We might be in the midst of the 12 days of Christmas, but among the lesser-known Feast Days in this season is December 28, the Feast of Holy Innocents. This is the day in remembrance of the massacre of young children in Bethlehem by King Herod the Great in his attempt to kill the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:16–18). You may wonder why I would set aside time to write about this event when we could be singing "A Partridge in a Pear Tree" and harmonizing "Five Golden Rings." However, I did write last year focusing on Christmas, so you can refer to that if you’d prefer.

The Feast of Holy Innocents is one of those horrific events in scripture that is rarely addressed. The story is unique to Matthew's Gospel.

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“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.”

Fritz Kunkel, the esteemed Psychologist who studied with Carl Jung, reminds us that this passage reveals the nature of destructiveness and tyranny as aspects of the inner landscape of the soul, as well as its outward manifestation in autocrats throughout history. "The terrible rage of Herod proves his helplessness. He cannot destroy the little (Christ) child who frightens him,

and this failure, though paid for with the lives of the innocents, is the inevitable cost of our spiritual growth." (Creation Continues by Fritz Kunkel, p. 41)

Matthew places this passage as a driving motivation for Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt. Fear for the newborn child's well-being dominates his gospel. In our sanitization of the Christmas narrative, we often forget that Christ is born in poverty, in a stable, and then runs for his life. This motif is consistent throughout ancient literature, sacred stories, and even fairy tales up through the modern era. The holy child is not born into comfy conditions with a bounty of gifts and nourishment. Rather it’s on the margins of society and the edge of disaster, hiding from authorities. Today, we see this portrayed again and again in film. For example, the Star Wars series consistently portrays the hero/heroine as being from a far-off humble place, often abandoned. "It shows that the collective, the established power, fears the new, as we, too, at times, fear new possibilities emerging within ourselves, shaking us out of our old ways," writes Mariann Burke in Advent and Psychic Birth, p. 145.

Duccio do Buoninsegna “Slaughter of the Innocents” C.E. 1308-11

All this disturbing imagery and storyline of the slaughter of the innocents brings to mind many examples of history. The Holocaust, the brutality of slavery, the treatment of Native people on this continent, and most recently, the events in Ukraine, which repeat a modern-day massacre of the innocents. These events make us wonder, "why is there suffering?" and, in particular, "Why are human beings so adept at making others suffer?"

I'm unsure why I've been captivated by these questions, and sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one. I suspect not. Instead, I surmise my quest for understanding is both personal and professional. As a parish pastor walking alongside people who witnessed friends and family die of AIDS, self-inflicted deaths, and tragic losses, the most often asked and unasked question was, "Why?" No response could ever satisfy either them or me. Usually, I simply held people while they grieved.

Some of you know my fascination with the book of Job, that ancient story that made its way into the Hebrew Bible despite its origin lying elsewhere in the ancient near East. This curiosity continues to lead me to explore various perspectives on the topic of loss and grief. One book of note is Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering by Scott Samuelson. In addition to Job, the author takes us through three other classic views on suffering along with three modern perspectives. Hannah Arendt, Frederich Nietzsche, and Confucius each get a chapter along with Job and a few others. One comes away with the universality of our human suffering and our desire to understand it. There are no answers, yet somehow, perspective helps.

But shouldn't we all stand up to the causes of suffering? Why not decide, as people, not to tolerate the Herods of this world? Then, if we all mustered enough courage, we could stop this nonsense. Right!? After all, we have been given the uniquely human capability of free will. Indeed, the exercise of choice allows us to stop, if not all, at least some of the madness. Come on, people, let’s do the right thing.

In 1971, the somewhat infamous Stanford Prison Experiment revealed how the seemingly good-natured and kind participants could quickly turn into brutal thugs. The participants, all men, were randomly divided into guards and prisoners in a makeshift jail at Stanford University. Though they were supposed to be playacting, the guards began to abuse the prisoners verbally, physically, and psychologically. The lead researcher, Philp Zimbardo, even got so caught up in the playacting himself that he continued the experiment, despite witnessing the abuse. It wasn't until his girlfriend intervened, imploring him to halt the experiment, that it ended. (This might say something about the need for a feminine essence in both body and spirit to serve as a counter veiling force – at least in this situation) Later reflecting on this experiment, Zimbardo recalls: "Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us….That knowledge does not excuse evil; rather it democratizes it…" (quoted in Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought, p 336) So much for the claim, "if I were in Nazi Germany, I would have stood up to Hitler." Well, maybe, but the evidence of the number who actually did is relatively tiny.

