Midlife Meditation

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through 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 are no more.” (Matthew 2:16-18)   Chances are that, even if you're a regular church goer, you've not heard this part of the Christmas story lately.   You probably know of it. It's appeared in a number of biopics of the life of Jesus. You've probably heard the expression "slaughter of the innocents" or "massacre of the innocents." And still, I doubt if you've heard a sermon preached on it.   I may be wrong. I, in fact, preached several sermons on this text during my ye...

Let's play Highlights Magazine! How many errors can you spot in this picture? Have you made your list? Good, because here I go: 1. Mary is blonde! 2. Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the shepherds, and two of the wise men are white! 3. The other wise man appears to be of African descent! 4. Jesus is getting a Faberge egg for his birthday! 5. The wise men and the shepherds are there at the same time! I'm cutting it off right there, because the last is what this post is really about. But before I tackle it, I will quickly take on the first three errors, all of which are grounded in the anti-Semitic movement of the nineteenth century, which sought to bleach Jesus' complexion to make him more acceptable to the world-dominating Europeans who also used the Bible to justify slavery, colonization, and social Darwinism. Caucasians ruled the world because we were destined by both God and nature to do so; which meant the foundational stories of the Bible had to be retrofitted w...