Day: December 29, 2025

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On this fourth day of Christmas we are confronted by a reality which is anything but “holly jolly.” We may get away with romanticizing other less-than-cheerful elements of the story of the birth of Christ without losing the point—the stable is a rather unhygienic place for childbirth, but it remains a sweet scene; the flight to Egypt is harrowing, but it still has the elements of a homely, family feeling. The massacre of the Innocents, though, is bleak.

Infanticide strikes us as just about the most wicked thing a person could do, as well it should, but I think this is a case of Christianity winning the battle of ideas in the West a millennium and more ago. To the cultured despisers of religion in your life who claim to have freed themselves from all the baggage of the Judeo-Christian worldview, I’d encourage you to ask the following question: “How do you feel about killing babies?” Unless your interlocutor is psychopathic, he will probably say that this would be a bad thing to do. In this way he has unwittingly yielded some ground to the idea that religion is at least not all bad. You see, from an ancient perspective, unless you were a Jew or a Christian, infanticide wasn’t reckoned that big a deal, at least from a moral standpoint. If it happened to your child (assuming you weren’t the one who did it) you would of course be distraught, but there was not a societal taboo against it among ancient pagans. If your baby is deformed or if you’ve already got enough kids and the new one’s a girl, you could kill the child without any legal or social consequence.

We cannot confirm the accuracy of the Fifth Century historian Macrobius, because it dates so long after the event, but he wrote that Herod’s own son was inadvertently killed in the massacre. To this, the Emperor Augustus purportedly mused “it is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.” If anything, this account may be suspect due to giving the emperor and the king too much credit for having sympathetic feeling regarding children!

That Christ was born in a stable, that his family became refugees, that the Gospel presents the fate of the Holy Innocents as a tragedy, that our Lord is shown over and over again associating with the outcasts of society, that he died as a criminal—all these facts point to a critical element of our faith: namely, that the Kingdom of Heaven is populated by the weakest and most vulnerable. Blessed are you if life has dealt you a terrible hand.

Most of you have heard me say that one reason I avoid getting into hot button political in sermons is because, this congregation not being filled with high-powered politicians and titans of industry and the like, it would only serve to make one feel good about having the right opinions and not result in any change in policy or effect a significant improvement in social problems. Two particular issues occurred to me first in relation to the Holy Innocents, and I thought about putting my oar in because one would mark me as a liberal, the other would mark me as a conservative, and then you’d all be equally angry with me afterward. I think, what I said previously about our ability as individuals to effect national policy change, I won’t go there, and that’s my Christmas gift to myself. We can talk about those issues not in a sermon if you want, but you’re probably happier not getting into it, too.

Where I think we can find ourselves moved by the tragedy of the Holy Innocents and the moral imperative of the Gospel, though, is significant, and it’s a lot more challenging than just holding the “correct” view on some political issue. We can identify who in our lives and in our communities are the most vulnerable and show them as much love as we can. That sounds easy, right? Like I’m saying “just be nice”, which isn’t a very inspiring takeaway from a sermon. It sounds easy until you sit with somebody who hasn’t showered in a month or who is experiencing psychosis or drug withdrawal or who doesn’t know how to behave in polite society or whom you just find off-putting in some unidentifiable way. Then it becomes hard, and you’ve got to stay “prayed up” to treat them as a brother or sister. That person is just as much but no more a sinner than you or I or the Holy Innocents for whom the stain of Original Sin was washed off by the baptism of blood at their martyrdom, when it mingled with the blood of Christ which would be shed for them. Christ took on flesh for all of them, too, just as he lives forever for them and for us. Today the Innocents are in everlasting felicity with their Lord, and so too may we come to live forever with them and with all God’s children.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In a recent volume of systematic theology focused on the Incarnation, the two authors, John Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson, wrote the following:

To dichotomize either God from Christ or Christ from us is to rip God’s saving acts and benefits from their ontological mooring in the humanity of our Savior, stripping the Incarnation of its tremendous soteriological, mediatorial significance.

Did you get all that? That’s okay. I’ll translate.

If the baby in the manger is not both fully God and fully human, then we are in quite a pickle. I always explain it to my confirmation class students this way— If Jesus were merely human, then the crucifixion was the act of a capricious and vengeful God. If Jesus were inhumanly divine, then it was no sacrifice at all. Either way the cross is emptied of its saving power. I would contend that the proposition “Christ, eternally begotten of the Father, took on flesh two thousand some odd years ago” is the Primordial Truth. By this I mean that not only the whole of Christian Theology but the question of whether or not there is any meaning whatsoever to material, human existence hinges on our accepting or rejecting the proposition. The former requires of us an act of faith… Perhaps the greatest act of faith, which is the humble recognition that neither I alone nor we as a human species can untangle and fully explicate the mystery at the heart of life. I am convinced that making this leap (which requires a degree of humility both of intellect and of heart) is worth it, because I’ve seen the fruits of joy and peace and even virtue in those who’ve truly made it.

