Holy Innocents
Mt
2:13-18
12/28/14
Today is the fourth day of Christmas. Although the world is finished with Christmas
as soon as it wakes up on Dec.26, it is not so in Christ’s Church. We spend the
four weeks of Advent getting ready to celebrate the birth of our Lord
Jesus. After preparing for four weeks,
we are not finished with Christmas in an evening and a day. Instead, we celebrate Christmas during the
course of twelve days – during a time that is known as Christmastide.
However, this year, no one is celebrating Christmas today in
Mosul, Iraq. Nobody celebrated Christmas
in Mosul yesterday or the day before. In
fact nobody in Mosul celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve or Christmas
Day. This is surprising, because
Christianity has existed in Mosul for somewhere between fifteen hundred and
almost two thousand years.
No one is celebrating Christmas in Mosul this year, because
there are no longer any Christians in Mosul to celebrate Christmas. For nearly two millennia, Mosul had been a
center of Christianity in northern Iraq.
However, everything changed in June and July this year.
At the beginning of 2014, the events that have unfolded in Iraq
were not expected. In January, hardly
anyone in the public knew the acronym ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria. During that month they captured
the city of Fallujah. This event caused a strong reaction among many veterans
of the Iraq war, because some of the most costly fighting by U.S. Marines had
taken place in retaking the city in 2004.
Famously, in an interview President Obama dismissed ISIS at that time as
the “J.V. team” – the junior varsity who was not a real threat.
Yet in a series of stunning victories, ISIS routed the Iraqi army
in June and July and swept into Mosul, as they established control over a large
swath of land that extended from Syria to Iraq.
As they moved into Mosul and other Christian areas, ISIS soon
demonstrated that they had a very clear plan that would eliminate
Christianity.
ISIS declared that every Christian had to either convert to
Islam, pay a tax that very few could afford, or be killed. Those who didn’t
want to abide by one of those options had to leave. It soon became clear that ISIS was deadly
serious about the threat. They began marking the homes and buildings of
Christians with an Arabic “N” for “Nazarene.”
In what has unfolded, ISIS has desecrated and destroyed churches
and Christian buildings. They have robbed Christians leaving the area of
everything of value. They have killed
Christians for refusing to convert. They have driven Christianity out of Mosul,
and now hundreds of thousands of Christian live as refugees in camps in other areas.
While this is terrible, it’s not even the worst that ISIS has
done. They have perpetrated
unimaginable evil in mass executions of captured soldiers, along with
beheadings and crucifixions of their enemies.
They have engaged in the practice of giving and selling non-Muslim and
non-Christian females as sex slaves – many of them nothing more than girls.
We are in the midst of celebrating Christmas and at the same
time this kind of evil and savagery is going on the in the world – evil
directed at God’s own Church; his own people. The presence of this evil is
enough to make us question whether God is really at work; whether Jesus Christ
is really all that Scripture claims he is.
When the world does Christmas, everything turns to sappy
sentimentality. When the Church does
Christmas, the Church year does not allow you to avoid the hard questions about
what the birth of Jesus Christ really means.
On the first day after Christmas, Dec. 26, we have the Feast of St.
Stephen, the first person martyred because of faith in Jesus Christ. And now on the fourth day after Christmas, we
have the Feast of the Holy Innocents – we think about the young boys who were
killed because of the birth of Jesus.
Our Gospel lesson for today deals with events that occurred
after the visit by the magi to King Herod the Great. The magi had seen a star at it rising that
they believed announced the birth of the king of the Jews. They went to Jerusalem looking for this king,
and found Herod. He sent them on to
Bethlehem to look for the child, with the instruction that when they found him
they should send word to Herod so that he too could worship him.
Herod the Great was a ruthless and cunning leader. He was a survivor who against great odds had
assembled a kingdom that was basically as large as the one ruled by King
David. He wasn’t going to let anyone
threaten his rule – not even his own children whom he killed on several
occasions. My favorite anecdote about
Herod that reveals his character is the one about the plans for his death. Herod knew that he was not loved by many
people. So to make sure that there would
be mourning in the land when he died, he had given orders that that leading
citizens were to be gathered in a stadium and massacred at the word of his
death.
God warned the magi in a dream not to return to Herod. In our text we learn that after they had left
the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his
mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is
about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Joseph obeyed and we learn that
this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet Hosea, “Out of
Egypt I called my son.”
Herod finally realized that he had been played by the magi. Herod had not acquired his kingdom by leaving
things to chance. He was furious and had
all the little boys in Bethlehem killed who were two years old or under,
according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Matthew tells
us, “Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was
heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she
refused to be comforted, because they are no more.’”
