The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
Dear friends in Christ. Christmas has finally come—but it has not gone. We are still in the midst of it. Because the world around us is in that lull between Christmas and New Year’s, there is still that Christmas cheer and feel in the air. It is especially true for the Church that Christmas has come but not yet gone. After all, we have our own calendar; we take 12 days to ponder the great mystery that God became also true man—for us and our salvation. Today we’re at the 4th day of the 12 day Christmas season—the day that according to the song we sing about the “Four Calling Birds,” which represent the four Gospels our true love, Christ, gave to us. Yes, Christmas is a different time of year; one with a different “feel” about it. It is one in which people at least give a little thought to joy and peace. Just look, for example, at the Christmas cards we got. There are quiet, peaceful scenes—be they nativity scenes or winter wonderlands.
But then we come to church today and what do we hear? More of that same joy and peace we heard about on Christmas Eve and which we have been reveling in the past days? Hardly! We hear something very “unchurch like.” Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
Since about the 4th Century the Church has remembered on this Fourth Day of Christmas, these boy babies that were killed—calling them the Holy Innocents. It’s not that they were sinless—because we all are conceived and born in sin [Ps 51.1]—but they certainly committed no crime worthy of death. And as we pray in today’s collect, they showed forth God’s praise not by speaking but by dying.
Herod, the king, was very suspicious, deluded and paranoid, especially now toward the end of his life. When he had heard from the Wise Men that the king of the Jews had been born and they did not return to him to tell him where to find He who has been born King of the Jews [Mt. 2.2], he ordered the ruthless massacre of all boy babies in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under. At that time, it is estimated that about 2000 people lived Bethlehem and the surrounding areas, so everything being equal, there probably would have been around 20 that Herod had killed. Herod, then probably thought he was safe from this threat, at least and no longer sought out the Baby Jesus to kill Him.
Right smack dab in the middle of this season of peace and joy—even a notion retained by the secular world—we remember this? Yes! It is a powerful reminder to us of what Christmas is all about/ its true meaning. Christmas is not about sentimentality and shopping, it is about salvation; it is not about family and feasting, but forgiveness of sin that Jesus would bring by His life and death.
As we examine our text, we will see Christmas’ “dirty little secret”—the Holy Innocents died that Jesus might live; He died that they and we might live forever.
1. As we remember the Holy Innocents today, we remember the greatness of Jesus’ work; we remember what He gave up and “got Himself into” to be our Savior. St. Paul writes [2 Cor 8.9; Phil 2.7, 8]: though [our Lord Jesus Christ] was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich, and [Christ Jesus] made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. The one true almighty God, the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity who is in the eternal, holy perfection of heaven did not stay there, but took on human flesh and blood in the womb of the Virgin and became true man—and all that that entails: being in the midst of and enduring the suffering and misery of this sin contaminated world.
Today as we remember the Holy Innocents, we are reminded that this is not a wonderful world. It is a world full of every kind of wickedness, sin, inhumanity, lovelessness, ugliness and death. But this is the world that we live in and to which we add our own sin—and this is the world into which Jesus came—for us and our salvation! How we marvel all the more now at the great mystery of the Incarnation—that the true God became also true man, came into this world, and was born that first Christmas. Here is His love for us sinners in full display—all what He endured and suffered to be our Savior. It certainly was not a “pleasure trip” or “vacation” that the Son of God came to this world. But here, with the slaughter of the Holy Innocents we come face to face with the reality of why there was a Christmas—our sin and thus our inability to enter heaven—but we also come face to face with the love of God for us sinners who would go through any lengths to save us from our sin and damnation—even to the point of coming to and subjecting Himself to suffering and death.
Who can understand this great evil by Herod? But before we pat ourselves on the back, it does us well to remember what St. Augustine rightly said: There is no sin one man has done which another man could not do; for we are all of the same flesh of the same mass, of the same badness, ruined and cursed through the first sin of Adam [quoted in AE, IX, 260]. The slaughter of the Innocents preaches to us why there had to be a Christmas—our sin.