But did you come here tonight because you wanted to hear me give a theological treatise? I should think not! Shall I proceed to explicate the definition of the Council of Chalcedon line by line, so you can see fully appreciate the nature of the doctrine to which I’ve imputed such significance? Perhaps not, as jolly as that exercise would be!

No, tonight we are like the shepherds who rejoice merely from hearing the news, not interrogating the delicate logic that expresses the finer points of a worldview, but simply affirming that God must be here, for we’ve seen and known and tasted that truth.

Or perhaps more aptly we are like the angels, already enlightened through wisdom mystically bestowed, not by merit of inhabiting the realms of glory but through the the miraculous laver of water poured on our foreheads and the invocation of that most holy, triune name so that, like this Blessed Infant, born today, we might also be sons and daughters of the Most High.

No, we are higher than those angels, because without the benefit of the beatific vision, we have nonetheless tasted of the heavenly banquet and received by faith the grace the Christ Child has come to give us. And though we have neither a lamb nor gold nor frankincense nor myrrh to offer the Newborn King, we can, as that sweet, old carol has it, offer our hearts. This is a better gift anyway, an offering more acceptable than that of Abel. And in so offering our hearts they are united to his Most Sacred Heart, our humanity (once broken) is united to his humanity (now perfected), and we are thus united to his divinity, too, that when he comes again in glory we may be with him, body and soul, unto eternity.

Tonight God himself has taken on our nature and bestowed on all creation the radiance forfeited at Eden. Tonight the new Adam is brought forth from the eternal habitations, and he will not fall. Tonight the New Eve crushes the ancient serpent under her feet. Tonight heaven rejoices and hell quakes with fear, knowing its end is now only a matter of time. Tonight our brokenness is mended, our wounds are healed, our tears are dried, our very nature is lifted up to that blessed state it possessed in our infancy. No, it is raised higher, for we are no longer only children. We are brothers and sisters of the very God who made us. Glory be to him now, this night, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Translation is always interpretation, and with regard to the bible this can be applied to choices for punctuation and capitalization, since the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts have neither. So the fact that the name of Jesus appears here twice in all capital letters (as well as twice in Luke and once in John—I did consult my concordance), was a choice by the committee that translated the Authorized Version, probably to draw our attention to the sacredness of the Holy Name in Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the birth of Christ. (In John, it’s from the crucifixion, and presumably reflects the fact that the sign Pilate placed on the Cross would have been in capital letters.)

I find this interesting, but I have to admit that it always reminds me of a sign I see every year this time of year in front of a house in Findlay. It reads “It’s a boy, and his name is JESUS.” Just like the all caps in our translation, I think it’s meant to be emphatic in a good way, but it always strikes me as if the tone were confrontational. “It’s a boy, and his name is JESUS.” I’m sure that’s not the point, but I have thought what it would be like to ring the doorbell, congratulate the person who answers on yet another baby, and ask why they name all their children “Jesus.” Must get confusing.

On a more serious note, notice how Joseph is given the honor of giving the Christ child his name. We often forget about Joseph, consider him a figure of secondary importance. He’s a bit like Amal Clooney, working tirelessly for human rights and prosecuting the perpetrators of genocide and all the rest and then having the bad luck of being married to a movie star. I’ve heard it said before—and I whole-heartedly agree—that St. Joseph should be the patron of clergy spouses. While Mary brings Christ into the world physically and the priest does so sacramentally, sometimes there needs to be somebody there to orchestrate a flight to Egypt, or at least to hang in there through all the craziness attending a peculiar vocation.

We focus so much on how Joseph is not Jesus’ “real dad” in the biological sense, but Our Lady, while engendering in Christ his humanity, is also his mother by something-other-than-natural (which is to say supernatural) means, so perhaps we shouldn’t get too caught up in Joseph being “marginalized” or something like that. They are both parents to our Lord in a true and profound manner. I’m grateful that the lectionary has us considering Our Lord’s earthly father this year, as much as the more familiar Annunciation story from Luke’s Gospel may provide us a more romantic picture. Joseph matters, too. He provides Christ his royal lineage; notice the angel addresses him “thou son of David.” He protects the Holy Family from Herod’s wrath. He takes his part in raising the child who would become the man who would save us all. Whether he imparts his carpentry skills to Jesus as some apocryphal texts would have it or not, he raises a master builder of another sort–one who would build a kingdom.

And most importantly of all, Joseph sticks around. He doesn’t dip out to the store

for a pack of smokes and disappear. He is called a just man, but this is used in a sense which implies more than fairness. He is upstanding and long-suffering and merciful and loving. None of us is Jesus. Few of us (I’d contend none of us, but I have a high view of the Mother of God, to say the least) are like Mary, the maiden from a Middle Eastern backwater who went on to tread the ancient serpent under her feet. But we can all be a bit more like St. Joseph, following the call of God down uncertain and sometimes dangerous paths, relying on the Lord’s guidance, confident in his providential hand, and being led to love in ways we never imagined. And maybe, when his family or his fellow carpenter’s pointed at his intended, clearly by now “in the family way”, whispering amongst themselves, Joseph went up to them, not confrontationally but confidently, lovingly but firmly, and said “it’s a boy. And his name is Jesus.”

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.