Ramah

For most of our neighbors, Christmas is called “Noel” and it means decorating a mini fake pine tree, having a party, and getting drunk on January 1. December 25 is just another winter day. No cantatas, no frontyards full of lights, no special church services, no holiday traffic, no packages of Christmas cookies being baked to the sound of special holiday music and delivered to every imaginable friend or relative. Living here where Christmas is smaller, different, has made it easier to look at it from new perspectives. I was re-reading Andrée Sue’s book of essays, Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, when I happened upon this meditation on the second chapter of Matthew.

From Matthew:

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."

From Seu:

“The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.”… ….Dec. 25 will surely come, with presents galore and songs of the sweet baby of Bethlehem. Carefully quarantined from this heart-warming tale will be images of those other babies hacked to death in neighboring Ramah: “Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” Hatred. Jealousy. Selfish ambition. Death.

But the Lord, who is not so sentimental, has placed Matthew 2 after Matthew 1, for the reason, I presume, that we should make connections. If there are no Ramahs there is no need for Jesus. If there are no young women who fall of bridges, no middle-aged women with calloused hearts, then what is the point? If Jesus’ incarnation was not “to destroy the devil” (1 John 3:8), then what was it for? The baby in the manger is a scene without a plot, good news without the bad, nonsensical. Jesus is cute, ornamental, warm and fuzzy—and ultimately irrelevant.