For many of us the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy is already almost a fading memory. Amidst the horror of that event the countless demands of the Christmas season (including for many a fiscal year end) lull us into a kind of ‘comfortable numbness’. For others the feeling may be something approaching guilt, wondering if we have lost our ability to mourn with those who mourn. But for the families and friends of the Newtown victims, I suspect these holidays will remain strangely marked by the deep sadness of loss combined with the joy and hope Christmas means to the world.
When human suffering takes place we intensely desire to know how and why such things happen, perhaps because any answer – even a weak one – gives us a sense of distance and control. The similarity of our own life situation with places like Newtown can produce considerable anxiety and lead us to wonder if it happened to them, could it happen to us? And to be honest, where was God in all of this?
In the face of difficult questions, I cling to the hope Christmas in 2012 meant more than simple holiday sentimentality or even family traditions at their best – that is, I want to believe the first Noel will always make a difference to the last one.
The media commentary following the Newtown shooting demonstrates clearly the public’s appetite for questions and answers. Every aspect of our human experience has already been probed, ranging from gun laws, school safety, and psychological development, to the most recent inquiry into the DNA of Adam Lantz, in which researchers hope to find clues revealing why this young man acted violently.
Covering these public and personal categories like a canopy are various questions about God: Was this tragedy a demonstration of God’s judgment for removing prayer from public schools as some public figures have boldly stated, or is Newtown only one part of the slow unraveling of human society as God is excluded from just about everything?
I am willing to leave the other subject to due process. However, I believe there is a major problem in seeing incidents like Newtown as God’s judgment against the human race. In a word, it is incarnation – and it is what Christmas is all about if we can listen carefully amidst the din of month-long boxing week sales. Christians have long understood the birth of Jesus as God’s initiative to address the problems of the human condition, not primarily through improving legislation or education (both of which are important tasks for the common good), but first and always through an act of being. That is, the solution that is fleshed out (literally) in the birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection of the Christmas child is first a matter of being among those who suffer. The presence of God in Jesus was and is a living assurance of whatever we must endure God endures with us in Christ. It is a ‘non-arm’s length transaction’, which means when you are being comforted it is ultimately his arm around you.
Against this divine pattern of incarnation, voices abound inviting us to imagine a life inside bubbles of ever increasing safety, with armed guards in schools and on planes, lock-down drills and the insatiable need for over-parenting.
I too want my children to be safe and live in a world free from suffering and danger. But as a Christian I am faced with the discomforting idea God sent his only Son into a world not unlike our own, born in a stable to parents with nothing to their name but ill-repute. Again and again, it is this story that challenges my sense of comfort and invites reflection on whether I see Christmas as something that merely happened, or the pattern of God’s way in the world. I grant this is not the kind of answer that provides a sense of instant relief, but then again, easy come easy go?
May we have the courage to follow Jesus in the way of incarnation, and in doing so be fully present to those who suffer – whether at Christmastime or any other.
