Sermon: Holy Innocents – 2022

28 December 2022

Text: Matt 2:13-18

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

In warfare, the innocent suffer.  Non-combatant civilians – even women and children – are hit by bombs and bullets, and lose their lives.  This is the nature of warfare in our fallen world.  The military has a euphemism for such casualties – trying to minimize the humanity of such victims, as people may not support the war effort if they think too much about it.  The word is “collateral damage.”

We see collateral damage in our large cities, as gunplay between gangs often tragically causes innocent people to die in the crossfire, often children.

But what happened in the slaughter of the innocents was even worse, dear friends.  For these boys who were killed by the sword of Herod’s soldiers were not accidentally hit by stray missiles.  No, this was intentional.  These children were the intended larger target as a means to hit the narrow target: Jesus.

The wise men had inadvertently tipped off Herod – who was a fraudulent king – that the boy prophesied in Scripture to become the successor of King David, that is, the Messiah, had been born.  They were making a pilgrimage to see Him.  King Herod tried to trick the wise men into betraying the location of the baby King, but the Holy Spirit intervened, and the wise men instead tricked their intended tricker. 

Herod became “furious” – and instituted a plan to snuff out the life of the one who would reclaim the throne of Israel.  Herod ordered all boys “two years old or under” to be put to death, both in Bethlehem and in the surrounding area.  St. Matthew doesn’t give us the gory details, but one can only imagine the horror – for the families of these children, and for the soldiers themselves.  St. Matthew does point to the passage in Jeremiah’s prophecy about “Rachel weeping for her children” and refusing to be comforted, and applying it to this incident.

The entire Herodian dynasty was comprised of thugs and grifters.  They were sycophants of Rome, and had no sense of honor or morality or loyalty to their own nation.  The actions of this King Herod were par for the course for that bottom-feeding family 

Jesus came into our world precisely to defeat this kind of diabolical evil.  He took flesh like these Holy Innocents.  And indeed, He would Himself die as the Holy Innocent – though not as an infant.  Jesus would briefly stand trial before a future King Herod, another fraudulent parasite.  And indeed, our world leaders of today are mostly just as corrupt and evil.  It is the way of this fallen world, the world Jesus came to replace by a New World in a New Age.

Indeed, today we have a slaughter of the innocents in the world and in our country that dwarfs Herod’s intentional destruction of infants.  And though Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortions will not stop until our culture stops seeing death as a solution to our problems, and instead embraces human life as sacred, as the image of God.

In Canada, medically-assisted suicide is seen as a solution to their socialized medicine that cannot keep up with demand.  If you kill some, along with curing some – you might ease demands on the healthcare system.  You can even get same-day service.  You can be a depressed teenager, and your doctor will put you down like a diseased pet on the same day, with no waiting period or consultation.  This is the sick spirit of King Herod continuing in our world, in our “culture of death.”

An early writing of the Christian Church called the Didache taught that “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways. The way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, your neighbour as yourself….  And the way of death is this: First of all it is evil and full of curse: murders, adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts, idolatries, magic arts, witchcrafts, rapines, false witnessings, hypocrisies, double-heartedness, deceit, haughtiness, depravity, self-will, greediness, filthy talking, jealousy, over-confidence, loftiness, boastfulness; persecutors of the good, hating truth, loving a lie, not knowing a reward for righteousness, not cleaving to good nor to righteous judgment, watching not for that which is good, but for that which is evil,” and so on. 

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Jesus is the way of life, and those who walk this way will strive to love God and love his neighbor.  The way of life is narrow, and few find it.  The broad way leads to destruction.

So what separates us from Herod, from those who make their living off of aborting children?  What makes us any better than those operating the euthanasia stations in Canada that have already killed ten thousand people who needed medical help? 

Nothing.

As shocking as it is, we are all Herod.  We like to think that we are better than “those people,” but didn’t we just confess together that we are “poor, miserable sinners”?  Think about the sin that you just confessed, for which Jesus forgave you, dear brother, dear sister.  That sin you chose to do was a step on the way that leads to death.  It was a slap in the face to Jesus.  It was happily biting the forbidden fruit because you felt that you could be like God, or at least ignore God, and do what you want.

And so, Jesus comes into our world, to fix that brokenness.  The Holy Spirit providentially protected Jesus from Herod.  Those Holy Innocents are a reminder of the fallenness of our world.  They died because of sin: their own sinful nature, and the sin of those who walked the way that leads to death.

They died as a kind of substitute for Jesus, the target that made all of them targets as well.  Their blood was shed in order that Jesus might live.  Jesus’ blood was shed, dear friends, in order that we might live.  His blood covers our sins, great and small.  And we plead His blood and call upon it to cover us when we find ourselves drawn to the Herodian way of death.

For indeed, our Lord did not die in Herod’s holocaust.  But He would become the one all availing holocaust, that is, the sacrificial offering, under another sinful ruler by the name of Pontius Pilate, some thirty years later.  For that was God’s plan.  The cross is indeed the way that leads to life.  Our Lord’s death gives us life.  His blood is shed in lieu of our own.  His grace and mercy drags us off of the broad way that leads to death, and sets us alright on the narrow path that leads to life.

We should look upon wicked Herod using the paraphrased words of St. Paul, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

So let us embrace life, defend life, and walk the way of life, by loving our neighbor, by serving our Lord, and by rejoicing that we have been Redeemed by the Baby Jesus, who grew up to be the crucified King of the Jews, who is indeed, the Good Shepherd, the Lord of the Universe.

Let us continue to invite people of every walk of life – including politicians and workers of death – to join us in a walk of repentance, in turning toward God and embracing the gift of the one who was born into our fallen world, He who heroically conquered sin, death, and the devil.

For the target of our Lord Jesus Christ is the devil himself.  And the collateral damage to those who walk the walk of death with Satan is unnecessary.  For, we are all the beneficiaries of His blood.  All have the hope of repentance, of forgiveness, life, and salvation. 

Let the silent testimony of these Holy Innocents point to the grace and mercy of Jesus, to His substitutionary sacrifice, to His mission to forgive the sinner and raise the dead.  And even as the Holy Innocents gave their lives for Jesus, let us also bear our own crosses as we walk the way that leads to life. 

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.