Wednesday • 12/29/2021
Feast of Holy Innocents (transferred), Year 2

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 2; Psalm 26; Isaiah 49:13–23; Matthew 18:1–14

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

Feast of the Holy Innocents. 

The third panel in our “Christmas Triptych” is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, a remembrance of “martyrs in deed if not in will,” and a reminder of the church’s resolute embracing of life as holy. The lectionary offers passages in the Psalms, Isaiah 49 and Matthew 18 for today, presupposing we know the story of Herod the Great’s murder of Bethlehem babies in a vain attempt to kill a rival newborn king (Matthew 2). “It’s a bloody story,” notes Professor Esau McCaulley, “out of which hope fights its way to the surface.”

Psalm 2: the folly of opposing God’s Anointed. Psalm 2 begins with these pointed questions: “Why are the nations in an uproar? Why do the peoples mutter empty threats? Why do the kings of the earth rise up in revolt, and the princes plot together, against the Lord and against his Anointed?” Upon the release of John and Peter from prison in Jerusalem, the church lifts these very words in praise of God’s saving acts (Acts 4:25–28). King Herod the Great had tried to kill Jesus as an infant. His son Herod Antipas had been party to the conspiracy that put Jesus on the Cross. But the grave couldn’t hold Jesus. As Psalm 2 had said: “He whose throne is in heaven is laughing” (Psalm 2:4). All that the evil conspiracy had accomplished was to effect God’s predestined plan to inaugurate the good news of the world’s true king, the crucified-resurrected-ascended King Jesus. 

Professor McCaulley’s words are true not just for the incident of the Holy Innocents, but for all the savagery, injustice, and callousness of the human story. In all of it God is at work in the “bloody story, out of which hope fights its way to the surface.” 

Matthew 18: “Let the little ones come to me.” The murdered children are a reminder to us that Jesus entered a world full of “Herods.” Jesus said, “Let the little ones come to me.” And so, from the beginning of the church’s history, Christians have declared their solidarity with “the little ones.”* May our homes and our churches be places of safety, peace, truth, and love—places of life for “the little ones.” 

Isaiah 49: God’s love never quits.

Even as Isaiah was delivering the bad news to Judah about the upcoming Babylonian Captivity, he promised that Yahweh’s love would push through and ultimately win the day. The St. Louis Jesuits’ song “Though the Mountains May Fall” asks and answers the musical question:

Could the Lord ever leave you? Could the Lord forget his love?
Though a mother forsake her child, he will not abandon you. 

Though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust,
Yet the love of the Lord will stand
As a shelter for all who will call on his name.
Sing the praise and the glory of God.

One thing we can hold onto in this life is that the love of God never quits, no matter what baggage we carry, no matter how laden with guilt and in need of forgiveness we are, and no matter how weary and in need of strength we are. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

* The early Christian catechism, the Didache, forbids both the abandoning of the newborn and the aborting of unborn children (Didache 2.2). Clement of Alexandria laments the “aborting of human feeling (philanthōpia)” that comes with such practices (Pedagogus 2.10.96.1). Bishop Augustine of Hippo writes of “holy virgins” rescuing unwanted and exposed babies, nurturing them, and preparing them for baptism (Epistle to Boniface). Christians gained a reputation for being on the side of life.