Slaughter of the innocents

Our flag, like others, is at half-mast to honor the students and teachers killed last Friday in Connecticut. Droopy in a snowstorm, it reflects how many of us feel: emotionally low and limp. When I first saw the news alert about the slayings on my internet home page, I pushed back my office chair, wept and prayed aloud, “Lord, show your mercy to those who hurt. This is so awful.”

As the news stations recounted emerging details, a common remark was how terrible that this happened before Christmas. It reminded me how our culture has stamped Christmas with a happy image of pleasure and gift-giving. Excessive merchandizing and “political correctness” have diminished the celebration of a holy Birth.

Yet even His birth brought murder to innocents through the decree of a very spiritually sick person. His name was Herod the Great, and he was a greedy, suspicious, ostentatious, sensual, ruthless man who didn’t want anything or anyone to threaten his claim to power. When “wise men” from a far-away eastern land came to Jerusalem to seek a new king heralded by a strange star, he was more than disturbed. Behind a fake grin, he told them to report back about this king so he could come and worship him, too. When they didn’t return with information, he was beside himself. He ordered his soldiers to rampage Bethlehem, killing all little boys two years and under. That, he figured, would eliminate any competition.

Take a deep breath and imagine the wails of mothers and fathers, clutching their murdered babies. One Bible commentary suggests about 26 baby boys were slaughtered in the little hamlet. (Twenty-six were killed in Connecticut: 20 children, six adults.) With this desperately sad, ruthless act, the prophecy of Jeremiah came true. Ramah, near Bethlehem, was the burial place of Jacob’s wife Rachel, who represents the nation Israel:

A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping,

Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted for her children,

Because they are no more.” --Jeremiah 31:15

Herod, who intended to enhance his rule through this act, today is remembered only in annals of infamy for the slaughter of the innocents. Sadly, the deeds of the troubled young shooter in Newtown will stain his extended family. They, too, are grieving as we all weep and ask questions.

But it has to come back to this: Christmas is about a baby born to die. Herod’s decree was not Jesus’ time to die, so God had warned Joseph to flee with his family to hide in Egypt until Herod died. Three decades later, at the appointed time, Jesus did die, but as a Savior. As Savior, He understands our deepest grief: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He was there as each child and teacher died in Newtown.

Can there be “Christmas” this year? Maybe not as people traditionally think of it. But there will be Christ in the midst of this, offering comfort in the unspeakable circumstances that happen because we live in a sin-dominated world. Someday, though, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Even as I share a tiny corner of national pain, that gives me hope.