“It’s essentially the most great time of the 12 months.”
Besides when it’s not.
Most of us maintain cherished recollections of the vacations. Nostalgia infuses the season with thrill. Decorations and traditions inject a way of enchantment. We bask in merriment with associates and treasure time with household. Not least of which, we revel within the pleasure of the youngsters in our midst.
Christmas has a means of magnifying life’s joys. We take inventory of them and put aside time to get pleasure from them. Like a magnifying glass, Christmas time not solely spotlights what’s already current however enlarges our notion of it.
This contains life’s joys—but in addition life’s sorrows.
For a lot of, Christmas could be one of the painful occasions of the 12 months. With the vacation’s give attention to family and friends, we could also be reminded of beloved members of the family who’re not with us, whose presence we’re not capable of get pleasure from. Possibly we’re compelled to reckon with estrangement or unhealed wounds. Possibly the change of tempo forces us to take inventory of our lives and reckon with the truth that issues haven’t turned out as we wished.
Regardless of the case, our already present ache is resurfaced, and oftentimes additional amplified by its distinction with the enjoyment that appears to envelop us. The merriment of the season can strike as a merciless reminder of our grief and sorrow.
Herod slaughters the innocents
Matthew 1:18–25 introduces Jesus as “Immanuel,” which means, “God with us.” However this isn’t merely an affirmation of his bodily proximity to us, turning into a human being and dwelling amongst us in bodily type. He additionally entered “with us” in our struggling, to fulfill us in our struggling, to make it his personal, and to redeem us from it.
Regardless of pristine portraits of a “Silent Night time,” the place “all is calm, all is shiny,” Jesus enters a world wreaked with the painful results of sin. And he isn’t unaffected by it. He’s not distant from us in our struggling. Christmas indicators his entrance right into a world characterised by it. Exhibit A, Herod’s so-called “slaughter of the innocents.”
Having heard of 1 “born king of the Jews,” Herod’s paranoia to guard his throne rises to fever pitch (Matt 2:1–8). When he realizes the magi (or “smart males”) wouldn’t develop into his unwitting accomplices in finding the kid (Matt 2:16; cf. 2:12), he resorts to drastic, murderous measures. He dispatches his forces to Bethlehem—together with all the encircling villages and territories—to kill each male little one two years outdated and youthful to make sure the new child king doesn’t escape (Matt 2:16). But Joseph, warned in a dream, flees with Mary and the kid to Egypt (Matt 2:13–15).
The one whose delivery indicators “peace on earth and goodwill towards males” is born right into a world soaked in blood, the place tyrants cling to their energy by way of violence and moms cling to their youngsters in useless.
So right here we observe the unique Christmas: The one whose delivery indicators “peace on earth and goodwill towards males” (Luke 2:14) is born right into a world soaked in blood, the place tyrants cling to their energy by way of violence and moms cling to their youngsters in useless.
Rachel refuses to be comforted
Matthew’s Gospel opens with a collection of vignettes, every demonstrating how Jesus’s arrival accomplishes the prophetic Scriptures.
- The virgin delivery (1:18–25)
- The magi’s go to (2:1–12)
- The flight to Egypt (2:13–15)
- The return to Nazareth (2:19–23)
- John’s ministry (3:1–12)
Discover how every scene highlights the success of Previous Testomony Scripture (e.g., “This was to satisfy …”). Likewise, Matthew’s opening family tree, recalling God’s incipient guarantees to Abraham, the reign of David, and the unfinished story of exile (1:1–17), identifies Jesus because the fruits of Israel’s historical past—and so too her hopes.
Matthew 2:16–18 participates on this sequence.
Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15, a passage expressing the sorrows of exile. Rachel, a matriarch of Israel (see Gen 35:23–26), is personified weeping over her descendants, the Jewish folks, as they’re carried off into exile on account of their sin (cf. Jer 25:1–11). Because the literal moms of Bethlehem and the encircling space wept inconsolably over murdered sons, so “Mom Rachel” weeps over her youngsters who “aren’t any extra” (Jer 31:15; cf. Matt 2:18).
