The Fourth Day of Christmas
28/12/14 04:42
On a couple of occasions, I have been with parents on the occasion of the death of a child. Perhaps there is a miscarriage, or a baby that is born but unable to sustain life for more than a short amount of time. I have also been the one to inform parents of a sudden and traumatic loss of a child by automobile accident, suicide, or some other means. I have journeyed with families through a much slower trip of cancer or another major illness. During my intern year, I spent time with a family, including officiating at a funeral, for a 15-year old who died of a form of chemical poisoning that was the result of an after school job. These are times of deep pain and grief for all who are involved. There is something about the death of a child that seems to throw the general order of life off.
So is is no mystery that the two occasions when our people were the victims of attempts at destroying the people through the massacre of infants stand out and receive special emphasis in the Bible. The infant Moses narrowly escapes Pharaoh’s attempt to control the population of the Hebrew people by killing male children. There is a kind of parallel story with the Exodus plague of the death of the firstborns later in that story, when Egypt is the victim of the terror. And Matthew reports that Jesus narrowly escapes Herod’s attempt at dealing with his fear of the rise of a Messiah from the midst of the Jews by killing firstborn sons.
These stories don’t have a primary function of providing solace for parents who experience the death of their children. Rather, they tell of some of the larger dynamics of our history, including these great losses and their attendant suffering as evidence that we can survive even the most gross and cruel attempts at wiping us out.
But there is some small comfort in the simple fact of understanding that ours is not the first generation of people to have experienced the death of innocent children. We are not alone in our grief and sorrow and sadness. And when we pray, we pray to God who has seen this pain before.
The fourth day of Christmas is traditionally the day to remember the innocents as reported in Matthew’s Gospel.
“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by 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 were no more.”
It might seem like a strange thing to pause in the midst of the celebration of the birth of Jesus to acknowledge a dark and tragic event in the story of our people in which innocent children were slain.
It is, however, extremely important that we do not forget the death of innocents. Whether the story be that of Herod, the death of Jewish children during the Holocaust, the death of children in the Laotian killing fields, the death of children in the conflict in Sudan or any one of the hundreds of of the conflicts that claim the lives of innocents, we who survive are charged with the critical task of remembering.
To forget is to behave as if they never existed.
To forget is to believe that they did not matter.
So we have chosen to remember. Every year we set aside a day to remember not only the innocents who were killed by Herod in his irrational rage, we remember the innocents who have been killed in our world today.
On the one hand, there is good news to celebrate. The last quarter of a century has been a time of significant decrease in infant mortality. The dramatic decline in preventable child deaths since 1990 achieved nearly a halving (49%) of those deaths. The world saved almost 100 million children - among them, 24 million newborns, who would have died had mortality rates remained at 1990 levels.
Still, far too many preventable deaths occur. And our country is proving to be a dangerous place for infants and children. Homicide accounts for one in five injury-related deaths among infants in the United States. And the infant homicide rate increased from 4.3 per 100,000 in 1970 to 9.2 in 2000. It has declined a bit in the past 15 years, but the horror of the death of a single innocent is far too much.
Worldwide 1.2 million babies died in the birth process. Nearly a million babies do not survive their first day of life each year. The leading cause of newborn death is inadequate or nonexistent medical attention for the delivery of the baby. Nearly 3 million babies die within the first month of their lives. Again the reason is lack of proper medical care. The number of deaths of newborns is four times higher in Africa than it is in Europe.
Newborn deaths are not inevitable. Most are easily avoided if the simplest of medical care is made available.
So as we rejoice in the dramatic gift of the Christ child and the incredible joy of God coming to us in the person of an infant, we also set aside one of the days of Christmas to mourn the deaths of the innocent and to renew our commitment to doing what we are able to end preventable child deaths.
Each year Save the Children issues a report on ending newborn deaths. In addition to reporting the statistics, the report contains specific proposals for actions that can be taken by governmental and non governmental agencies to save lives.Hopefully the world will continue to prevent infant deaths.
As long as one mother weeps over the death of her child, however, we will continue to share her sorrow and grief.
On the fourth day of Christmas, we weep with those who weep.
So is is no mystery that the two occasions when our people were the victims of attempts at destroying the people through the massacre of infants stand out and receive special emphasis in the Bible. The infant Moses narrowly escapes Pharaoh’s attempt to control the population of the Hebrew people by killing male children. There is a kind of parallel story with the Exodus plague of the death of the firstborns later in that story, when Egypt is the victim of the terror. And Matthew reports that Jesus narrowly escapes Herod’s attempt at dealing with his fear of the rise of a Messiah from the midst of the Jews by killing firstborn sons.
These stories don’t have a primary function of providing solace for parents who experience the death of their children. Rather, they tell of some of the larger dynamics of our history, including these great losses and their attendant suffering as evidence that we can survive even the most gross and cruel attempts at wiping us out.
But there is some small comfort in the simple fact of understanding that ours is not the first generation of people to have experienced the death of innocent children. We are not alone in our grief and sorrow and sadness. And when we pray, we pray to God who has seen this pain before.
The fourth day of Christmas is traditionally the day to remember the innocents as reported in Matthew’s Gospel.
“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by 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 were no more.”
It might seem like a strange thing to pause in the midst of the celebration of the birth of Jesus to acknowledge a dark and tragic event in the story of our people in which innocent children were slain.
It is, however, extremely important that we do not forget the death of innocents. Whether the story be that of Herod, the death of Jewish children during the Holocaust, the death of children in the Laotian killing fields, the death of children in the conflict in Sudan or any one of the hundreds of of the conflicts that claim the lives of innocents, we who survive are charged with the critical task of remembering.
To forget is to behave as if they never existed.
To forget is to believe that they did not matter.
So we have chosen to remember. Every year we set aside a day to remember not only the innocents who were killed by Herod in his irrational rage, we remember the innocents who have been killed in our world today.
On the one hand, there is good news to celebrate. The last quarter of a century has been a time of significant decrease in infant mortality. The dramatic decline in preventable child deaths since 1990 achieved nearly a halving (49%) of those deaths. The world saved almost 100 million children - among them, 24 million newborns, who would have died had mortality rates remained at 1990 levels.
Still, far too many preventable deaths occur. And our country is proving to be a dangerous place for infants and children. Homicide accounts for one in five injury-related deaths among infants in the United States. And the infant homicide rate increased from 4.3 per 100,000 in 1970 to 9.2 in 2000. It has declined a bit in the past 15 years, but the horror of the death of a single innocent is far too much.
Worldwide 1.2 million babies died in the birth process. Nearly a million babies do not survive their first day of life each year. The leading cause of newborn death is inadequate or nonexistent medical attention for the delivery of the baby. Nearly 3 million babies die within the first month of their lives. Again the reason is lack of proper medical care. The number of deaths of newborns is four times higher in Africa than it is in Europe.
Newborn deaths are not inevitable. Most are easily avoided if the simplest of medical care is made available.
So as we rejoice in the dramatic gift of the Christ child and the incredible joy of God coming to us in the person of an infant, we also set aside one of the days of Christmas to mourn the deaths of the innocent and to renew our commitment to doing what we are able to end preventable child deaths.
Each year Save the Children issues a report on ending newborn deaths. In addition to reporting the statistics, the report contains specific proposals for actions that can be taken by governmental and non governmental agencies to save lives.Hopefully the world will continue to prevent infant deaths.
As long as one mother weeps over the death of her child, however, we will continue to share her sorrow and grief.
On the fourth day of Christmas, we weep with those who weep.