Food For Thought is a public theology & Bible advocacy blog for Eternity from Sophia Think Tank’s David Wilson, who gathers top Christian thinkers to take a closer look at how the Christian faith addresses matters in society at large every week.

I’ve been moved to tears a fair bit over the last couple of days. Every time I hear more about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre I’m deeply moved. So incredibly tragic. The latest tears came this morning when I saw the pictures of some of the children killed. I have grandchildren the same age as those kids and one of their pictures bears an uncanny resemblance to one of my grandsons of the same age. I’m finding it hard to come to grips with the reality and I am grieving with and for those personally involved. I know I’m not alone in those feelings.

Someone said that it was a terrible thing to happen so close to Christmas and that’s right. Christmas is all about family and love and joy and boisterous happiness for most kids. To be robbed of that is most cruel to say the least. But as I reflected on this I realised how close this story is to the real Christmas story of over 2000 years ago. Let me explain.

The Connecticut story has a person performing great evil, innocent children being murdered, and people acting heroically with many children saved by their actions. It is anything but a sweet story; it must never be glamourised, denied, or white washed. And it’s possible that great good will come out of it.

On the other hand, the Christmas story has been white washed over the years and the pristine, sanitised version is the version we sing about in carols, put on the cards we send, and even determine the sermons preached in churches across Australia at Christmas time. The real story is much darker than that. It has a villain, murdered children, grieving families, and forced exile. It also has, in the middle of all that mess, the possibility of hope, of peace, and of deep joy. Not as a denial of the darkness but in the midst of it, crying out for those with messy lives to pay attention. As the Bible portrays the story, it’s all about God coming to town, moving into the neighbourhood and acting heroically to offer true life. Again, not as a denial of the tragedy of life as so many experience it but as an alternative frame of reference in which to interpret all of life, a frame of reference of hope and meaning, of rescue and transformation… in the midst of the mess.

So, what does the Christmas story offer the Connecticut tragedy? Empathy for starters. Around the time of the first Christmas there were villages full of grieving, distraught families who had lost their young children because of the actions of a crazed man (Herod). This Christmas there are many families in Connecticut suffering the same trauma for the same reasons. Just the name of the perpetrator has been changed. Stories of incredible heroism are now coming out of the Connecticut events: teachers shielding students, talking wisdom and kindness to them, and saving their lives.  There would have been stories like that at the time of the Herodian massacre as well. Tragedies of this proportion always bring the best out in some people.

But most of all, the Christmas story offers the message of hope through it all, in the midst of the mess. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, back in the 1960’s, put out a rather haunting version of Silent Night/Holy Night. It was sung over the top of the 6 o’clock news, which told of the horror of mass murders and war and other assorted tragedies. As the song progresses, the news gets louder and by the end Simon and Garfunkel are just about drowned out by the reporting of these tragic world events. What’s the message there? The song is attempting to say that the message of Christmas is drowned out by the realities of the world. But I want to suggest a different version, one where the song and the news broadcast play along at the same volume, neither one drowning out the other.

The Christmas story doesn’t stop atrocities like the Herodian massacre or the Connecticut slaughter, but those events don’t drown out the realities of what God did at that first Christmas that enabled the continuing message of wellbeing in the midst of it all.

Darkness and light in co-existence. May this Christmas be a time where we take the opportunity to pass the peace, in the middle of the mess.

Food for thought.

Watch the Simon and Garfunkel 7 o’clock news / silent night video here:

Image: DERBY, CT – Members of the local community gather at the Derby Green Sunday night during a vigil to remember the lives lost during Friday’s shooting at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School. The event was organized by the communities of Ansonia, Derby, Seymour and Shelton. Photo by Josalee Thrift. From Flickr/Valleyindy.org