The War of Christmas

Text: Matthew 2:13-18

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

            When our Lord came into this world as an infant, it was not to simply luxuriate in comfortable praises and settings. He’s not surrounded by silks and satins. The glorious song of angels and shepherds ends the night He’s born, when everyone had to go back to their regular tasks. And Jesus too, even as an infant, got right to work Himself, doing what He had come into this world to do: make war against sin, hell, and death. And as we all know (even though at times we can forget it, living so far from it as we do), war is a nightmare.

            There is no starker reminder of this reality and of the high stakes that Jesus is handling right from the start than this remembrance that follows mere days after Christmas morning: the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The Church on earth observes this day so that we never put out of our minds the brutality of evil’s warfare against Christ and those He has come to save. Savage King Herod, raging that he had been tricked by the wisdom of the eastern Magi, sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the male children two years of age or younger. This would cover all his bases in making sure that the One born King of the Jews would never grow up to become what the prophets had foretold.

            Herod had his reasons. They were not good reasons. They were, in fact, evil reasons; but they were reasons nonetheless. He was securing his throne for himself and whoever would become his heir. He was maintaining the power that he had fought and plotted for a lifetime to achieve. He was keeping control over his own life, making sure that the life he had gotten comfortable with was kept stable. He was doing what so many people are so often told to do: live your life for yourself, don’t let others push you off the course you want to be on, even if that someone else is the Son of God. And so, in order to keep the life he had and wanted, in order to keep his kingdom stable (remember, all of Jerusalem was also troubled when the Magi appeared saying there had been another who was born King of the Jews), he lashed out with deadly violence against those who could not defend themselves. The most innocent of Bethlehem, infant boys who could never actually threaten Herod, were slaughtered.

            Of course, we know that the one whispering those fears to Herod and suggesting such an evil course of action was the tempter, the ancient serpent who first whispered lies and corrupted paths to Adam and Eve. And this old evil foe, the devil, has always hated children. Throughout the history of God’s people, there is a curious pattern of the devil making violent war on the smallest of the Lord’s children. In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh declared that all Israelite boys were to be thrown into the Nile and drowned immediately at the time of birth. When Babylon swept into Judah and Jerusalem, they did what they always did when they conquered a place, and they murdered the babies of the region in ways too vile to speak of here. That’s what led to the words from our Old Testament reading, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted for her children, because they are no more”—words also applied to Bethlehem after Herod’s rampage there centuries later. And even today, the ancient liar Satan, the father of lies, convinces many that the industrialized—and it should be added, extremely violent—killing of infants, even unborn innocents, has its reasons—usually along the same lines that Herod had of maintaining a lifestyle.

            Why does the enemy hate children so much? We should never try to probe too deeply into a mind as evil as the devil’s, but it may be that he can’t stand those tiny reminders of new life where Satan loves death. He may hate them for their seeming limitless potential when he himself has strict chains limiting him. In these last days of his warfare, he may simply be trying to do as much damage as possible, knowing that he’s already lost the war, but wanting to destroy as much as he can, and they are the easiest targets. Or it may be out pure spite for the beautiful things that God creates. At any rate, like Herod, Satan certainly has his reasons—not good ones; evil ones—but they are his reasons nonetheless.

            But where Satan and all the powers of darkness have hatred for the littlest among God’s family, our Lord has the purest and most powerful love for these innocents. That’s why Jesus Himself speaks threats against those who would hurt them—threats on a level that he doesn’t say about anything else. Later in Matthew’s Gospel, the same one that records the murder of the innocents in Bethlehem, Jesus says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receive me, but whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” A few verses later He talks about how He protects them, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”

            So Jesus will not abandon these smallest, most vulnerable to those who would harm them. To fight on behalf of the infants, our Lord Jesus takes their side and becomes one of them. He sides with them and shares their weakness. And in that weakness, He retreats. His parents, being warned by the angels who protect these little ones, take Him to Egypt. This may look like loss—a devastating loss at that. Retreats are rarely chalked up as a win. And yet, we know that when it comes to Jesus, things are never as they appear at first, especially if we’re judging by mortal human standards. It has always been through weakness that Jesus achieves victory.

            For in ancient Egypt, the Lord preserved one child—Moses—to survive, by being placed into the Nile River, no less—and after his strategic retreat, he went on to lead the rest of God’s people out of slavery and bondage into freedom and the fulfillment of His promises about a new and better home. In the captivity of Babylon, the same Lord promised that the children that had been lost to that empire would return: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country.’” And so here, in Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be important to the rulers of Judah, here one Child escapes to fight another day—to fight and to win.

            “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” the Lord has declared, in order to overthrow the old Pharaoh Satan. “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” to defeat every Herod established by the devil’s plots and lies. “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” to destroy the power of sin and death, not by strength or might, not by what the world would call powerful or wise. But He will get victory for the weakest through His own weakness. He will be a defenseless baby, guarded by a carpenter, Joseph. He will be a toddler who learns to walk and talk. He will be a wandering Teacher, who will be slandered and doubted. He will be falsely accused and shamefully convicted in a mockery of a trial. He will die a criminal’s death on a cross, not wielding the weapons of Egypt and Babylon and Herod and the world, but breathing His last breath to forgive, to heal, to give the Spirit and life, rather than take it.

            That is where Jesus gets the victory. That’s why today is a feast day and not a day of fasting and gloom. Those children are redeemed. Your children are redeemed. They will all come back to Rachel, to all the mothers who have thought them gone. They will return from the land of the enemy, to their own country, the kingdom of God. We see the Lord who redeemed them in the reading from Revelation this morning, as they’re singing a new song before God’s throne that no one could learn except for them, following the Lamb wherever He goes, redeemed from mankind as a firstfruits for God, blameless.

            And you, when you are struck down by the ancient foe, when you feel the icy grip of evil, when you are driven to tears by death and loss and lamentation, your Lord fights for you. He fights for your loved ones. Even when it appears to be loss, His grace is sufficient for you, for His power is made perfect in weakness. His victory is won on His own terms, in His own ways, which confound the ways of the world.

            We get our first promise of resurrection today, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, mere days after celebrating the birth of Jesus. That’s really the whole point of this blessed season. We’ve started our road to Easter, where all that is lost is restored, where death is crossed over into life that cannot die, where all that was begun in a manger is completed in an empty tomb. In the name of Jesus, who fights for us. Amen.