Sunday Sermon - 28 December
It is always a challenge when December 28 falls on a Sunday. Know why? Because December 28 is not still Christmas carols and warm thoughts of a baby’s birth. December 28 is Childmas. Also known as the Mass for the Children or the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
It is the day the Church remembers when Herod declared that all babies under the age of two living in and around Bethlehem should be killed.
The lectionary actually gives us an out. We are allowed to transfer this feast to January 11 - presumably so as not to completely ruin Christmas - but this year January 11 is also a Sunday, and that Sunday belongs to the Baptism of the Lord. For those of you on Chancel, you’ll see that our church calendar bumps it to tomorrow, but the readings aren’t changed. So here we are and maybe we should face Matthew’s story head on.
December 28. Still within the twelve days of Christmas. Still singing about peace on earth and good will to ward all. Reading a Gospel about murdered children. This should tell us something right away: Matthew refuses to let us sentimentalize Christmas.
There’s a lot that’s interesting about this Gospel passage. One of the things people often point out (quite rightly) is that its historicity is debated. Did this actually happen? Did Herod really call for the slaughter of all the children in Bethlehem under the age of two?
Matthew is the only Gospel that tells this story. There’s no external historical record confirming it. Josephus, who lived from 37-100 AD, writes extensively about Herod and his cruelty yet never mentions the massacre. But Bethlehem was also tiny. A few hundred people at most. The number of children involved may have been small enough to escape broader notice and not be worth documenting.
Quite frankly, all of that matters far less than this one question: Why does Matthew include this story at all? Why does this matter?
Because Matthew is not writing a neutral history. None of the Gospel writers are. Each is telling the truth about Jesus for a particular theological reason. Mark and John don’t mention Jesus’ birth at all. Luke tells a beautiful story of poverty, angels, shepherds, vulnerability, and a messenger of hope.
But Matthew? Matthew tells a darker story.
Only Matthew includes the Magi. Only Matthew includes Herod’s fear. Only Matthew places the birth of Jesus immediately next to political violence.
That’s not an accident. Today’s Gospel (Matthew 2:13–23) is not a tragic footnote to Christmas. Matthew places it at the center. For him it is an important part of the Christmas story. He gives it intentional, substantial purpose. Matthew wants us to know that Herod’s violence is not sudden. It is not impulsive. It is calculated. It is informed. It is enabled.
Matthew tells us that Herod acts after realizing he has been outwitted by the Magi. Which means the massacre of the innocents is not only the result of Herod’s cruelty. It is also the result of information that had already been shared. We’ll hear next week that the Magi didn’t go directly to Bethlehem, but to Jerusalem and asked around - "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." - therefore tipping off Herod of this threat to his empire.
When we take a moment and think about it, think about how the Magi, whether intentional or not, enabled Herod’s violence, it is hard to sit with.
But Matthew insists on this truth: Good intentions do not neutralize deadly systems.
Jesus becomes a refugee because powerful people are terrified of losing control. Families grieve the death of their babies because an insecure ruler cannot tolerate vulnerability. God does not stop it with fire from heaven. Instead, God enters exile.
The holy family flees to Egypt - back into Israel’s oldest trauma. Rachel weeps again. A familiar story retold anew. History repeats itself, not because God wills it, but because human power does. God rests within it.
Matthew’s Gospel reveals Jesus in parallel with Moses himself: a child threatened by a murderous ruler, saved through flight, and carried out of danger so that one day he might lead his people into freedom.
Just as Pharaoh’s fear could not stop the deliverer God was raising up in Moses, Herod’s violence cannot prevent the salvation God is already setting in motion. In Jesus, the story does not simply repeat - it is being redeemed.
Here is the deeply uncomfortable Christmas truth Matthew will not let us avoid: Herod could not have acted so precisely without help.
The Magi are not present in this part of the story—but their absence is loud. They are gone before today’s Gospel scene because they refused to return to Jerusalem. But before they refused, they were involved.
This is where the Gospel stops being safely ancient. It is no longer a story locked in time past. This is not just a story about a long-dead king. It is a story about how violence is born, bred and actually works. Violence rarely begins with weapons. It begins with cooperation. With access. With information. With people who (mistakenly) believe they can be adjacent to power without being claimed by it.
Sadly, I’ve seen the modern version of this play out, especially in my work with teenagers, but with adults too.
Think of social media companies, for example – Facebook, Google, TikTok, Instagram, SnapChat,Truth Social and the like. None of them set out to harm anyone (well, maybe one did). Their stated purpose was connection. Once they discovered that fear, outrage, and misinformation keep people engaged longer, those emotions began to be quietly amplified intentionally and by design.
Algorithms started deciding what we see, what we fear, and who we blame. These companies didn’t create the lies. They didn’t write the hatred. But they built systems that made those messages travel faster and farther than ever before. When harm followed, the response was often the same: “Hey, it’s not our fault, we’re just a platform. Blame the user”
Matthew would recognize that false logic immediately.
Proximity to power is never neutral. Herod does not need collaborators who share his cruelty. He only needs people willing to provide access, information, and plausible deniability.
So here we are, on Childmas - a day that forces us to confront the danger of proximity to power, the harm that unfolds when information and disinformation are shared without regard for their consequences, and a Gospel that offers no easy answers.
There is no explanation for why God did not stop this. No angelic justification. No spiritual lesson drawn from the deaths. Just grief. Just exile. Just a child who survives by running.
But that isn’t quite the whole truth because the Gospel is also clear about this: God does not abandon them to chance.
God does not change Herod’s heart. God does not soften his paranoia and fear. God does not override his freedom to choose violence. Instead, God comes to Joseph in a dream. Not with thunder, an army, or an explanation but with instruction: “Get up. Take the child and his mother. Flee. Run!”
And Joseph does.
In the middle of the night. Without argument. Without clarity. Without knowing how long exile will last.
God’s saving action here is not dramatic. It is relational. It is fragile. Salvation comes not by force, not by political manipulation, but by gracing a human being with clarity and courage.
God participates in this story not by controlling power, but by trusting someone faithful enough to listen. God’s saving work isn’t imposed on us from on high, God saves us, as I’ve said before “from the inside out.”
If God had changed Herod, the story would end - but love would be coerced, imposed, not chosen. Instead, God entrusts the future of salvation to the obedience of a carpenter. God saves the child by saving the family. God saves the family by awakening Joseph.
Joseph becomes the quiet hero of Christmas - not because he is strong, but because he is attentive. Not because he understands, but because he acts.
This is where the story reaches into our own lives because most of us will never be asked to confront a Herod but many of us will be asked to listen in the night for the quiet crying of those unseen and unheard. To protect someone vulnerable. To move when it would be easier to stay. To act when no one will ever applaud.
God does not rescue by changing the world. God rescues by changing us.
Like Joseph, we are called to find the courage to respond. A child survives—not because evil is restrained—but because faith is awakened. Not as a reward for obedience, and not at the expense of the other children, but so that God’s answer to violence might live. This does not explain the deaths of innocent children. It promises that death will not have the final word.
Matthew leaves us here this morning, in this tension. For today’s sermon is the first of two parts. Next week, we go backward and read Matthew’s words that tell us what happened before today.
Next week, we meet the Magi. The “Learned” or “Wise” Men.
Next week, we see where the information for Herod came from.
Next week, we see what happens when seekers finally stand face to face with the Christ child.
The questions that hangs in the air until then are this: What if the Magi didn’t start out wise at all? What if seeing Jesus is what finally changed them?
If that’s true, then Epiphany isn’t about wisdom arriving at the manger. It’s about conversion. And that is a story worth coming back to hear.
Amen.