Text: Matthew 2:13-18
In
the name of Jesus: Amen.
This
morning we as a church remember The Holy Innocents - the young boys whom Herod
and his soldiers murdered thousands of years ago in their attempt to kill the
Christ Child.
These
young little boys are called the Holy Innocents, because they were the first
martyrs to lose their lives for Mary’s baby - Jesus.
Today,
we can all grieve the loss of these approximate 20 children from the city of
Bethlehem. Our hearts can wrench in pain
over the grief, fear, and horror that was thrust upon the mothers, fathers, and
families by King Herod’s bloody sword.
However, grief and remorse are not enough for us this day. No, to simply feel bad and to simply shake
our heads and say, “ah, shucks,” does not do justice to commemorate these little
ones. What am I saying? We actually honor and remember these Holy
Innocents best when we allow their deaths to speak to us today; we must allow
their story, their death, and the sin that led to their butchery to impact and work
on us.
With
that said, taking pause and meditating upon our Gospel reading from today, we
hear what sin is like. We hear “what sin
is like most obviously in the damage when one sins. This is horribly clear with Herod. Herod loved Herod. Herod wanted himself to be big. He got power for himself no matter by what
means and no matter at what cost to others.
When he suspected his wife or sons of endangering his power, he simply
had them executed.”[1] When he heard about a Messiah being born in
Bethlehem, he ordered Bethlehem’s children to be slaughtered. And so it goes with sinners like Herod, me,
and you: we put ‘ourselves’ as number one while stomping everything and
everyone under our foot. Yes, “When we
put ourselves first, then everybody else comes second. Herod had the power to subordinate people to
himself. Most of us sinners do not have
[as] much power; therefore, the damage we do [to] others in putting them second
is not [as] spectacular as Herod’s efforts in Bethlehem. But the basic principle of sin remains the
same. . . . [In other words,] when people get in our way, we do not have the
use of Herod’s sword, but we know how to get rid of them.”[2]
And
so it goes. Sin, my friends, corrupts us
by setting our eyes upon ourselves and not our neighbor, and especially not
upon our Lord. This inward looking –
which is known as selfishness, greed, egoism, narcissism, and so forth –
ultimately flicks God off the throne and has us supposedly take over the role
of God where we are in apparent control and where we can get what we want, when
we want it, and whenever we want it. Furthermore,
as we sit upon the throne as number one, everything is corrupted: reality,
ethics, and especially God’s handiwork; sin corrupts the way that we value life. In other words, if we refuse to acknowledge
that we are creatures of God – that we are number two - and if we kick God off
of his throne and place ourselves as number one, “then, naturally, [we] also
fail to recognize [our] neighbor as a creature of God [as well]. [As a result, we]then do not value and deal
with [our] neighbor according to his or her connection with God but only according
to the connection with [us]. If [our] neighbor
is not understood in connection with God, then he or she has value to [us] only
as he or she is useful to [us] and [we can then] feel free to push him or her
around to suit [our own] convenience.”[3]
Objectively:
when Herod killed those children, he was damaging these little babes, their
parents, himself, and the Lord. However,
subjectively none of this mattered if Herod is on the throne. Otherwise stated, since these children
threatened Herod’s throne, their value did not matter. With Herod, value is given to that which
enhances Herod’s throne and the label of ‘evil’ is ascribed to that which
threatens Herod’s throne. Herod’s
criteria for determining the value of life was himself – his choice. That which enhanced Herod was good; that
which threatened Herod was evil. The
Messiah was among the children in Bethlehem; the Messiah was a threat;
therefore, damn those children and damn the Messiah… no, let’s butcher them.
Like
Herod, we creatures unfortunately have not done too well with the criteria in
which we have used to determine life’s value.
We have used ethnicity as a basis for value and ended up with places
like Auschwitz and Cambodia and Croatia and Rwanda—hundreds of thousands of
people brutally slaughtered that did not serve a certain ethnicity’s agenda. We
have used skin color as a basis for value and ended up with slave trading and
civil war and discrimination and lynching—thousands upon thousands of lives
lost that didn’t serve the aspirations of a certain color of skin. Now we use
whether you are born or not as a basis for value and end up with abortion being
the most common surgical procedure done is this country. Millions upon millions
of lives lost in brutal ways – over 50 million lives that would have forced
mothers and father to become a number two – lives that were an inconvenience. More
and more we use health as a basis for value and end up with assisted suicide
and euthanasia and “killing as a means of caring” and the elderly being led to
believe they have the “duty to die.” Millions of people with disabilities and
people in nursing homes are increasingly at risk of hastened deaths, because
they have become an unnecessary burden upon the hopes and dreams of their family
and friends.[4]
Like
Herod, all of these examples have a common thread. They use mankind’s criteria of ‘self’ as the
basis of life. That which is not of the same ethnicity, race, status, age,
ability, and intellect… that which will not prop up my throne and my kingdom is
deemed as worthless and an inconvenience and must be put to death. For example: in pregnancies, it is a child in
the womb if it is wanted and if it will enhance the family; however, it is
considered a blob of tissue if it is unwanted and will ruin the future dreams
of a mother and father. In other words,
children in the womb are never referred to as blobs of tissue when the desired
outcome is birth; whereas, they are routinely referred to as blobs of tissue or
fetuses when their desired outcome is termination.
