A Longing Fulfilled

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
Matthew 2 (click the link)


KEY PASSAGE:
Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 1:17-18, NIV)


REFLECTIONS:
Joy to the world! The Lord is come: let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing; and heaven, and heaven, and nature sing!

It’s the sound of Christmas right? Jesus is born, let the whole world rejoice! So, how many of you are already disappointed in Matthew’s telling of the biggest holiday of the year? Truth is, most of what we retell in song and pageant at Christmas-time is found in the book of Luke. Luke goes into detail about the events surrounding the birth of Jesus (Luke was a doctor after all) and, as if to document the emotional health of his subjects, he even includes “songs” that express the heart of Jesus’ mother Mary and his uncle Zechariah as they prepare for Jesus’ arrival. Not so with tax-collector Matthew! Matthew, too, sticks to his specialty and begins with an account of the generations leading up to Jesus. And in chapter 2, he gives us a curious list of numbers: 3 wise men, 2 kings (Herod and Jesus), 3 gifts, 2 dreams (both for Joseph), 3 residences (Bethlehem, Egypt and Nazareth), 3 prophesies fulfilled and 1 song of lament. What? That’s right, in the middle of “Joy to the World,” Matthew inserts another kind of song: Rachel, weeping for her children who were no more.

Rachel… remember her? She was in love with Jacob, and he with her, but her father refused to let them marry unless Jacob would take her older, homely sister, Leah, as his first wife. So Jacob gets 2 wives when he only wants one, which, in the words of songwriter Rich Mullins, “sure does seem like an awful dirty trick.” Leah could have children, and she did, but Rachel could not, until one day she pleaded with both God and her husband “give me children or I will die!” She finally had a son and named him Joseph, which means “let there be another” so every time someone said his name they were asking God for more children for Rachel. Her second son was born during a grueling road trip and as often happened in those days, something went wrong. Rachel died birthing the answer to her own prayer. The favorite wife… the wife Jacob (whom God had renamed “Israel”) always wanted, named the baby as she was dying: Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow.” The grief invoked in his child’s name was too much for Israel to bear so he changed it to Ben-yamin or Benjamin, “son of my right hand” and so the dying effort of the beloved wife became the last of Israel’s 12 sons. And these sons went on to father the 12 tribes of Israel. Later these same tribes, the “Israelites,” Rachel’s “children,” would be taken captive and subjected to generations of oppression.

Thanks for the history lesson. But what does this have to do with the Christmas story? Do you see the connection?

• Matthew, always one to give an account, is reminding us again of Jesus’ genealogy as he did in 1:1-2:“This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.”… Jacob/Israel, the husband of Rachel. Jesus was one of Rachel’s “children.”
• Matthew 2:16 reports: “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.” Matthew presents newborn Jesus as the Messiah, with this state-sanctioned infanticide reminiscent of the Exodus story (of the killing of the Hebrew firstborn by Pharaoh upon the birth of Moses) and the fulfillment, the coming-full-circle of Jeremiah’s account of the grief and despair the Israelites felt at being left to die during the Exile. Rachel wept, in her day, for the children she thought she would never bear, and her grief symbolized the legacy of a people whose children would never quite thrive because of the oppression they were constantly under. When Matthew, quoting Jeremiah, recalled the name and grief of Mother-Rachel, he reminded them of generations of hope deferred, hope that was finally being realized in Jesus.

PERSONAL APPLICATION:
Truthfully I’m not able to wrap my head around all the possible personal applications found in this passage. Could it be the ways God intervenes in dreams and protection amidst a series of dangerous events? Could it be the care and detail in the story of Jesus’ genealogy? Could it be certainty found in Jesus being the fulfillment of so many prophecies? 

Here’s what I do know: Jeremiah 31 (the source of the prophecy Matthew quotes in our passage today) gives a beautiful account of God’s heart toward the Israelites during the Exile. My favorite part is verses 16-17: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,’ declares the LORD. ‘They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your descendants,’ declares the LORD. ‘Your children will return to their own land.’”  Jesus, born as a baby, moved from town to town, protected by Joseph and a few legions of angels IS the Hope for their Descendants, and for us also.


WHO AM I?
My name is Leigh Anne Bland and I have a message for Tres Sansom (who assigns these passages): This was a tough one Tres… enjoy twisting your villain’s moustache a little longer.