THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS
Matthew 2:13–23 • Romans 8:18–25
Christmas 1 (a) • December ’95, ’98, ’01
I hope you had a good Christmas. We stayed home again. We didn’t go anywhere. Didn’t visit any relatives (though we had some visit us). Didn’t go see a movie (something we’ve sometimes done in the past). Didn’t even leave the house.
We’d done this before. Back about six years ago we started. Stayed home all day that Christmas, 1995. By the end of the day I got a little case of “cabin fever” and decided that we’d go out to eat supper. But then one of the kids started running a fever, so I announced that I’d go out, get something, and bring it home.
It was the first time I’d ever tried that, and I learned something: there’s nothing open on Christmas, at least not in north Charlotte! I was amazed! I drove all over University City and down North Tryon. I found two places open: The Waffle House and an Italian restaurant down in front of Lowe’s near Harris Boulevard. And both of those places were kind of deserted! The whole city was like a ghost town at 6:00 p.m. on Christmas day!
I got some Italian food, and as I drove home I thought: “How refreshing! There’s at least something, one day that can bring to a halt the hurry–scurry mad-ness of this world!”
But then I thought: Is this real? This Christmas peace?
Well, here we are, the Sunday after Christmas, and once again the lectionary presents us with this strange story from Matthew.
A strange, strange story that comes so close on the heels of Christmas.
The text is commonly called “the slaughter of the innocents.” We don’t usually tell or hear this part of the Christmas story. For the first sixteen years of my ministry I sometimes alluded to it, but never actually preached on it, even though at least once every three years the lectionary presents it to us here on the first Sunday after Christmas.
I’m a little ashamed of that, but I take some comfort in the fact that I’m not alone. I’ve never seen this part of the story on a Christmas card, or heard it sung in a Christmas carol, or seen it acted out in a Christmas pageant. Oh, we do sing and tell about the wise men’s coming — we act that out. But we always cut the story short. We do not include this episode, even though what happens here is the direct result, the direct consequence of the wise men’s visit. But we leave this out!
Can you imagine what it’d be like if I insisted on including it? Imagine me telling Jim Short, Jim Angel, and George Eanes, those brave men who once again produced our children’s Christmas pageant, that we must include this episode?! So recruit some children to play soldiers who will come in at the end and kill the babies.
For goodness sake! It’s too harsh! Too gory! Dead babies and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as refugees running for their lives! Not part of our holiday picture!
But here they are. Right here in Matthew’s telling of the tale. And those who protest the violence are right: there’s no more gory, bloody, violent scene in the entire New Testament, unless it’s the crucifixion itself. “The slaughter of the innocent.” “The flight to Egypt.” What are we to make of this part of the tale? Why did Matthew include it in his story. Luke left it out, after all!
Of course, there are theological interpretations which are quite helpful. The presence of an angry ruler, a helpless infant, the slaughter of innocent children, and the land of Egypt — for those with biblically trained ears, all of these things call to mind the stories of the beginnings of the people of God — the stories of Jacob, and Joseph, of Moses, Pharaoh, and the Exodus.
It’s clear that at times Matthew wants to portray Jesus as a kind of “second Moses” who delivers and frees his people. For Matthew the true fulfillment of Israel’s Exodus occurs later in the gospel, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but this episode from the birth story is a kind of foreshadowing of that event. Matthew’s weaving of these themes in his story is evidence of his marvelous skill as a master storyteller. He connects the story of Jesus with the story of Exodus.
Matthew makes one other such biblical/theological connection with this busi-ness about Rachel weeping for her children. That’s a reference to the exile in Babylon. Ramah, a site just a few miles south of Bethlehem, was the traditional burial place of Rachel, the wife of Jacob, the father of the twelve sons who be-came the nation of Israel. Rachel was buried at Ramah sometime around 1600 BCE.
But a thousand years later, in 587 BCE, Ramah also became the gathering place for the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. You remember the exile? Because of their sin — their idolatry and unfaithfulness — God allowed his people to be conquered by the Babylonians. Their temple was destroyed, their land ravaged, and practically the entire population carried off into exile.
It was at the town of Ramah that King Nebachadnezzar’s soldiers rounded them up and sent them from there, in chains, to Babylon.
Jeremiah, the prophet, was there at that deportation, and in poetic style he lamented that Rachel, the symbolic mother of the nation of Israel, Rachel who was buried nearby, was weeping for her children as they were now being exiled from the land of promise.
And so, by quoting Jeremiah, Matthew makes the connection of that story, the story of the exile, with his story of Jesus — Jesus, who is himself now about to become an exile, a refugee, far from his home.
It’s easy to see, isn’t it, that you cannot fully understand the Matthew’s story of Jesus without first understanding the Old Testament. With a few simple literary connections, Matthew is able to call to mind the Exodus and the Exile, the two watershed events in Israel’s history. In so doing he adds incredible depth and richness to the Christmas story and plants his gospel firmly in the fertile soil of the history of Israel.
So why do we shy away from this part of the tale? Why don’t we tell about the slaughter of the innocents? Why don’t we sing about it? Why don’t we act it out in our pageants? Why don’t we preach about it?
Maybe because we’d rather stay home on Christmas and forget the real world.
Maybe we don’t tell this because this part of the tale is too true to life!
Maybe we had rather stay a while longer, holding aloft our candles with their little paper protectors, in the beautiful, gentle “Silent Night” fairy tale beside the manger crib.
After all: Why should we have to be so quickly wrenched from the serenity of Bethlehem and flung into this nightmare of mass murder and perilous escape? Why should we have to face the sad reality, that if the world ever does interrupt its dirty business, it doesn’t do so for very long?
