The Fourth Day of Christmas: The Politics of Grief

 

The Politics of Grief

The Fourth Day of Christmas

Monday, December 28, 2020

Jeremiah 31:15-17

Matthew 2:13-18 

“Too often,” argues Stanley Hauerwas, “the political significance of Jesus’s birth...is lost.” 

He explains: “the birth of Jesus is not seen as a threat to thrones and empires because 

religion concerns the private.”

But the idea of religion as private and personal, as opposed to public and political, is foreign 

to the world of scripture. 

And so “Jesus...is born into Herod’s time...in an occupied land, a small outpost, on the edge 

of a mighty empire.”

Already, yesterday, we saw that Simeon and Anna both recognized the baby Jesus as the 

Messiah. Then in today’s reading, Magi from the East have followed a star and come looking 

for the King of the Jews.

But there is already a King of the Jews. And he is none too pleased to hear the news about 

this child.

Herod’s response is what is now known as the Massacre of the Innocents, the hunting down 

and killing of all male children 2 years-old or younger.

“Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction 

of Christmas,” says Hauerwas, “than the death of these children.”

But this is nothing new: “Matthew reminds us that Jeremiah prepared us for such a horror, 

warning of the loud lamentation that would come from Ramah.”

It’s not just Rachel who is grieving, though. A few verses later, notes Brueggemann, “Yahweh 

himself is grieving and will not turn loose.”

According to Brueggemann, “The prophet is engaged in a battle for language, in an effort to 

create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge. The prophet 

is not addressing behavioral problems. He is not even pressing for repentance. He has only 

the hope that the ache of God could penetrate the numbness of history.”

And that numbness of history is something we know all too well.

We have grown numb, for example, to the incredibly high infant mortality rate in the Mid-South. 

With 8.3 deaths per every 1,000 births, Mississippi has the highest rate in the nation. Arkansas 

is third, at a rate of 7.5 per 1,000. And Tennessee, with a rate of 6.9 per 1,000, ranks ninth. 

Here in Memphis, the infant mortality rate has been cut in half in recent years, but we still have 

9.3 deaths per 1,000 births. Most of these infant deaths are preventable.

And now, we sit by and watch the COVID-19 pandemic ravage our nation, with Tennessee 

recently leading the world in new cases per capita. Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi 

all rank in the eight states with the most per capita covid deaths in the last week. In Memphis, 

we’ve experienced 849 deaths, with 188 so far in December, our deadliest month yet, with 70% 

more deaths than the next highest month. And over the past six months, we’ve consistently 

prioritized businesses over the wellbeing of our children and families.

Hauerwas calls this “the politics of murder, to which the church is called to be the alternative.”

But we’ve grown numb. We don’t even notice these deaths - we don’t hear their names, don’t 

hear their stories - much less grieve over them.

 

 

“In the time of Jeremiah,” writes Brueggemannn, “the pain and regret denied prevented any new 

movement either from God or toward God in Judah. The covenant was frozen and there was no 

possibility of newness until the numbness was broken.”

And so Brueggemann points to Jesus weeping and says that it “permits the kingdom to come.”

Grieving is political.

“Such weeping,” says Brueggemann, “is a radical criticism...because it means the end of all 

machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones.”

But here’s the kicker: “Yet the loss of thrones is exactly what is called for.” You should hear an 

echo here of the Magnificat, where Mary sings of bringing the powerful down from their thrones.

May we learn to practice a politics of grief. 

And may we join with the Rachels in our community, who weep and refuse to be comforted, for 

as Brueggemann says, “[t]ears are a way of solidarity in pain when no other form of solidarity 

remains.” Together, our tears can expose and challenge the Herods in our world today.