The Slaughter of the Innocents

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© Davidson Loehr

19 December 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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INVOCATION

It is a sacred time, this.

And a sacred place, this:

a place for questions more profound than answers;

vulnerability more powerful than strength;

and a peace that can pass all understanding.

It is a sacred time, this.

Let us begin it together in song.

An Angel Story

Vicki Rao

One day, many years ago now, I was in my mid-twenties, I took my dog out for a walk. We were living in a new part of town. I had rented a house for the summer in an area with many ravines and parks and my dog Shef and I explored new trails every day. This one day though, we were climbing up a steep, wooded hill, cutting between trails. I had no idea exactly where we were but that was okay, we had lots of afternoon left. Shef followed his nose and I followed Shef. He was an easy dog to take on walks or anywhere. He was gentle and not at all inclined to run off. Anyhow, all of a sudden, Shef yelps and sits down on the hillside, and holds up one of his front paws as if to show me. He had cut himself, probably on some glass, and his paw was bleeding, dripping generously. I panicked for a second and then figured that we had to get off the hill. I knew the car was way too far back, so we went ahead. Shef made it to the top and it was a relief to see that the treed area gave out into a grassy shoulder of a road. I guess I took the time to look at his paw, I cannot remember, but I sat him down beside the road and started to wave at the cars passing.

A small car almost immediately stopped for me. The guy opened the door and I told him my dog was cut and bleeding. With no hesitation at all he said he’d take me wherever we needed to go. So I got Shef into the floor of the front passenger seat and gave the man directions for a neighborhood vet. Shef was quiet and shaking and bleeding. I tried to wrap his paw up but he bled right through the cloth in the few minutes it took us to get to the vet’s office. I must have thanked the man many times and I apologized too when we got out and I saw the bloodstain on his car. I think I tried to get his name so I could arrange to fix his car but he just waved me towards the office. I rushed Shef into the office. It was very quiet. No one was waiting. But I called out that my dog was bleeding and people appeared. They took Shef into the operating room immediately and got him rigged up for surgery. Shef was calm and cooperative. When I saw them fix his muzzle onto a metal support, visions of vivisection in combination with relief took my breath away and I collapsed into a chair in the empty waiting room, too dumbfounded to even look to see if the kind man was still there in the street out front.

They stitched Shef up and he was fine after a few weeks of bandgages being dutifully applied and chewed off. I cannot remember how I got down to that park to retrieve my car or even how I got home that day. But I remember how often I gave thanks for that man who stopped on a dime and opened his car up for us, blood and all. I had never learned his name and after the excitement of the hour I regretted being unable to express my thanks. But that is why I offer this story as an angel story. I think of that man as an angel. Like an angel he just appeared, ready and willing to be there for us in our time of need. Like an angel, he became a messenger of an encompassing and unconditional love for me and my dog. It did not matter that we were strangers or that we were bleeding. How many times have I remembered and blessed this man and recognized that when love like this sweeps through your life, you are changed and made new. A new prayer enters your heart that you also may be used one day to help another in such unexpected and holy ways.

PRAYER:

Vicki Rao

O source of life, O mysterious sensitive wonderful unknowable ground of being:

Let us offer praise for the great gifts with which we are blessed in this life – Our families, friends, neighbors, our church community, this weird city in this beautiful land.

And what of the bounty of our lives – the food, homes, education, healthcare, employment, savings, investments, benefits, vacations, and other forms of material wealth? These are great gifts and they are not shared by all. We all know people without jobs, without healthcare, without the means to save money or go on vacation. May we be so bold as to confront the inequities upon which our lifestyles depend.

Let us remember that each day over sixteen thousand children die of hunger throughout the world. Here, in Travis county over forty thousand children experience food insecurity on a daily basis.

Let us become compassionate actors in the human drama. Let us pray for the families in war torn cities, let us pray for the families and souls of all the soldiers of nations and fortunes. Let us pray for our lawmakers – for the emergence of wisdom and humanity in their religious values

Let us truly give thanks for all is given to us, knowing that what is ours is ours by grace as much as by our own design, efforts, and hard work.

May a sense of wonder and graciousness live in our hearts and renew our spirits during these holy days and all days. Amen.

SERMON: The Slaughter of the Innocents

It’s always struck me as odd that religion is supposed to address our ultimate concerns, be prophetic, and search for the truth that can make us free – but church services, like children’s cartoons, are supposed to be rated “G.” Literature and movies sometimes share these high ideals, and use colorful language and even violence in their service. No one would tolerate this in a church service!

We still want the search for truth; and that “prophecy” stuff sounds good. But we want it kept nice and pretty. Church services are mostly theater: polite, genteel theater.

Our favorite holidays are seen that way, too: especially Christmas. The little baby Jesus, mother Mary, the picturesque manger, those nice animals, a special star, people bringing presents. Silent night, holy night; all is calm, all is bright. It’s theater.

