Matthew 2:13-23
The festival of Christmas is always a day of joyous celebration. We remember God’s goodness and love in the sending of his Son to be our Savior, and as we do so, we are glad.
The story of the birth of Jesus is a declaration that God cares about us. He has not forgotten about the human race in all its troubles, but has made a way for us to find happiness and peace through this Holy Child.
But even as the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem always lifts us up in joy and optimism, we are then always brought low again – in a sober-minded sadness – by the story of the deaths of many other babies in that same small Judean town, which is so closely associated with the story of Jesus’ birth.
The good news about Christ is seemingly eclipsed and buried by the bad news about King Herod’s cruelty that immediately follows it. And Herod was indeed a brutal tyrant. The Lutheran historian Paul Maier recounts just a few of his notorious deeds:
“Herod was so jealous of his favorite wife that on two occasions he ordered that she be killed if he failed to return from a critical mission. And then he finally killed her anyway, as well as her grandfather, her mother, his brother-in-law, and three of his sons, not to mention numerous subjects. During a swimming party at Jericho, he also drowned the high priest, who happened to be another of his brothers-in-law. Old and very ill from arteriosclerosis, Herod worried that no one would mourn his death – a justified concern. So he issued orders from his deathbed that leaders from all parts of Judea were to be locked inside the great hippodrome at Jericho. When he died, archers were to massacre these thousands in cold blood, so there would indeed be universal mourning associated with his death.”
Fortunately, this last order of a dying despot was not carried out. But the fact that it was issued shows us something of the man.
And of course, within the past 2,000 years, there have been enough other tyrants in human history – matching and surpassing Herod’s brutality – to illustrate the fact that this world is indeed a cruel and painful place.
And even when tyrants on a smaller scale inflict misery on a smaller number of people, it still serves to remind us that in this life people often do experience much suffering and injustice.
The Christmas story might make us forget about this for a day. But when we read on just a little further in our New Testament, and come to the account of the massacre of the Holy Innocents, we are shocked back into a realization of what the world is really like.
And, of course, that realization may once again make us wonder what Christmas really accomplished. Where is the peace on earth that the angels promised?
The Christmas story is supposed to demonstrate God’s love for humanity. But how can this divine love be harmonized with the depredations and savagery that have continued to occur for the past 2,000 years?
If God loves the world, why does he allow these things to continue? Might we not rather conclude that God is either indifferent to these injustices, or too weak to do anything about them? And if that is so, then what’s the point of believing in him, or of trying to follow his ways?
One thing that can be said in response to these questions, is that our ability to discern the presence of injustice in human affairs is actually evidence for the existence of God, and for the goodness of God.
God is the supreme Good. As creatures of God, according to the way God did in fact create us, we humans have an inborn, intuitive sensitivity to God’s goodness; and an ability to know, deep down, the difference between good and evil, right and wrong.
This is something that God planted in us. St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Romans – with respect to the Mosaic law and natural law – that
“When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness…”
So, if there were no supreme being – who embodies Goodness in an absolute sense – then there would be no ultimate criterion by which we could identify, in our conscience, good things as good things, and bad things as bad things. Without God’s moral voice within us, as a standard by which all things can be measured, the perceived difference between good and evil would be an illusion – completely subjective and arbitrary.
Some people in human history – like Herod the Great – stopped listening to the voice of their conscience, and hardened themselves to the natural law that God had planted within their conscience.
King Herod came to think that, for him, it was a “good” thing to kill babies and toddlers, and to kill his wife and other relatives, because this served his selfish desire to remain in power. People like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Chairman Mao, are well-known 20th-century examples of the same sort of thing.
And it would be that way with most people, if most people did not continue to listen to that still small voice of God’s natural law within them, most of the time; and if they did not try to live, and to make judgments and decisions, according to that inner voice from God, most of the time.
And while we’re on the subject, all of us need to admit that there have been plenty of times when we have not listened to that inner voice – and have not listened to the divinely-revealed Ten Commandments, either – in a moment of surrender to a sinful temptation.
Oh, we haven’t massacred people. But we have done things we should not have done, even as our conscience was screaming out to us not to do those things.
But even more can be said about our difficulty in understanding why God does what he does, and why he allows what he allows.
We should not minimize the emotional and physical suffering and sadness that many people in this world do experience. But we can recognize that God’s will for the human race reaches down to issues that are at a deeper level than this pain and sadness.
It is easy to criticize God for not preventing things like the slaughter of the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. But before we conclude that God failed to do something he should have done, we should make sure we know what God is actually trying to do in this world.
