Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents

admin | 28 December 2015

“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is perhaps the most challenging of the three Christmas holy days. It challenges the sentimental aspects of Christmas and opens us out to its deeper meaning. Like The Feast of Stephen, nothing of our world of cruelty and suffering is glossed over or hidden from view. Yet nothing could be more disquieting than the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, the killing of children simply because they happen to be in the way, simply as a policy of political expediency.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents open us out to some of the larger biblical features of the Christmas story, particularly the flight into Egypt seen as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that “out of Egypt have I called my Son”. But how and why is the child Christ in Egypt? Because of Joseph being warned in a dream about the wrath of Herod seeking to kill the child whom he thinks is a rival to his kingship, little knowing that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and little knowing, too, like Pilate, that he has no power at all except it were given him by God. The story also looks back to the story of Moses, to the policy of infanticide enacted by Pharaoh as an attempt to control the Hebrew population.

Yet the real power and the poignancy of the story lies in its theological meaning, especially as indicated in the reading from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. We are privileged to see things there from a heavenly viewpoint and to learn something about suffering which otherwise remains simply unfathomable in our lives. Like “Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not”, we are often distraught and inconsolable and destroyed by the deaths of little infants or of those who never come to full birth. Such deaths are part of the tragedy of our humanity and yet this feast suggests that there is meaning to be found even in such loses.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents gives us the privilege of placing the deaths of the little ones with the pure and innocent suffering of Christ who dies for the sins of the whole world. In other words, their brief lives, whether in the wombs or the arms of their mothers are not without meaning. Their humanity is not denied as it is in the abortion culture of our contemporary world. Instead they are understood as the “redeemed among men, being the first-fruits unto God, and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile; for they are without fault before the throne of God.”

There is the wonderful theological paradox that though the Holy Innocents precede Christ, in another sense they “follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”. The Holy Innocents past and present follow Christ and participate by grace in the work of human redemption. It is a profound reflection upon the larger dimensions of our humanity. And while it challenges all of our sentiments about Christmas, The Feast of The Holy Innocents reveals the greater message of the love of God conveyed by “God’s great little one”. Their pure and innocent suffering shares in the pure and innocent suffering of Christ.