Holy Innocents

We are still very much in the season of Christmas. Twelve days of
Christmas…until the Feast of the Epiphany on 6th January.  And it's a
season that includes a mixture of bitter sweet. The celebration of
God’s presence with us in the Christ-child is immediately followed the
next day by the feast day of St Stephen, the first martyr of the
Christian church. What’s clear is that following this child is not
going to be an easy option: it’s going to be risky.

After the feast of St Stephen, a few days later, on 29 December, we’re
reminded about other martyrs: the infant martyrs of Bethlehem, known
as the ‘Holy Innocents’. These innocent children were dispensable to
Herod’s political ambition, and the things that so often accompanies
power: paranoia.

Herod the Great wasn’t all bad. He defended the independence of the
Jewish nation, he built many palaces, the imposing ruins of which
remain to this day. He rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. But Herod was
terrified that he’d be assassinated by someone who wanted his throne.
His fear wasn’t without warrant, because several had tried to do
exactly this.

To protect himself, Herod killed all rivals. He got rid of his own
beloved wife, his brother, three of his sons and 45 members of the
Jewish counsel. And he got rid of his mother-in-law (I love my
mother-in-law, but I know that’s not always the case!). Emperor
Augustus, knowing that Jews don’t eat pork, joked that he’d rather be
Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.

Into this situation come philosophers, wise men from the East,
searching for the king of the Jews. Disturb by this contender to his
throne, King Herod orders the execution of all young male children in
the village of Bethlehem. It seems as though anyone, even innocent
children, were dispensable to Herod.

The massacre of these children puts an end to overly sentimental
understandings of Jesus’ birth.

Herod thought that Jesus was a threat, and he was right. Ironically,
for all of Herod’s scheming and violence, it’s he who grasps what is
at stake in the birth of Jesus. Even if he didn’t understand the full
implications of the birth of Christ. He understood quite clearly that
if Jesus is Lord, then he is not. Herod recognised the potential
political implications, if not the cosmic significance, of the person
of Jesus Christ. Within a generation Jesus’ followers will be
persecuted by the Roman Empire as a danger to good order. Jesus upset
people’s power structures, the status quo, and he suffered the usual
fate of people who do.

But power is not easily kept when taken by force and duplicity. The
mystery of Christmas includes the truth that the power of God has
arrived in a little helpless vulnerable child. In the topsy-turvy
world of the Gospel, the weak are raised up, the strong brought low.
Power is demonstrated through weakness, vulnerability, and love even
of enemy.

Perhaps we’ve grow so used to hearing this that we find it difficult
to grasp how unbelievably significant it is.

The philosopher Nietzsche, however, saw the truth of his atheist
stance with fearless clarity. He had little time for Christianity, or
any religion. He believed it was the ethic of the underdog, the weak,
the vulnerable, the powerless. It generated an entirely new set of
virtues: Pity, the kind and helping hand, the warm heart, patience,
humility, friendliness, compassion, self-giving love.

Nietzsche was contemptuous of such attitudes. He thought that only
slaves are foolish enough to believe that love and gentleness are ways
to live. Masters know a different ethic entirely: “According to master
morality it is precisely the ‘good’ who inspire fear and want to
inspire it.”

On this Nietzsche agrees with Machiavelli, who said that in politics
it is better to be feared than to be loved. And here we arrive at the
heart of the matter. Nietzsche’s supreme value was the ‘will to
power’.

If you look at Richard Dawkins’ view – he has a list of crimes
committed in the name of God. And all of them are cases in which
religion has been used to conquer, control or intimidate. They’re all
expressions of the will to power. This, if anything, is the root of
all evil. That is why the supreme and radical challenge of Christ is
humility – it’s the opposite of the will to power.

In the topsy-turvy world of the Gospel, we learn a different way. And
it’s not about power, might, strength, prestige… those things you
might well associate with being a king. Though he were rich, says St
Paul, yet he became poor (1 Cor 8.9; cf; Phil 2).

How does God become manifest at Christmas – in the context of a
helpless, vulnerable baby, in a small insignificant town.  This
mystery subverts the pretensions of human domination. The baby Jesus
comes at Christmas, without power, needing to be protected, dependent
on the people around him. ‘The only power he chooses is simply to draw
out of people what is in them, the longing to love and care for the
vulnerable. That is the Christmas present he gives us’ (Jane
Williams).