The Holy Innocents

Jeremiah 31:15-17
Revelation 21:1-7
Matthew 2:13-18
Psalm 124



The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents

The commemoration of the Holy Innocents – the children exterminated by Herod in his furious determination to eliminate any possible rival to his throne -- is not widely observed in the life of the Church. No doubt this is because it falls on Dec 28, just three days after Christmas. Yet for centuries it has been a “Red Letter” day, which is to say, a major festival of the Christian year. The children who died were probably few in number – Bethlehem was a small place, after all – and could know nothing of the reasons for the ghastly fate that befell them. Nonetheless they traditionally count as martyrs – not just because of their innocence – but because they died for the sake of Jesus.

The politics of Palestine at the time of Jesus made an explosive mixture. Herod’s position as a Jewish king serving a Roman Empire deeply at odds with Judaism inclined him to the kind of brutal “realism” that so readily regards the innocent as expendable. “Messiahs” were cropping up all the time, and the movements they prompted were generally crushed mercilessly. He was not to know that the Messiah who had just been born sought a wholly different type of kingdom, one so different that it could best be described as ‘not of this world’.

The astonishing level of sheer cruelty that was inflicted on the mothers and children of Bethlehem is still with us. The tyrannical exercise of political power reached unprecedented heights in the 20^th century, and does not show much sign of receding in this one. Commemorating The Holy Innocents so close to Christmas serves as a helpful antidote to the saccharine sweet scenes in which the baby Jesus so often appears at this time of year. It reminds us that God did not come to dwell among us in a world of sleigh bells and festive fare, but to secure a victory on the Cross that, despite the suffering, sorrow and injustice described in the Gospel for today, enables us to keep faith with the vision of Revelation that provides the Epistle – ‘the first things have passed away’ and the God whose ‘home is among mortals’, has made us this promise "See, I am making all things new."