And before we persuade ourselves that God has let us down, we should consider that the story may actually be that we have let him down.
In his relationship with humanity, God wishes to be more than a cosmic policeman, who prevents men from inflicting on others the bad things they want to do. God would certainly be able to set himself up as the head of a supernatural police state.
But God’s purposes are not merely to prevent people – like Herod, and like us – from doing the hurtful things they want to do. Rather, he wants people not to want to do hurtful things in the first place.
He doesn’t intend to be the equivalent of a zoo-keeper, who keeps vicious animals in cages or chains, so that they cannot fulfill their desire to attack other animals. Instead, he wants the animals to be “tamed” – deep down on the inside – so that they don’t have a desire to attack.
It certainly was a problem that Herod ordered the children of Bethlehem to be killed. But at a deeper level – at least as far as Herod’s soul was concerned – it was a more serious problem that he even wanted to issue such an order.
God would have wished that Herod’s inner depravity and hatefulness be replaced by compassion and kindheartedness.
And that goes for all of us. To whatever extent you harbor hurtful feelings and angry intentions toward others, you, too, have a problem in an area of your life that runs deeper than your outward actions.
If God were simply to restrain you in your outward behavior every time you were getting ready to say or do something unkind or cruel, this would not change your heart. This would not remove from you the selfishness, pride, and arrogance that motivate such words and actions.
God does not simply want us to be physically restrained. He wants us to be spiritually regenerated.
Literal police officers perform a valuable function in maintaining order in the civil society. But if God had settled for being humanity’s cosmic policeman, he would never have gotten down to the deeper issues that he really wants to address with us.
It’s difficult to hear about atrocities like the massacre of the Holy Innocents at the hand of Herod. It’s even more difficult to hear about the atrocities that continue to occur even in our own time.
But when these things do happen, don’t blame God for failing to do what we think he should have done for us. Ponder instead what it is, at a deeper level, that God actually wants to do for us.
In his Epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul summarizes for us the reason for Christ’s entrance into this world:
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”
God is not, in the final analysis, a supernatural policeman. He is a supernatural Redeemer.
God’s Son came into the world, not merely to restrain our outward evil behavior, but to buy us back from the power of death and destruction, with the price of his own blood; and to reconcile us to God. St. Paul writes to the Romans that “when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
God’s Son came into the world to atone for our sins, and to justify us before a holy God with the covering of his own righteousness. He came to deliver to us a heavenly adoption, and to make us to be children of a heavenly Father by the indwelling of his own life-giving Spirit.
God has the right to call us to account, and he does call us to account: for all the times we have ignored his law, and as a consequence have hurt others. We do not have the right to call him to account, when he allows things that we think he should not allow: such as the slaying of the Holy Innocents, and a million other crimes that have occurred in human history.
According to the righteous judgment of God, Herod certainly needed to stop perpetrating his acts of human cruelty on others. He should have mended his ways before he died. But at a deeper level, Herod also needed to repent of his sins before God.
Herod certainly needed to stop being so paranoid and callous in his thoughts and feelings about others. But at a deeper level, he also needed to be reconciled to God, and to become a new creature on the inside, through faith in the Messianic promises of God.
It grieved God that Herod lived and died in the blindness of sin, with his heart turned away from God and his grace. It grieves God today, when people who are alive today likewise shut themselves off from his power to forgive, to heal, and to restore.
It grieves God when those who need the inner deliverance from sin – in time and in eternity – that he offers in his Son, choose instead to criticize him for failing to prevent outward evil actions in the affairs of this world.
The gift of Christmas is God’s gift of salvation to those who have grieved God, but whom God loves nevertheless. The gift that is offered to you, in the Holy Babe of Bethlehem, is the gift of reconciliation with a God whom your sins have offended, but who wants to pardon you and give you another chance.
The gift that is offered to you in Jesus, as he comes to you today in Word and Sacrament, is the gift of adoption and acceptance from a heavenly Father who wants to be alienated from you no more.
The peace of Christmas is not simply the kind of outer “peace” that could be imposed on the world, if the wicked actions of wicked people would be restrained against their will. Instead, the peace of Christmas is the inner peace that comes when wicked people repent and are forgiven, and when they are given a new will, and a new heart and mind in Christ.
God has the power to do this. God wants to do this. God wants to do this for you.
May your life be ever filled with the goodness and grace of the Christchild. Even in the midst of suffering and injustice, may you still know, and rejoice in, the eternal peace that only God can give.
And may God answer the prayer from Psalm 51 that you chant to him, by creating in you a clean heart, today and every day; and by renewing a right spirit within you, today and every day. Amen.