Psalm 124, Jeremiah 3:15-17, Revelation 21:1-7, Matthew 2:13-18
The Holy Innocents
The Gospel lesson that is read today is actually from the lectionary for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which in the liturgical calendar is celebrated on December 28 – four days ago. The Book of Common Prayer lectionary assigns different readings for today. In the liturgical calendar, January 1 is the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. But the rubrics in the Prayer Book say the following: “Upon special occasions the Minister may select such Psalms and Lessons as he may think suitable.” And, so, today, I have thought it suitable to use the lections ordinarily appointed for the Festival of the Holy Innocents.
This festival honors those infant martyrs slain by Herod. We do not know the precise day or the death of the Holy Innocents. The data in the gospel of Matthew shows us that the infants were slaughtered within two years following the appearance of the star to the Wise Men. In the Western Church, this event in gospel history appears for the first time in the record in something called the Leonine Sacramentary, which is something similar to our Book of Common Prayer that dates from the middle of the Fifth Century. Clearly, the festival had been observed for some time before that, probably from at least the middle of the Fourth Century.
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. I remember the first time this was impressed on me. We had just taken up residence in Austria, and we were reveling in new-found Christmas customs in that land. One of them is a kind of whirly-gig – a tower of circular platforms which spin in a circle powered by a windmill set of paddles that are powered by hot air that rises from candles set around the perimeter of the base. On these spinning disks at various levels are the personalities you usually find in nativity scenes – one level will hold the shepherds and several kinds of animals from sheep to donkeys to cattle. Another level will hold Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus in his manger. Another level holds angels, and another the wise men. But in one display I saw on sale at a Christmas market, the artisan had included some Roman soldiers with drawn swords.
And, yet, that is what happened at the first nativity, the real nativity. No sooner than the angels have returned to heaven, the shepherds have returned to their fields, and Joseph and Mary are about to return home from Bethlehem, when an angel warns Joseph to take the mother and child and flee to Egypt. And, hard on Joseph’s heels come Herod’s soldiers, killing every male child two years and under, both in Bethlehem, and in all the territory surrounding it.
How about that for an addition to your home nativity scenes? Roman soldiers with drawn swords, looking for boys aged two years and under, so that they could slaughter them. Imagine how different the Christmas pageants you may have seen in churches would look if there was a scene of Roman soldiers slaughterings little baby boys. No wonder you don’t ever see that in a Christmas pageant. And, no wonder you don’t find a lot of preachers going out of their way to preach on this passage during Christmas.
So, as I have never offered a homily on the Holy Innocents, I have done so this year to accomplish three things. First of all, I want to shine a light on why Matthew included this episode in his gospel. He wasn’t trying to be gory and gross, though the murder of these children was indeed gory and gross. Matthew had another purpose and I want to say something about that. Second, beyond fulfilling Matthew’s purpose, this episode shows us something about the gospel of Jesus Christ which it is very easy to forget, and we must not forget it. And, finally, if we can muster the faith to receive it, there is a powerful hope that Matthew points to in the Old Testament, a hope for these slaughtered innocent children and a corresponding hope for ourselves. Let’s take each of these in turn.
First, why did Matthew record this event in his gospel? After all, Luke didn’t see fit to do so. Well, you will find the answer to that in the peculiar character of Matthew’s gospel. Students of this gospel from the earliest days note how Jewish Matthew’s gospel is – he is continually bringing in events or details, or making comments, which show us that he has primarily a Jewish audience in mind. Said another way, Matthew expects his audience to have a well-exercised cultural memory of their own Jewish faith and practice. 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 lays out the history of Jesus birth, what does he show us? An angry and paranoiac ruler, a helpless infant, the slaughter of innocent children, and the land of Egypt. For those whose ears have heard from their own infancy these very features recounted, what do you suppose will immediately come to mind? Why of course – the OT stories of Jacob and Joseph, of Moses, Pharaoh, and the Exodus. For the Jews, the paramount personality in their religious history is Moses, the giver of the Law. But, here is Matthew showing this audience Jesus is one who accomplishes what Moses accomplished for the Jews. And, yet, at the same time, this is not Moses redivivus. Someone greater than Moses is here.
