The Death of Innocents/Innocence

In light of today’s horrible atrocity of the killing of 145 children and adults in Pakistan by the Taliban, I reprint here a meditation from last year I wrote during Advent. A blessing on the memory of all those innocents who died today.

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The headline was brutal, the pictures even worse. “Local Mayor Goes on Baby-Killing Rampage.” I really could not believe it. He went door to door in his small town and if there was a child that looked under two or three years old, he just blasted away with his Glock 9 mm. CNN wouldn’t even go near the story. The New York Daily News, the New York Post, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune didn’t have even a sidebar. FOX News, ABC, NBC, CBS, nor any local news channel I watched covered this horrific story. Why does the press keep mum about such a terrible tragedy? Is it because no one wants to imagine little kids being ripped apart by a madman on the loose with a gun?

Matthew’s Gospel tells the story of King Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. How come this never makes it into the Christmas story? Sure, it isn’t Frosty the Snowman or Rudolf, it sure isn’t a pretty story like shepherds and angels, but it is part of the story, just like the one I made up in the paragraph above. Admit it. You were shocked when you first read that paragraph. You may have stopped reading and started ‘googling’ to find out where it occurred. Herod’s massacre is a horrific story about power, the addiction to power, the fear of losing power and the impotence of power.

Yet it doesn’t make it into our sanitized Christmas narrative.

Violence dominates our news; it is everywhere, every day. Violence permeates the biblical narrative. Have we so failed to see that the gospel is about our being rescued from our violence that we are blind to this piece of the holiday story? If my fake news story had really occurred, don’t you think it would be major news headlines like the Sandy Hook school shooting? So, when is the last time you heard a sermon that dealt with this text at Christmas?

When is the last time you heard a Christmas sermon that acknowledged that the birth of Jesus wasn’t just sweetness and light?

When was the last time you heard a Christmas sermon that spoke to the apocalyptic reality that a baby was a threat to the governing principalities and powers? And not just the ‘spiritual ones’ but the real this world flesh and blood ones?

Some would have us believe that we are all beautiful people, that there is nothing wrong with any of us, that sin doesn’t exist. Stories like the Massacre put that to the lie. Governments are all about death. They are in the death business no matter how much they parade themselves as champions of the people. And Jesus will always be the singular power that challenges this death dealing institutional monster.

In a world that fears weakness, God comes as a baby.

Jesus, from the very beginning, did not fight power with power. Jesus did not take up arms against any institutional power. Herod may have feared that one day some child would be heralded as “King” and replace his family’s dynasty. That fear may have had some reality, for in John 6, the crowds would make Jesus king, but he hid from them and refused to “run for office.” Pilate couldn’t figure out why anyone would confuse this bloodied torture victim with a “king.”

In the midst of the ever increasing senseless violence of our world, we need to stop, for just one moment, and reflect that God is not like us. God comes into our world as one of us, but God is not like us. God comes into our flesh and blood, broken and battered existence but will not threaten anyone, Herod included, with violence. Violence is our story, not God’s. God comes to bring “Peace on earth.” “Peace” is the opening word of God’s story in Jesus and it is God’s last word too, for the Risen Christ announces “Peace.”

There was a lot of wailing in Israel when Herod went on his village to village and door to door campaign to kill young children. There is still weeping and heartache every time a drone drops a bomb and there is ‘collateral damage.’ Who is playing the role of Herod now? And who will bear witness to the powerless God? Even and especially at Christmas? Who will announce “Peace on Earth”, not through might, not through guns, not through bombs, but through solidarity, oneness and embrace? It must begin with you and with me. Right here, right now. Let us beat our guns into plowshares today.