Daily Lesson for the Day of Holy Innocents December 28, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson is from Matthew chapter 2 verses 16 through 18:

16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

This year we received a crèche scene for Christmas and just like all our others we see Joseph and Mary and the baby and a few shepherd and, in a couple wise men, but no Herod. Out of all the crèche scenes I've ever had I've never seen Herod in the crèche.

But Herod was there. He was just a few miles away from there anyway -- his dark shadow cast from his palace in Jerusalem toward the little town of Bethlehem 15 miles away.  And when word came to him that another king had been born the shadow lengthened and cast its dark pall over the city of David.

Aside from the Bible, no other historical source from the time remembers the slaughter of the innocents. That is understandable. Violence and war and the massacring of villages was the way the world was; it's the way the world still is in many places. It's easy to overlook the killing of a few dozen or hundred children in a small backwater place. I mean, just how many children have been lost in Syria in the last 5 years? We lose count. We forget.

But Matthew remembers. And this is his way of saying, God remembers also.  "For not a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing it," Matthew later tells us Jesus said. And how much more precious are these children than many sparrows.

What could possess Herod to act so heinously?   Who could slaughter innocent children?  Today's lesson says Herod was enraged when he ordered the massacre. And surly he was. By all accounts Herod was a raging madman.

But there is something before and something deeper than the rage that Matthew tells us about. And that something was Fear. Matthew says when the Magi came and told him of another King being born Herod was "afraid, and all Jerusalem with him."  Herod was afraid, and so too then all the people were afraid also.

Fear can motivate one to do many cruel and barbaric things.  And it can motivate others to go along with them. This is why fearful leaders who whip up the fears of others are so dangerous. If we are afraid enough we can see almost any action as reasonable -- even barbarism and slaughter.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It is a day to be mindful that while Christmas was a great day of joy, the shadow of death soon was to fall over Bethlehem. It is a day to remember the sacrifice and loss of those Bethlehem children's lives and indeed all the young lives lost to tyranny and oppression. We remember those children because God remembers them.

But we remember something else also; we remember what fear can do to us and our own humanity. Two thousand years later the Slaughter of the Innocents is a cautionary tale, reminding us just how brutal and violent fear can drive a leader to become -- and all his people with him.

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need listen and consider it soberly.

Note: A version of this reflection first appeared on the Feast of Holy Innocents in 2015.  Look for more Daily Lessons in 2017.