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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in the church we suffer no delusions about Christmas. Only a few days after the birth of Jesus, the blood of infants spills through the small streets of Bethlehem, and the inconsolable weeping of mothers fills the town that had just housed the baby Jesus. The blood, the screaming, the weeping, quickly mute the angelic hymns of joy to the world and heavenly declarations of peace on earth.
But this is no perversion of the Christmas story. Far from a feel-good hallmark film, Matthew’s account eerily depicts the reality of Christmas on earth. This is the church’s Christmas story. The infant Jesus is born into the real world—the world we see around us, a world filled with death. As Christmas rolls around each year, we may long for the sentimental depictions of Christmas to color our lives. But more often, the tragedy of Matthew’s account is what we witness. More often, the Christmas season is lived in suffering.
Perhaps this year may be that Christmas of suffering for you, or maybe that Christmas has passed, and if it hasn’t happened yet, most likely it will come. At some point, your family has been or will be fractured by sin and its wages, death, where loss and loneliness tear at the cords of your heart. Perhaps, in the most extreme way, your voices have been joined to those mothers weeping for their children. No doubt, nothing can be as horrific and overwhelming as the death of a child.
Jeremiah puts it in this way: “Thus says the Lord, a voice was heard in Rama, weeping in loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be comforted because they are no more.” The weeping prophet, the holy seer Jeremiah, reports the haunting voice of Rachel, who was buried near Bethlehem, mourning the violence against God’s chosen people. In Jeremiah’s day, Rachel wept for the many slain by the sword and the Judean captives being brought to Babylon. In our text, she laments again over the slaughter of these innocent children.
But the Christmas story is that violence and murder do not have the last word. That Jeremiah and Matthew both record the cries of Rachel means her voice is heard. The sounds of suffering, the tears, the groaning, the sighs of the heart toward God that are so intense they can’t even be formulated into prayers—these are all heard by God. And God is not silent. God answers.
The prophet Jeremiah continues in the very next verses: “Amen. Thus says the Lord, keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord. Your children shall come back to their own country.” God hears Rachel. God hears weeping mothers. God hears you. And God answers. God answers with hope for the future.
It is in this same chapter of Jeremiah, almost like the turning point of the entire book, that the Lord declares the days are coming when he will do a new thing, the days are coming when he will make a new covenant, the new age, the new covenant, the fullness of time. It all dawns with the birth of Jesus into the world.
In this new age, God does more than hear and answer through a prophet. God becomes Emmanuel. He becomes God with us, and he is born into the sufferings of your lives, that your sorrows may become his own. The flesh that our Lord takes is not the flesh before the fall. It is not the flesh already glorified. Though he is born without sin, the flesh he takes is that same flesh as yours that suffers from this fallen sinful condition. So, the infant Emmanuel is persecuted. He flees to Egypt to live as a sojourner, taking his place along the Israelites of old.
The son of man has no place to lie his holy infant head. While these little lambs in Bethlehem take Jesus’ place, they only do so for a short time. The lamb is kept, but only to be fattened for the slaughter. Our Lord is fattened up by eating with sinners and tax collectors, touching the sick and the unclean, coming near to the lepers no one else would dare to approach. And he weeps with those who weep. Emmanuel joins those who suffer and takes upon his own holy body the illnesses, sicknesses, griefs, and diseases of all mankind until it is time for this innocent lamb to be slaughtered for the sins of the world.
From the moment the infant Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger, Jesus was on his course to be wrapped in clothes and placed into a tomb. God loves you so much that he paves the way for your future by his lifelong march to the cross. This is how God creates hope for your future, for those children who are lost, for the mothers who grieve.
And Jesus does more than give you a promise that someday, a long time from now in the future, things will get better. And Jesus even does more than point you to the resurrection. Jesus becomes your Emmanuel, your God with you. Even after the resurrection, Jesus, in his same body born of Mary, promises, “I am with you always.” Jesus enters into your lives and suffers with you each step of the way.
Now, this suffering Emmanuel, these lost children, the weeping mothers, it may not be what you would choose to hear right after Christmas, but this is what you need to hear. The holidays, the Christmas lights, the trees, the family visits, they all come and go. But suffering remains. This is why Jesus is born—to be a real comfort to you, to really, actually, truly join with you throughout your life. He hears your weeping and weeps with you, and he is faithful. He will see you through this. He will be with you always, just as he is for those children remembered today.
Indeed, the fruit of our Lord’s work on these holy innocents is already to be seen. The beloved disciple of our Lord, John, whose feast was yesterday, while he himself was suffering captivity and deportation in this earthly veil of misery, was granted a glorious vision into heaven to see not only what will be, but what is now. The souls of these holy innocents, slain for the word of God and the witness they bore to his birth, are under the Lord’s altar. They cry out with a loud voice, “Holy and true Lord,” for God, not Herod as their king, and they yell out, “How long before you judge and revenge our blood on those who dwell on earth?” Our Lord listens, gives them a white robe, and tells them to rest.
A few chapters later, in our reading, we see our holy innocence again. They have been redeemed from the earth, John says. 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 first fruits for God and the Lamb. And in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.
What man intended for evil, God intended for good. In the measure that Herod’s hatred was poured out on these little babes, the goodness of God has repaid many times over. The day these babies were put to death is their heavenly birthday that we celebrate now. Many Herods still fill the world whom Satan has stirred up to kill and persecute the church. But our faithful infant Emmanuel will accompany us through every persecution and will sustain us with his word, his spirit, and his innocent precious blood, guiding us into the Father’s presence in heaven, that like babes sundered from the valley of tears and washed of our sin by the blood of the Lamb, we may join these holy innocents as they play in childlike joy with their martyrs’ palms and crowns.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.