Homily for Christmas 1, Year A, 2010
Sunday, December 26th, 2010
Trinity Anglican Church, Bradford, ON
The Rev. Daniel F. Graves
Text: Matthew 2:13-23
“Herod… was infuriated and he killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.”
-Matthew 2:16
My wife Athena and I enjoy the television program Madmen. It is the story of a 1960’s Madison Avenue Ad agency which paints a picture not only of that wild world of advertising, but also of everyday middle-class 1960’s life. Although, the events slightly predate us, we share a cultural memory from our early childhoods of the flavor of the day. Many of the little ordinary aspects of daily life that are depicted in that show ring true for us. For example, we both remember sleeping in the back window of the car on long car trips. We remember people smoking everywhere. We remember littering without much sense of consequence to the earth. Many who worked through that period will remember alcohol in the office and sexism and racism in the workplace. What the show depicts so poignantly, though, are those moment that are seared into our cultural consciences, namely events like the freedom marches, the Kennedy assassination and, of course, the Cuban missile crisis.
Although the Cuban missile crisis occurred before I was born, it served as a sign for my generation that we were on the brink of nuclear destruction. Indeed, we grew up in the seventies and eighties believing we would not live to see adulthood. The pessimism and angst of that age seems so far away now. It is now replaced though, for a new generation with wars on terror and the terrors of counter-terrorism. It is replaced by foreign wars in which we are involved that I can scarcely understand and dare not justify. Thus, while the circumstances have changed, our proclivity to hurt one another has not. It is easy for pessimism and angst to grip up once again.
Yet, into our moments of pessimism and angst, a light breaks forth. In the car, listening to my favourite classical music station the other day, I heard the Christmas carol, “Said the night wind to the little lamb,” and I learned something that I did not know, that is probably not news to the rest of you, that this song was written and first performed during the Cuban missile crisis as a plea for peace.
It begins almost as a whisper and finally swells with grandeur as the message of peace is proclaimed throughout the world.
This is how it goes:
Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I see
Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you see what I see
A star, a star
Dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite
Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear
Ringing through the sky shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear
A song, a song
High above the tree
With a voice as big as the sea
With a voice as big as the sea
Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know
In your palace wall mighty king
Do you know what I know
A child, a child
Shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Said the king to the people everywhere
Listen to what I say
Pray for peace people everywhere
Listen to what I say
The child, the child
Sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light
He will bring us goodness and light
The child, the child
Sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light
It seems to me that the world of first century Judea, a world ruled by a tyrant king with so tentative a grip on power that he chooses to slaughter innocent children, is not so different from the world at any time and place in human history. Terror is terror in any age, as the mothers of slain innocents in first century Judea knew only too well. It is surely not so different from a 1960’s whose existence hung on the decisions of Kennedy and Kruschev. The angst we feel from age to age, whether it be the angst of older veterans who are haunted still by the things they saw in Europe or the South pacific during the second world war, or the angst my generation knew under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, or the angst this new generation must feel in an age of terror and counter terror, is not so different or alien that we cannot understand what it is to live under fear.
But fortunately, there is voice above the trees that calls out in the night, “Fear not!” It is a voice that proclaims to shepherds abiding in the fields that the fearful reality they know need not be the reality into which they live. It is a voice that proclaims to a young couple that through their love and care of a little child, peace will indeed come into the earth. It is a voice in the wind that awakens us from our fear and pessimism and angst. And dare we say it, it is a voice that can indeed form in our own mouths, be we kings or lowly shepherds and proclaim to the world a word of peace. It is a voice that says no to war, no to missiles, no to terror. It is a voice that says no to domestic violence, no to bullying in our schools, and no the hurt we cause others through shame and anger. But it is not primarily a voice that cries no, but a voice that cries YES. Yes, to peace, yes, to love, yes to hope. It is a voice that changes things, a voice that can make tyrants stand down, a voice that transforms our hearts and conforms us into the image and likeness of God. It is a voice of humility and a voice of new life.
Listen to the night wind and you will hear that “yes” and through an encounter with the tiny child, born in a stable, you will be given the boldness and courage to proclaim peace to people everywhere.
c. 2010, the Rev. Daniel F. Graves
words and music for "Said the Night Wind to the Little Lamb" by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker.
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