13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
Our Bible passage today tells us the next part of the Christmas story, and it’s about as far removed from our normal, cosy view of Christmas as it’s possible to get.
“At least six soldiers entered”
“There was chaos everywhere”
“I tried to hide, and I called for my mother”
“We saw children falling down, crying and screaming”.
Words of terror, confusion, shock, grief. We can readily imagine these being spoken by those who witnessed the terrible killing of the children by Herod’s soldiers. But these words were actually spoken in 2014 by those who witnessed the killing of 133 children and 9 staff at a school in Peshawar in Pakistan. These children were murdered - not by a distant king in ancient times, but by the Taliban just 12 days ago.
The Song of Zechariah in Luke 1, says of Jesus:
“In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death
And to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
If ever we found the way of peace, we have lost it again. And we may well ask ourselves: where was the ‘tender compassion of our God’ when those school children were killed? And indeed, where was it when the Jewish babies were slaughtered by Herod all those years ago?
This is an almost impossibly tough question, but it is one that our passage today forces us to ask: Where is God when innocent children die?
Download the full text of Massacre of the Innocents - Martin Little
Comments