There are no other ancient sources that mention the Bethlehem
massacre. That’s not really surprising
because in the grand scheme of Herod’s rule it was insignificant. Estimates of the little boys killed usually
run around fifty – certainly less than a hundred.
Yet while the numbers may not be great, the personal tragedy of
the parents who lost children is incalculable.
The pure evil on display is breathtaking. And this happened when Jesus Christ was
born. It happened because Jesus
Christ was born. What does this say
about Jesus? What does this say about
the way God works? What does this say
about what Jesus means for us?
In our Gospel lesson this morning, we learn that God did not
avoid evil. In the incarnate Son of God,
Jesus Christ, he subjected himself to it.
It is Jesus who is carried away in the middle of the night to Egypt
because Herod intends to kill him. God subjects himself to the evil of this
world, and yet the evil does not hinder his saving plans. Instead, God uses that evil as the instrument
to fulfill his plans.
Matthew tells us that the flight to Egypt fulfilled the prophet
Hosea’s words: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
God had brought his son the nation of Israel out of slavery in Egypt in
the exodus. But Israel had failed in its
role to be a light to the nations as she disobeyed Yahweh and worshipped false
gods.
Now, Jesus the Son of God had entered into the world in order to
be “Israel reduced to One.” He had come
to fulfill all that Israel was meant to be.
And in the unexpected mystery of God, the action by Herod becomes the
means by which Jesus goes to Egypt in order to recapitulate – “to redo” – the
role of Israel. He goes to Egypt so that
he can be called out of Egypt just as Hosea described of the nation. He goes to Egypt so that the purpose of the
nation can be fulfilled.
The Son of God enters into an evil world in order to fulfill
God’s saving purpose. And this purpose is fulfilled by suffering at the hands
of evil. The death of Jesus Christ is an
evil event. The sinless One – the One
who loved and helped others – is tortured and crucified because his enemies
plot against him and the Roman governor has no backbone. He dies a horrible death as merely one more
victim of the brutal might of the Roman empire.
Yet this evil too, becomes the means by which God accomplishes
his saving purpose. Jesus goes to the
cross as the sinless sacrifice that wins forgiveness for all people – even for
those who torture and kill him. He dies
on the cross as the sacrifice for you.
In the darkness of Good Friday there was nothing but evil to be
seen. And yet God was at work, using
this evil to defeat sin and evil. It was
only on the morning of Easter, when Jesus Christ rose from the dead, that all
became clear. God had been at work. Forgiveness had been won. And now, new life
had begun – resurrection life.
For the present, Jesus Christ changes nothing. And he changes everything. We see this in the murder of the children in
Bethlehem. The Son of God is present in
this evil world in order to bring salvation, and because he is here Herod kills
the little boys. Evil did not disappear
when Jesus was born. It did not even
disappear when Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. Instead, Stephen became the first of so very
many who have suffered and been killed because Jesus lived, died and rose
again. The same thing happens today to
the Christians in Iraq and Syria; to Saeed Abedini and other Christians in
Iran; to the Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, China and so many other
places around the world.
The “not yet” of the continuing presence of evil may make it
look like nothing has changed. But Matthew wants us to know in our text this
morning that this is not the case. He
says, “Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was
heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she
refused to be comforted, because they are no more.’”
Matthew quotes words from Jeremiah chapter 31 that acknowledge
the horror of the people of Judah being taken into exile by the
Babylonians. Yet this is the lone
negative statement in a chapter that announces that God’s people will
experience restoration and something even bigger. Yes, they experience evil now, but God will
bring them back. And he promises that he
will in the future make a new covenant through which his people will know him
and he will forgive their sins.
The message of Jeremiah 31 is that yes, there is evil in the
world. But this evil cannot change the fact that God will bring his
salvation. Matthew says that yes, the
Holy Innocents were murdered. But in
Jesus Christ God was doing something to overcome this evil, and these children
will share in this salvation too.
The murder of the Holy Innocents; the destruction of the Church
in Mosul – these are things that force us to acknowledge that evil is still
present in spite of the fact that Christmas has occurred. Yet our Gospel lesson also encourages us with
the knowledge that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ God has
accomplished the saving purpose of the incarnation. And because he has done this we know for
certain that we already now have forgiveness, and that the Holy Innocents, the
Christians who have fled Mosul and all who are God’s people will share in the
final victory when Jesus Christ returns in glory and annihilates evil
completely and forever.
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