Galatians 1:11-19

Matthew 2.13-23

The slaughter of the innocents by Herod is read multiple times throughout the week-long Christmas Feast. Why? Clearly, it is essential to the Gospel of Christmas. Why? Because it shows the Paschal substance of Christmas. This Gospel reveals that the ‘great joy’ of the Angel’s First Noel to the Shepherds ‘that shall be to all people’ because of Mary’s Child is real. It shows that the LORD ‘going up to Jerusalem’ to the Cross begins on Christmas with the flight into Egypt.

How on earth can the unspeakable cruelty of Herod murdering these innocents show forth the ‘great joy that shall be to all people’?

Herod is one of the kings and rulers of the earth who rages against the LORD and His Christ (Ps 2.1-2) As such, he is an agent of the devil who is a murderer from the beginning. The world of king Herod is the world we live in in this age, either as its friends, and thereby as enemies of God (Jm 4.4), or as strangers and pilgrims who are seeking a better, heavenly homeland not of this world (Heb 11.16).

To live in this world ruled by King Herod is to live in the ‘rebellion of lawlessness, which is already at work,’ as St Paul says (2 Th 2.2-7). Herod is a type of the man of lawlessness, the son of perdition, who is to come at the end of the last days by the activity of Satan. And are we not seeing these false christs and prophets everywhere? They are precursors of the man of lawlessness who deceive even the elect with great signs and wonders (2 Th 2.2-4, 7, 9-11; Mt 24.21, 24) that include healings, clairvoyance, and predictions of the future.

We might well say that this morning’s Gospel sets before us the very essence of the ‘rebellion of lawlessness’ already at work under the rule of the king Herods of this world. It is the slaughter of the innocents in one way or another by calling what is good evil and what is evil good – e.g. abortion. One observes that at the root of all the social and political agendas imposed on us today is the normalization and legalization of sexual perversities that destroy the capacity to sire and bear children, and that either destroy the capacity for intimacy or they remove the bearing of children from the personal intimacy of man and wife altogether. The net effect is a murder of the soul in the disintegration of the family and the ensuing mental illnesses and psychosomatic disorders of all kinds.

Our Gospel this morning tells us of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more. St Matthew is quoting here from Jeremiah. And it is precisely this prophecy of Jeremiah’s that reveals the Gladsome Light of the LORD’s Pascha shining in the heart of Christmas.

Rachel in Hebrew means, mother sheep; an ewe, the mother of a lamb. Through the Holy Spirit, St Matthew reveals to us that the Rachel of Jeremiah’s prophecy is the Virgin Mary Theotokos, Mother of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1.29). And from the prophecy of Jeremiah, we learn that the Virgin Mary Theotokos – no doubt as they were fleeing to Egypt – was weeping for the infants slaughtered by Herod as for Her own children. She is weeping for all of us who are being murdered by the ruler of this age in so many different ways.

And, in Rachel weeping for the slaughtered infants as for Her own children this morning, we see Her weeping for Her Son and God at the foot of His Cross on Great and Holy Friday.

But the Virgin’s Child Himself had said that when He was lifted up on the Cross, He would draw all men to Himself. This would include the 14,000 innocents slaughtered by Herod; it means that He would unite them all to Himself in His death and make them victors over death by uniting them to Himself in His Holy Resurrection.

I believe it is this Christmas prophecy of Jeremiah’s that opens for us the meaning of the LORD’s word that He spoke to His Holy Mother as He died on the Cross, when He says to Her, pointing to John, the beloved disciple, standing next to Her: ‘Woman, behold your son.’ The prophet, Jeremiah, gives us to understand that the LORD is saying: ‘Woman, behold your child. Woman, behold the murdered children of this world for whom you weep because they are no more.’

For, listen: Jeremiah’s ‘Christmas Prophecy’ does not end with Rachel weeping for Her children. It continues with the sound of a trumpet proclaiming the Savior’s victory over death in His Holy Resurrection: ‘Thus says the LORD: "Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears.”

Suddenly, we hear from Golgotha afar off, but sounding in our ear as very near, the Irmos of the Ninth Ode of the Nocturns of Pascha: “Do not lament Me, O Mother, seeing Me in the Tomb.”

Jeremiah’s prophecy continues: “For your work shall be rewarded, says the LORD.” This ‘work’ of Rachel’s that the LORD says will be rewarded, is it the tears of the Holy Virgin’s maternal sorrow for Her children that are no more that shall be rewarded?

“They shall come back from the land of the enemy,” Jeremiah’s prophecy goes on. Can you hear the prophecy of Hosea (11.1): “Out of Egypt have I called my Son!”

Again, Jeremiah: “There is hope for your future, says the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country” (Jer 31:16-17). Can you hear the prophecy of Ezekiel read in front of the LORD’s crucified Body, laid out on the bier inside the Tomb, at the Matins for Great and Holy Saturday (sung on the evening of Great and Holy Friday): “Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done it, says the LORD." [Eze 37:12-14]

But we know from the Epistle to the Hebrews that the homeland Ezekiel’s prophecy speaks of is the better, heavenly country of the Heavenly City the LORD God has prepared for them, a City with foundations, whose builder and maker is the LORD God Himself (Heb 11.10, 14, 16). That is, it is the Kingdom of Heaven.

‘For I shall arise,’ the Ninth Ode sings out, ‘and I shall be glorified with eternal glory!’ And if Rachel’s children – dear faithful! If we who have believed in the LORD Jesus Christ and have received the power to become children of God – are united to Christ in His death, we shall all be united with Him in the eternal glory of His Holy Resurrection!

And so it is! For, in our Gospel this morning, it is Herod who dies and is no more! But the infants he slaughtered have become martyrs, for by their slaughter, they have borne witness to the victory over death of the one Child Herod sought to destroy. This morning’s Gospel, then, shows that Christmas is the Day the LORD God came into the world to destroy the power of the devil who rules this world by the fear of death. In the darkness of the tomb, in the tomb of the human heart that was dead in her sins and trespasses, the Resurrection and the Life, the LORD Jesus Christ, has sown Himself as a mustard seed in the root of our nature, in our birth and in our death. He has become bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh that we might become one Spirit with Him, partakers of His own divine nature. And in the power of the Savior’s Cross, we become vanquishers of the devil, breaking the Herods of the earth with the rod of iron that is the LORD’s Cross, and dashing them to pieces like a potter’s vessel (Ps 2.9). We become children of God born from above of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead; and in union with the LORD’s Christ, we are made heirs of the LORD’s own eternal Glory in the Joy of the angel’s First Noel that is indeed to all people!

This is why we say on all the Feasts of the Church – for they all come forth from the Tomb of the LORD’s Most Glorious and Holy Pascha that was manifest to the world at Christmas in the slaughter – or rather, in the venerable martyrdom – of Rachel’s children, the holy innocents: ‘The Joy of the Feast be with you!’ ‘Christ is born,’ it becomes clear, means: ‘Christ is risen!’ ‘Glorify Him,’ then, must mean: ‘Indeed, He is risen!’ Amen! Glory to Jesus Christ! Most Holy Theotokos, save us!