And he consecrates us to
Join in the sacrifice, to be part.
But where is the bull, the dove,
The lamb?

The old man who smells of olives and dust
Looks at my brother Eliab,
Strong and vital and handsome.
An eternity passes; he’s listening to God.
Then he shakes his head.
Not him, he says, not him.
Then my brother Abinadab;
Not him, he says, not him.

Then Shammah, astonished,
As he looks at me, his eyes
Bore into my soul as
Hope and fear contend in my heart.
The holy one shakes his head;
Not him, he says, not him.
My body is flooded
With the joy of relief,
And a bitterness of regret.

Four more sons, four more brothers,
Four more not hims.
And then the question that cracks
Open the skies:
Are there no others?

My father brings beloved
From the pasture, the youngest,
Our shepherd boy who laughs when we
Tease and bully him but whose
Eyes already have
The pierced look of a warrior,
Perhaps a king.
The old man’s face whitens
Like the dust that clings to his feet.
The Lord speaks,
He is the one I have chosen.
Selah

Not chosen, my heart aches for
The bewilderment on beloved’s face
As the old man who smells of olives
Pours oil from his horn and
Anoints my brother’s head,
Consecrates my brother,
Separates my brother and
Names the sacrifice he has come to make
Before the Lord.
Selah

The heavens split open,
The power comes.
Now my brother smells of dust and olives.

He does not choose me.

What I'm Not Doing Today

Retailers are facing one of the most abysmal holiday shopping seasons in a long time. The wad of newspaper ads that arrived on our driveway Wednesday night (the “slip run” in newspaper parlance) is thick enough to be lethal just by trying to pick it up. Our consumer-driven economy desperately needs people like me to hit the stores today.

I’m not going. For two reasons.

The biggest reason – 95 percent of the total – is that, as my wife will tell you, it’s bad enough trying to get me to a shopping mall at any time of the year. But the day after Thanksgiving? When mobs have already been lining up for hours outside of stores, staring with zombie-like eyes at sales people inside the stores? When the closest parking space is in the next state? When I have to wait three-deep to look at a sweater and then stand in line for hours to buy it?

It’s not going to happen.

I don’t care what the savings are.

I don’t care what the bargain is.

I’m not going.

The second reason is, I admit, the smallest part of the total. But the sentiment is growing.

Near-riots at retail stores are not what Christmas is supposed to be about.

There, I’ve said it: Christmas. Not Winter Holiday. Not Festivus. Not anything else. Christmas, when Christians the world over celebrate the birth of Christ. That’s what this is supposed to be all about. That’s why we get off from work on Dec. 25, even though our employers believe they have to be inclusive and politically correct and not mention that word, Christmas. But that’s what it is. And perhaps one step we can take to reclaim civility and common sense in public discourse is to begin to acknowledge the fact that it’s Christmas.

Here’s another step that we Christians can take: how we give to our churches.

Twenty-five percent of the giving at my church comes in the month of December. Twenty-five percent. Part of the reason may be that year-end bonuses (no matter how small) happen around this time. But I suspect – and this is only a suspicion, mind you – that a chunk of that 25 percent has to do with people looking at their income tax deductions.

Wrong reason. Giving to your church at any time of the year is part of worship, part of giving thanks and returning to God what he’s given you. It’s never supposed to be about income tax deductions. We’re supposed to give back out of gratitude and love.

I would be lying to you and myself if I said I never think about giving to my church and tax deductions. I do. And it’s wrong.

There are some things we can do to make a change. Little things. Easy things.

There’s a web site called Christmas Change, put together by a community of people who want to change what this season is about. Take a look, and take a look at the associated blog, with some great guest posts from people like @katdish and @HeatheroftheEO (to use their Twitter names). And you can follow Christmas Change on Twitter: @ChristmasChange.

So, on this day after Thanksgiving, I’m making a commitment to myself to make a change. And to be a change.

(Also see Billy Coffey's $10 Challenge.)

Harvest Thanks

He stands, watches;
Studies the stubble
In the field,
Stubble to keep
Soil intact,
Protecting;
Something like the
Stubble on his face.
She stands by his side.

It wasn’t the life
She thought she’d want then.
It was now, though.

It’s done, he says,
By the barest, glancing
At dark clouds
Threatening cold white.
Thought we might
Have to turn
The combine into
A snow plow.
But we made it.

She touches his
Relief, his gratitude,
His faith.

She links her arm through his,
Leaning into his side.
We did, she says,
We made it.
God is faithful,
Always.
She touches the gray
Beginning to drift
From his temple.

The first flakes of icy white
Kiss their faces,
Lightly.

A Farmer in Northwest Iowa

He’s one of three million Americans.

This particular one lives and works in northwest Iowa. He does what his father did before him – he farms the land, to grow food, provide for the family, and be a vital part of the community where he grew up. Farming is what he knows and what he believes in.

He fights the weather, as much as anyone can fight it. He certainly talks about it a lot, because the weather matters. A lot. A wet spring means he’s planting late. Not enough rain in the summer threatens his crop. A wet fall means he’s harvesting late, and he hopes it’s not too late because the rain could turn to snow. If it’s been as wet a fall as this year has seen, when most Americans are sitting down with family and friends for Thanksgiving, there’s a good chance he’s going to be in that combine, trying to finish the harvest. And giving thanks he has some dry days to do it.

So people like the rest of us can eat.

Some harvest nights, he’s got the headlights on the combine, and he’s out there, working. No one except his wife knows, because he can’t quite slip into bed quietly enough not to wake her at 3 a.m. to get a couple of hours of desperately needed sleep. She hears him; she knows what he does for their family. She doesn’t say anything; she puts her hand on his shoulder so he’ll know. And he does.

He doesn’t talk about it, either. He just does it.

He’s heard what some say. You don’t take care of the land. You’re industrial agriculture. Flyover country. All the demeaning and patronizing words that come when people learn farming from whomever the latest college guru happens to be.

He shrugs. He has work to do.

He’s a businessman because he has to be. He has to track commodity prices. Seed and fuel prices. Fertilizer. Utilities. Loan rates, assuming credit’s available. Land values. And he’s learned how to use technology. GPS. The net. Mobile computing. Because some things he has to find out like now, while he's on the tractor or in the combine or he's stopped at the feed supply and he hears something he has to check on.

He’s smart, because farming takes brains, and an intellect, and common sense, and experience, and ongoing education from the state university and the extension agent and the seed dealer and anyone else who has knowledge to impart. He listens and ponders. That’s on top of his degree in agriculture or business or marketing. And, yes, he reads the farm publications but that’s the Wall Street Journal and Business Week that he’s reading at breakfast. And he's reading them online.

He worries, too, about a lot of things. If the children will farm after him. If commodity prices will stay high enough to turn a profit. About the cost of his inputs. About whether he should make an offer on that land that became available across the road. And the weather.

He’s a man of faith. He has to have faith to be in farming. Faith in God. Faith in something besides himself. Because he knows it takes more than himself to be successful. Like when his father-in-law spends a week with him to help with the harvest. When his brothers share equipment. And when he does the same thing for them.

So this Thanksgiving, give thanks for him. And the three million men and women just like him.