Why would anyone want to kill baby Jesus?
It is one of the truly sobering questions of Christmas that rarely makes it onto the front covers of Christmas cards, or into the closing scene of the annual Christmas pageant. No, Christmas is usually sanitized for us, and its not until after the holiday is over, the relatives have all gone home, and the church services return more or less to normal that we even dare come to grips with the last scene of the Christmas story.
King Herod tries to kill the Christ child.
Why would anyone want to kill baby Jesus?
Matthew tells us that some time after the baby’s birth word comes to Mary and Joseph that Herod the Great – the Roman king who is in charge of Judea – is looking for them, and his aim is to kill their child. After all, the baby is rumored to be the King of the Jews, and the current King of the Jews – Herod – doesn’t like the idea of competition. So hearing the news of Herod’s anger, Joseph jumps into action and packs up Mary and the baby, and they leave the village – they leave the province – they leave the country. They escape to Egypt.
And King Herod, realizing that the family is no longer in the stable by the manger in Bethlehem, launches a full offensive in hopes of capturing the Holy family. He sends out his forces to gather up all the children in and around Bethlehem two years old or younger.
And once they have all been caught in his evil dragnet, Herod orders the children killed.
And the last scene of the Christmas story is not of a congregation holding candles and sweetly singing “Silent Night, Holy Night”, but rather of the mothers of Bethlehem wailing at the top of their lungs for their dead children.
Why would anyone want to kill the babies of Bethlehem? And why, for that matter, did the early Christians decide to include this terribly disturbing scene as the grand finale of the beautiful Christmas story? Why was it important to them that we encounter this incredible tragedy?
Let’s start by first trying to understand Bethlehem itself. The image most people have is of the quiet little village described in the song:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Have you ever been there? To Bethlehem? Its not like in the song, you know. Its not even close to the pictures you see on Christmas cards. Bethlehem in real life is just a dusty, dumpy West Bank, Palestinian town of no great stature. The population is about 28,000, almost equally divided between Muslims and Christians. If you were to visit Bethlehem today – which I would not recommend – you might start at the outskirts of the village where the shepherds are said to have watched their flocks by night. There are still shepherds and goatherds there – along with their sheep and goats – and they are willing to pose for a picture. And once the picture is taken, they will tell you it will cost one American dollar for the pose. And they will get mad at you if you don’t pay!
The next stop will probably be the Church of the Nativity, a pretty homely church structure built atop the very place it is believed Jesus was born. Entering the church, your eyes will sting from the burning incense, and your modern Protestant senses will be assaulted by all the statues, ornaments, vigil lights, and other religious paraphernalia that clutter the place. And then you will be led down a staircase to the underground part of the church where a star-shaped hole is cut into the floor. You can actually get down on your knees, and reach down through the hole to touch the ground of the very place it is thought Mary gave birth to her baby. But it will cost you one American dollar.
Outside the church is Manger Square, and leading from it are several roads including Nativity Street. Gift shops line the street, and you can buy a beautiful hand-carved olive wood Nativity set, or red and white Christmas ornaments, or Jesus figurines in various poses. And most of the merchants there prefer to be paid…in American dollars.
I suspect you would probably find yourself greatly upset and offended by the crass commercialism of it all. You might find yourself scratching your head and muttering, “This is the little town of BETHLEHEM I’ve been singing about all these years? What have they done to my Bethlehem?”
And then it gets worse. When we traveled there years ago, in the window of one of those shops along Nativity Street was a large plastic statue of a bleeding Jesus on the cross. And right next to it, a disturbing sight. A colorful poster in memory of a Palestinian man recently killed in a targeted Israeli missile attack. The attack was in response to the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister by militants.
Today there are lawless gunmen freely milling about in Manger Square, convinced that the Israelis will not dare retaliate against them so close to the birthplace of Jesus. And a quarter mile away, Israeli tanks stand by ready to defend or to attack. Once in awhile, shooting breaks out between the two sides.
Years ago, a young man named Johnny Talgieh was emerging from evening prayers at the Church of the Nativity. Witnesses say he was struck in the chest by a stray bullet from a machine gun mounted on a tank. Johnny collapsed there in Manger Square – just a few steps from where Jesus was born – and died.
