Christ in the Rubble

“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.”

There is something profound about this advent season that is new to me. Advent being a season that celebrates light breaking through darkness, yet, this Advent seems too dark…the global situation seems too dark. 

2,000 years ago, a story, a narrative began circulating - the story we center the advent season around. It takes place in Bethlehem, a city in the West Bank, in Palestine. A baby born to a poor family labeled as the one to inherit the throne. A ruler of Israel afraid of losing power and land. The scene finds itself in what we historically call the Slaughter of the Innocents. A moment when a powerful leader, out of running things the way the world wants, chooses to kill those who cannot defend themselves for sake of keeping the very power that he tries to clutch on to. 

To criticize the ancient nation and the modern is not the same thing. But, we find a common thread between two rulers who rule for protecting their power - a willingness to slaughter those who have no voice, creating deep and disturbing ripples of silence in a generation lost to Genocide.Loss of life on both sides of conflict should be something that is mourned, period. But there is a rising and staggering number. Genocide. Apartheid. We have passed those points. We missed our opportunity to use that language. We now enter into the slaughtering of the innocents. 

Where do we find the advent of Christ this season? Under the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods, hospitals, homes, and living spaces of Palestine. Where do we situate the birth of the Christ? In the same place the story does - in the West Bank. The God made visible in the person of Jesus is the same God that mourns the loss of life and is angry at the use of power for the killing of countless children. 

Kyrie Eleison. 

Lord Have Mercy.