Ramah is a locale just a few miles south of Bethlehem. It is the traditional burial place of Rachel, the wife of Jacob, the father of the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. Rachel was revered by the Jews as the mother of the nation. And, Rachel was buried at Ramah sometime around 1600 B.C.
But a thousand years later, in 587 B.C. Ramah was the staging area for the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. Because of their sin — their idolatry and unfaithfulness — God allowed his people to be conquered by the Babylonians. Their temple was destroyed, their land pillaged and burned, and practically the entire population carried off into exile. Ramah is the place where Nebachadnezzar’s soldiers organized them into caravans, put them into chains, and marched them off to Babylon. Jeremiah the prophet, who was present at that deportation, includes a comment about it that we heard in the OT lesson read a short while ago. At the place where Rachel was buried, Jeremiah says that Rachel is weeping for her children as they are lead off into captivity. 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.
Some have supposed that this slaughter of the innocents never happened, because there is no extra-biblical record of it. Indeed, the obvious parallels between what Matthew tells us happened with Jesus on one hand, and what had already happened in Israel’s history on the other hand, these parallels prompt some commentators to charge Matthew with making the whole story up.
Of course, this is stupidity of the highest sort. If the slaughter of the innocents had never happened, there were plenty of people who would gleefully point this out when Matthews gospel was circulated. Memories aren’t THAT short back then! And, while we don’t – at this point – any extra-Biblical corroboration of this particular slaughter of children by Herod, we do have plenty of extra-biblical evidence that this is exactly the kind of thing we would expect of Herod. From outside the Bible, we learn that Herod murdered each of his three sons, out of fear that they might try to take this throne away from him. From outside the Bible we learn that Herod had made plans that at his own death, one member of every family in his real was to be slain, so that the nation might genuinely mourn his passing.
No, Matthew’s gospel and his report about this slaughter, coming as soon as it does after the fact, and finding no refutation when his gospel is beginning to be circulated – all this is compelling evidence that such a slaughter did, in fact, take place, and that Matthew mentions it, along with Jesus’ flight to Egypt, in order to show his Jewish audience how Jesus is recapitulating the entire history of the nation Israel, that Jesus is, in fact, a greater Moses, who survived the same kind of political slaughter of children that Moses survived, and who comes out of Egypt, just as Moses did, leading his people to a new Kingdom.
Well, if that is what Matthew was trying to tell us Jewish audience, it has the same purpose for us 2,000 years later. We, too, have the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament record. And, if we will pay heed to the Old Testament Scriptures, things like what Matthew points to here are to be found in every single detail of Jesus life, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. That is why Jesus expounded all the places in the Old Testament which spoke of him to the disciples on the Emmaus Road.
But, there is more here than just this. The slaughter of the innocents does not find its full meaning by way of recapitulating what had already happened once before in Israel’s history. Later in his ministry, Jesus would tell his disciples, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) And, surely those words were never truer than when the Romans arrived on their horses in Bethlehem and its environs and slaughtered all those baby boys.
The good news always has enemies. Moses brought good news to the people of Israel when he went to Pharaoh and delivered God’s word “Let my people go.” Yes, very good news to God’s people, and very bad news to Pharaoh. The good news from Moses to his people was instantly bad news to Pharaoh, and he became Moses’ chief enemy.
And, so it was in the lives of every one of Jesus’ disciples. They bore the good news of the forgiveness of sins by faith in the resurrected Christ, who had died on the cross to pay the penalty of their sins, and had risen from the dead to demonstrate that God was pleased with his sacrifice, that God had accepted his death on behalf of all believers. Very, very good news indeed. And, yet, within a day or so of this good news being preached in Jerusalem after that first Pentecost, Stephen met a martyr’s death at the hands of unbelievers who hated what the Apostles were preaching.