They erected a twelve-foot monument on the spot where he was killed. His father, Yousef, pauses at the monument every morning to look at the image of his son’s face chiseled into the white stone, along with the verses from John 11 in which Jesus promises eternal life for the faithful. Yousef says the pain is almost too great to bear as he remembers his son who was an altar boy at the church. He notes that the women of Johnny’s family come often to the monument there in Manger Square.
And there at Johnny’s tombstone, they wail. At the top of their lungs.
Why would anyone want to kill an altar boy at the place where Jesus was born?
Why would anyone want to kill the children of Bethlehem?
Why would anyone want to kill baby Jesus?
I suspect the early Christians included this story because they wanted to be sure that those who followed them would well understand years later that the birth of Jesus did not occur simply to give us a reason for a holiday. Rather, Jesus came because all over this world of ours, the blood of children is spilled every day because of the confluence of terrible evil, and the voices of mothers and fathers raised in unspeakable anguish.
My brother Steve has for many years been part of a ministry in Belarus, in the former Soviet Union. He is involved with a ministry that seeks to reach out to and nurture the children of this very poor republic. Thousands upon thousands of children in Belarus are orphans. Large numbers of children live in homes where alcoholism and abuse are rampant. And a large segment of the population are afflicted by the aftereffects of radiation poisoning from the catastrophic nuclear accident at the nearby Chernobyl power plant.
It may be called Belarus in our world, but to God this is Bethlehem. And Christ is born wherever the blood of children is spilled, and moms and dads wail their loss at the top of their lungs. Beijing. Belfast. Beirut. Birmingham. The world calls them by many names, but to God, they are all Bethlehem.
And Christians must come to understand this!
For the Christmas story pulls us past all the glitter and glory we’d love to dwell on and, at the very end, rudely rubs our noses in the blood of the children of Bethlehem, and brings us face-to-face with the reality of evil. And it does it for a reason: so that we will know for certain why Jesus came, and what it means for US to follow him.
Put simply, Jesus came and we are to help him lift, heal, nurture, and save the children of this world!
I once saw a piece on television that reminded me of the meaning of Christmas. The report featured two boys. I’m not sure what the name of the first is, but I remember hearing that he was fifteen years old. He was a fighter of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance. He had been a soldier since he was eight years old. In his brief life, he never known anything other than the experience of war. The second boy is also an Afghani. Like the first, I do not recall his name either. He was a student in a school where young men are religiously groomed to become participants in holy war against the west. The report said this school is a breeding ground for terrorists and suicide bombers.
Two boys, caught in the middle of a world where King Herod – in whatever form he manifests himself today – ruthlessly spills the blood of children as he seeks his own evil purposes.
And Christ is born among them.
Christ is born among them.
And you and I are called to lift, and heal, and nurture, and save these children.
How do you think of the Kingdom of God? How do you imagine it? For many years, I had a hard time thinking of it as anything other than a heavenly realm where life is almost too good to be true – where people walk down streets of gold and play among the clouds. Of course, the downside was always that, in heaven there is no beer…that’s why we drink it here. But making up for that lack is the very presence of God himself before whom his creatures fall down and worship day and night.
But after years of reading and studying the scriptures, I’ve come to understand this Kingdom Jesus came proclaiming in another way. Not as an other-worldly place far removed from the reality of life, but as our world re-made!
The Kingdom of heaven is the world you’ve always wanted for your children, and for your grandchildren, and for yourself!
Oh, the saying is true! Christmas IS for children! But in a deeper, more profoundly challenging way than you ever imagined.
Bethlehem is wherever children suffer and have the promise of life taken away from them. And you and I are called to come to Bethlehem and see – this thing God is doing for children everywhere! God is making a NEW world! And God seeks to enlist YOU and ME in the building of this new enterprise!
This morning, we are reminding ourselves of our calling to children everywhere. Our children. Our grandchildren. The kids down the street. Children in Loudon, and Lenoir City, and Knoxville and beyond. American children. Afghani children. The Jewish children of Tel Aviv as well as the Muslim and Christian children of Bethlehem.
For in a world where the forces of evil squeeze the life out of children, and mothers and fathers wail in anguish, God acts.
Jesus comes.
And we are called!
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