Someone sent me an email this a.m. promoting a song based on the “Christian mythology that Jesus never cried.” I am a lapsed Christian, but I was pretty well steeped at one time and I thought, “What?”
Okay, first up — the song is, for this listener, absolutely gorgeous. It is called “All Babies Must Cry” and was written by Sxip Shirey (pronounced “Skip” — go figure) and sung by Rhiannon Giddens. A video of then performing it was released this morning (Dec. 12) as a fundraiser for RAICES, a Texas-based non-profit that works with immigrants and refugees along the southern U.S.-Mexico border. Here’s the video:
But what is this myth that the baby Jesus did not cry? To the Googlemobile! And there it is, right in the lyrics of “Away in a Manger,” a song I might have sung 47 million times in my life, but did I ever really listen to it?
The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
But little lord Jesus, no crying he makes.
Mystery solved! The Googlemobile also sent up a good, long explanation of the idea that Jesus never cried by Richard Ostling, a legend in the religion reporting field (see “Mormon America” by Ostling and his late wife, Joan, a religion reporter must-read, IMHO). In it, he writes of the “Infancy Gospel” of the 6th century in which baby Jesus exhibits superpowers worthy of a Marvel comics hero — or villain:
As a mere tot (not age 12) he supposedly taught his elders, and miraculously removed pollution from pools of water, performed healings, and raised the dead. But he’s also a creepy fellow who’s said to petulantly curse a boy who then “withered up” and order death for another lad who accidentally bumped into him. He also afflicts neighbors with blindness for no good reason!
“All Babies Must Cry” does not address Jesus, Christianity or any faith explicitly in its lyrics. The pr firm that sent me the video says Shirey wrote the song decades ago when he was in his 20s as a response to the notion of a cry-free baby Jesus. It does not tell me anything about his personal faith — or lack thereof — and has not responded so far to my requests to speak with him. It does say he is upset at the United States’ treatment of immigrants and refugees at the southern border and wants RAICES to use this new recording/video as a fundraiser. I suspect they sent me the video because I just wrote about a Southern California nativity that protests the same thing. I think it is a lovely song that made me ask a good question about Christianity I had not considered before.