The story of Jesus has been called “the greatest story ever told,” but not the story of the special star and the animals. That’s not a great story: that’s theater, and pretty insipid theater at that.

There are two stories in the “Christmas story.” One is historical, the other is mythic. And the irony of the Christmas stories, as of nearly all religious stories, is that the historical story is not true, and the mythic story is profoundly, eternally, dangerously true. The historical talk is theater, like a cartoon. But the myth, that unsettling myth, may be the greatest story ever told.

Good myths contain the kind of truth that can set us free, that can show us the human condition in ways that seem always to be true. We say that’s the kind of truth we want. Every week in church we say it. But I’m reminded of the old adage that “Grace is free; but it is not cheap!” – Or something written by a 2nd century Christian theologian (Tertullian), who said “We daily pray, and daily fear that for which we daily pray.”

The truths of good myths are the kind that set you free after running you through a wringer. We hope for them, but not the trip through the ringer. And some elements of the Christmas story are like that, too. Let me ease into this sideways.

We usually try to “unmask” Christmas by flexing our critical muscles and acknowledging that Christmas is really a “cover” of the more ancient winter solstice festivals: in the ancient calendar, what we know as the 25th of December was four days earlier. It was the winter solstice, the nature festival celebrating the return of the sun. It’s the birthday, by definition, of all solar deities. Haloes were symbols attending solar deities, so you can see even in Christian artwork the earlier myths from which it was taken.

But I don’t want to go too far here, because the Christmas story is very different from a solstice festival. It is ethical and political, all the way down. And nowhere is this more obvious and dramatic than in the story of the slaughter of the innocents.

Historically, it never happened. The historical story is not historically true. There was no such slaughter under King Herod, though by all accounts he was a cruel tyrant. But there was no census-taking or taxing at the time, either. These things were not historical truths, the kind that happen just once and are over. And the star, the birth in the manger, the animals, the wise men bringing gifts – these things never happened either.

The truth is, we don’t know a single thing about the birth or the childhood of the man Jesus. We’re not sure where he was born (but it wasn’t Bethlehem), when he was born (I accept the Jesus Seminar’s guess that it was 6-7 BCE), or who his father was (Joseph? A Roman soldier named Pantera?) The gospel writers made these stories up more than eighty years after he had been born – gospel writers who probably never even knew Jesus. (The gospels were written anonymously. They weren’t given their present names until the second century.) Historically, we know nothing at all about these things. Historically, the stories are not true.

But these stories were myths, and as myths, they contain great and timeless truths. Myths are things that never happened but always are. Mythic truths are both more true and more profound than merely historical truths. They are insights into the human condition in almost all times and places. That’s why the stories live, why people keep telling them, age after age after age: they offer a profound truth we don’t want to be without. They show life measured by a different currency than we are used to measuring it by.

I want to coax you away from the untrue historical story and into the profoundly true mythic Christmas story: especially the part of the story about the slaughter of the innocents.

Myths contain the truths that can make us free. That’s why we tell and retell them. They contain things that never happened but always are. They contain some of the most dangerous and upsetting truths we know, because they show us the nature of the world, including its dark side: our dark side.

Like that business of the slaughter of the innocents. Two weeks ago, Vicki talked about the birth stories of baby Jesus and baby Krishna. Both stories were myths. We don’t know a thing about the birth or even the childhood of Jesus, and the whole Krishna story is told as a myth. Yet in both stories there was a slaughter of the innocents, and both pointed to the same dark and unpleasant truth. Whoever put these stories together felt that a story about the birth of a “son of God” needed a chapter on the slaughter of the innocents: quite a perceptive intuition!

These weren’t real slaughters by real rulers at the time. They were mythic slaughters, telling us about the nature of the power of many rulers contrasted with the power of truth that is symbolized by the birth of a true son of God. Jesus was called a son of God, as Krishna was called an avatar, or incarnation, of the god Vishnu. Both were presented as humans who were true sons of God. And both stories say that the birth of a true son or daughter of God is the greatest of all possible threats to those who hold unjust or cruel power over people.

Why, you wonder? Well, mythically speaking, for the same reason that Superman and Wonder Woman were the mortal enemies of tyrants. Because they serve an uncompromising vision of truth and justice, because they oppose all tyrannies over people, and because they have the courage to act on these high ideals that most of us lack the courage to act on. That’s what makes them such great, great stories.

But this idea of the birth of a true son or daughter of God appearing in our lives isn’t all that appealing to us, either. Imagine suddenly having your whole life compared with these highest ideals, and someone asking you why you have not served them with your life! I mean, come on: we all care about those noble things like truth and justice, but there’s this real world we have to live in, where those things aren’t honored. And, you know, we have to make a living, provide for our families, our retirements. We can’t afford to go around tilting at windmills like Don Quixote. We go along to get along. We don’t make waves. We don’t confront lies even when we see them if it’s really unpopular to do so. Life’s short, we try to accentuate the positive and ignore some of the negative.

