I have been reminded this week about a remark someone made to me once. Nothing you probably haven’t heard too. Just that all the things that happen in our lives – the happy things, the sad things, the crazy things, the boring things – they all stay with us and remain a part of who we are and always will be. Our life experiences – all of them, not just the ones we choose, make us the men and women we are. The good, the bad, and the indifferent. We can’t do anything about that. All we can do is choose how we will remember it, and that is a choice.
How we choose to remember the things that have made up our lives, it matters.
The ways in which we remember things are important for how they shape us, how they give our life meaning. The act of remembering is about telling the story of who we are.
That is what the Bible does. It tells the story of who we are. All of it.
And there are parts of it we like better than others. In the Christmas season we can’t resist the warm and cozy promise of it. The newborn baby, “no crying he makes.” At least, according to the song. We make the stable and the rough manger seem like desirable locations. In our imaginations we see the scene through soft filters and warm colors. We crop out any of the less attractive, more awkward parts that we would find in a stable with live animals.
We are so content in this scene that we usually fail to remember what happens next.
But Matthew does not let us forget it – not at all.
A voice was heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because they are no more.
We know her story from the book of Genesis. Rachel was the one desired by Jacob, the one for whom he happily gave seven years of labor to her father Laban for her bride price. But Rachel was then left behind because her older sister, Leah, had to be married first. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah. Then, if he still wanted Rachel, he could work another seven years for her. Which Jacob did.
Rachel’s life was hard, and her suffering was great. She was plagued by years of infertility. She longed with every fiber of her being for a child. She watched with envy as her sister Leah was blessed with many healthy children while she remained barren. After many years she bore a son, Joseph, then another, Benjamin. But the birth of Benjamin was hard. Rachel died in childbirth. She was buried far from her home. Her two sons grew up without a mother.
The story of Rachel we hear in Genesis never mentions her tears, but we know she had reasons to weep.
Genesis doesn’t say anything about Rachel weeping, but we hear it later from the prophet Jeremiah. The Israelite exiles, on their bitter march to Babylon, pass by Rachel’s grave and hear her weeping, weeping for her children who are no more, weeping for all that Israel’s children have lost.
And then, again, we are reminded of Rachel’s tears in this second chapter of Matthew. Rachel still weeping, for all the little children who were destroyed by Herod’s wrath.
It is not a part of the Christmas story we often choose to remember, even though it’s right there in Matthew 2, right after Mary and Joseph open the gifts from the wise men. Right after Joseph has another dream in which he is warned to flee, and so they do, and find safe haven from Herod. In Egypt. We imagine them living there securely. But we ought to remember that they were refugees, and there is little about that you would call secure.
We lightly skip over this part of the Christmas story in the same way we tend to skip over our own losses when we tell our stories. We don’t talk about the things in our lives that made us afraid because who wants to hear about that? Nobody. Not even we want to remember the things that made us afraid.
But Matthew doesn’t skip over it, and there is good reason for that. It’s because everything that happens to us, the happy and the sad, even the terrifying, all stay with us and become a part of who we are and always will be. and on the whole, that is not a bad thing.
It is not bad, because to remember our own sorrows may give us compassion for those who are suffering their own sorrows now. To remember our own fear may give us empathy for those who are living in fear now. To remember our own suffering may make us merciful toward those who suffer now.
Remembering the bad can be good. But, again, it sort of depends on how you choose to remember it.
Jewish tradition says that a person should recite 100 blessings each day; and there are blessings for everything under the sun – the good, the awkward and embarrassing, and everything else. “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us,” we hear from Isaiah.
So we can have these words of praise right next to Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. We can have the wise men kneeling in worship before the Christ child right next to Rachel’s loud lamentation. Rachel will not be consoled for the losses, yet there is hope. In this world there is sorrow and there is joy, both. There is pain and there is hope, both. There is no amount of Christmas joy that wipes out the sadness of the world, but there is no amount of sadness that erases the joy we know in Christ.
We need them both. When we remember the sorrows of our lives they can move us to action – actions to bring more justice and mercy to the world. And this is why seeing the sacred reflected in all things, being the sacred in ourselves, is followed by doing the sacred, where we respond to all that we have seen and all that we have been given.
Rachel still weeps for her children. The children of Uvalde, still grieving. The children of Haiti suffering a new outbreak of cholera. The children of Ukraine, in the midst of war. Suffering continues. But this is exactly why Christ was born. He became fully human to identify with us in every way, from beginning to end, reminding us at every step, that we are not alone. God is with us.
Blessed be the Lord our God for this gift.
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Image from ChurchArt.Com