But when we all know the remainder of Jeremiah 31, we all know the oracle doesn’t finish in despair. Instantly following Rachel’s weeping, God speaks phrases of hope: The exiles will return; he’ll make a brand new covenant with them (Jer 31:16–38). The lamentation over exile, although actual and deep, is just not the ultimate phrase. Restoration is promised. And, as many biblical students argue, “If Matthew once more intends his readers to attract on the entire story, he’s pointing to the truth that God will restore after this sorrow, at the same time as he restored Israel after the exile.”
So Matthew hears in Bethlehem’s wails an echo of Jeremiah 31’s. Israel nonetheless finds herself in a world marked by the immense sorrow brought on by sin.
But as Matthew’s use of Jeremiah assures us, even on this darkest of moments, deliverance is already in movement. The tears that soak this sin-wrecked world will ultimately be wiped away (Isa 25:8; cf. Rev 21:4).
Jeremiah 31:15 happens in a setting of hope. Regardless of the tears, God says, the exiles will return; and now Matthew, referring to Jeremiah 31:15, likewise says that, regardless of the tears of the Bethlehem moms, there may be hope. … The tears of the Exile at the moment are being “fulfilled”—i.e., the tears begun in Jeremiah’s day are climaxed and ended by the tears of the moms of Bethlehem. The inheritor to David’s throne has come, the Exile is over, the true Son of God has arrived, and he’ll introduce the brand new covenant (26:28) promised by Jeremiah.
Jesus meets us in our sorrow
Christmas with its insistence on festive cheer feels prefer it precludes our disappointment. Its emphasis on merriment appears to say, “Your sorrow is unwelcome right here.”
But the primary Christmas reminds us that Christmas is definitely for the unhappy, for the inconsolable.
As Israel’s sin led to the ache of exile, so too we stay in a world contaminated with and affected by sin, bringing sorrow in its wake. But God is just not distant from our sorrow. He entered into our human expertise (Heb 4:15), together with its sorrow. Like us, he’s “acquainted with grief” (Isa 53:3–4). Even at his delivery, he didn’t arrive in consolation whereas the world was in distress. He entered straight right into a world marked by violence, loss of life, and grief.
The true account of Christmas doesn’t shove our sorrows apart, as if unwelcomed. It meets them.
That is how Israel’s redeemer was to seem; that is how God would set about liberating his folks, and bringing justice to the entire world. No level in arriving in consolation, when the world is in distress; no level having a simple life, when the world suffers violence and injustice! If he’s to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, he have to be with us the place the ache is.
And, after all, this incarnational participation in our struggling climaxes on the cross (Phil 2:5–8), the place Christ bears the burdens for these he got here to avoid wasting.
As Matthew 2:16–18’s use of Jeremiah 31 reveals, Jesus’s arrival indicators our eventual restoration, our rescue from this world’s sorrows. As God guarantees there, “I’ll fulfill the weary soul, and each languishing soul I’ll replenish” (Jer 31:25 ).
Are you weary? Does your soul languish? God says to you, I’ll replenish you.
Possibly you possibly can relate to Rachel whose grief was so deep it proved inconsolable (Matt 2:18: “she refused to be comforted”). Your sorrow is so profound that no phrases can penetrate it. Because the moms of Bethlehem, “they refused to listen to any factor that is likely to be steered to them for his or her reduction.” Individuals might attempt to consolation you, however nothing supplied can erase or heal the ache. (It’s fairly doable that nothing on this world will.)
If that’s you, Matthew 2:16–18 would repair your hope on Jesus, who will convey a couple of world the place, as J. R. R. Tolkien writes, “every thing unhappy will develop into unfaithful.” And, as deep as the current ache is, we’re informed it’s not even price evaluating to the load of glory that awaits us when Christ comes once more (Rom 8:18; 2 Cor 4:17–18).
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