The Slaughter of the Innocents - Clergy and Educators - Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies



	Clergy and Educators Advent Preaching Colloquium The Slaughter of the Innocents The Advent Preaching Colloquium held on November 29, 2001 had many of the trappings familiar to anyone who had attended these events in the past. We had returned once again to Woodbrook Baptist Church to be led in our study by ICJS Executive Director Chris Leighton and Roman Catholic staff scholar Rosann Catalano, who on this occasion were joined by the new Jewish staff schol-ar Rabbi Charles Arian, and by the Rev. John Roberts, Pastor Emeritus at Woodbrook Baptist and a welcome addition to the ICJS staff. But there were some significant differences as well. The focus of our attention was not an Advent text, but the reading designated as the New Testament lesson for the first Sunday after Christmas in the Revised Common and Roman Lectionary, the Matthean text (2:13-23) that tells of the Slaughter of the Innocents, a story of polit-ical power gone awry and human efforts to thwart the will of God. The most important difference, however, was the hitherto unimaginable backdrop against which this Preaching Colloquium was set: the horrific events of September 11, 2001. This Colloquium explored in exege-sis, art, and poetry theological, homiletical, and pastoral issues raised by Herod's unanticipated slaughter of in-nocent children and the unanticipated slaughter of innocent Americans and people of other nations in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The session kicked off with a versatile presentation by John Roberts, who discussed the variety of liturgical and homiletical responses that have been made since that world-shattering Tuesday morning in September, guided us in our study of Matthew's text, shed additional light on the fine details of the text, and treated us to an il-luminating review of art depicting the slaughter that has emerged out of the biblical narrative over the centuries. John began his presentation by taking us quickly from images of the birth of Christ to the brutal murder of little children by quoting Fred Craddock: The mood has shifted since Christmas day: exit shepherds, enter Wise Men; exit stables, enter palace; exit poverty, enter wealth; exit angels, enter dreams; exit Mary's lullaby; enter Rachel weeping for her children. [Fred B. Craddock, Preaching through the Christian Year - Year B (Valley Forge: Trinity Press Inter- national), 1993, p. 72.] At this point we got down to work on the text. In small groups we combed the passage looking for the theolog-ical, homiletical, and pastoral care issues it raises. Each group reported briefly on the things it found in the Gospel narrative, which included some highly relevant twenty-first-century concerns: a refugee family, government-sponsored terrorism, and the notion of "survivor's guilt" and its effects on those who are left behind. Questions of theodicy were raised, for example: What do we do with the idea that God takes care of one child and neglects all the rest? We discovered that one of the homiletic challenges of this disquieting text lies in plumbing the richness of its rabbinic style ("this was to fulfill what had been spoken by the prophet") and its Old Testament allusions ("Joseph in a dream"); what the text is trying to suggest is lost if these allusions do not resonate in the ears, minds, and hearts of those who hear it today. Following this discussion, John educated us about the Jewish context of Matthew's Gospel, the connections between this Gospel and Torah, and the comparisons that Matthew makes between Moses and Jesus. He called our attention to a critical difference in the word-ing of verses 15 and 17: Joseph's taking Mary and Jesus to Egypt and remaining there until after the death of Herod is expressed as a fulfillment of God's word and will spoken by the prophet; but the massacre of the children of Bethlehem, likened to events in the time of Jeremiah, was neither God's word nor His will. John concluded this portion of his presentation by reminding us that verses 16-18 had for years been omitted from the lectionary but had now been put back in, which amounted to "putting Herod back in Christmas." But then he pointed out that, in fact, Herod had never left because the Herods of this world and the things they do haunt us every Christmas. After our review of certain works of art (see below for a list of the works included in the study and other art resources), John handed the baton to Rabbi Arian, who quickly got our attention by pointing out that the Rev. Jerry Falwell's impulse to look inward in search of where to place the blame for the attacks of September 11 was very biblical. Charles then led us in a discussion of Avot D'Rabbi Natan 4:5. Avot D'Rabbi Natan is a minor trac-tate that serves as a companion to or a midrash on Pirke Avot. The passage we read represented a rabbinic response to the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., an event that was as cataclysmic in its time as the Holocaust and the terrorists acts of September 11 have been in our own time. The lesson this passage teaches is that, although we want to know why something has happened, nevertheless we also must move on from what has happened to something positive. Avot D'Rabbi Natan 4:5 tells us that after the destruction of the Temple, Jews moved on to acts of loving kindness and Torah study. Charles finished his portion of the program by reading a poem called "Tourists," written by the late Yehuda Amichai. Ironically, the