Light Where Hope Falters

Radical Advent 2023

Fritz Eichenberg, The Christ of the Breadlines, 1951, wood-cut

O Holy Nightmare

Today’s art piece, once again created by Fritz Eichenberg, shows what first appears to be a picture-perfect scene. Baby Jesus sleeps peacefully in the hay. Two cows are gently “lowing.” A star shines in through the rafters of the stable illuminating this tiny hope-bringer…

But the picture is not perfect. Do you see the military helmet in the straw by the baby? See the blazing fire burning the nearby village? 

Just as in our realities today, there is no peace here, no “silent” night.

Imagine the smoke the little one is taking into his lungs from the burning village. Where is the soldier who left his helmet so close to the sleeping child? What are his plans? What sort of violence is to come? Notice how vulnerable the baby is, dependent on others to cover, protect, ensure his thriving; as is the case with all vulnerable people.

Matthew 2 tells us that Christ’s birth was not just accompanied by the worship of shepherds, angels, and wisemen. The breaking in of God Incarnate came with cries of weeping and despair. Soon after Jesus entered this world, Herod ordered the killing of all the male children in Bethlehem under two years old, slaughtering the innocents. 

“Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

These children were the bystanders to and victims of this violent conflict. They had not enlisted to fight against the powers of evil. These children, like the hundreds of children who have lost their lives in recent months, were brutally torn from their mothers and killed because of the violence that invades our world. 

This day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, is a day for mourning, for crying out with the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers as together we cry against the many, many casualties of the Divine War between the forces of Light and Dark. 

It cannot be denied that the Darkness fights back and pushes into even our most quiet moments. Has a day ever gone by without tears, without loss? 

As you reflect on what this day means, may you hold fast to the holy hope we knew at Christmas. This is not how the story ends. This  story, our story. ends with empty tombs. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, there will be a day when death will be no more (Rev. 21:4). 

Lean in and Learn

  • Understand these statistics as "the age of unprecedented vulnerability" (John Nehme, Allies Against Slavery) in the US, especially for children. Poverty, loneliness, isolation, despair, violence, and trafficking.

  • The poverty rate in the U.S. more than doubled last year -- from a historic low of 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022. That’s the largest rise in the poverty rate in the previous 50 years.
     

  • The US Surgeon General released an advisory saying we have an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” in our country. One survey found that 61% of 18-25-year-olds reported feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time or all the time."

  • The Financial Times reported that one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. The majority of those deaths are not health-related. Instead, they are called “deaths of despair” – gun-related deaths, suicide, homicide, and overdoses.

Fritz Eichenberg, Nativity, 1950, wood-cut

Nightwatch
by Fritz Eichenberg

Midnight has fallen and the woods are quiet.

Truce has been declared, the hunt has stopped.

The eagle has his fill, the gulls are resting, and the fish

are safely sleeping in their pond.

The pigeon dreams of love, the crow of sharing carrion with the vulture.

The owl is wide awake.

The watchman of the night must think of weightier things than mice.

Pallas Athena's bird, with a degree in wisdom, perches on a skull and ponders what those eggs may yield:

New insights, a messiah, or new horrors-perhaps a neutron bomb?

Mark 9:36–37

for every child, especially the vulnerable ones,

whether born or unborn

And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them,

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.

Rev. 22: 12-13

“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”