Holy Innocents, December 28th, A+D 2025
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Audio of the Sermon available HERE.
1
Sweet flow'rets of the martyr band,
Plucked by the tyrant's ruthless hand
Upon the threshold of the morn,
Like rosebuds by a tempest torn;
2
First victims for th'incarnate Lord,
A tender flock to feel the sword;
Beside the altar's ruddy ray,
With palm and crown, you seemed to play.
3
Ah, what availed King Herod's wrath?
He could not stop the Savior's path.
Alone, while others murdered lay,
In safety Christ is borne away.
4
O Lord, the virgin-born, we sing
Eternal praise to you, our King,
Whom with the Father we adore
And Holy Spirit evermore.
We know and
no doubt prefer the better-known hymn from Prudentius, “Divinum Mysterium,”
which we sing as “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” “Sweet Flow’rets” did make our last two print
hymnals, and is still in the extended electronic version of LSB. But I don’t
think many sing it often.
We can all acknowledge that today’s Gospel
makes us uncomfortable. The turn in
theme and tone from the soaring “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” to the bitter
tears of “Sweet Flow’rets” is stark.
This turn that was reflected in the Church’s calendar from very early on;
around the same time the Church started regularly celebrating Jesus’ birth on
December 25th, in the early 4th Century, she also began
observing Holy Innocents three days later on the 28th. And the turn from the pure joy of Christmas
to darker themes actually comes even faster in the liturgical calendar, as St.
Stephen, Martyr is celebrated on December 26th.
Why so fast from joy to sorrow? Well, I don’t know about St. Stephen’s Day,
but with the Holy Innocents, it is likely because St. Matthew records it that
way.
The birth of Jesus is told from Joseph’s
perspective in the second half of Matthew, chapter one. In chapter two the story skips a couple
years, describing the visit of the Magi from the east, following the star. These eastern sages draw King Herod into the
account, mistakenly assuming the current king would know something about a
newborn King. Herod knows nothing, except
fear. The Jewish scribes, however, point
the Magi to Bethlehem. After the Magi
worship the Christ Child, but do not return to Herod as instructed, the enraged
king seeks to kill all the little boys in Bethlehem and the area around it,
hoping to catch this newborn King in his horrifying dragnet. Sorrow and terror
quickly enter the Christmas story. By
putting the Holy Innocents just three days after the Nativity of our Lord, the
Church calendar is just tracking the historical facts as Matthew lays them out.
So here we are, with the killing of these
innocent children before us. And that is
right. We prefer joy to sorrow, peace over
strife and violence. As we should. But skipping over the difficult parts of the
Bible is not good for our faith. Christians
will not be able to avoid strife in this world, and may even face violence for Name
of Jesus. We all face struggle and
rejection, to be sure. The recent
horrors in Nigeria are just the latest chapter of persecution for Christ, one
that has broken through into the news, a bit.
The reality is that martyrdom and suffering for the sake of the teaching
of Christ is a constant in the life of the Church. Every day that persecution doesn’t touch us
directly is a day to sing Alleluia to our God, and to pray for our brothers and
sisters around the world, whom the Lord is blessing through their
suffering.
And so, we are wise to deal directly with
the strife in the Bible, not avoid it.
Thus, the Holy Spirit will strengthen us for Christian living. As a bonus, you will also find that the
joyful mysteries and promises of the Bible are richer and even more precious to
us when we dare to also dig into the fearful parts of God’s Word.
But how do we deal with a text like today’s
Gospel? Little toddler boys and babies, taken
from their mothers and murdered, because a deranged king fears for his
throne? No shortage of law and its
consequences, the cost of sin made obvious.
Our reading from Matthew ends with Rachel crying for her children, who
are no more. She refuses to be
comforted. This is the
Gospel, the Good News of the Lord?
Yes, but we would need to read the rest of
Matthew to hear this Good News. Instead,
today our lectionary gives us a shortcut.
For we also heard Jeremiah, whom Matthew quotes when he speaks of
Rachel’s tears. Matthew stops his quote with
Rachel “refusing to be comforted, because [her children] are no
more.” Jeremiah rescues us, as the
prophet adds this: “Thus says the Lord: “Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work,” declares
the Lord, “and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.” “There
is hope for your future,” declares the Lord, “and your children shall come
back to their own country.”
We learn from Revelation that the children’s
own country is the heavenly one. From St.
John, we gained a glimpse into heavenly joy, as the redeemed of Christ worship
around the throne of God. And their
number includes the Holy Innocents, by now long reunited with their faithful
mothers, whose tears have been wiped away forever, by the Christ Child who
escaped Herod’s sword. Jesus escaped to
Egypt, so that, in the fullness of time, He could become God’s ultimate Martyr. Persecuted and executed unjustly on a Roman
cross, Christ crucified is the greatest witness, the greatest testimony ever to
God’s love for fallen humanity.