Why can’t Christmas be just sweetness and light, and love for all?
Why does Matthew have to mess it up with Herod?
Why should we have to deal with him?
The truth is: whenever Jesus is born in Bethlehem, Herod wakes up in Jerusalem.
The good news always has enemies.
And wherever you go in this world, the contest is the always the same: It’s King Herod of Jerusalem vs King Jesus of Bethlehem. And it’s often a bloody contest.
What Matthew is telling us is that: Anytime, anywhere the light of hope is born among those who sit in darkness, then those in power, who benefit from keeping it dark, will do all they can to snuff out the light.
Anytime, anywhere hope is born among the oppressed, the imprisoned, the blind, the crippled — anytime that kind of hope is born, then those who are deeply invested in the status quo will do all in their power, using whatever means necessary, to annihilate, to kill that hope.
If you don’t think that’s so, then I invite you to get just a little bit serious about that kind of hope, get just a little bit serious about justice, about “good news for the poor, release for the captives, liberty for the oppressed” to quote both Isaiah and Jesus. You don’t have to do much! I’m not asking you to become a martyr! Just get go a little ways out on the limb for the sake of the gospel.
Fred Craddock, the preacher, tells the story about going back to his hometown in rural north Georgia where he would often go for breakfast in the café run by one of the members of his church. It was a restaurant in what’s called a “shotgun house” – a long slender house with a door at each end. In this case one door opened onto the front street. The other door, the back door, opened onto the alley.
One day when Craddock arrived the owner, a man named George, who was a member of Craddock’s church, said, “Let’s go for a cup of coffee.” Craddock was surprised. “You don’t have coffee?” But George insisted. They went to a nearby fast food restaurant and sat down with their drinks.
“You know the curtain?” George asked.
“Yes,” said Craddock. The curtain George referred to was stretched out across the middle of his café, between the two doors of the shotgun house. It was there to segregate. White folks entered the restaurant by the front door from the main street. Black folks entered from the alley. The curtain separated them.
“The curtain’s got to come down,” said. George.
“Then take it down,” said Craddock.
“But if I take it down there’s a lot of folks who won’t like it,” said George.
“Then leave it up,” said Craddock.
“If I take it down I may lose my business,” said George. “But if I leave it up I lose my soul.”
Stand up for the what’s right, take a stand for racial justice, or for the poor, and you’ll be labeled as a socialist, a communist, or just plain stupid.
for the poor
Actually do something, oppose discrimination against people of color, or against homosexuals, or against women, and, if you’re really effective, you’ll be labeled as “dangerous” and you’ll be angrily told in a myriad of ways to “Back off! Shut up! Mind your own business!”
Challenge a system which discriminates on the basis of money — reward-ing those who have and punishing those who have not — challenge that system and see if the words “trouble–maker” and “hot head” don’t become associated with your name! And then see if that system doesn’t try to make you pay.
Support legislation that protects besieged ecological systems or endangered animals and see if you’re not called an “eco-nazi.”
Speak out for the rights of people in places like Nicaragua or Haiti to take control of their own destiny through democratic processes, and in the process challenge the policies of our own government that thwart those rights, and you’ll be called naïve — or worse — as those in power frantically and fanatically try to squash even the smallest birth of hope in such dismal and virtually hopeless places.
I’ve lost some of you now. Some of you are beginning to reject what I’m saying: “You’re preaching politics, Jacob! Stick to the gospel!” Yes, that would be wise of me, I sup-pose! And that’s what we in the church usually do:
• close our eyes to evil unless it’s of a very personal nature;
• look the other way when a star appears;
• preach the Christmas story, but leave out the ugly part!
Yes, that’s right! Avoid controversy: conduct our worship services, say our prayers, have our scout troops and Sunday school parties, talk about being born again, and maybe even lend a helping hand now and again! But for heavens’ sake, whatever you do, steer clear of Herod’s palace!
Trouble is, Matthew won’t let us do that. For Matthew says that in order to worship the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem you first have to go through Jerusalem and upset King Herod.
Not only that, but Matthew also insists that if we’re gonna follow this Jesus, then we too must be willing to risk Herod’s murderous anger! We too must become involved in the subversive plot to challenge and undermine his power! And that’s scary! We’d rather not do that...
But if we are to be faithful we must do that. Otherwise the birth of that baby in Bethlehem is little more than schmaltzy sentimental syrup which might make you feel all warm and fuzzy for a little while, but which has really got very little to do with the cold hard reality of this harsh Herod–ruled world.
So, that’s what I want to say this morning. You want to worship the baby in Bethlehem? Then you must be willing to take on the Herods in Jerusalem.
But there’s one thing more that Matthew would remind us. And it’s this: try as he might, Herod cannot kill the hope. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Herod’s plenty powerful, and he’s not to be taken lightly. He can shed blood, and cause real pain and suffering. He can cause you to lose your business, your friends, and maybe — in extreme cases — even your life.
But he cannot kill the hope. He could not kill it in its humble infancy. He cannot kill it later when he assists in nailing it to a tree and then burying it in a tomb. No. Herod cannot kill the hope.
And that is why Christians in all times and places, under all sorts of conditions and trials, continue to give birth to that hope, nurturing it and sharing it with those who sit in a land of darkness — and do so even at the risk of our own lives.
Because, we are confident, that although King Herod of Jerusalem is fearsomely strong, in the end, he is no match at all, for the baby of Bethlehem.
Do you believe that? I believe that.
