Stepping outside
onto our back patio, the frigid early morning air startles me, smacking my
cheeks like a trainer popping the face of a prizefighter, making sure the boxer
is fully conscious.
Moments before I
had been inside, listening to the news reports: the murders in San Bernardino,
CA., were likely the result of a terrorist attack, the newscaster reports, and
this on the heels of the murders in Colorado, Springs, Co., at a Planned
Parenthood Clinic, and just a few days before that---the terrorist attack in
Paris, France.
The bad news cascades
from one day into another, and I am weary of it.
Shaking my head
in disbelief, I want to escape to the calmer sounds outside: the morning dove
waking her brood, the distant sound of traffic on the highway, the rustle of
the leaves.
“If only I could
stay in the quietness of my backyard sanctuary and rewind to a quiet, peaceful
time, like during the days of the first Christmas,” I wished.
And that’s when
the morning cold slapped me back to reality, for I knew that first Christmas
was anything but peaceful, as much as we would like to cherish the myth of
groomed animals in a manger where the hay is neatly nestled around an
antiseptic manger with shepherds smiling on Jesus whose mother has quietly
ended her pregnancy with an almost painless birth.
The misery
actually began before the Holy Family ever arrived in Bethlehem.
The 90-mile
journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was a grueling trip in the best of
circumstances, what with the threat of robbers and bandits and the the rough
terrain, and if the journey was made during winter, the likelihood of foul
weather was ever present. And Mary, nine months pregnant, riding on a donkey
about 10 miles a day, would have made the sojourn all the more miserable.
According to the
gospel accounts, life didn’t get any easier once Jesus was born.
King Herod, a
puppet king for the Romans, was insanely paranoid. His evil antics rival
Syria’s Assad or the leaders of most any terrorist organization. According to
the Jewish historian Josephus, Herod murdered his wife Mariamne and his
brother-in-law Joseph after falsely accusing them of having an affair. Later,
he executed his own sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, whom he accused of
plotting to take his throne. About the time of Jesus’ birth, he tortured each
of his slave girls in hopes they would confess to information about rivals to
his throne. And in 4 B.C.E., he executed his son, Antipater.
Herod’s
political agenda would stop at nothing, including the murder of innocent children,
to maintain his authority and power. According to Matthew’s account, when Herod
was unable to find out where the prophesied King of the Jews was to be born, he
thought the only way to make sure the potential future king wouldn’t be born
was to kill every boy baby under two years of age in and around Bethlehem.
Given the small size of Bethlehem and its rural surroundings, the massacre
would have been a small order for a seasoned veteran of murderer like Herod. Maybe
20 children were killed.
Twenty boy
babies murdered.
An angel
warned Mary and Joseph. They fled to Egypt, making them refugees for a short
time. And so the life of Jesus was preserved, and 33 years later, the religiopolitical
powers of his day would cruelly murder him, the most innocent person in history.
Writing several
centuries after the birth of Christ, one of the “fathers” of the Church,
Cyprian, wrote to a friend about the world they lived in. Cyprian saw, “murderers on the high roads, pirates on the seas; under every roof,
misery and selfishness. It’s really a
bad world, my friend,” he observed. “It
is a very bad world.”
It was then,
just as it is now.
Yet, holding on
to something intangibly tangible, Cyprian concluded: “…in the midst of this, I
have found a quiet and holy people. They have a joy and a strength which is a
thousand times better than any pleasure or happiness. They are often despised
and persecuted, but they have overcome the world. These people, dear friend,
are the Christians—and I am one of them.”
Stepping back
inside my house, shielded from the early morning cold, I find warmth, not just
from the heat, but from the thought that despite the bad news of another day, I
too “am one of them.”
All because of
Him.
The One born in
a manger.
Destined for the
Cross.
Alive today.
And that makes
all the difference in this and every Christmas.
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