With Herod’s slaughter of the Innocents we come to another character of Christmas—the devil. Obviously, the devil was using and working through Herod and this great horror to try to derail God’s plan to save the world from its sin. A few chapters before our text, St. John describes these events of Christmas this way [Rev. 12.4]: And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. The devil—the dragon—had all along been trying to spoil God’s plans of sending a Savior, born of the woman, that God had promised already Adam and Eve. Think back to the OT when the devil incited Pharaoh to kill all the boy babies; by getting Pharaoh to kill them, the devil was trying to eliminate the Savior, but that was not the right time for the Savior to come. Then God had preserved the life of Moses who would lead the people out of Egypt to the promised land—and the Lord also saved those who would be Jesus’ ancestors. Now when the Offspring of the woman, the virgin, was born, the devil pulls out all the stops to try to keep Him from carrying out His saving work. The devil failed here and other times; he failed with all the various temptations to derail Jesus from His saving work; he failed even with the temptations when Jesus was on the cross [Mt. 27.40]: If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. From the manger to the cross, Jesus carried out His work to save the world from its sin, from death and the devil. Already in the womb of Mary and throughout His earthly life Jesus lived without sin and faithfully kept every part of God’s holy Law for us/ in our place. When the right time came He laid down His life as the perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world. That Jesus escaped Herod’s slaughter of the Innocents is a glorious picture to us, already now in the Christmas season, that Jesus would complete His saving work and bring about that true peace the angels sang about that Christmas night. Try as he might, the devil and his allies could not keep Jesus from His saving work for us!
2. That’s what our text is all about—Jesus died that we may live and He is triumphant! That’s the scene, the glimpse of heaven we get in our text: Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. Jesus is the Lamb—as St. John the Baptizer said of Jesus [John 1.29], The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And there in our text He’s standing—standing in triumph! He withstood all the assaults and attacks of the devil—physical and spiritual—and brought about the salvation of the world; He reconciled the whole sinful world to the holy God, by offering up Himself as the once for all perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world. There Jesus stands in triumph on Mount Zion, that is, in heaven with His Church, His whole Church, described as 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. Here is a picture of the end result of Christmas, of God becoming man: His Church with Him in heaven; His Church, all His Christians, in Him, triumphing over our enemies. On earth we, dear Christian, are God’s own special people [1 Pt 2.10]; and we shall be forever because of Jesus’ work which began that first Christmas!
What a blessed condition that will be ours, dear Christian, as we are one of the 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads and one day will be delivered from our earthly pilgrimage, our time of great tribulation and trial and received into heaven. Although now we are seemingly besieged by the devil and his allies all trying to lead us to reject Christ and to despair of our faith, what a comfort to catch this glimpse of heaven and Christmas’ ultimate result: the joy of our salvation as the saints in heaven sing Christ praises for His saving work:
I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the 4 living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.
Our lives now will mirror that of Christ and the Innocents—we will suffer during our earthly lives. We will suffer as a result of Christ’s coming, His coming to us and being born in our hearts through faith. The Holy Innocents suffered because of Jesus’ coming. On this day of remembering the Holy Innocents we give our Lord praise and thanks that although they died brutal and senseless deaths, they are now with our Lord in heaven. That’s because of God’s grace to them in the OT Sacrament of circumcision, which pointed forward to Holy Baptism; like in baptism, they were brought into God’s holy family, the Church, in their case the OT Church which looked forward in faith to the Savior who was to come.
We rejoice in our baptism. In baptism our sins are washed away, faith is created and we are connected with Christ and His death and resurrection; we are clothed in the perfect holiness of Christ. We are forgiven and pure in the sight of the Lord. Our text pictures the saints in heaven as pure, rescued and cleansed:
It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.
The Holy Innocents are a picture to us of the purity that is ours in Christ, that all Christians have through faith in Him. The virginity of the Christians in heaven is a picture/ figurative term describing their faithfulness to the Lord, rejecting all other gods and clinging faithfully and in all simplicity to Jesus and His saving work, following Him in faith through whatever way He leads them to their heavenly home. We, dear Christian, are blameless before the Lord because He has forgiven us our sin and cleansed from all unrighteousness. The Holy Innocents, who were martyrs for Christ, remind us not only of the suffering that will come our way because of Christ but also of the holiness and purity that is ours in Christ who was born in this world of sin that first Christmas.
The remembrance of the Holy Innocents in the Christmas season reminds us of the reason why there had to be that first Christmas—Jesus had to come to save us from sin. That’s Christmas’ dirty little secret. They died that Jesus would live; and Jesus died that they and we might live! As we see in our text Christ triumphant in heaven and the holiness and peace that is ours through faith, we rejoice Jesus completed the work for our salvation He began by coming to this world of sin to destroy sin and devil. The Holy Innocents were not martyrs in vain. INJ Amen