And no true son or daughter of God would tolerate that. Superman wouldn’t tolerate it. Neither would Wonder Woman, or even Xena the Warrior Princess. That’s what our superheroes represent: sons and daughters of Truth, Justice, high ideals and the courage to serve them. Do you really want your life compared with that? Do you really want your feet held up to the fire like that?

Grace is free, but it is not cheap. We daily pray, and daily fear that for which we daily pray.

All times hope for the birth of a true son or daughter of God, and all times fear that for which they pray, because it is world-shattering to have your life or your country held up against the highest ideals. And to those who abuse power, the greatest enemies are not “terrorists,” but those who would expose their deceptions as low, selfish and mean.

Another poet who expressed this same fear of what we pray for was Stephen Crane, author best known for his book The Red Badge of Courage. He wrote a little five-line poem that says:

I was in the darkness;

I could not see my words

Nor the wishes of my heart.

Then suddenly there was a great light…

Let me back into the darkness again!

— Stephen Crane

“Suddenly there was a great light – let me back into the darkness again!” We daily hope, and daily fear that for which we daily hope, because while grace may be free, it is not cheap. Suddenly there was a great light. But that light would show up our sins, our crimes against others. It would show that we use people as things to serve our ends. And tyrants are the picture of this trait written in capital letters.

It is no mystery why the slaughter of the innocents attends the birth stories of religious savior figures. From Jesus to Krishna, the myths created to cradle these births have been set against a background of the slaughter of the innocents.

If these were merely historical facts – slaughters of innocents that just happened to be going on at the time – they wouldn’t be so important, just coincidences.

But in two widely separated times and places, those who crafted the stories felt that the birth of the sacred needs to be seen against a background of the slaughter of innocents.

And in both cases, the slaughter comes from vicious rulers for whom the birth of the sacred, of a true son of God, was a real threat to their tyranny. The threat is the birth of a spirit that could expose the deceits and tyrannies of rulers who have turned people into things to serve them and their visions. To do this, they must control everything, including our stories.

How ironic that this Christmas, like most Christmases, also comes against a background of the slaughter of the innocents. The Iraq tribunal hearings opened eight days ago (December 11, 2004) in Tokyo. They are a form of war crimes trials. They refer to America’s invasion of Iraq as “unprecedented in the annals of legal history,” and speak of “the deliberate and premeditated death and destruction unleashed against a sovereign nation and people, waged solely to capture its oil resources.” They speak of the deaths of an estimated 48,000 to 260,000 Iraqi citizens, and post-war effects that could take the lives of an additional 200,000 Iraqis. No matter what you think about the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, the liberation of its oil and resources and our plans to establish a permanent military presence there, I think the deaths of 400,000 to 500,000 Iraqi citizens must qualify as a genuine slaughter of the innocents.

Everything I have read leads me to believe that these charges are true. That our country invaded Iraq to take its oil and resources, and to establish a long-term military presence there, while lying to our citizens, our soldiers and the world about our motives, and pretending that Iraq had anything at all to do with the attacks of 9-11. Perhaps I’m wrong. But as I’m sure as I can be that the deaths of Iraqi citizens as we claim their oil and their resources is a bona fide slaughter of the innocents, as are the deaths of their soldiers, and of our own soldiers – no less than in the Vietnam War.

It is uncanny, how well this fits the Christmas story. Truth is the moral enemy of lies, deception, thievery and fraud. The threat of the birth of a true son of God is that – like a Superman – he would have no fear, couldn’t be bought or intimidated, would serve God and truth, and nothing less.

People gather in Christian churches saying they think the birth of the Christ child, the son of God, was a good thing, as though they would really like that to happen in their own lives. And Hindus, I assume, think that Krishna as the most beloved son of God, or avatar of Vishnu, as they would put it, was a good thing, the sort of thing they’d love to see happening in their neighborhood today. I’m not so sure.

We daily pray, and daily fear that for which we daily pray.

This is why prophets are honored only after they are safely dead. They point out that we are living out of values that demean life and need to be changed, and they are uncomfortable to have around.

The birth of a true son of God, the birth of someone who will actually act on behalf of high and noble ideals, is a threat to every tyranny, every deception, every robbery of the weak by the strong, every lie in the service of low aims, every bogus war into which our young soldiers are sent to perish and to cause other young soldiers to perish.

As a background for the Christmas story, it is perfect. For the myths of the slaughter of the innocents attending the births of Jesus and Krishna are telling us that always, in all times and places, the mortal enemy of wars, theft, invasion, subjugation and deceit would be the birth of true sons and daughters of God, who would serve only truth and justice, and would have the courage to face down the tyrants of the day.

And as the two stories from such different cultures and eras show, this is the eternal dream of people everywhere. As they also show, if God is to be present here, it can only be in human form.

That is the kind of birth for which we pray: the birth of true sons and daughters of the very best gods. That’s the Christmas prayer. When it happens – and it can happen any time, any place – it is indeed the greatest story ever told.