Carols – Away in a Manger / Sandy Hook

Carols – Away in a Manger
Sycamore Creek Church
December 16 & 17, 2012
Tom Arthur

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
Psalm 42:3 NRSV

Today we mourn.  Today we cry.  Today our hearts our broken.  And how can we continue this Christmas celebration after the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut?  We’re in the middle of a Christmas series called Carols.  We’re supposed to be looking at a new carol each week and unpacking it and exploring it.  Today we were supposed to look at the carol, Away in a Manger.   I had a great sermon lined up to ask the question: is the “little Lord Jesus” Lord of a little of your life or all of your life?  But somehow that just didn’t work anymore, so I had to throw that sermon out and start again.

I must admit, even the carol, Away in a Manger, felt like a bunch of sentimental B.S. as I began reworking this sermon.  But as I collected my thoughts for what new thing God was calling me to say, I felt that the carol still had something to say to us today, or at least provided a framework for a word that God might be speaking to us today.  So to refresh your memory, here’s a music video for the song:

Away in Enemy Occupied Territory
Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed,
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head;
The stars in the heavens
Looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay.

This is a quaint image of the “little Lord Jesus” in a cute little hay filled manger.  But the spiritual reality of what’s going on here is something much deeper.  Have you ever read the Christmas story in the book of Revelation?  You get a much different picture of what’s going on.

Revelation 12:1-9 NRSV
A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.  Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.  His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.  And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.  And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  

The “little Lord Jesus” is born at ground zero of a spiritual war going on in heaven.  There are two forces at work in the world, the forces of light (heaven) and the forces of darkness (hell).  It isn’t always a clean cut issue of who is on what side, because each one of us is a mixture of light and dark, heaven and hell.  If you look within yourself and are honest with yourself, you’ll see some good stuff and some ugly stuff.  But in Jesus Christ, there is no darkness, only light.

1 John 1:5 NRSV
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

So the first thing we need to recognize about our world when we encounter tragedies like the one that took place at Sandy Hook is that it is taking place amidst enemy occupied territory.

Away in a Manger: Jesus Does Cry
The cattle are lowing,
The poor Baby wakes,
But little Lord Jesus,
No crying He makes.
I love Thee, Lord Jesus;
Look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle
Till morning is nigh.

This is one verse that needs some work.  It needs some work because it implies some kind of not-human baby.  We need to separate fact from fiction in this carol.  There is no mention of animals in the Christmas story.  And there is no mention of Jesus’ crying status.  But somehow we have got it in our collective imagination, probably due to this song, that Jesus doesn’t cry, and if Jesus doesn’t cry as a baby, then Jesus probably doesn’t cry as an adult.  Not true.

When Jesus showed up four days after his friend, Lazarus, had died, Jesus wept (John 11:35).  It’s an odd place for Jesus to cry because it’s just before Jesus raises him from the dead!  But Jesus gets caught up in the emotion of the situation.  He feels the pain of those around him.  He suffers with them.  Jesus knows what its like to have a loved one die, and Jesus wept.

Jesus also knows what it’s like to suffer.  He was executed in a very painful way: crucifixion.  Crucifixion kills you not from bleeding, but because over time you get too  tired to pull yourself up to take a breath, and you suffocate.  Jesus was born in enemy occupied territory so as to lead a rescue mission to save all who would follow him by giving us the ability to follow his teachings on how to love God and others in a right way.  But the world encountered this perfect love and executed him.  Jesus didn’t want to die this way. He even asked his heavenly Father to do something else, but submitted to whatever happened.

And while Jesus hung on the cross he felt abandoned by God.  He cried out the first line of Psalm 22, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?  In the face of his own suffering, Jesus asked God Why?  If Jesus asked God Why? then surely it’s OK for us too to ask God Why?  And let us remember too that in the midst of Jesus’ death on the cross, the Heavenly Father knows what it is like to lose a child.  The Father and the Son are not removed from our suffering but know intimately what it is like.

Sometimes It Gets Worse
Be near me, Lord Jesus;
I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever
And love me I pray!
Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care,
And fit us for Heaven
To live with Thee there.

When I heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook, the first scripture that came to mind was the massacre of the innocents.  Here’s the story:

Matthew 2:13-18 NRSV
Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”  Then Josephgot up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men,he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through 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 are no more.”

When Jesus comes into the world and enters enemy occupied territory, sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better.  The forces of darkness don’t just lie down and play dead.  They punch back with everything they’ve got.  In fact, sometimes Jesus’ very presence, the presence of light amidst the darkness, is the very thing that causes it to get worse before it gets better.

In the face of things getting worse, sometimes we Christians say some things that I don’t think are very helpful.  One thing I think we often say to comfort one another in times of tragedy is that everything happens for a reason.  Is this really true?  This idea implies that God orchestrated these things to happen so that God could accomplish something.  It’s as though God set up the domino pieces of tragedy so that they would fall into suffering in just the right way.  According to this view, God caused these shootings to happen so that God could get something else to work the way God wanted it to work.

But does everything happen for a reason?  Did God cause this to happen for a reason?

Was this the will of God?

Closely related to these questions are some other questions: How can you believe in God in the face of something like this?  If God is good and all-powerful, how does God allow something like this to happen?

There are no easy answers to these questions but let me offer some ideas that point us toward answers.

First, the Bible isn’t Pollyanna.  Everyone in the Bible doesn’t get what they want and live a perfect and charmed life.  The Bible is full of stories of people hanging on to faith amidst great and terrible suffering.  So don’t think for a second that what the Bible is about is getting rid of all the suffering in your life.  My own experience is that often times following Jesus in a broken world causes me more suffering.

Second, Jesus is the “little Lord Jesus” because he does not force or coerce himself on us.  God allows freedom in the creation, but the natural world of “mother nature” and the human world of each one of our hearts.  God gives each one of us the wonderful and terrible gift of the freedom to choose or reject God and God’s ways.  This is not to say that God is disinterested in our lives or that God is a God who simply created the clock, wound it up, and lets it run.  But rather, most of the time God allows us all to live with the natural consequences of our behavior and the natural consequences of others’  behaviors.  And in that freedom, we people who are all a mixture of heaven and hell, do some bad things.  Some of those bad things are small, and some of those bad things are tremendous.

Third, God can and often does take something bad and turn it, twist it, conform it, even push it into something good. St. Paul tells us that “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28 NRSV).  Let me make sure you understand the distinction between what Paul is saying and the idea that everything happens for a reason.  “Everything happens for a reason” means that God made it happen.  What Paul is saying is that once something happens, God can use it to God’s purposes and God’s ends.  These are two very different ideas.  Do not confuse them.  Paul is not saying that everything happens for a purpose of God.  Paul is saying that everything that happens can be used for God’s purposes.

Lament is OK
Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed,
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head;
The stars in the heavens
Looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay.

It’s Christmas time and we want to celebrate.  But this tragedy won’t let us celebrate.  And it is OK to lament.  It’s OK to lament because the Bible is full of laments.  The prayer book of the Bible, the Psalms, have more laments in them than any other kind of prayer including praises.  The book of Job, one of the longest books in the Old Testament, is basically one big lament.  Then there’s even a book of the Bible called Lamentations, written after the city of Jerusalem was sacked and many were taken off into exile in Babylon.

We are living in a world that is both already and not yet.  Jesus already entered into enemy occupied territory to initiate the great rescue mission, but the mission is not yet complete.  In the midst of it being not yet complete, it is OK to lament.  So I would like to end this message on a lament.

Lamentations 2:18-19 NAB
Cry out to the Lord;
Moan, Daughter Zion!
Let your tears flow like a torrent
day and night;
Let there be no respite for you,
no repose for your eyes.
Rise up, shrill in the night,
at the beginning of every watch;
Pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord
Lift up your hands to God
for the lives of your little ones.

Lord, have mercy.