Carl Jung helps us in this area with his theory of the human shadow. The understanding that within each person is an aspect of our personality that is counter to our conscious or lived life values. You know the shadow is real when you have those thoughts about that co-worker at the office you can't stand, to put it mildly. Recent efforts in the Jungian community have begun applying this understanding beyond the individual to suggest that groups, churches, corporations, and nations have a shadow. Yet, Jung always brings matters back to the individual. He reminds us, "Nobody is immune to a nationwide evil unless s/he is unshakably convinced of the danger of his/her own character being tainted by the same evil." (CW 18, The Symbolic Life, para 1400.)

One aspect of confronting a feast day like the Slaughter of the Innocents is remembering our responsibility individually and collectively for addressing such horrors, whether they be something as horrific as the events in Ukraine or that bully who sits on the committee with you, while simultaneously facing the Darth Vader within.

But a second response, connected with the first, is facing the grief of such tragedies. It's my view that unattended sorrow is among our primary national crises. We don’t do grief very well in our modern world, and we pay the price for that. Historically, societies had collective ways of attending to the grief and sorrow that are part of the suffering. For example, imagine for a moment the collective sorrow of all those parents of the innocents under Herod's brutal rule. Most likely, what those parents had were not only the funeral rituals but also other forms of ongoing collective grief expression. No doubt their faith practices connected their loss to those of their ancestors dating back to Moses and other times of significant loss. Knowing that your loss relates to others, and with some aspect of an eternal divine schema, may not eliminate the pain of loss, but it helps put it in context. If nothing else, you know you are not alone in grief.

Terrence Mallick’s The New World is a film that expresses how pre-modern societies tended to sorrow and loss. The grief people experienced was honored and treated with careful attention to the personal and communal aspects of sorrow. As Oscar Wilde wrote, "Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.” Watch this 8-minute video commentary for a description of The Lost Art of Grief.

Responding to loss with intentionality is applicable in many aspects of our lives. Yes, for the suffering of loss of people, but also loss of place, home, and even the shifting loss of identities around work, citizenship, and physical capacity. We need formal and informal rituals to help us in this time of great cultural transition. Every aspect of life is changing. Every week we should pause to grieve what we have lost. Attending to our sorrow frees us up to look to the future. It’s hard to be forward-looking when you are stuck in nostalgia.

Each December, I pull out the music of the Ohio-based musical duet, Over the Rhine. I’m particularly fond of their eloquent lyrics around ultimate matters in life and faith. This year, a hidden track on one of their Christmas CDs spoke to me. Penned by Lindford Detweiler, it expresses sorrow and longing with poignancy. Yet, it also points to a way through other kinds of loss, thus enabling a move to the next chapter of life. The line “And so we must all finally surrender, As we release our grip upon whatever we hold dear, And call familiar,” captures it all.

My Father’s House
My father’s body lies beneath the snow
High on a hill in Holmes County, Ohio
From there you can look out across the fields
A farmer guides his horses home as day to darkness bends
And finally yields
Dad’s gravestone holds the words Be Still My Soul
A song we sang together long ago
And there were times we even shared one hymnbook
His right hand and my left hand side-by-side holding pages
Of Music
But now his hands hold nothing but the earth
Hands that held me moments after my birth
And so we must all finally surrender
As we release our grip upon whatever we hold dear
And call familiar
My father’s body lies beneath the snow
And I’m still learning how to let him go
I’ve come to know him better since he’s gone
And often wondered if or how I could’ve been a different
Better son
My father’s body lies beneath the snow
Sometimes on Christmas Eve that’s where I go
I hear faint Christmas bells from far away
Ring out all the unspoken words I’ve never found within myself
To say

Until next time,

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