Camels enter stage left delivering their burdens of wisdom and wealth to the radiant child in the manger. The flash and glitter of the adoration of the magi captivates the scene until the stage goes dark except for the Flash animation of the star which now gives way to a montage of horror: infants and toddlers being torn from the arms of terrified mothers by those simply carrying out the orders of king Herod. The scenes of terror now shift chaotically from Bethlehem to Bosnia, Afghanistan, Ireland, Iraq, and a hundred other places, but always to the screams of mothers and the bodies of children.
Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children. Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants. Christians are tempted to believe that the death of the children of Bethlehem ‘can be redeemed’ by Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection. Donald MacKinnon, however, insists that such a reading of the gospels, in particular the destruction of the innocents of Bethlehem, is perverse. For MacKinnon, the victory of the resurrection does not mean that these children are any less dead or their parents any less bereaved, but rather resurrection makes it possible for followers of Jesus not to lie about the world that we believe has been redeemed.
Truth-telling requires us to pause and ponder the fact that “when King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him (Matt. 2:3). And still today fright leads us to cry for safety at any cost. Does the infamous California “three-strikes” law make us any safer or does it merely swells our prisons with lives that will never be redeemed? The Patriot Act will never cost my children their liberty, but its secret places of torture are necessary to make them safe.
I never had an answer for all those voices in my days of seminary reading that asked how the Christian church could be nearly totally silent while Hitler wrecked his horror; now I understand: King Herod was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him!
Perhaps the hope comes in the wailing of the mothers, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled (Jer. 31:15). It was primarily the persistent, unquenchable outcry of the mothers of Ireland that brought some measure of peace to that place of fear and death. If only some modern day Matthew would force us to stop the pageantry and see clearly the images of the children dying for the sake of fearful powers. Perhaps again Rachel’s weeping would give us courage in our fears to stand up and say ‘No’ to the powers. To choose the way of the child in the manger; the one with the knowing look.
— quote from Donald MacKinnon’s “Ethics and Tragedy” in Exploration in Theology, vol. 5. London: SCM, p182-195
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