"SWEET LITTLE JESUS BOY?"

“SWEET LITTLE JESUS BOY?”

            I remember hearing Christine Callier sing the lead part to “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” at Christmas early on in our time at Oakhurst.   It is a powerful song, and I thought that it surely came out of the African-American tradition.   I learned, however, that it was written in 1934 by a white man, Robert MacGimsey, from Pineville, Louisiana.  He grew up in the time of neo-slavery, and he experienced music in many genres, and he tried to learn and preserve African-American folk music from the South.

            Though the words are moving, the title sticks with me:  “Sweet Little Jesus Boy.”  It is a metaphor for the evolution of Christmas from a counter-cultural gathering to a sentimental way to sell products.  The meaning of the baby in the manger has become mainly a sweet story, and we have the opportunity to feel good about ourselves and about life before we box it all up and put it away for another year.  The Biblical accounts are much different though, none more so than Matthew’s account of the Magi coming to see the revelation of God in Matthew 2.  This event is called Epiphany, and last week I looked at Luke’s version of the Epiphany, which we in the West celebrated yesterday on January 6.  While Luke’s version has a hint about the struggle that is to come in relation to “sweet little Jesus boy,” Matthew’s account is much more harsh and explicit. 

            We are familiar with the first part of the narrative in Matthew 2, where the Magi follow a star and come to Jerusalem to King Herod’s palace to inquire about the one born to be ruler of the Jews.  Since that is Herod’s current title, he is not especially pleased to hear this news.   His advisers discern that the baby was born in Bethlehem, and he sends the Magi there, telling them that he wants to come and worship this sweet little baby also.   The Magi find the baby and bring him gifts, and it is a sweet and powerful scene – Gentiles coming to worship the one born to rule the Jews.

            The lectionary reading for Epiphany ends the passage at this point, because the rest is horrible.  The Magi do not return to Herod because they are warned in a dream to go home by another way.    Herod is planning to kill this sweet little Jesus boy, and he sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the baby boys there.  Joseph, who has adopted this baby boy as his own, discerns the times, and he takes his family to Egypt as refugees to escape the political violence.  Yet, Matthew’s account tells us that Herod’s soldiers do kill all the baby boys of Bethlehem, and it is horrific.  Matthew tells us that there is loud lamenting, “Rachel weeping for her children, for they are no more.”

            Sweet little Jesus boy indeed.  Perhaps it should be “Dangerous little Jesus boy,” for the two versions of the Epiphany both indicate that the world will be exceedingly threatened by this baby born to an unwed mother, born on the streets, his family fleeing for their lives as refugees in Egypt.  It is as if this story came right out of today’s headlines, with the federal government shut down because the Trumpster and his base want a wall to keep out people like Jesus and Maria and Jose.  Herod sending his soldiers to Yemen to destroy the babies of that country.  The drones sent from USA and other places to kill all over the Middle East.  Our president acting like the petulant and narcissistic King Herod on so many levels.

            So, perhaps “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” should be retitled “Dangerous Little Jesus Boy.”  Yet, some of the words to that song, that I heard Christine Callier sing,

do envelop this radical and dangerous part of the Christmas story:  

“The world treat You mean, Lord;

Treat me mean, too.

But that’s how things is down here,

We didn’t know it was You.”

            So, as we wrap up this Christmas season, let us remember this sweet and terrible and dangerous story.  This is not a story to be taken down, put into the boxes and stored in the attic or closet until next Christmas season.  This is a story that tells us that God’s coming among us in this baby is both life-changing and dangerous at all times, but especially in these times.  Let us look for his star in the night skies.