The Holy Innocents ...
The historic readings of the church make December 28 a day to recall the murder of the Holy Innocents. We sometimes recall this as we combine many events together into the Christmas Story, but I don’t think we hear much preaching about Herod’s murder of the children in Bethlehem. After all, this does not fit in with the tone we want to enjoy over Christmas. We want to rightly focus on celebration. God is come in Jesus. Jesus is true God begotten of the Father from all eternity; Jesus is also true Man born of the Virgin Mary.
Yet, on this Day in the Twelve Days of Christmas we detour from joy to mourning. We rightly recoil in horror as we see the lives of newborns literally cut short by the heavy handed jealous King Herod and his operatives.
“Jesus loves the little children,” we sing. Yes, He does. He loves and honors them so much that He who is the Second person of the Trinity becomes a child in his mother’s womb — the reason many early Christians called Mary by the Greek word, theotokos, which literally means “God-bearer,” and is rendered more colloquially as Mother of God. God in the virgin’s womb.
Yet, we see the wrath of man against baby Jesus, God become flesh, as well as little children, when threatened. We see it in Herod’s actions here, we see it in war, and we see it in our own social policies. Such a testimony to the reality of human sin. Yes, it is an ugly testimony.
Was this a large scale pillage? I doubt it. Bethlehem was not a big community in Bible days. The point is not the numbers. The point is the hostility of the ruthless King Herod the Great towards any possible competitor to his throne. The contrast is between Herod’s selfcenteredness and God’s giving of Himself.
This of course, is a problem today. Too many see young children and even the unborn as a threat to our autonomy, to doing things our way. In our seeking our ways, we, are no better than Herod of old, when we turn on children in the womb.
Not a pretty picture. Indeed, we need a Savior who will save us from our sins.
(Editor’s Note: This column is written by a different Littlefield pastor for the Leader-News each week. The columns are published on this page on Wednesdays.)