Christ Church

“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”

And so must we. It is, in a way, the deep meaning of Christmas. We find our abiding in God by pondering the wonder of God’s Word incarnate in Jesus Christ. It means coming, like the Shepherds on Angels’ wings, to “see this thing that has come to pass” and to ponder its meaning. How? By keeping all the things that are said about Christ in our hearts and minds, to be sure, and even more to ponder them.

It is a strong image. “Love is my weight,” Augustine said, echoing what is said here about Mary in St. Luke’s Gospel. Here is “the world’s desire,” to use the words of Chesterton’s poem and hymn. We ponder the mystery of the Incarnation and what it means.

The Octave Day of Christmas helps to underscore some of the essential features of the Incarnation. Christ is the Word made flesh who came unto his own, a phrase which suggests, first, the ancient people of God, the people of Israel, but, secondly, our humanity in general. But, in becoming flesh, becoming man of woman, means, as it does for all of us, a birth in a particular place, a particular culture, and with a particular history. We may use the phrase ‘a man or a citizen of the world’ but all our lives are inescapably local. This place at this time subject to these conditions. And so, too, for the holy birth of Jesus.

Yet here is the great wonder and truth of the Incarnation: through what is individual and particular we are opened out to what is universal. God makes himself known through the things of the world and nowhere more completely and more strikingly than in the birth of Jesus Christ.

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“The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise”

So much hidden and revealed in a parenthesis, it seems. “The birth of Jesus Christ,” Matthew tells us, “was on this wise.” He goes on to confront the strange and wondrous nature of Mary being with child but not of Joseph but of the Holy Ghost and provides a wonderful insight into the mindset of gentle Joseph, “a just man,” we are told who does not want “to make her a public example.” A laconic phrase, it hides the harsher realities of the situation of women who were stoned for adultery, a custom that has sadly not entirely disappeared from our world and day. In other words, Joseph is in the dark about what is going on at this point. Yet we see something of his character: rather than expose her he “was minded to put her away privily.” That doesn’t means doing her in!

It is only at this point that he is let in on the plan by the angel of the Lord, who pretty much explains everything to him in a dream. The dream is a kind of ancient world IT, information technology, a means to convey information. The angel’s information to Joseph is very specific, not much in the way of obfuscation or ambiguity. The angel, in a rather lapidary fashion, straightforwardly explains the situation to Joseph: don’t be afraid to take Mary as thy wife; the thing which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost – you have to wonder what on earth he made of that; she shall bring forth a Son; you – meaning Joseph – “shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins.” Of all the angelic statements, this one probably made more sense than the others. The idea of Yeshua, Saviour, is rooted in the Jewish Scriptures and looks back to Joshua, Yeshua, and now ahead to Jesus.

Joseph is to call the child Jesus. He is given the naming rights, a significant point, the rights of a father, though Joseph is technically only the step-father. It signals the theme of the Incarnation, namely God’s embrace of our humanity in Jesus Christ and the ways in which he is incorporated into the structures of human life, in this case the family. It establishes identity at the same time as suggesting the unique otherness of Christ.

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“And in their mouth was found no guile”

They are the Holy Innocents, the last of the jewels in the Christmas crown of the Child Christ. They are without guile or deceit, and so are unable to harm, hence innocent (Latin, in nocens). And they are, it seems, without speech, hence infants (Latin, in fans).

Unnamed yet known, unnumbered yet numbered, The Feast of the Holy Innocents belongs directly to the festival of Christmas. They are in the narratives of the nativity of Christ in the story of the flight into Egypt. They die in place of Christ who ultimately dies for all. They are the very paradigm of the innocent victim in the truest sense.

It is an awful and frightening spectacle even for an age like ours inured to brutality and slaughter. “Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked … sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem.” There is blood in Bethlehem, the blood of the little ones who die because of the wrath and envy of Herod. We live in a world where unnamed and unnumbered thousands of little ones die, the innocent victims of the social, political and personal machinations of others. How can we possibly make sense of the senseless slaughter of the little ones? Whether it is in Rwanda, in Syria, in the Sudan, or in the urban confusions of modern culture in the issues of abortion, child neglect, abuse and exploitation, we confront the hideous enormity of human sin and suffering.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents attempts the impossible. It connects their deaths to Christ and in so doing offers consolation and comfort to the Mothers in Israel, like Rachel, who confront the unbearable loss of their children. It is one of the hardest and yet profoundest aspects of the pastoral ministry to have to bury the little ones whose deaths seem impossible to comprehend. We are like “Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not.” And we are not in our loss and sorrow. It just doesn’t seem right. And, of course, it isn’t, but the great theological idea here is that their deaths participate by anticipation in the redemptive death of Christ crucified. Their deaths are not without meaning; they become in the words of the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, “redeemed among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb.”

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