“Comforting the Inconsolable.”

Scripture: Jeremiah 31: 7-17; Matthew 2:13-23; Text: Mt. 2:18. “Comforting the Inconsolable.”

What a terrible turn of events, worse than a stock market crash! Here we go swiftly from the joy and peace of Christmas to a grizzly scene of multiple, brutal murders. Which story tells the truth better: the peaceful, snowy scene on a Christmas card, or this horrible criminal event in Matthew 2?

This story! It is a war story. When Mary gave birth to the saviour of the world, God reasserts his dominion in this world, a world which Satan wants to control and to destroy. The warfare is between God who wants to restore his beautiful creation with the kingdom of justice, grace and peace, and the devil whose rule is violent, brutal and destructive. God is moving to a new creation, and the evil one desire to have everything end in hell.

The evil is personified here in the person of Herod. Herod was some piece of work, let me tell you. When his own children got in his way, he killed them. Ditto for his wife. What a paranoid, power-hungry dirt bag he was. No one who knew Herod would be in the least surprised that when he heard about another king, that he thought nothing of putting all the boys under 2 in the city of Bethlehem to death.

I hate to say it, but children and women are too often the first to suffer at the hands of the powerful. The fact that these were babes or toddlers who had done nothing to deserve this doesn’t seem to bother the Herods of this world. In NA there are well over a million abortions per year. In Alberta about 1 in every 7 children live in poverty. Somewhere right now a child is dying from starvation. This battle between the God of the kingdom and the evil one is always in the background whenever people are persecuted for their faith. And on it goes.

So one morning, the citizens of Bethlehem heard the hooves of horses, and saw puffs of dust on the horizon. Soldiers! What do they want? When they come, it is not good news. Soon there is weeping throughout the city. It is hard to imagine it, but soon all these little boys are dead.

What is going on, so soon after the birth of the Saviour, Messiah? What is so threatening about one little boy? And even with all of these dead children, Herod did not get the one he wanted dead: Jesus. Joseph had been warned in a dream about Herod’s raging, and told to flee. Just on time!

Matthew does not need to describe at length what has happened. One quotation from Jeremiah says it all. This happened to fulfil the prophet Jeremiah’s words, and exceptional words they are.
Matthew and Jeremiah speak about the response of the mothers: they refuse to be comforted.

Remarkable words, those. They speak about the depth of their grief. To lose a child through sickness is terrible. You never forget. To lose a child through an accident is possibly worse, especially if mom or dad feels that it is somehow their fault. How unspeakable when a child murdered by a pervert. But this? Those in governing authorities should be the protectors of the people, especially of children. But now: all those dead babies at the hands of the governing authority, Herod. No wonder these mothers refuse to be comforted.

At the same time, it is truly terrible to have a grief for which you refuse to be consoled. How can you then get on with your life? If we refuse to be consoled, don’t we than get totally stuck right in the centre of the event that caused such pain?

Sometimes we cannot find comfort. We wish the pain would go away, so we can live again. Often others do not understand our sorrow, and offer well-meant but cheap sounding words. But what happens when we refuse to be comforted? One author suggests that now everything is experienced through the pain of loss. It is possible that these mothers, and probably dads, too, found their faith questioned deeply beyond words, with the result that now life has no meaning and God seems too remote to be trusted. Should God not have prevented the deaths of these children? The question is so painful, and who knows the answer to it?

Another possibility presents itself. I wonder if these mourners refuse to be comforted because it would seem like a betrayal of their children? For them to say something like this “now I am comforted,” might feel like you’re letting these children behind. Refusing to be comforted might then mean that it is never right, always reprehensible and unforgiveable that people do such things. They cannot forgive the perpetrators of the crime because not makes it right. But if we cannot come to terms with the horrible deeds of others, do we not become their victims for as long as we live?

Should we reprimand people who refuse to be comforted for their stubbornness? I would not do that. I might say something like this: if some day you reach a point in your life where these terrible people who killed all those children no longer haunt and torment your spirit, then you will have received a wonderful gift of compassion, of healing, of getting the barbs out of your soul.

This healing ointment for people who suffer the very worst that can happen is in fact exactly what Matthew is after.

Please follow me as we think through how Matthew might have intended that.
Matthew quotes words from Jeremiah. But notice, often when New Testament writers quote words from the First Testament, they mean for us to be mindful of the entire unit of thought from which the quotation comes. Here’s a for instance: when Jesus says on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, he quotes from Psalm 22, just a few words. But Psalm 22 not only speaks about feeling abandoned, t it tells us that our ancestors trusted in the Lord, “and were not put to shame,” vs. 5. So Jesus speaks of great pain but also great confidence, as he hangs on the cross.

If we do the same for the quotation in our text, and look at the entire chapter of Jeremiah, chapter 31, then we see the prophet expressing the most profound awareness of human pain. However, he speaks about this in the context of great deeds that God will do and is doing. In chapter 31 we read about God renewing the covenant promises, and deepening them, in fact.

The chapter is full of the glorious deeds God will do. Here are a few snippets:
The people who survived the sword
found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest,
the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
And immediately after our text we read:
Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears;
for there is a reward for your work,
says the Lord:
they shall come back from the land of the enemy;
there is hope for your future,
says the Lord:
your children shall come back to their own country.

In summary, Jeremiah 31 is about God making a new covenant with his people. He begins anew with them. This includes the forgiveness of sin on the basis of God’s goodness, not on their merit.

It speaks of a new heart, too, since the big problem that causes people do to the terrible things we mentioned is heart trouble. And it moves beyond that to a new exodus, a new way of setting people free from the many things which hold us in bondage.

God does not engage in these acts of mercy and deliverance because of our goodness, but because God sees our great need, and our inability to deliver ourselves. God does not intend the powers of evil to win, and overcomes them without our help, often against our own inclinations and character.

This forms the faith perspective for understanding our lives and our world, especially the suffering and sin in this world. If we look at life’s worst only from what we can see, then perhaps we might all either simply resign ourselves to despair and hopelessness, or respond with a sorrow so deep we cannot be consoled, or even as in this text, where we refuse to be comforted.

But now what would happen if we were to view our lives from the perspective of the message and deeds of God? Now the Herods of this world don’t rule after all. And the comfort of God embraces even those who steadfastly refuse to be comforted.

Many parents know what it is like to have a colicky baby. Nothing you do seems to be good enough to stop your baby’s maddening howling. It can try a parent’s patience till you are driven around the bend. You pull out your hair in desperation. But most of the time, parents hold on to their child. They want to help their child, and bring them comfort.

And so it is that God holds on in his sovereign embrace people who see no way out, who have given up, who resign themselves, who cannot find consolation, and who even refuse to be comforted.

Don’t let your assessment of life be determined by what you see happening around you, but by what the ear of faith hears in the Word of the Lord.

I don’t know how long these mothers refused to be comforted. If Matthew knew, he doesn’t say.
I don’t know what happen to Paul, how long or arduous the journey, before he discovered God’s ability to comfort. But somewhere in his difficult journey, with nakedness, peril, shipwreck and beatings, he learned to say:

“Blessed be the God and Father of mercy, and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction…”