In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Man, oh man . . . I hate it when I don’t think things though.  You know what I mean?  I hate it when I make a decision without thinking through the consequences.  You see, this Sunday, the first Sunday after Christmas is when we traditionally hear the beginning of the Gospel of John as the Gospel lesson of the day.  You know . . . “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. . . .”  Every Sunday after Christmas we hear this . . . and for ten years in a row I’ve tried to find something new to say about it.  So this year, when the Feast of the Holy Innocents fell on the first Sunday after Christmas, I said, “Great!  Let’s do that instead.”  I was thinking, “Terrific!  I’ll get a break from preaching on the prologue of John.”  I was NOT thinking, “Which means that I’ll get to preach on the slaughter of innocent children.”  Man, oh man. . . .

As you might imagine, I thought about trying to find a way to wriggle off the hook and not address the subject directly.  It wouldn’t be too hard to do.  You see, the story of the murder of all those innocent children is found only in the Gospel of Matthew, and there is no historical proof that such an event occurred.  The explanation for this may be that in writing this Gospel, Matthew is especially concerned about explaining to his fellow Jews how Jesus is the Christ that they’ve been waiting for, for thousands of years.  Throughout his Gospel, Matthew portrays Jesus as a kind of second – and even better – Moses, and in the opening chapters of the Gospel, we can find many parallels between Moses’ story and Jesus’.  It is possible that Matthew “created” the slaughter of all those innocent children in Bethlehem to be a parallel of sorts to the slaughter of the Egyptian children that leads to the release from slavery of the Hebrew people.  So you see, I could go on at great length about Jesus as a second Moses, and skirt the issue of Herod’s murderous rampage.

The only problem with this idea was that, while it got me off the hook, I didn’t think it’d do much for YOU.  While I might be able to avoid talking about this particular event that may, or may not have happened, I decided that I still needed to address the question of why this story of terrible brutality and suffering is dropped right down into the middle of the Christmas season.  Man, oh man. . . .

Perhaps the biggest problem with dealing with today’s text, is the all pervading, relentless, secular context in which we celebrate Christmas.  Every single one of us has absorbed, to at least some degree, the idea that Christmas is supposed to be a purely joyous, happy time, in which there are no bad feelings, no family divisions, no recognition of illness or pain or tragedy.  In other words, we’ve all absorbed the idea that Christmas is a time that is supposed to be totally divorced from reality.  This is why the Christmas season is such a stressful time for many of us . . . it’s very hard to pack away the painful bits of our lives and pretend that they don’t exist for the duration of the season.  And now, into this season of mass denial, drops today’s Gospel story of Herod’s massacre of all of those babies in Bethlehem.  It’s a slap in the face.  But it’s also an opportunity to get a grip on reality and to address a much deeper meaning of Christmas.

A Lutheran pastor named Charles Henrickson puts it this way,[1] “Any celebration of Christmas that can function only on a surface level of sweet, syrupy sentimentality, a Christmas that cannot come to grips with the harsh reality of death and suffering and evil in the world – that kind of a Christmas is not worthy of the name.  But the true Christmas, the real Christmas, DOES speak a word of deep comfort to those who are suffering, to those who are struggling with the unanswered, and unanswerable, questions of life – and death.”

The story of Christmas is the story of the Incarnation, the story of God coming to us as one of us.  Jesus – the Word made flesh – did not come to us to put an end to suffering and death, but to take away their power over us.  Jesus comes to show us that God is with us in our earthly life, sharing in our suffering and pain, as well as in our celebrating and joy.  And even more important, Jesus proves to us that God not only shares in our humanity, but is willing to suffer and to die FOR us.  Christ Jesus, in his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, destroys the power of suffering and death over us.  Oh yes, we will all experience suffering; we will all know death . . . but with Christ dwelling in us, and we in Christ, these are not determinant factors in our existence.  In Christ we may know joy despite our pain, and experience eternal life despite our physical death.  Sin and hell and death have no power over us now.

Preparing for this sermon I came across something that makes this point better and more poignantly than I can.  It’s a short piece by Donna Marmorstein of Aberdeen, South Dakota, and with your indulgence, I’d like to read it to you.  It’s called, “Can Death Obliterate Christmas? Ask Herod.”  Here it is:

Early in December, when stars seem sharper and bluer than at other times, Christmas music seems to sharpen them even more.  I unpack my age-old Christmas record collection.  I’ll put on “Goodyear’s Great Songs of Christmas” with Mitch Miller and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  I’ll brew some cinnamon tea, light a mulberry-scented candle and write Christmas cards.  Usually, when stamps, return labels, address book and cards are arrayed before me, the carols swirl up together with the tea steam, and my toes turn warm.  A deep, bone-radiating satisfaction takes over.  Renewing contact with friends is one of the best parts of Christmas.

But this year something went wrong.  It started when I tried to write a Christmas greeting to my aunt.  How can you wish holiday cheer to someone who just lost a husband to cancer?  Her chance of merriment at Christmas is about nil.  My pen froze in midair as I tried to think of something to write.  How jolly will her Christmas be, as she tries to mix celebration with grief?  And his death will mar Christmases to come.  My uncle’s voice, singing every morning as he shaved, now stilled.  His jokes, smiles, and positive outlook – all gone.

And what do I write to warm the spirits of friends whose youngest child drowned in a lake this summer?  Merry Christmas?  Right.  Every mall, every shop they enter where toys just right for a 6-year-old boy sit on display will become a torture chamber.  No message I write can convey joy without pain.  There’s no way around it.

My address book isn’t what it used to be either.  Every page has abandoned addresses now.  My grandpa, long gone.  My grandma, who every Christmas cooked up fudge divinity and sugared walnuts, can’t receive my Christmas greetings now.  My other grandma – whose flashbulb ALWAYS malfunctioned Christmas morning – is dead, too, and I would love to feel her knobby, blue-veined hand on mine once more, and watch her “fiddle with” her camera now.  Her sister, wise, warmhearted Auntie Faye, died Christmas morning in her sleep at 97.  Her address still echoes in my book.

All the expired addresses accumulate, and suddenly ripples spot my envelopes.  The candle flickers out, the record player grinds to a halt.  Stars blur and fall.  The needles on the tree all turn brown and drop to the floor.  Death creeps into my address book.  It grips my pen and tries to overpower my Christmas.  No carol seems able to withstand its ugly claw.

But then the turntable starts up again.  The Coventry carol plays: “By, by, lully, lullay/ Herod the king, in his raging/ Charged he hath this day/ His men of might, in his own sight/ All young children to slay.”  The only carol I know that mentions Herod’s slaughter of the innocents to destroy the Christ child and, consequently, Christmas.  Pain, grief and fear riddled the first Christmas.  This problem goes back a long time.

Herod, however, did not have this day.  Death does not have this day.  In fact, the whole reason behind Christmas was to overthrow the power of death and sin and hell.  So when death creeps up and grabs a loved one, Christmas kicks death in the teeth and says, “You can’t keep that one.  That’s mine.”

Death, where is thy sting?  Stuck somewhere under the mistletoe, I suspect.  The needles fly back onto the tree and turn green.  Falling stars rise and shine, resharpened.  My cold tea steams up again.  The candle relights.  Appropriate, hopeful words spill from my pen onto cards.  And Christmas, if not always merry, is always, always victorious.

Merry Christmas!

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