Frankly
my friends, Herod’s ethics of seeing good in that which enhanced him and evil
in that which threatened him, actually runs rampant in our modern day and
age. Our culture and our mindset push
almighty God around like He is a weak puppet.
We kick Him out of the driver seat on to the curb, grab the wheel
ourselves, and drive the way that we so desire that enhances our throne, and
think we can get away with it. However,
when we try to overthrow God, it is not God who grieves, but it is ultimately
us.
When
Herod killed those children, he believed that he was preserving himself and his
throne; however, he was digging a grave to hell. By killing those children to serve his throne
he believed that he was doing that which was good; however, he was in reality
destroying God’s creation, estranging himself from the Lord, and aligning himself
with death, damnation, and the jaws of hell.
Dear
friends, we are not master and commanders of the universe. We are not the creator. When we harm our neighbor, especially the
least of these in the womb, we are damaging a piece of God’s workmanship, God’s
creature. “God meant that person for
something, and if [we] injure him or her, [we are] working against God.”[5] We even fail our neighbor when we fail to
speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. We share in the blame when we fail to deal
with issues because we think they are only political problems or social ills.
It
seems that the epidemic of Herod’s ideology is widespread in all of us. Indeed, not only is King Herod the unholy
patron saint of Planned Parenthood, but his ideology is held by each and every
one of us to a certain degree, for we all want to be number one while subordinating
others to our will and our desires.
God
have mercy on you and on me. Christ have
mercy on all of us.
Dear
Baptized Saints, you, who have ears, hear.
“God could have come with terrible power and slain Herod and all like
him. But if He [slaughtered] everyone
prepared to put themselves first, there would be none of us left. [Therefore,] He came the way of love, which
knows that we are not made better by force. . . . Force deals only with the
outside of a person. [However,] when God
came [He] came to save us from sin. [He
came to save us from ourselves.] He used
not force but love – love that brought Him to a stinking stable and a cruel
cross.”[6]
Dear
Baptized Saints, “Jesus did not put Himself first. He was there for us. [He was there for you.] His whole life was such action of love. It fulfilled the will of God. He lived the life that is expected of us, and
He died the death that was coming to us for our sin.”[7]
Baptized
Saints, sin is always out to destroy.
Sin, as seen in Herod’s life, tempts you to put yourself as number one,
but in the end it destroys your loved one, estranges you from God, and kills
you. The Lord though, is not content to
give up on you and let you sit on His throne.
No, God carried His plan on even though Herod attempted to slaughter
Jesus. He carries His plan on for you, even
though sin continually wreaks havoc on you – when you attempt to be number one. You see, He daily comes to you and me and
returns us to our baptism that by contrition and repentance, sin may be drowned
and die. He returns you and me to our
baptisms, so that we may be put to death.
But through all of this we know that God has joined Himself to you and
me and to those slain babies in Bethlehem in order to grant us everlasting life. He was determined to have you as His
possession, which means that He will not forsake you and will not forsake The
Holy Innocents. But rather, we, with these
babes, will be lifted up in the end unto glory, free from sin, to the Lord’s
presence, where there will be no more pain, fear, or grief, but rest, joy, and
praise. This is most certainly true, for
Christ did not put Himself first, but put you, me, and The Holy Innocents first
by living, bleeding, dying, and rising for us.
In
the name of Jesus: Amen.
[1] Norman Nagel, Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel: From Valparaiso to St. Louis, (St.
Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2004), 325.
[2] Ibid, 326.
[3] Ibid, 326.
[4] James Lamb, “Hands that Knit; Arms
that Hold” Lutherans for Life, http://www.lutheransforlife.org/sermon/hands-that-knit-arms-that-hold/
(accessed January 1, 2016).
[5] Norman Nagel, Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel, 326-327.
[6] Ibid, 327.
[7] Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment