A high school classmate messaged me on Saturday, asking what she promised was not a snarky question: How will I preach a “normal” Christmas sermon in the wake of Newtown? It’s a good question. There are parents like myself who are trying, perhaps in vain, to protect our younger children from the news—certainly the grisliest details. More deeply, though, she wondered how we can celebrate in the face of this kind of tragedy. (To make matters worse, did she see that I was preaching on A Charlie Brown Christmas? Would a children’s cartoon not be hopelessly beside-the-point at such a time? If you attended my church service yesterday, I hope you saw that it wasn’t.)
Regarding this deeper objection, however, I reminded her first that Christians ought to be the most realistic people on the planet about evil—its reality, its pervasiveness, its intractability. This is the very evil, after all, that God sent his Son into the world to defeat. That this victory remains elusive to us is also no surprise: the world in which suffering, death, and evil will no longer exist is discontinuous with our own. Our faith is eschatological: Christians don’t share the burden, under which our modern-minded friends labor, that our world is or should be making “progress.” As David Bentley Hart said in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami many years ago, our Christian faith sets us free from optimism and teaches us hope instead.
We celebrate Christmas in the wake of Newtown because Christmas teaches us hope.
Besides, at the very center of the Christmas story is another Newtown: King Herod, hearing reports of a rival king born in Bethlehem, sent soldiers there to murder every boy two-years-old and younger. The first Christmas proclaims hope in the midst of tragedy and suffering and unspeakable evil. Try naming any Christmas since then in which that wasn’t the case.
In yesterday’s pastoral prayer—after referring with great circumspection to Newtown—I directed our attention to a future beyond our present world, when “the blood of all your beloved children will be avenged.”
Avenged. Some Christians bristle at the idea of God’s vengeance. Isn’t that an Old Testament idea? they ask—as if they never read Revelation, not to mention the four gospels. If so, I would point them to something that Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, who lived through the civil war in the former Yugoslavia in the ’90s, wrote in Exclusion & Embrace. He said that those Christian traditions (Anabaptists, for instance) most committed to non-violence and pacifism are also most comfortable with the idea of God’s vengeance. We should learn from them, he writes.
My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone (which is where a paper that underlies this chapter was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.†
In yesterday’s sermon, I said the following: “Among other things, Christmas means that there will come a day when the Herods of the world will face the justice they so richly deserve.”
It’s perfectly appropriate, as we reflect on the events of last Friday, for us to look forward to that day.
† Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 304.
I totally agree with everything you say here. “Leave room for the wrath of God.” “‘Vengence is mine,’ says the Lord. ‘I will repay.'” I mean, what is Hell, except the outpouring of God’s wrath, and that forever. Thinking that God does not take vengeance is simply unbiblical and a warped view of God, man, and reality.
The only comment I would make is as to the Mennonite view of pacifism. I agree that it takes “greatness” to take such a position, to suffer evil without response. “Turn the other cheek.” Nonetheless, the Old Testament contains numerous examples of God telling men to engage in wars. Also, he told Noah, “If a man sheds another man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” (Something like that.) In the New Testament, Paul says to fear the policeman, because he carries his gun for a reason (Romans 13, modern paraphrase). Even if we are not supposed to protect ourselves, can’t we nonetheless have a duty to protect others–the innocents? Should we not have opposed Hitler as he murdered millions of Jews?
I agree, although I believe Volf’s words are more about practicing non-violence in general than being a pacifist. I don’t think he is a pacifist. I mean, I think he explicitly says in that book he isn’t. Although, like you, I’m sympathetic with those who have the courage to be so, I am not a pacifist. (Of course, most pacifists I know have the luxury of being so from the comfort of their suburban homes, protected as they are by the force of police and military.)
Completely by coincidence, I just received an email from a church friend of mine forwarding song about people in the military. Here are his comments about it:
Soldiers today are called hero’s if they just step on foreign soil. Being a veteran myself, having served overseas, I consider the men and women on this flight the REAL HERO’S. They gave their all, for our country, their friends and family, and everyone who lives in our country. This song brought tears to me, because I’ve had several friends take this flight serving their country.
I salute all veterans, and most especially the men and women who are passengers on this flight. If ANYONE would ever speak against any veteran, I’d be happy to buy them a one way ticket out of our country and back to where they came from. I’m honored to be in a brotherhood of soldiers, sailors, and Veterans. Remember, a soldier and sailor is a young person serving all of us and our country. A Veteran is a soldier or sailor with EXPERIENCE still defending our homeland. (WE THE PEOPLE)