The sermon for this Sunday is based upon the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 2:13-23, which is a continuation of the story of the birth of Christ. This Gospel Lesson focuses on Jesus’s escape to Egypt, the killing of the innocent children by King Herod and lastly Jesus’ coming to Nazareth.
This Sunday, the Sunday after Christmas, commemorates three persons in Christ’s family; David the King, Joseph the Betrothed and his brother the Apostle James, the brother of the Lord. The problem of human suffering is a universal one. Most painful is innocent suffering such as the killing of the innocent children in Ramallah by Herod, who ordered all male children born at that time in the town to be killed.
The number of children, which some say numbered two thousand, doesn’t matter as much as our attention is centered on thousands if not millions of people throughout the pages of history, innocents, who have been slaughtered just like those at the time of Jesus’s birth.
One question comes to mind often at the reading of this Gospel, why do the innocent righteous suffer while sinners seem to prosper. How could God allow undeserved suffering, especially the cruel suffering of innocent children. The most effective answer is the example of Christ. Jesus was the most innocent person who ever lived. He possessed nothing but love and truth. Yet we know that He suffered cruel persecution, torture and a shameful death on a cross. The burden of the world’s sin crushed His human body. He emptied Himself of His divine glory taking the form of a servant, for He came to serve not to be served.
At His birth, a cruel and possibly psychotic Herod tried to destroy Christ upon His birth in the flesh, but instead took out his rage on the poor innocent children of the Bethlehem area whom we commemorate today. It is precisely Christ’s example of suffering that shows us how through faith, love and forgiveness we can overcome suffering and be entirely free of it in God’s Kingdom.
This is the message of this Gospel, for Herod, like many tyrants throughout history, was blinded by hatred and cruelty and was solely responsible for the murder of the Holy Innocents!