The Holy Innocents

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8am

Matthew 2.13-18

When considering any account of the past, whether in the Bible or secular history, you can ask two questions. Did it happen as described? And, What was the writer trying to convey in his account of events? Let us consider the second question in relation to the story of the innocents, for Matthew is quite clear in what he is trying to say. In a dream Joseph is told to flee to Egypt. Egypt was first of all the place where another Joseph was miraculously protected by God and allowed to prosper in a way that saved the whole family. More especially Egypt was from where Moses delivered the people from the oppression of Pharoah and he himself had been saved as a young child when Pharoah ordered all the young male children to be killed. Matthew sees what happened to the child Jesus as a focus and summing up of the history of the people of Israel in their deliverance from Egypt, but this time not just for one people but for the whole world. So he quotes words from one of the prophets. ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son.’ The people of Israel as a whole were called to live in a filial relationship to God. That call is focussed and summed up now, in a single person, Jesus, that it may spread out from there to every person.

The deliverance from Egypt however was not the only time the people was Israel had to be rescued. In the 8^th century before Christ the people in the North of the Kingdom were taken into captivity by Assyria and in the 6^th century most of the people were taken into captivity and exile in Babylon. It is in relation to these times of suffering that Mattew quotes another prophet

In Ramah 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.

Once again, with Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, mothers would not be comforted.

But Matthew tells this story not to highlight the cruelty of human rulers but to proclaim that in a cruel world where such things happen there is still a providence at work, first in revealing his purpose in a particular people, and then to bring that purpose to a head in a particular person, the long expected messiah, a universal saviour, God’s own eternally begotten son.

Sadly we still live in a world where innocence is violated, where daily children are hurt and killed. In which Rachel is weeping for her children and will not be comforted because they are not. And it is surely an obligation on all of us to do all we can to protect children from the multiple harms that assail them. At the same time we have faith that there is a providence at work, that the God who came amongst us in Jesus, still works his purpose out now through those who put their trust in him.