Today is the first Sunday of Christmastide. And it is my birthday! Most years, my birthdate, December 28, falls on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. This year, however, the Feast has been transferred to tomorrow. Now, counting the day of my birth, I have visited this day eighty-one times. This means I get to say a few words about the Holy Innocents before turning to the readings for the first Sunday after Christmas.
I think you know the story. But I’ll summarize. (Matthew 2:1-18)
The Wise Men from the East came to Jerusalem and said they were looking for the child who was born King of the Jews. They had seen his star and were coming to worship him — not bow and scrape before him, but worship him. King Herod, who was really upset by the news, asked the chief priests and scribes where the child was to be born, and they said the Scriptures pointed to Bethlehem. Herod talked to the Wise Men privately and asked when the star had appeared. Presumably, they told him. So, in line with what he’d been told, he said they should go to Bethlehem to find the child. Herod was relying on the Wise Men to tell him where exactly the child was. He told them that he wanted to worship the child too. Right. The Wise Men did find the baby Jesus and gave him their gifts. Then, warned in a dream — or maybe just figuring the lay of the land — they sneaked away and returned home. King Herod was “exceeding wroth” at being tricked. (Matthew 2:16) He was left in a predicament: that is, the Wise Men told him when the star appeared and so he knew how old the special child was, but he didn’t know exactly which child to destroy. So, Herod, left high and dry by the Wise Men, ordered a deliberate overkill. That is, he had every male child in Bethlehem two years old and younger killed. Fortunately, the Holy Family had already left and found refuge in Egypt.
Matthew closes the story with a quote from the prophet Jeremiah. “[There was] a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Matthew 2:18; Jeremiah 31:15).
So, what is this story telling us? Maybe it’s that King Herod is one of the first to believe in the Incarnation! Seen this way, the story presents a particularly savage view of the hatred for Jesus right from the beginning. This heralds how, later in his life, the authorities will seek a means to put Jesus to death. (e.g., Matthew 12:14; John 11:47-53) Death is always dogging Jesus’ steps. And, as we are made eventually to understand, it is his purpose. So, the story of the Innocents sets the stage for what will happen later in Jesus’ life.
But the story is also about babies and toddlers and how much we love our children. and how they are nevertheless not immune from the world’s violence. We have a visceral, fundamental, wordless love for our children. The massacre of the Innocents is an extreme example that points us to this love. It brings up a grief that, as Simeon tells Mary, the Blessed Mother, is a sword that pierces the heart. (Luke 2:34-35) The point is strengthened by the quote about the lamentation, weeping and mourning for children at Ramah. Grief is an odd but exceptionally powerful way to describe love. It makes us sensitive to a deep consideration: That is, maybe babies are really the only thing that matters to the human race. As Jesus said later in his life, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” (Matthew 19:14)
Now, let’s move onto today’s Gospel.
I find that the older I get, the more I examine what I learned, not as a baby, but as a child. And so I come to the Gospel passage for today. This is a passage that was read out over and over when I was a child. It closed every single Mass. At the same time, we were being taught to memorize The Apostles’ Creed and, eventually, we got to the Nicene Creed. Knowing from my childhood that these creeds and this Gospel passage existed is kind of exciting for me.
As for creeds, this year is the 1700th anniversary of the formulation of the Nicene Creed. I once read someone’s complaint that the Nicene Creed is a waste of time, that it is not “relevant” or does not connect to us. Well, I admit that, on the surface, it looks like a kind of a scholar’s document. But it was written by bishops who thought the big question it tries to answer was important and demanding enough for them to trudge great distances — not easy in the fourth century — and come together in Nicaea which is now in Turkey. This whole business was really relevant to them.
And as for today’s Gospel passage, John the Evangelist was answering the same question that the Bishops at Nicaea were trying to answer. In fact, John’s whole Gospel can be seen as giving an answer to the question.
So, what is the question that was so important to the Nicene Creed and to Saint John? This is a question that Jesus asked his Apostles and therefore asks us. We have all heard this question. The question is: “But who do you say I am?” (Matthew 15:16. Also Mark 8:29 and Luke 9:20) The Apostles had to answer this question. They were standing right there. The bishops of Nicaea had to answer it. They were standing right there. And we have to answer it because we are standing there too, basking in the happy light of the Incarnation.
Peter answers Jesus’ question with something like: “You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the Son of the living God.” And therefore, through the Gospels, we know that Jesus is someone unique and special. This Gospel passage and the Nicene Creed is a declaration of Jesus’ everlasting existence and everlasting divinity. It is a declaration that everlasting divinity became incarnated as a human being of flesh and blood like ours and then suffered and rose from the dead purely for our sake. This is Jesus’ work, and he accomplished it. And he is coming again somehow, sometime. This is our hope, our blessed assurance, in what I will call the “between times” that we actually live in — that is, the time between the Annunciation and the Last Day. This is the point that Saint Paul emphasized over and over again in his letters.
Let’s not make what happens in these “between times” and what we are instructed to do during the “between times” to be the only things our faith is about or the only thing Jesus is about. What we do in the “between times” gets its foundation and its meaning and its commands only from the Incarnation and Jesus’ subsequent work of salvation. What I am trying to say is that, of course, we should clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick, help the poor, seek justice, and so forth. But that does not mean that Jesus is nothing more than a sociologist, or a do-gooder, or a protestor, or a social justice advocate. We do what he has told us to do by grace and with love in accordance with the gift of the Incarnation. We do them also with our eyes on the prize, as maybe Saint Paul who loved sports might say. (See, e.g., running and boxing in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27) We do them because Jesus is God and has done so much for us and promises us more. This is the bedrock of our good acts, our obedience, our love. This is the bedrock of our faith. Without this bedrock, nothing really has meaning.
I think that a good definition of faith is the word “awe”. Awe is a mix of happiness, joy, and solemnity, of a smile that is just starting to form. Dear People, awe is wrapped up in today’s Gospel passage and in the Nicene Creed and in Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question. They are all about our practically dumbstruck aspiration as humans to know about God. The beauty of the Creed is the same beauty as in today’s Gospel. They are both aspirational and open-ended. They are attempts to put awe into words.
On the first Sunday of Christmas of the Incarnation, we too are challenged to answer Jesus’ question? “But who do YOU say that I am?” Actually we will wonder about how to answer this question our whole lives, while we are looking through a glass darkly. But we are impelled by awe, by faith, to wonder about the question even while we are doing the good things that Jesus has asked of us. For people of the Way, like us, this combination of wonder and awe and our deeds in this “between time”, while we wait for very much better times, is joyful.
The saint known as the Venerable Bede lived in the north of England in the 600s and late 700s. He was a writer of history and theology. He wrote a short prayer that I read on a placard placed on top of his tomb in Durham Cathedral. I think it tells about the joy of awe and faith as we wonder about things in these between times and wait for the better times. Let’s pray it.
“I pray, merciful Jesus, that as you graciously granted me to drink from the sweet Word which tells of you, so you will, in your kindness, grant that I may come at last to you, the fountain of all wisdom, and to stand before your face forever”. Amen
