Pastor’s Corner – December 28, 2025
She Refused to be Consoled – Matthew 2:13-23
It’s difficult to read the later part of the passage when you come across Jeremiah’s quote, “A voice was heard in Rama, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” The end feels like an invitation to an abyss, a grief that will never heal. How can you? When the children are no more. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare that will never go away. I wish this ancient text was far gone, past that it’s no longer true. However what the prophet Jerimiah experienced, his people destroyed, ethnically cleansed, exiled and enslaved is still happening today.
Matthew’s lesson for coming Sunday, after the joy of Christmas, feels dark. There is fear, an immediate sense of danger from Herod, to flee and find security in Egypt. Joseph has a dream to take his family, Mary and baby Jesus to a safe place. This murder of children mirrors the story of Moses and Pharaoh’s killing of Hebrew children, all male boys as a form of preemptive strike against potential future threat, just as Israel’s armed force killing children to justify “potential future Hamas.” No matter how you look at it, this is morally wrong.
I remember visiting Yad Vashem, a holocaust museum in Jerusalem where I saw mounds of children’s shoes piled up high to show how systematically little children were murdered at the concentration camps. It was a very emotional moment. And most recently there is an art installation in Italy, honoring over twenty thousand children killed in Gaza. The installation was created by parents, teachers, children and early-years educators from 39 nurseries and pre-schools across the city and province. After weeks of preparation, the courtyard was filled with rows of white ribbons carrying the names and ages handwritten on cloth strips, intended to give visible form to the scale of the loss and create a collective gesture of remembrance. Watch: Italian art installation honours 20,000 Palestinian children killed in Gaza
These acts of remembrance are all refusal to be consoled. If there is anything true and genuine about our faith, it’s an invitation to lament, without which there is no real hope and justice. To lament, as a prayer and faith practice is to refuse and resist any form of violence, especially for the innocent. Like Rachel we will refuse to be consoled, because the children are no more. On this note, please come to Holy Innocents Evensong! That the cries of the innocent may embolden us to build a world where all children are safe from the threat of violence. Come let us worship God and offer our prayers and praise. It’s the last Sunday of the year. Let us give thanks and remember and lament together, and share joy and peace that comes from God. Amen.
Pastor Dae