“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”
“Behold the Lamb of God”, we have heard throughout Advent in the witness of John the Baptist. He highlights the deep truth of the meaning of the One who comes. Christ comes as sacrifice. He is the lamb of God.
Perhaps no part of the Christmas mystery is more disturbing and difficult than the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the third of the Christmas troika of celebrations which serve to deepen our understanding of the Christian mystery of the Incarnation. It bids us contemplate the almost unbelievable and unbearable idea of the slaughter of little children, the innocents of the world, those who are the most vulnerable and utterly unable to harm. Such is their innocence.
But in the story of the flight into Egypt and Herod’s endeavour to seek the young child, Christ, to destroy him, that leads to the mindless slaughter of “all the children that were in Bethlehem”, we see something of the radical meaning of Christmas. It speaks to the hardest and darkest things of our world and day, a world which continues to witness to an horrific extent the deaths of countless little ones, both born and unborn, in the dystopia of our world. The Christmas mystery does not hide the realities of human sin and wickedness which implicates us all in one way or another.
What this feast shows us is that the little ones are not unknown or unloved by God despite our evils and despite the limits of human justice and compassion. This feast, like the Feast of Stephen and the Feast of John the Evangelist, reminds us of the greater depth and meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. It reminds in a most poignant and painful way that suffering and sacrifice are inescapably part of the human condition, but, even more importantly, they are part of the story of human redemption.
Herod’s actions are a retelling of Pharaoh’s attempt to control and annihilate the Hebrew people in Exodus through a policy of infanticide. Infanticide is not unknown in our world and takes different forms. They all involve the privileging of some lives over and against others and often the claims to the complete autonomy of ourselves as agents freed to the pursuit of our own immediate interests even at the expense of the lives of others. In other words, Holy Innocents is a strong indictment of our culture and world too.
But the greater lesson of this disturbing yet necessary Christmas feast is what is seen in the lesson from Revelation. What it reveals to us is that the little ones are in Christ and participate by anticipation in the purpose of Christ’s coming. This is to suggest that we are always more though never less than the things which happen to us, whether they are the things over which we have no control, such as the little ones who are most vulnerable, or the things for which we do bear some responsibility or other. The striking feature of this feast is that nothing falls outside of the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. In other words, “nothing can separate us from the love of God”.
We confront in this feast one of the most difficult and horrific aspects of our humanity and yet we confront as well the idea that these little ones participate in the sacrifice of Christ. The one whom they precede they follow. The love of God in Christ defines us even as it defines them.
“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of Holy Innocents, Xmas 2022