“Expendable”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Matthew 2;13-18 (Forward, p. 61) CEV p. 983
Sometimes I think that certain scholars go out of their way to be obtuse, especially when it comes to matters of faith and the Biblical record. For instance, there are some who dismiss, out of hand, Matthew’s account of the murder of ‘the Innocents’ in Bethlehem. These scholars suggest that, seeing as there is no record of it in the official records of this having taken place, that the story is probably a product of Matthew’s fertile imagination.
But let us step back a moment and look at it in light of what we know of Herod the Great and his times.
a) There wasn’t anything of the press or the social media presence that we know today in Judea back then. The judicial murder of a few children, a dozen or two at most, in some obscure village would not have made the news, for there were no news outlets then. And, most assuredly, such a dastardly deed would not have made it into the official, royal records, for it could hardly be considered the sort of thing that you wanted recorded, that you were proud of.
b) And certainly, it fits in entirely with what we know of the character and habits of King Herod. He is known to have been insecure about his throne and its legitimacy and paranoid about any threats to it. Earlier in his reign he had snuffed out potential rivals that he saw as threats, even to the point of eliminating some within his own family. (His numerous fortress cities, Masada, Herodium and others, were built for the express purpose of providing him with sanctuaries in case of trouble.) And, as he aged, he got even worse on this point, even more threatened, even more paranoid than before.
This may well seem like a nasty and regrettable episode from past history, one that is mercifully far removed from modern life and experience, but sadly, unfortunately, it is not. We see all sort of examples of people who are counted as expendable in today’s world. (When I say ‘expendable’, I am not taking it quite as far as Herod, in actually ordering someone’s death, but rather counting that person or group as being less important, and so simply left out of the equation, left out of one’s thinking and planning). So, these ‘expendable ones’ would include
-sweatshop labourers and farm workers who toil in abysmally poor and unsafe working conditions and provide us with much of our cheap food, clothing and consumer goods;
-the unborn and the elderly, and those whose health care is seen as an unacceptable drain on the health care system, those who are considered to on the cusp of death ‘anyway’’;
-people of colour who do not have access to the same health care, food resources, clean water, policing, financial credit, or housing as do others in the mainstream;
-those whose homes and livelihoods will be flooded by a global rise in sea level, or whose lives are otherwise devastated by climate change;
-those whose political leanings or voting patterns, or whose district does not favour our re-election, and so are neglected or outright ignored or disenfranchised by our governmental policies—all in the name of party politics, or in some cases, ethnicity or religion or region.
I am sad to say that such notions of expendability are alive and well on Planet Earth, even today. However, they are totally alien to the spirit and practice of Jesus Christ. He reached out to everyone, regardless of class or gendre or status or ethnicity, and tried to include and welcome all of us. The incredible thing is that He did so, even with His enemies, even with those who plotted His death and carried it out to completion. In His eyes, there was no one who was expendable, no one at all. And so, shouldn’t we do likewise? I think so. Amen.
Forward notes: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more” (verse 18).
Commemoration: Holy Innocents
“The video haunts me to this day: Callie Greer, a mother, cries for her daughter, Venus, whom she lost to breast cancer. Had the state of Alabama expanded Medicaid, the Poor People’s Campaign explains, Venus would have lived. Instead, Greer wails and pleads for an answer: ‘How many more babies? How many more children?’
“I imagine her cries aren’t all that different from the biblical figure of Rachel who wept for her children and refused to be consoled. Her weeping is first found in Jeremiah and then again in Matthew (when a jealous king orders the slaughter of innocent baby boys). Days after we celebrate the birth of a newborn King, we also remember the little ones who innocently lost their lives.
“Like Rachel and Callie, we too are invited to wail and grieve, to remember and cry out. We do this unashamedly and without reserve, knowing that God holds our tears and meets us in our pain.”
Moving Forward: “Light a candle and enter into a time of prayer, honoring and remembering the holy innocents in your midst.”
