Marvelous Hope

2 Cor. 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion & the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. Amen.

The hospitals don’t slow down for the holidays. Law enforcement officers don’t get to kick their feet up because everyone’s behaving this time of year. Relational conflicts, health conditions, and personal struggles don’t disappear just because it’s Christmas. While many streets are glistening and gleaming with sparkling lights, there are some that are grim and grieving with emergency siren lights. Sickness, sorrow, and suffering do not recognize this as the most wonderful time of the year. Death and evil don’t take the holidays off.

We wish it worked that way, right? We wish there was some two-week period each year when we knew that only good things were going to happen and that tragedy couldn’t strike. But that’s not how things work.

In fact, it’s even more challenging to grapple with sickness, loss, and evil during this time of year. Everyone and everything is busier than normal. It’s even more painful to be in low spirits when everyone else seems to be in high spirits. It’s not the right time to feel lousy or alone.

But it happens. Every year. To lots and lots of people. People get sick and hurt. Relationships crack and splinter. Loved ones pass on. Not only does it hurt in the moment, but it hurts for years and even decades later. Because now Christmas is connected with that pain, grief, & loss.

During the Christmas season, here at church, we tend to zero in on joy. We talk about joy. We sing about joy. We emanate joy. There’s nothing wrong with that. This is a joyful season. God has come to make his dwelling among us. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t encounter danger, disappointment, disaster, devastation, & even death. Today’s reading is a powerful reminder of that painful reality.

The Magi, the mysterious wise men from the East, had come to Bethlehem to worship the newborn King, Jesus. They first stopped in Jerusalem, thinking he would be found in the Holy City. And there was a king in Jerusalem—King Herod. Herod was quite interested in this birth—but for very different reasons. He directed the men to the right town, Bethlehem, but he deceived them by saying that he would like to go and worship the newborn King as well.

When Herod realized that the Magi weren’t going to come back to Jerusalem to tell him where to find this child, (Mt. 2:16) he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were under two years old. We have no reason to think that this order was not carried out.

Herod was a violent, jealous, and paranoid king. He executed nearly anyone who opposed him—and even those he thought might be thinking about doing so soon. He executed 45 members of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. He appointed his brother-in-law as Israel's high priest, and then, a year later, had him drowned at a party. He executed one of his wives, her two sons, her brother, her grandfather, and her mother. Right around this time, he altered his will three times and then disinherited and killed his firstborn son. Herod even tried to kill himself.

But Herod’s history of jealousy and bloodthirstiness don’t make the scene any better. Mt. 2:18 A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel, symbolic mother of Israel, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.

It’s hard to read that and not have your heart break. It’s hard to think about the mothers weeping for their sons and refusing to be comforted. And at Christmas, too? Where is the peace on earth?

Even the fact that—because Bethlehem was a very small town—most historians estimate the number of boys killed in the dozens is of little comfort. It all feels so heinous and unnecessary. Why doesn’t God step in? Why doesn’t strike Herod dead? Why doesn’t he blind the soldiers? Why doesn’t he warn the other homes of what is about to happen?

What’s perhaps particularly troubling is the whole prophetic part. How could God’s prophet speak about this day and God do nothing? Doesn’t that make him responsible—even partially? Isn’t passivity in times of evil the same thing as doing the violence itself?

This isn’t just a Christmas problem for Christians. We believe in the one true God who reveals himself to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present. So how can that kind of God allow evil to exist at all?

Here, we must tread more carefully than we might think necessary. If God were to exterminate evil, we would not be spared. After the flood, God diagnosed mankind in this way: every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. Childhood is the same Hebrew word used to describe Moses in the bushel basket and the days-old child of David and Bathsheba. God’s verdict would apply to these babies too.

And us, as well. So if God followed our complaint to a “t”, we would not be spared either. But that’s not really what we mean when we say that, is it? We don’t think God should eliminate evil in all its forms, just the really bad stuff. We think God should step in and put an end to the really bad stuff. Heinous Crimes. Abuse. Childhood cancer. Genocide.

We want God to step in and stop evil in its tracks. This sounds very reasonable to us and we are troubled by the fact that God doesn’t seem to agree with us.

God does agree with us in part. God hates heinous crimes, abuse, childhood cancer, and genocide. In fact, he hates these things more than any of us do. And he knows about more of them than any of us. God is well aware of the atrocities committed by sinful people. Herod is the rule, not the exception. Sinful people deceive, hurt, steal, destroy, & kill. God speaks the truth, heals, gives, restores, and resurrects. And he does all of those things perfectly. But that does not mean that he does things the way that you and I would do them personally.

This is one of our great struggles as sinners. Our sinful minds simply cannot let God be God. Not just in how he hands out blessings but also in how he holds back disasters. We want to give him our critiques & corrections. We want him to take advice from us. More than that, we want God to do as we tell him.

For a moment, I want to tease out that hypothetical. How would God decide what to do and not do? Would he rely on popular opinion? The prevailing moral sensibilities of the day? Would he choose a council of individuals to direct him? Don’t you understand that letting sinners have the universe’s steering wheel would only result in catastrophe?

Not only that, but how would any of it even work in real-time? Wouldn’t the decisions that had to be made and the actions that had to be taken all be too slow to actually change anything?

If anything is actually going to work out for good, we must not wish for the power, knowledge, and presence that belongs only to God. We must trust in God and let God be God. Then in the God who enters into a world of jealousy, violence, murder, and death, we will find comfort.

You and I want nothing to do with a world where evil runs roughshod over those who are vulnerable and powerless. But God so loves this world that the Son of God became vulnerable. The Lord of lords and King of kings was so physically powerless that he could not even run away on his own. He needed his father to take him to safety in Egypt.

And God the Father did not do this because he was showing special treatment to his favored Son. He knew where all this was leading.

God knew that, thirty-some years later, his one and only Son would be hanging from a cross, crying out to him and he would not step in. He would not strike the Roman soldiers dead. He would not rescue his beloved Son from that excruciating and shameful death. He would not prevent his perfect Prince from going through the eternal pains of hell.

And we know why not. Because in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus was wrestling with his sacrificial suffering and death, he cried out Mt. 26:39 My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will. Then a second time, Jesus prayed in a similar but slightly amended fashion. Mt. 26:42 My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done. Jesus prayed the same thing once more and then woke up his sleeping disciples and told them Mt. 26:46 Rise, here comes my betrayer. Our God did not spare himself sadness or suffering of any kind. In fact, he suffered most excruciatingly knowing that though he had the power to intervene he could not do so and save us.

This is the comfort we cling to in times of sorrow and suffering. God does allow his beloved children to encounter danger, disaster, disappointment, devastation, and even death. But he only allows what is absolutely necessary for the salvation of all his children. In times of trouble, we can trust that God is with us and God is for us. So nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We know that for the ones God loves, he works all things for good. Everything happens for his reasons.

And sometimes, for his own reasons, God provides a surprising measure of peace in strange places. In 1914, British and German soldiers were hunkered down in their trenches, exchanging fire and casualties. But on Christmas Day something strange happened. The firing ceased. Christmas carols filled the air instead of bullets. Soldiers on opposite sides met in the middle, in no man’s land, and exchanged gifts, they drank and smoked together. Of course, a day or so later they went back to war. And the next Christmas they didn’t repeat the songs again. But for a single Christmas, God gave them temporal peace.

How beautiful is that? One day he will bring us to a place where there is peace without end. One day he will shepherd us to the place where fighting and frustrations, sadness and sorrow and suffering can never strike us again. Because in that holy city, we will have even more joy than we hope for. Amen.