Meditation on the Feast of the Holy Innocents

admin | 28 December 2010

“Then Herod … sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem”

There is no greater challenge to the cultural celebration of Christmas than the Feast of the Holy Innocents. We like to think that Christmas is for children and for the child in all of us. We might want to think again. God “madest infants to glorify [him] by their deaths.” Now, there is a show-stopper! A real shocker. Try marketing that!

And yet, this is inescapably part of the Christmas story, albeit a part of the story we easily overlook. It recalls us to the inescapable political occasion for the nativity of Christ in Bethlehem – a census for taxation purposes – and then ups the ante in terms of the real-politique of power and domination. Herod embarks upon a policy of infanticide, killing all the little children in Bethlehem. Why? Out of fear for a rival king, the child King of Bethlehem, as he has heard from the Magi. He embarks upon a human scorched earth policy to destroy a potential rival to his power.

His policy, of course, echoes a similar policy by Pharoah in ancient Egypt who wanted to control the population of his gastarbeiter – guest-workers, also known as slaves, namely, the People of the Hebrews. That policy was the occasion for the remarkable birth of Moses, literally, the one who is drawn out of the reeds. Moses, of course, will be the leader of the Hebrews in the quest for freedom, leading them out of Egypt by way of the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea, and leading them into the Covenant with God in the form of the Ten Commandments. “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” In the context of the prophetic vision of the Old Testament, this refers to Israel, coming to be the people of God by being called out of Egypt.

Now, in the Christmas story, it takes on a whole new meaning, a deeper and profounder meaning. Herod’s policy of infanticide is the occasion for the Holy Family’s fleeing Bethlehem and going into Egypt from which then they will return to Nazareth. “Out of Egypt have I called my Son” now has an extended reference, the concentration of the story of Israel into the story of Jesus.

It concentrates our understanding of the Christmas story wonderfully. It reminds us of the reason for the Incarnation; it is, at once, revelation and redemption. There is blood in Bethlehem. Herod slew all the little children in Bethlehem. At least one of the carols of the season, a 15^th century carol sung to a 16^th century melody, is explicit about this reality of the Christmas story. Puer Nobis Nascitur – Unto Us a Child is Born.

Herod then with fear was filled:
‘A prince’, he said, ‘in Jewry!’
All the little boys he killed
At Bethlem in his fury.

It ought to disturb us, I think. The question is in what ways. I have known clergy who have been quick to denounce the very concept signalled so directly in the Collect, God making infants to glorify him by their deaths.

And yet, the idea of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents – innocent, theologically speaking, because they lack the power to harm (in nocens); infants, because they are literally without speech (in fans) – speaks to the radical nature of redemption and to the power of the idea of redemptive suffering. The lives of the countless little ones of the world matter; their deaths are not without purpose. They are understood within the greater embrace of God in his care for our sin-wracked humanity, regardless of what kind of political policy or project of social engineering happens to be underway, driven, as always, by the fear and the lust for power.

To my mind, this is powerful. And it belongs to a significant sea-change in the outlook of the ancient world. With the birth of Christ, there is actually a new valuation of human life, especially the life of children. Infanticide, after all, was a common pagan reality – the exposure of infants to the elements, for instance, if the child was thought to be deformed or unwanted or a threat in some way or other. Think of the story of Oedipus. He was exposed and left to die on the slopes of Mount Citheron because his parents feared the prophecy which said that their son would kill his father and marry his mother.

No. The feast of the Holy Innocents challenges the sentimentality of the Christmas celebration in our culture and it recalls us to the new and greater demands of charity and compassion, namely, our care for all the little ones. The Feast of the Holy Innocents teaches us that they matter; that their lives are not in vain. Their purity and innocency connects them and us to the purity and the innocency of Christ, our Redeemer.

In our culture, the little ones are again in danger throughout our world and day whether it is policies (or the lack of policies) about abortion, policies about reproductive technologies that are cavalier about the conception(s) of new life, policies about single-child policies by way of political fiat and so on. It is partly a feature of our technological culture which raises inescapably ethical concerns. Not everything that we can do is that which we should we do.

But even more, it seems to me, this feast speaks to the hard-rending forms of suffering encountered in the loss of children through accident or disease. It allows for a way of thinking about human life in terms of our divine destiny. We do not, I have to say, raise children for ourselves. In truth, we raise them for God. For they are a gift – of God – and not a right. This disturbing feast gives us the great comfort that allows us to place our children with God, come what may in the course of a wicked and weary world, where, once again, the politics of power in which we are all complicit, threaten the little ones.

It recalls us to the revolutionary power of God’s care for our humanity. Christ, after all, is “God’s great little one.” The Christmas story challenges all the forms of the hubris of our humanity; it offers human redemption and a way to face the hardest of hard things, even the deaths of the little ones.