No Card For Rachel

The Smallest Aisle in the Store

Walk into any store that sells greeting cards and hunt for the sympathy section. It is the smallest strip in the place, tucked at the end of a row. Birthdays get half an aisle. Weddings get a wall. Grief gets a corner.

Read what is printed there. "They are in a better place." "Time heals all wounds." "Everything happens for a reason." Someone bought those because there was nothing else to say. We do the same with time. We give a grieving person two or three weeks, then we ask, "Are you doing better?" A kinder way of saying, "Are you done yet?"

There is one place in Scripture where a weeping mother is not handed a card. It sits in the middle of the Christmas story, of all places. And the man telling it does not rush her. He does not explain her. He lets her weep.

Where Matthew Chose to Stop

You know the Christmas story. Maybe too well. But watch what Matthew refuses to leave out. He could have stopped at the wise men kneeling at the manger, or the family safe in Egypt. Both true. Both beautiful. But he keeps writing, down to this: "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be consoled, because they are no more" (Matthew 2:18, CSB). That is where the scene goes dark. Not on the gold and the frankincense. On a mother who will not be comforted.

And notice this. Everywhere else in these chapters, prophecy is fulfilled "so that" it "might be fulfilled." But at the massacre Matthew drops the purpose language: "Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled" (Matthew 2:17, CSB). Then, not so that.

He will not write a sentence with grammar that makes God the author of murdered children. The sword belonged to Herod alone.

He left the weeping on the page for a purpose... because the child in that manger came to walk into grief, not around it.

A Mother Thirteen Hundred Years Dead

So where did Matthew get that verse? He is quoting Jeremiah, who is quoting a woman dead for thirteen hundred years.

Rachel is Jacob’s wife. She died on the road to Bethlehem, bringing a son into the world (Genesis 35:19, CSB).

Israel remembered her grave in two places... up north near Ramah, where the exiles were staged (AKA put in chains) for the march to Babylon, and outside Bethlehem, on the road Herod's soldiers would one day march past. Jeremiah uses the first. Matthew used the second.

Like the deliberate choice Matthew made in chapter one to omit Bathsheba’s name (see Week 2 of this series, “The Bloodline He Refused to Clean”)... why is he deliberately doing this? Why go back thirteen centuries for a dead mother? This was a national tragedy in the history of Israel. Jeremiah not just telling history… as cold facts, but wants a voice for a nation marched into pagan exile. He uses the voice of the Matriarch of Israel to weep for all of them. Every grave in that line is stacked behind hers. Rachel is a name for all of them.

Some of Us Are Rachel

Some of us do not have to imagine Rachel… we are her. Lost a child, buried a marriage, a relationship, a future that was certain. Never to return. We get handed greeting cards as a place for our grief to land.

But may we hear the weeping for what it is. One theologian says it like this: the capacity to grieve is the most visceral announcement that things are not right. In other words, when we weep over what is broken, we are not doubting God. In fact, we are agreeing with him that the world is not the way it is supposed to be. Empires cannot do that. Herod can only rage and kill.

One of the most amazing things about Scripture is not only the miracles, but the language it gives us for grieving! Especially grief that has turned to anger. Look at Psalm 13, "How long, LORD?" is not unbelief (Psalm 13:1, CSB). It is Scripture. Grief and frustration, even anger are the same motion, as long as they move toward God with the wound open. And the God we are shouting at did not wait for our anger to cool. He put on flesh and walked straight into the wound.

The Promise Left Out

Jeremiah 31 is the most hope-soaked chapter in the book. It is the new-covenant chapter Jesus reaches for at the Last Supper (Luke 22:20). And Rachel’s weeping sits right here in the middle of this chapter. Listen to what God says next. "Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears... your children will return from the enemy's land. There is hope for your future..." (Jeremiah 31:16-17, CSB).

But look at how Matthew deliberately quotes this verse in Matthew 2:18. He omits Jeremiah 31:16 and 17… the “hope” verses. He pulls the lament out of the middle of a promise, sets that weeping mother down in Bethlehem, and leaves the hope promise unquoted. And notice what God does not say to her. Not "everything happens for a reason." Not "are you done yet?" He makes a promise. They will come back. The comfort God offers Rachel is return. Not explanation. Return.

Why did he do this? Read the very next scene in Matthew chapter 2. Herod dies, and an angel tells Joseph, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel" (Matthew 2:20-21, CSB). Matthew never quoted the promise. He narrated it. He did not need the promise from Jeremiah 31 because he now has The Story.

Pause here. Do not read past this too quickly... really consider what Matthew is doing. Look where the chapter actually ends... not at the weeping in verse 18, but at verse 23, with the child home in Israel. The chapter that opens with a slaughter closes with a return. And the one child who got out of Bethlehem did not come home to stay safe. He would grow up, turn around, and walk straight into the enemy's land on purpose.

The Grave = Enemy Territory

In Jeremiah’s day the enemy’s land had an address: Babylon. You could walk there and walk back. But remember, the mothers of Bethlehem were not grieving Babylon. Their children had gone into death, and death has never sent anybody back home. "The last enemy to be abolished is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26, CSB). Every grave is enemy territory. If Jeremiah’s promise is to be fulfilled, somebody has to go deep into enemy territory and open a road back out.

That is what the child did. Nobody deported Jesus into death, he went willingly. He said, "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own" (John 10:18, CSB). The sword that missed him in Bethlehem found him at Golgotha on the cross, because this time he stood still and let it. He died. He was buried. He went into the land no one returns from. And on the third day he walked back out of it. Not resuscitated. Not a memory his friends kept alive. Risen. Paul calls him "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20, CSB)... the first of the harvest that guarantees the rest is coming. In other words, he went in and made a way back out for the rest of us.

So read the promise again. Your children will return from the enemy's land. Not just from Babylon. From death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is how Rachel's children come home. That is the person and the promise that God gives her. Christmas is not the explanation of grief that we might expect but it is grief relocated in God Himself. It is God's presence down inside it.

You may still be standing in that smallest greeting card aisle. You may still be at the grave. The invitation is not to stop weeping. It is to bring the weeping to the one who has already walked into the enemy's land and come back out... and to grieve like someone who knows the road has a door on the far end. Even if you cannot see it yet.

Rachel is still weeping. She is facing a road she has never walked. A door she has never seen. Opened by the one child the sword could not keep. What kind of God answers a mother's grief by climbing down into the grave himself?

This article is drawn from the fourth sermon in the "Christmas in July" series at Red River Baptist Church, Rachel Is Still Weeping, Matthew 2:1-18