A Voice Was Heard in Ramah

EVERY DECEMBER, prior to holiday travel, our family has a festive, pre-Christmas meal in our home. We invite special guests—friends and neighbors who are short either on family (with whom to celebrate) or discretionary income (with which to throw a feast of their own)—to share a sumptuous meal. Afterward we gather in the living room to act out the Christmas story, assigning roles on the spot, with no rehearsals. It usually makes for some interesting casting choices—one year an 80-year-old woman played the role of Mary!

We break out our daughters' box of "costume clothes" for quick wardrobe selections. Someone also plays the role of narrator, reading the traditional Christmas narrative from the second chapter of Luke's gospel, providing rudimentary clues to keep our drama going. At appropriate points we interrupt the script to sing the first stanza of well-known carols. For the sake of added drama, we borrow a few lines from Matthew's Christmas story, so we can include the "wise men" episode (and sing "We Three Kings") in our storyline.

Ever wonder why Luke's account became the standard text from which the Christmas story is read? Why not Matthew, or Mark, or John? It could be because Luke has all the great lines: the shepherds "watching over their flock by night," the angels' comment about "good news of great joy," the image of a baby "wrapped in swaddling clothes," the heavenly host (picture the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) singing "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom God is pleased."

It could also be due to the fact that the other gospel accounts aren't nearly as dramatic and colorful. Mark's account, for instance, doesn't even have a birth narrative. He simply jump-starts Jesus' biography at his baptism. And John's story takes what you might call the high, metaphysical approach to Jesus' birth, identifying Jesus not as a babe born to a virgin and laid in a cow trough but as "logos," as "Word," who was with God, who was God, who was in the beginning of all creation with God. "All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3). It would have been kind of hard to create a children's play around that sort of story.

That leaves Matthew's storyline. And Matthew presents an altogether different problem. Three-fourths of the way through Matthew's second chapter account of Mary and Joseph and Jesus' birth is this episode:

"Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.'"—Matthew 2:16-18

You can see the difficulty right away. With Mark offering no help at all, with John writing the story in Hellenistic, philosophical terms, and then this ugly, gruesome episode in Matthew, it's easy to understand why recorded and amplified voices coming from nativity scenes on church or courthouse lawns stick with Luke.

I know of no Christmas carols that remember Rachel's holiday experience. Hallmark sells no card depicting the "slaughter of the innocents."

IT IS EASY FOR THOSE designing Christmas advertising campaigns to neglect Rachel's lament. I can assure you that the plight of those Bethlehem babies will be overlooked by this year's TV specials. In more recent times, in the late 1980s, Rachel's wailing and lamentation in the Palestinian city of Ramah called out to the lamentation of widows and orphans heard in another city, the Nicaraguan city of Rama, on that country's east coast. But then-President Reagan did not make the connection when he lit the Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

But what do we—the believing community, the ones who come to Jesus' manger to kneel in obedience and not just in curiosity—do with Rachel? What will we do with the Spirit's plea through this sister's scorched voice? How can we sip eggnog, unwrap presents, and revel in the innocent delight of children with that wailing and weeping in the background?

Will we forget, too? Will we read Luke, and borrow the magi from Matthew for theatrical purposes?

What we have here is a major theological problem. The paper and ink used in addressing "the problem of evil" is measured by the ton.

By what bloodthirsty logic should the birth of the Messiah be accompanied by the butchery of children? But asking the question that way is wrong-headed. The enigma is misplaced. It is a "problem" mostly for those protected from the raw edges of life.

The poor know that good news for them will most likely be bad news for those, like Herod, who wield power. Not everyone welcomes baby Jesus.

Ours is a culture impregnated by the Enlightenment, nursed on Manifest Destiny, weaned on the power of positive thinking, and now nourished on "possibility thinking." We are old-styled evolutionists, conceiving history as the gradual advancement of truth.

It goes against everything we know to think that, as the poet said, "Truth is forever on a scaffold." It is hard for us to think of the gospel as a scandal, as a word that evokes hatred and resistance from "the world." Don't each of our presidents lay a hand on the Bible when being sworn into office? Surely, in polite company, folks would applaud the preaching of the good news!

The truth is otherwise: In Jesus, God revealed unequivocally that only bloody timbers make for peace. And it has nothing to do with divine sadism. God does not exact pain and suffering as the price for our salvation. According to Jesus, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.... Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think they are offering service to God" (John 15:18; 16:2).

The timbers of the cross, brothers and sisters, are the tools of Christian discipleship: "If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24).

IT IS RACHEL WHO calls out to the majority culture in North America. Only at her side will we begin to comprehend the gospel of our Lord. Any shout of Christmas good cheer that has not been spoken within listening distance of Rachel's voice is nothing more than sentimental drivel. Only in Rachel's presence and at her side will Jesus' assurance take on any semblance of reality:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."—John 16:20-22

That is the Christmas spirit for which we long, of which we are promised, by which the world is redeemed. It is that spirit which blesses our sumptuous feasts, our gifts of affection to each other, and our merriment. Do these, by all means, and mark them as prophetic announcements of the age which is to come! Even though creation is now enveloped in darkness and cries out in anguish, the announcement of Christmas joy is the pronouncement that a light shines, that a child is born.

We are not alone, not consigned to destruction. Rachel will find her comfort. The streets of Ramah (and Rama) will once again echo the sounds of children playing unafraid.

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.... For unto us a child is born." (Isaiah 9:2,6). Thanks be to God.

Ken Sehested, of Memphis, Tennessee, was executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America when this article appeared.