The Slaughter of the Innocents

It's December 29. In the "Twelve Days of Christmas," it's the fifth day of the season, with "gold rings" given by true love in the song. This year the fifth day is also the First Sunday of Christmas, where the gospel reading this year, Lectionary Year A, is Matthew 2:13–23. This would be Joseph and Mary's flight to Egypt and Herod's orders to kill all the children under age two in Bethlehem, agitated as he was by the threat of a new king. The Slaughter of the Innocents.

The story seems out of sequence. We won't hear about the wise men following the star to Herod's court in Jerusalem and ultimately to the baby in Bethlehem until Epiphany on January 6. But at a distance, time folds back on itself. We hear in one story the echoes of others, from times before and after. And history has no shortage on stories of slaughter, of times of "wailing and loud lamentation" (v. 18).

Today, December 29, is also the 129th anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee. I learned this from a Facebook friend who posted this link, and I then read more at Wikipedia. In an attempt to disarm a band of Lakota Sioux, the U.S. 7th Cavalry ended up murdering at least 150 men, women and children -- perhaps as many as 300. One Lakota man could not be made to give up his gun -- he was deaf and did not understand what the soldiers were saying. The rifle went off, others fired, and the people were slaughtered. Women were shot down as they fled through the snow with infants wrapped in their shawls.

Gold plays a part in this story: the Black Hills of South Dakota had been Sioux land, protected by treaty with the U. S. government — until the Black Hills Gold Rush began in 1874. And gold was only a small part of what white settlers took from native people.

It would be nice, or convenient, or comforting, if we could say such things no longer happen. But that's not true. In many and various ways, innocent people are rendered powerless and suffer the loss of dignity, freedom, life.

When you read about Wounded Knee you learn about the Ghost Dance, a religious movement within the Lakota culture that foretold a time of peace. It would "reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples."

Familiar echoes?

Whites felt mystified and threatened by the Ghost Dance, like Herod felt threatened by the prophecies about a rival king. Power and privilege distort vision. God was made human not as a great king, but as a tiny baby, as an ordinary man, as one who suffered and died at the hands of power and privilege. A gift of true love.