poem contains a reference to David's Citadel, which was built by Herod. In this poem an unidentified and ostensibly unimportant human being becomes the point of reference for locating a piece of architecture for some tourists. At the end of the poem we learn that redemption will not come until pieces of architecture become important only as points of refer-ence for locating human beings. The third presenter of the afternoon was Rosann Catalano, who showed us that asking why catastrophic events like the slaughter of the innocents, the destruc-tion of the Temple, and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occur is futile because there is no answer to that question. She suggested instead that the task of the pastoral leader is to move people beyond that question to other, more productive questions: How do I live in the face of this? What can I do in the midst of this reality? What resources are there within our tra-dition that will help men and women of faith to respond to the slaughter of innocent people? People become enraged in the face of catastrophe, and the instinctive pastoral response is to try to deflect the rage. Violence turned inward, however, is a self-destructive move, and violence turned outward destroys the neighbor. When a clergyperson is confronted in a pastoral situation with someone who is angry, or who should be angry, there are resources available in the tradition to deal with that anger. Two-thirds of the psalms in the Book of Psalms are lament psalms, and eighteen percent of the psalms are psalms of impre-cation -- cursing psalms. Using cursing as a form of prayer, directing the violence toward God, is an appro-priate response to rage in our religious tradition. Cursing psalms are part of a tradition that says that one must pray honestly from where one is, so the pastoral task is to assist people to find the honest place from which to begin. It requires an enormous act of trust and courage to reveal such an ugly piece of our heart, but it is this ugly piece that is most in need of redemption. Likewise, it requires a courageous pastoral move to find space in church, even in liturgy, where people will feel able to pray a cursing psalm. We need to expand our notion of prayer to incorporate this little-known and little-used facet of our tradition into our religious discipline to truly help the individual who prays with nothing left to lose. The Advent Afternoon came to its conclusion with the presentation of Chris Leighton, who took as the basis for his remarks the current political tendency to use the word "evil" to describe the actions of the terrorists with no explanation of what evil is or what its dynamics are. To begin to unpack the meaning and the dynamics of evil, the group read and discussed four poems: A Prayer of Anger, by John Shea; Waiting for the Barbarians, by Constantine Cavafy; Contraband, by Denise Levertov; and Hatred, written by a Polish poet. Chris left those us in attendance to ponder the thought that neutralizing evil is a job that requires us to do a lot of work not just beyond our borders, but also right here at home. The Slaughter of the Innocents in Art Slaughter of the Innocents, Duccio di Buonin-senga, 1300, Musel dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena Slaughter of the Innocents, Gionanni Pisano, 1301, Sant' Andrea, Pisoia Massacre of the Innocents, Breviary of Martin of Aragon, 14th century, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Scenes from the Life of Christ: 5, Massacre of the Innocents, Giotto di Bondone, 1304-1306, the Arena Chapel, Padua Massacre of the Innocents, Fra Angelico, 1451-53, Museo di San Marco, Florence Massacre of the Innocents, Daniele de Volterra The Slaughter of the Innocents, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565-66, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna The Triumph of the Innocents, William Holman Hunt, 1883-4, Tate Gallery, London The Light of the World, William Holman Hunt, originally painted 1853-1856 for Keble College, Oxford; other renderings of the same subject in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London, and St. Werburgh's Chapel, Chester Cathedral The Slaughter of the Innocents, Chinese Painting The Massacre of the Innocents, Jaques Callot, 1592-1635, etching, National Gallery of Art, Washington Art Resources Richard I. Abrams and Warner A. Hutchinson, An Illustrated Life of Jesus from the National Gallery of Art Collection [Nashville: Abingdon Press] 1982, ISBN 0-687-01356-9. Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy's Story of Painting [New York: DK Publishing, Inc.] 1994, ISBN 1-56458-615-4. John Drury, Painting the Word: Christian Pictures and Their Meanings [New Haven: Yale University Press] 1999, ISBN 0-300-07777-7. Lectionary Homiletics, David B. Howell, editor, published monthly, 13540 East Boundary Road, Suite 105B, Midlothian, VA 23112. Each week's treatment of the lectionary usually contains a section on the "Lesson and the Arts." One-year subscription costs $59.95. Peter and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture [Oxford: Oxford University Press] 1996, ISBN 0-19-866165-7. The Text This Week (http://www.textweek.com) is an invaluable lectionary preaching resource. There is an Art Concordance. Most weekly lection-ary treatments contain a section on images and films linked to the text. Who We Are :: What We Do :: Events Calendar Clergy and Educators :: Scholars' Corner :: Newsletter Information Resources :: Get Involved :: Home
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