Pray for them, pray for them, pray for them...

Thumbnail: Tintoretto, “Massacre of the Innocents”

Clare L. Hickman

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Second Sunday after Christmas–Epiphany and the Innocents

Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:13--23

This is the moment in which the worst side of humanity breaks back into the narrative. This is the sour note, sounding through the angels’ song: Herod the Great has entered, stage left.

Told of the birth of the “king of the Jews,” Herod knows just enough to realize that this child could threaten his power. He is afraid, and fear makes people dangerous. So he considers his options, and sends his soldiers out into the streets. 

It is a terrible story, and I can see why the lectionary permits us to omit those verses. I put them back in. Because so much gets lost when we omit them. So much of the power and the grit and the significance of the Christmas story gets lost when we don’t hear it all.

When Matthew tells the birth of Jesus, he places it deliberately and squarely within the sacred history of the Jewish people. In Matthew’s understanding, Jesus relives that history. Which means these deaths aren’t just a terrible interruption of Christmas wonder: they are echoes from the story of Exodus, an acknowledgment that once again a ruthless despot has arisen. In Egypt, Pharaoh had feared the power of his Hebrew slaves, and ordered all male Israelite babies to be killed at birth. Herod, driven by a similar fear, has resorted to the same drastic tactic. 

Pharaoh was unsuccessful in his machinations: Moses was hidden from destruction and grew to lead his people out of Egypt. Warned by the angel to flee Herod’s destruction, Joseph, Mary and Jesus evoke this memory. Jesus too escapes the tyrant, freed to bring a new liberation to God’s people! Remember the Exodus, Matthew beguiles, when our ancestors escaped oppression and slavery? Well God’s at it again, and this time will be even better.

But here’s the thing: this isn’t just a story for Matthew’s audience. It’s our story too, because we too recognize the narrative. We come to the manger, longing for news of change. We come, daring to hope. And we come, marveling to hear the angels sing that this is God at work.

We recognize this bright and beautiful story, even as we acknowledge how ridiculously miraculous it is. But we also recognize the moment when Herod breaks in. Because we too live in a world in which the peace and joy of Christmas had not yet faded when one more violent anti-Semitic attack took place. We too live in a world in which (all the time!) “violence and fear press right up against the peace and goodwill”[i]

The Biblical story does not shy away from this reality, which is what makes it a holy story. Which is what makes it a TRUE story. It calls us in, because we recognize all of it. It calls us in, and shows us a little of how to live in the world that we actually live in, while also placing our hope in the larger dream of God.

It invites us to take our place in the narrative. A narrative in which there will always be powerful people who feel threatened by the idea that “the last shall be first.” A narrative in which the powerful will do anything to avoid this, seeking to obliterate those who insist there’s a way other than one in which the rich and powerful get to do whatever benefits them.

It’s a narrative in which there will always be people trying to escape this violence, needing to flee the forces that seek to destroy them, because their life calls attention to the need for a new world order.

There will always be people fleeing, and people pursuing, and people who assist, and people who stand by. This is the narrative. It’s the biblical narrative, and we have a place in it. The only question is, where are you in that story? And is that where you’d want God to find you?

The story of Herod and the slaughter of the innocents is an old story, it’s a terrible story, and it’s a true story. It’s a story of the parents, with their awful helplessness and grief. It’s a story of those whose children were older, relieved to bear only guilt and joy that their children were spared. It’s a story of the soldiers, who followed orders and perhaps lived with the damage for the rest of their lives. And it’s the story of Herod: Herod the villain. Herod, the enemy. Herod, the one we long to have erased from history as easily as the lectionary erased the verses about the slaughter from today’s passage.

Bringing down Herod is a role we could take on very enthusiastically. Trouble is, that’s not part of the narrative. Yes, there are tales in the Old Testament in which plucky heroes and heroines lop off heads or bring down enemies with sling shots. But Jesus takes the narrative in a more challenging direction. His story admits that there will always be those who seek to destroy, whether those be mighty rulers or the petty tyrant of the break room. He admits they will always be there, and admits our instinct will almost always be to strike back in some way.

However, he urges us to a much more difficult role: Pray for them.

Start there: Pray for them, pray for them, pray for them. Because your ultimate goal is to actually love them, and that’s going to be a tall order. Because they hurt you, or they hurt other people. They burst into a Hanukah party with a knife. They ransack your Thanksgiving dinner table with their opinions. They fight on the other side of one war or another. They betray or they ignore or they plot or they lie, and they destroy things that you hold dear. So, it will be insanely difficult to love them.

Begin by praying for them, and pray for them all. Pray for everyone on every side of whatever terrible, messed up story is on your heart right now. That’s a place you can always stand in the narrative, and know that Jesus is with you there. Pray for them (not about them, FOR them), and that might lead you into further action. Pray for them and you might find that action differs from the one your instincts originally suggested. Pray for them, and that might—no, it WILL—lead you to a new capacity to love people you had previously feared and despised.

And that, my friends, is the story of Christmas. May we know that it is now, and always will be, OUR story. Amen.

[i] The Rev. Beth Taylor, facebook post, 12/29/2019