December 28. The third day of Christmastide. And it is the darkest day. Christmas is over. The presents are opened. The carols have faded. And we remember the children who died because a king was born.
Matthew tells the story. The wise men came from the east. They asked Herod where the King of the Jews was born. Herod told them Bethlehem. But the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod. So they went home another way. And Herod, when he realized he had been outwitted, flew into a rage. He gave the order: kill every boy in Bethlehem and its vicinity who was two years old or younger.
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was furious, and he sent and killed all the boys in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.
Matthew 2:16There is no mention of how many children died. Scholars estimate anywhere from a dozen to a few dozen. This was not a major event in Roman history. It did not make the news. It was a small village tragedy, a footnote in the reign of a paranoid king. But the early church remembered. They could not forget that the first fruits of the King were children who died for Him.
The Cry of Rachel
Matthew quotes Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted, because they are no more." Rachel was the mother of Israel. Her tomb was near Bethlehem. And Matthew is saying: the mothers of Bethlehem are crying, and their cry will be heard. Not now. Not in history as the world writes it. But in the kingdom as God writes it.
There is something deeply wrong about this. It is not redemptive. It is not fair. Children did not choose to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. They did not threaten Herod's throne. They were babies. And they died because a king was afraid.
This is the problem of innocent suffering. Why do children die? Why do babies bleed? The question has no easy answer. But the fact that the church remembers these children, names them as holy, celebrates their memory, is itself an answer. It says: these deaths are not meaningless. They are not forgotten. They are part of the story. And the story does not end at the cross.
What the Innocents Teach Us
Herod represents every power that opposes the kingdom of God. He was afraid of a child. That is the nature of evil: it is terrified of the thing it cannot control. The baby in the manger threatened Herod because the baby was the King. And the only response Herod knew was violence.
The Christmas story is not a comfortable story. It includes exile (the flight to Egypt), murder (the innocents), and flight (the family running for their lives). The King was born in weakness, and His first followers were refugees. This is the shape of the gospel: God enters the world through the vulnerable, and the world responds by trying to destroy them.
If you are someone who has lost a child, or known a parent who has, this day is for you. The church says: your child is not forgotten. Your grief is seen. The God who did not spare His own Son will not forget the little ones who died for Him. They are holy. They are innocent. And they are held.
What Do You Do With the Darkness?
December 28 is a dark day in the church calendar. It forces us to look at the dark side of Christmas, the part we want to skip. But the church does not skip it. Why? Because the story is not over. The children died, but the King lived. And the King will make all things right. How do you hold the darkness alongside the light?
Father, I bring you the grief that is hard to name. The children who died too soon, the parents who weep, the innocents who suffer. I do not understand why. But I bring them to you, because you are the God who holds the children close, who gathers the lambs in your arms, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus and does not stay far from my grief.
Make me someone who holds the darkness with the light. Who does not look away from the hard parts of the story, because the hard parts are where you are at work. In Jesus' name, Amen.
With honesty and hope,
Claire