And so it was as the Apostles continued preaching, the psalm we sang at the beginning of our worship today – one of the Psalms of Ascent (Ps. 124) must have been on all their lips, with a meaning they never dreamt of before:
1 “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side,” Let Israel now say—If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, When men rose up against us, 3 Then they would have swallowed us alive, When their wrath was kindled against us …
And, so we find in the book of the Acts of the Apostles that where ever they preached, they met opposition, persecution, oppression, imprisonings, and eventually crucifixions of their own. The Epistles of Paul, and Peter, and John are full of exhortations to perseverance in the fact of persecution. And, so when you find yourself, or your loved ones in Christ, encountering hostility because of Jesus, think of the Holy Innocents. They were killed for no other reason than to insure that Jesus himself would die. Jesus was the reason – not for the seasons – but for their deaths. This is the normal Christian life – to the degree that we follow Christ, we meet what Christ met from the moment of his birth – murderous hostility from those who hate everything Jesus represents, God in the flesh, calling sinners to repentance.
Many time, Christianity is mocked as a pie-in-the-sky kind of religion. What the mockers overlook is the path Christians must take to get to that heavenly pie. When people think that faith in Christ is for weak willed and nelly wimps, all they show is how ignorant they are of the Christian faith. From the opening scene in the gospels suffering comes with salvation, and indeed, our salvation is secured by the suffering of Christ on the cross. And, so it is that Jesus says, “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” [John 15:20]
What about that pie, then? Is it a mirage? Is it an opiate, as Karl Marx charged? And, what, exactly are we to think about the Holy Innocents who died because Jesus had appeared? What are we to think of those mothers and fathers, weeping for their children, because they dead?
We can say several things. One of them, in fact, is something Jesus said in Mark 10:30: “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, 30 who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.”
In the case of the Innocents who were slaughtered, there is no possibility that they would receive a hundredfold of anything in this life. But, there is a promise made concerning them, in the prophecy of Jeremiah in the Old Testament lesson for today. When Jeremiah spoke of Rachel weeping for her children, he was referring to those going off to Babylon in captivity. And, as if he were speaking to Rachel in her lamentation, Jeremiah added this:
Thus says the LORD, Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the LORD: they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future, says the LORD: your children shall come back to their own country.
In context, Jeremiah was speaking of the Jews return from Babylon after 70 years of captivity there. But, Matthew shows us that there is more going on here. For if Rachel’s weeping for her children foreshadows the laments of those mothers whose children were slaughtered by Herod’s soldiers, then the comfort offered to Rachel will find its fulfillment in the Kingdom of Christ. Those baby boys who were slaughtered in and around Bethlehem 2,000 years ago have a hope for the future, and they shall come back to their own country in the company of the Savior for whose sake they were killed.
The fullest picture of this is in the New Testament lesson for today, that scene at the end of John’s Apocalypse, when he describes the New Jerusalem in these words:
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."
That, too, was foreshadowed in Moses who delivered his people into a new kingdom, the promised land. But, we worship and serve one greater than Moses. And, when we have finished his great commission, to preach the gospel to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that Christ has commanded, then all these first things will pass away and be replaced by all those things which Christ makes new.
The Holy Innocents have a sure hope in Christ, far exceeding their loss. And their hope is also ours. In this Christmas season, let us avoid the saccharine and silly banalities of a world which takes the stuff of Christian joy and makes it into jingle to help sell Christmas ornaments. Instead, let us enjoy this joyous season with an eye on the Holy Innocents. Let us remember them, not so that our celebration will be dampened, but rather than it may be sober, and that in this godly sobriety we may anticipate with them the fullness of joy that is ours when Jesus returns from heaven to make all things new.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
