“We have escaped
like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.” Psalm 124:7
A
few yards from the door of this chapel lies the grave of Samuel Griffin, the
first person to be buried on this spot.
He died on October 11, 1792, accidentally drowned in the lake at the age
of four years, six months. On his stone,
you can still barely pick out the epitaph verses:
Happy
infant, early blest
Here
in peaceful slumber rest
Early
rescu’d from the cares
Which
increase with growing years.
Now, I don’t know about you, but
I find that epitaph hard to swallow.
It’s hard for me to imagine those as the words chosen by his mother, the
ones that seemed to fit best as she held him dripping and cold in her lap at
the shore of the lake.
I
guess it just sounds too easy. Killed
tragically while still a young boy, his whole life ahead of him—is that “happy
infant, early blest.” I’m sure they
tried their best, but no one could save him, he had to die in such a
frightening way—is that really “early rescued from the cares?” Surely these words would speak only to
someone who wasn’t ready to be honest about the real devastation of such a
death—surely they’re trying to put a bright face on things when everything is
falling apart inside?
They certainly
aren’t the sort of thing I would recommend bereaved parents to read and
ponder. They’re not at all like the advice
I received in seminary about how to console those who mourn. It’s not what we train Stephen Ministers to
say.
And
yet you can find words much like them on the gravestones of several other young
children in this churchyard, you find them all over the old cemeteries of our
land and many others. The words on Sam
Griffin’s tombstone aren’t the exception, they’re the norm. Something much like them were what most
bereaved parents who could afford a monument chose to leave behind in his
day. Those who die young are
blessed. They are spared the
corruptions, worries and pain that a long life will surely bring. They fly to God, and the perfect peace of
eternal rest.
And
something much like this is precisely the message that was proclaimed at the
heart of today’s festival, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, for most of
Christian history. The liturgy we use
now is rather uncomfortable with that.
Maybe you noticed that our collect we used today tries to focus
attention on the tragedy of innocent suffering—we remember the holy innocents,
it says, because they are like so many other people who are treated
unjustly. The modern collect suggests
that the point of the feast is to remind us to work for justice so that this
sort of thing won’t happen any more.
But
the older prayers, and the verses and hymns written for meditation talk about
this day as one of victory for those children of Bethlehem
Fear
not, little flock
The
prowling lion’s tooth
For
the Good Shepherd will give you
The
pastures of heaven.
Even in the face of this awful
tragedy, God is to be praised for His mercy and saving help. Herod’s cruelty does not have the last
word. In the end it is all glory.
I
generally find that those truths of the spiritual life that disturb me the most
often have something important to teach me.
But they must be looked at squarely, taken on their own terms, not
explained away. What if the death of an
innocent child was actually a blessing?
Well, I suppose that would be the case only if heaven were in fact an
immensely greater place than the earth, if a minute in the presence of God were
far better than years of life here in this world. And to talk of being rescued from corruption
here—well, that too would be true only if this world were really corrupting, if
sin really were an awful thing that destroys life and beauty and joy. It would be true only if we, in the end, must
account for each one of our sins, stand before the great judge with blackened
consciences.
From that perspective,
well, innocence is a very valuable thing indeed, the most precious thing of
all, save the life-giving grace of God.
And that matter of God triumphing through it all—well, that would be so
only if we were prepared to let our faith see on ahead of where our reason can
follow, if we yearned to know God with simple hearts instead of thrusting
minds.
In
the end, I suppose it comes down to a matter of perspective, a question of from
where you stand as you survey the life given to us all. It depends on what things stand at the front
of your reckoning, and which must follow after.
I
don’t think it would be honest to say that I would reach first for the lines on
Sam Griffin’s tomb were I to lose one of my own precious sons. But I think I would need to try to understand
how those might be speaking the truth, a truth that with God’s help, I might
come to understand and even embrace. In
the face of tragedy, it is always wise to look for the loving, saving,
victorious work of God.
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