Christmas 1A, 2004
Matthew 2:13-23
SOME BELLS JINGLE AND SOME BELLS TOLL!
In August this year, US Border Patrol agents in Texas,
found a life-sized crucifix, minus the cross,
on a sandbar in the middle of the river Rio Grande.
When no-one claimed it, they donated it to the local Catholic Church.
Since its discovery, this particular image of Jesus
has attracted the curious and the faithful from the local area
and from across the two countries of USA and Mexico.
Likewise, the name now given it, is also significant.
Many are calling it the ‘Jesus Christ of the Undocumented’.
Because it has become a symbol of the struggles
that undocumented immigrants face when trying the reach
the so-called ‘promised land of the USA’.
The statue's initial appearance in a sandbar in the middle of the Rio Grande,
is reminiscent of many Mexican immigrants' path to the US.
Some drown in the occasional torrents of the Rio Grande, trying to get to Texas.
Others die of thirst in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.
Some make it safely into the US
only to find themselves slaves in garment factories
or other sweatshops or, even worse,
forced into lives of prostitution.
Others are packed into container trucks and abandoned,
to suffocate in heat greater than 50 degrees celsius.
Still others are turned back at the border and never make it very far into the US.
A few, very few, do make it, but tend to live very frugally.
(Based on a story by Tod Mundo /Progressive Theology web site)
Tod Mundo, from whom I received this actual story, offers these comments:
“Jesus Christ of the Undocumented reminds Christians that Jesus suffers the indignities of the undocumented as they struggle, suffer, and sometimes die in their attempts... (But) how do we Christians... treat the undocumented?... Do we call them by the derisive term ‘wetbacks? Do we take advantage of their willingness to work
cheaply and pay them substandard wages for work around our houses? Do we support politicians and policies that make their lives more difficult than they already are... by prohibiting them from getting driver's licenses or preventing their children from attending public schools? When we persecute the ‘undocumented’ in these and other ways, we are driving nails into the hands of Jesus himself, as the bleeding hands and brow of Jesus Christ of the Undocumented reminds us” (Mundo/Progressive Theology web site).
oo0oo
Much of the story we hear during Christmas
comes from the biblical storyteller we have given the name Luke.
In artistic terms, this is a picture full of bright primary colours.
A cheerful story.
A buoyant, hopeful, joyous story.
But every couple of years or so we hear a different story.
One told by the Jewish storyteller we call Matthew.
Again in artistic terms,
Matthew’s picture uses a darker palette.
The colours are more sombre, darker hues.
A gothic story - disturbing, disquieting.
We also hear this ‘darker palette’ in Norman Habel’s poem “The flight”,
published in the book Outback Christmas,
an edited collection of poems and paintings by Habel and Pro Hart:
“We fled into the wilderness like plunging through the eye
of life’s cast unseen enemy
inviting us to die....
Cross endless plains of burning earth
where only fierce ants fly,
sharp tongues of grass like barbed wire
invited us to die...” (Hart/Habel 1990:44).
We hear it in Tod Mundo’s story of ‘Jesus Christ of the Undocumented’.
We hear it in the Iraq tribunal hearings opened 16 days ago
(December 11, 2004) in Tokyo - a form of war crimes trials.
They speak of the deaths of an estimated 48,000 to 260,000 Iraqi citizens,
and post-war effects that could take the lives of an additional 200,000 Iraqis.
Surely this must qualify as a genuine slaughter of the innocents!
And we hear it in the media accounts
of long term detainees at the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia,
participating in hunger strikes in protest against their detention
and possible deportation to Iran.
Luke’s story and Matthew’s story are very different.
And despite attempts to the contrary
by both the church and the many ‘Carols by candlelight’ events,
they can’t be harmonised into one grand, neat story.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against Christmas.
Indeed I am an enthusiastic supporter of the festival.
And I agree with historian Clement Miles when he says:
“The God of Christmas is no ethereal form, no mere spiritual essence, but a very human child, feeling the cold and the roughness of the straw, needing to be warmed and fed and cherished.
“Christmas is the festival of the natural body, of this world; it means the consecration of the ordinary things of life, affection and comradeship, eating and drinking and merry-making...” (Miles 1912/76).
But I also want to claim that the story (rather than the history) of infanticide
which is the context for the biblical story we heard this morning,
is as much a part of the Christmas story
as is the story of the baby haloed in love and holiness,
lighting the manger with peace.
In so doing, I am seeking to acknowledge the tension many of us feel
as we try to hold on to the wonder and the magic of the Christmas season,
amid all the challenges of the ordinary, everyday.
An acknowledgement I admit,
that calls for our patience as well as active discernment!
For not all bells jingle at Christmas time. Some toll.
And if John Donne’s solemn advice be right
we do not need to go too far to find out ‘for whom the bell tolls!’
oo0oo
Life is never lived on a high all the time.
Christmas is not found in some rarified sacredness.
Jesus might have escaped the sword of Herod, but he died under the orders of Pilate.
I wish I had more... indeed, some, words of comfort
for the many innocent sufferers in this country and our world, at this time.
If I knew them I would speak them.
But I do call out in solidarity, as a friend, and with hope...
Hope which was gathered up and presented to us
in the gift of a child, at Christmas.
Hope made know in the goodness born into the world
in spite of the demons that strike madly at all innocents, past and present.
So if Christmas is not your celebration
I continue to hope rather than despair,
that Easter and its promise of new possibilities against all odds, shall be.
Notes:
Hart, P.; N. Habel. 1990. Outback Christmas. Third edition. SA: delaide. Lutheran Publishing House.
Miles, C. A. 1912/1976. Christmas customs and traditions. Their history and significance. NY: New York. Dover Publications.