The death and resurrection of Jesus, and the
eternal life in glory that He brings, is the only solution, the only medicine
that can heal a wound like the slaughter of the innocent little boys of
Bethlehem. The Gospel of forgiveness and
eternal life for all who trust in Christ does not take away all the pain and
tears, not yet. But it does carry us
through the shadow of death with faith and hope, trusting in the One who gave
His life for the little boys of Bethlehem, and for you and me.
The victory of Christ is the only solution
to great horrors, and even to the more mundane problems of life in this fallen
world. And so, week after week and day
after day, we are wise to drink deeply from God’s Word, both to be able to
understand that the evil of our day is not unknown to God, and also to feed our
faith that trusts in His ultimate victory.
The
victory of Christ is the only solution to the consequences of sin. But it is not the only thing we can learn
from the Holy Innocents. God wants to
impact our day to day lives too. Your
eternal life started when you were made a child of God by faith in Christ, and
God wants to bless you now, and bless others through you. In these blessings, the Lord gives you daily
foretastes of the perfect life that is yet to be revealed.
We can even learn from the very negative
example of King Herod. He was vain, cruel
and full of fear, suspicion and hate.
His murder of the Innocents may be the worst thing he ever did, but
there is plenty of competition. Herod
even killed his own firstborn son, simply because he imagined his heir might be
plotting against him.
We are repulsed by Herod and his wanton
violence. Good. Let us also be repulsed by the clinical
cruelty of our day, as, in addition to abortion, we also create life in
laboratories in order to experiment on the unborn, for the benefit of those who
escaped the womb alive. We have allowed
our culture to degrade until young people today, despite all the technology and
comfort they enjoy, are the most anxious and unhappy cohort of Americans in all
our history.
We who mourn for the boys of Bethlehem
should also speak for the children under threat today, and also for the
countless adults and elderly who live in crushing loneliness. Into such pain and loneliness, today’s agents
of death suggest more and more that people just end their lives, and get out of
the way. God help us not accept such
cruelty.
The Day of the Holy Innocents is truly a Sanctity
of Human Life Sunday. For Jesus Christ
has passed through and sanctified every stage of human life, so we could be
forgiven, re-born, declared holy, and welcomed into the family of God.
For the sake of the little boys of Bethlehem, let us speak and act for life, in our private and our public lives. And let us also reject cruelty. None of us compare to Herod, who killed family members, murdered and punished without any hint of concern. We are not monsters. But cruelty is not unknown to us.
When the frustrations of life pile up, when we
get busy and detached from Christ and His Good News, when we are struggling,
then we are also prone to lash out, usually against those closest to us. A heartless silence. A thoughtless word. Or perhaps a word well thought through, chosen
to injure. A foolish and pointless
attempt to make ourselves feel better by making others feel worse. God grant that when cruel thoughts and words infect
us, He will bring us to repentance, and reconciliation with those we have
hurt.
The Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 teaches us about love for a reason: we need help to know how to love. We need help to know how to actually pursue the fruit of the Spirit that the Father desires to see in our lives. So Paul teaches what He learned from Jesus: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Paul wrote these words to help us know what
love really is. Life with its pleasures
and with its problems tempts us to pervert love for our own selfish
motives. To return to evil King Herod
for a moment, it could be helpful to understand love as the opposite of fear-driven
cruelty. Herod feared losing his power,
his throne, to an unknown infant King.
His fear made him cruel.
Love is produced in the lives of sinners
like you and me when the Gospel of Jesus Christ drives out our fear, and the
Holy Spirit makes way for the character of God to be displayed in our lives.
December 26th and the day after
Easter are often tough days for preachers.
Or at least for one preacher I know.
Over-stimulated, tired, discombobulated, the preacher crosses the finish
line of the liturgical sprint of Advent and Christmas, or Lent and Holy Week,
and sometimes irritation and impatience dominate, instead of the peace and joy
which should prevail. Irritation and
impatience can lead to cruelties, to a grumpy attitude and an unkind tone, if
not worse.
Now, we all get run-down and worn-out from
time to time, and that’s o.k. Nor am I
suggesting we should indulge in a painted-on, false cheerfulness, a pretense
hiding darker thoughts. But, we can pray
that the Holy Spirit give us wisdom and time and space to just chill. God grant that, when we are stressed out, we
have the self-control to think before we speak or act.
In this way, the way of depending on Jesus,
even in our bad moments, there will be a bit more gentleness, self-control,
patience and love. For all these are
gifts, gifts which flow into our lives from hearing and wrestling with the
truth of God’s Word, the hard parts included.
For the struggles of the Bible are not
there to depress us, but rather to lead us to the Good News and embrace it, the
Good News that the Child of Bethlehem has done all things well, and continues
to care for His own, for the Holy Innocents now resting in His nearer presence,
and also for you and me.
Receiving His Gospel, feeding on His grace, we will be brought to know His peace, the peace of God which passes all understanding, and keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord, today, and forever and ever, Amen.
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