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            In this joyous season of Christmas we mark a dark and terrible event: the Slaughter of the Innocents.  The old order, represented by King Herod, gives way to the new order, represented by Jesus, the new-born King.  But this revolution is not without a struggle, and the victims of this struggle are the babes in Bethlehem, as Herod vainly attempts to eliminate a potential rival—a major concern throughout his bloody reign. 
            Herod was an astute and generous ruler and one of the most imaginative and energetic builders of the ancient world.  He guided the kingdom of Judea to new prosperity and power.  But today he is best known as the sly and murderous monarch who tried, unsuccessfully, to kill the new-born King of the Jews.  The Slaughter of the Innocents is not mentioned outside of Matthew’s gospel (2:16-18).  But the historical sources do mention Herod’s murder of other children, including three of his own, along with his wife Mariamne, whom he dearly loved. 
            Herod even devised a scheme to plunge the entire kingdom into mourning, when he ordered the army to imprison a crowd of leading Judean citizens in the hippodrome in Jericho, and to massacre them when his death was announced.  This scheme, like the plot to kill Jesus, proved unsuccessful, when the intended victims paid off their appointed executioners. 
            The death of a young child, whatever the cause, is something that no one who has not been a parent and undergone this agony can ever appreciate.  Unfortunately, when we look around the world today, it is the children who are the most vulnerable and are therefore dying in the greatest numbers, from disease, warfare, and hunger. 
            The agonized pictures of mothers struggling to keep their young ones alive and the cruel faces of warlords  without pity for the suffering they are inflicting give a contemporary update to today’s gospel story.  In Canada we don’t believe that might is right, but here too there is hunger, poverty, disease, and killings.
            If you look at the photos on the walls of the corridor leading from the church to the auditorium, you will see that the Church of the Good Shepherd was once a thriving community: the Married Couples Club, the Ladies Auxiliary, the Sunday School, the Choir, the Boys’ Brigade.  But those glory days are past, and the evils of the wider city have come to Mount Dennis.
            We are trying to make a difference, which is why the church is still here, but we too are vulnerable: the diocese considers us non-viable and has doubled our monthly tax. From the Christian point of view this vulnerability is nothing to be ashamed of, since it joins us to the infant martyrs whom we are honoring today. 

December 28, 2008

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