Never Forget

Today reminds us what a threat this kingdom presents to the status quo. Jesus' mother spoke like a Maccabean when she got the news--as if "the one whose birth ... now being announced is to be an agent of radical social change."* Recall some of her words from the first chapter of Luke :

⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,⁵²
And exalted those of low degree;
He has filled the hungry with good things,⁵³
And the rich he has sent away empty.

...Zechariah, as soon as his lips were loosened, proclaims as the meaning of the birth of John,

That we should be saved from our enemies,
And from the hand of all who hate us; 
... to grant us that we,⁷⁴
Being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
Might serve him without fear.

This expectation is all the more clear when John himself spells it out:

Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees;

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire...
His winnowing fork is in his hand,
To clear his threshing-floor,
To gather the wheat into his granary;
But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

This is the language with which John "preached good news to the people. Too hastily we have passed all of this language of annunciation through the filter of the assumption that, of course, it is all to be taken "spiritually." (* all taken from John Howard Yoder The Politics of Jesus, 1972, p.26-27)

Herod sure didn't take it "spiritually":

"Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

"A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more."     Matt 2:16-18

Far from "spiritualized" events, we remember very literal terror today. Horrific slaughter by the government due to reactionary "heightened security threats"--announced and imposed after word leaked out that the status quo was about to be radically disrupted. A popular slogan in today's terror rhetoric is "never forget." May today's remembrance of the Massacre of the Innocents help us never forget that Jesus' coming may stir up all kinds of reactions in the neighborhood. It may cost some of us our very lives.