The Holy Innocents

Sunday 28 December 2014

Stewkley and Soulbury, Buckinghamshire

Reading Jeremiah 15

¹⁵ This is what the Lord says:

‘A voice is heard in Ramah,
    mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.’

¹⁶ This is what the Lord says:

‘Restrain your voice from weeping
    and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,’
declares the Lord.
    ‘They will return from the land of the enemy.
¹⁷ So there is hope for your descendants,’
declares the Lord.
    ‘Your children will return to their own land.

Reading I Corinthians

²⁶ Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him. 

Gospel Matthew 2

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

The escape to Egypt

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’

¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’

¹⁶ When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ ‘A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.’

Sermon

There’s a choice of service provision in the lectionary, set for today. One is the festival of The Holy Innocents . The alternative is just the 1st Sunday after Christmas.

Normally, churches would decide to celebrate a festival in these circumstances, moving it from the nearest weekday to the Sunday if need be. But today, especially with many clergy taking a well-earned rest, a lot of churches will instead observe Christmas 1.

The reason is pretty obvious. It’s the subject matter. After the joy of the Nativity, we are plunged into the massacre of babies and children by a despotic tyrant. It’s not likely to lift the spirits. Continuing the Christmas season is easier and more pleasant.

But isn’t that the very reason why we shouldn’t duck the issue? The Christmas season is filled with happiness, and that’s right and proper, but our world is not always perfect, and our lives are sometimes tinged with sorrow as well as joy.

Matthew’s gospel sets the story of Joseph, who was warned in a dream to take the baby Jesus and his mother away to Egypt, in fulfilment of prophecy. Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 15:

‘A voice is heard in Ramah,
    mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.’

It all seems so wrong. There was no night time warning for the mothers of the babies in Bethlehem. Those families were just caught up in the politics of the region. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet God let this happen to them.

Fast forward 2,000 years or so and we find nothing has changed. Just before Christmas, 180, mainly children, were injured or killed in the attack on an army school in Pakistan. What had they done to deserve such cruelty and horror?

If anyone feels these incidents take place a long way away and don’t affect us directly, we only have to look at the intercessions in Common Worship suggested for today. In them, we pray for the children of our world, that they may grow up knowing love and security, but we also remember those who suffer physical and mental abuse. We pray for those communities that still live with the memories of massacre and gross cruelty. We pray for those corrupted by power, who regard all human life as cheap. Most of us know families who have suffered the death of a child, and of course they come to mind on a day like this.

Where, then, is the message of Christmas against the background of so much suffering? Surely it can only be that God comes to bring new life, Emmanuel — God with us — even into this madness of want and evil. He comes to show us the way.

This is why our focus on the Holy Innocents instead of the First Sunday after Christmas is a strong way to proclaim the gospel. The image of salvation in the midst of cruelty is accurate. It is crucial rather than something to avoid. We should not be afraid of it.

A shallow faith will not want to hear about the murder of children, but such horrors are not endured by failing to hear about them. What overpowers the bloody spectacles human beings create is the overwhelming truth that God gives not only a means for responding to evil but also a reason: God’s creation is holy, intended for good.

The ways of God are not easy to understand, with our limited comprehension, and the fact that evil seems to flourish provides a stumbling block to faith for many people. God is not an absentee, of course: he does intervene, as we all know in our own lives.

Joseph had 4 dreams, giving guidance and warning, telling him not to fear, and enabling him to act against his own strong instinct and social conventions. After that, his job was done. We don’t hear anything more of Joseph throughout the rest of the gospels.

We might prefer a God who is more like Superman — a power constantly intervening to put wrongs right and protect the vulnerable, but that’s not the way things are. Christians do not worship a God who fixes problems, but in tune with the whole Christmas story, a God who suffers, and comforts those who suffer.

This is the importance of The Holy Innocents. Jesus came to a world of suffering in the midst of Herod’s brutality. This same Jesus knows our suffering, comes to the frightened and the sick and the hungry, feeds and heals, and teaches the presence of God’s power wherever there are tears.

‘I will comfort you,’ says the Lord, ‘ as a mother comforts her child,
and you shall be comforted.’ Amen