I came across this excerpt from a sermon from the Early Church Father St. Quod-vult-deus (Sermo 2 de Symbolo: PL 40, 655)
“A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.
Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.
You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you accomplish your desire you can prolong your own life, though you are seeking to kill Life himself.
Yet your throne is threatened by the source of grace, so small, yet so great, who is lying in the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes freeing souls from captivity to the devil.
He has taken up the sons of the enemy into the ranks of God’s adopted children.
If you had been reading Matthew’s Gospel from the beginning of the first Chapter up until our Gospel reading today, you might have expected the Gospel to be all “sweetness and light”.
But in our Gospel reading today we hit the hard reality of life.
Yesterday - 28th December - was the remembrance of the slaughter of the young baby boys in Bethlehem.
It is known in the Church’s calendar as the “The Holy Innocents”
You might say: This is the dark side of Christmas.
As an Anglican priest William Mouser once said:
This passage from Matthew is probably one of the least preached passages in the Bible, and it’s not hard to see why. Amidst all the Christmas cheer, it’s a harshly jarring and horrific note to strike.
It is something of a paradox that people want to celebrate the story of Christmas at all.
But sadly it has been sanitised in our Christingle and Carol services
What we celebrate of Christmas has had all kinds of paraphernalia added.
We have added the tradition of Christmas trees and Father Christmas with his “elf helpers” bringing presents on a sledge pulled by reindeers, the chief of which is Rudolph.
And we have also added a good deal to the biblical story of the birth of Christ too
The Ox and the Ass are hard to find in Luke’s Gospel and in Matthew’s Gospel we have turned the Magi into kings.
And where does it say there were three of them. And that their names are Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar
What Scripture does record was that there were three gifts that the Magi brought.
I wonder if we told people the real Christmas story, would it be celebrated with so much gay abandon?
After all, the story begins with a rather scandalous story about a pregnant girl who was not married (albeit this is then explained by the angel) due to have a baby.
Then the child is born in the room at the back of the house where the animals are sheltered, a despot murders a number of babies in Bethlehem and the story really finishes with the Holy Family on the run.
Some liberal Bible critics in the 19th and 20th Century suggested that Matthew made this story because there is no extra Biblical record of this event
But why should there be?
At the time of Jesus, Bethlehem was a little town of 300-1,000 inhabitants. ( http://www.redletterchristians.org/bethlehem-then-and-now/#!prettyPhoto/0/)
And from that modern theologians have reckoned that there were no more than 15-20 baby boys under the age of 2 who were slaughtered by Herod. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07419a.htm)
So it is very unlikely that extra Biblical sources, such as Josephus who does record a lot about Herod, would have bothered with such a small loss of life compared the excesses in Herod’s reign.
So who was King Herod and what do we know about him?
Herod was known as Herod the Great and lived from 73 to 4 BC.
Herod was the second son of Antipater the Id-um-aean,
founder of the Herodian dynasty, and his wife Cypros, a princess from Petra in Nabatea (now part of Jordan).
The family rubbed shoulders with the greats in Rome, such as Pompey, Cassius, and in 47 BC Herod’s father was appointed Procurator over Judea.
And Antipater appointed his son Herod – to be Governor of Galilee at the age of 25.
In 40 BC the Parthians went to war with the Romans and the Jewish populace – who hated Herod, sided with the Parthians.
At first the Parthians were successful and put their own king on the Jewish throne, but in 37 BC the Roman Senate made Herod king of Judea and gave him the forces to regain the throne.
And he held that throne for about 37 years until his death.
As ’friend and ally of the Romans’ he was not allowed to be a truly independent king.
However, Rome allowed him to run his own domestic policy.
Herod ruled with an iron fist and his reign was a reign of terror.
He married ten times and all his marriages were unhappy.
He was also paranoiac – so much so that he executed his favourite wife - the Hasmonaean princess Mariamme I, because he thought she was having an affair (though she wasn’t).
He executed his brother in law Kostobar and his mother in law Alexandra - as well as his uncle Joseph.
He also executed three of his 14 children.
When the Roman Emperor Augustus heard of the execution of Herod’s eldest son Antipater in 4 BC, he made the now famous comment - that it would be preferable to be Herod’s pig than his son.)——the joke being that, since Herod was a Jew, he didn’t eat pork and his pig would be safe. (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2:4:11)
When Herod fell ill, two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, incited their pupils to remove the golden eagle from the entrance of the Temple because this contravened the Ten Commandments.
Herod had both the teachers and the pupils burnt alive.
Just before his death, Herod, realising that when he died there would be no great mourning, sent letters to the principal heads of every family in Judaism. He demanded their presence in Jerusalem on pain of death.
Herod then had them locked up and gave orders to his sister that - on his death - they were all to be executed – so that the whole nation would mourn the day of his death, albeit not for him.
Fortunately, when Herod died, his sister released the imprisoned Jews and allowed them to return home.
(History taken from http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great01.html and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_the_Great)
So does the slaughtering of the Holy Innocents fit the character of Herod?
I think it does.
1. So why does Matthew recount the story of the murder of the baby boys in Bethlehem?
After all, Luke the consummate historian doesn’t record it
To understand why Matthew wrote as he did, you need to consider his audience.
Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience and expects his audience to be well versed in the cultural memory of their own Jewish faith
And, so, Matthew is concerned most of all to show how Jesus fulfills all the Old Testament expectations of the coming Messiah.
Now, as Matthew continues with the early history of Jesus in Mathew Chapter 2, WHAT does he show us?
• An angry and paranoiac ruler, Herod
• a helpless infant, Jesus
• the slaughter of innocent children, in Bethlehem and
• the land of Egypt, where Joseph and Mary with Jesus fled to.
WHAT do you suppose will immediately spring to a first century Jewish mind steeped in the Old Testament?
The story of the birth and survival of Moses
It probably doesn’t jump out at us because we don’t spend enough time with the Old Testament.
And in so doing we lose a lot of the background to the New.
But remember in Jesus day the Old Testament was their only Scripture. And the Jews were steeped in it.
The story of the birth and survival of Moses can be found in Exodus 1:15-22 and Exodus 2:1-10
By way of background Pharaoh, the King of Egypt had become paranoid about the growth of the Jewish nation in Egypt and we read in Exodus 1:15-22
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 ‘When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.’ 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, ‘Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?’
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, ‘Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.’
20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: ‘Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.’
(Ex 1:15-22)
And we then read in the following chapter
The birth of Moses
2 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river-bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. ‘This is one of the Hebrew babies,’ she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?’
8 ‘Yes, go,’ she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother.
9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.’ So the woman took the baby and nursed him.
10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, ‘I drew him out of the water.’
Do you see the association now?
In Exodus one particular male child miraculously survives to be the Saviour of his people. Moses.
In the same way, in Matthew’s Gospel one particular male child miraculously survives. Jesus destined to be the Saviour of mankind.
I think Matthew included the story of the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem to make the association between Moses and Jesus.
For the Jews, the paramount personality in their religious history is Moses, the giver of the Law.
And, yet, at the same time, Jesus is not Moses redivivus. (i.e. Moses brought back to life)
Someone greater than Moses is here.
As Michael Green so succinctly puts it:
“The whole unsavoury story of Herod’s activity in all this is an awesome reminder how deeply opposition to Jesus can be rooted in the hearts of people who are not prepared to allow his gentle rule to control them
If we are determined to get our own way at all costs, we will go to any lengths to eliminate all traces of Jesus and his claims in our lives (The Message of Matthew – Michael Green p,72)
