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Text: Jeremiah
31:10-17 (Matt Your
Very Great Reward In the name
of Jesus, dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
The grisly story of the slaughter of the infant boys of If that’s
the case, and I suspect that it is, maybe it’s because we’ve allowed our whole
concept of Christmas to become entirely too sentimentalized. I mean, it’s so easy amid the gift exchanges
and holiday cheer and all the other trappings and traditions to put from our
minds, if only for a short time, what a cold, dark, sin filled world this really
is. But let me suggest that losing that
sense especially at this time robs Christmas of what it’s really all
about. That cute little baby in the
manger wasn’t born to give us fond holiday memories or warm, fuzzy
feelings. He was born to suffer and die
horribly for the sins of the world. And
if nothing else, the story of the slaughter of the innocents shocks us back to
grim reality by reminding us just how evil and corrupt are the hearts of men
that they could do such a despicable thing.
This story shows us why the world so desperately needs a Savior. And let’s take it a step
further: it shows why so desperately you
and I need a Savior. It’s easy to
point an accusing finger at cruel old Herod, the paranoid king who, fearing for
his throne, lashed out with murderous intent against the baby Jesus without any
thought or concern for whomever else might get hurt in the process. It’s a little tougher to turn the finger
around and examine ourselves … to see how in our own efforts to retain the
authority of kings and queens over our own little pieces of turf we too strike
out against the newborn King, refusing to give him the honor and place he
deserves in our hearts. How we
fight against God to keep control and be our own lords; and how, in the
process, do we too do untold damage to innocent bystanders, wounding with our
words and actions anyone who happens to be in the way – and these victims often
turn out to be the very people we say we love and want to protect the most. Yes, it’s painful to admit, but seen in that
light you have to agree that you aren’t so very much different than Herod after
all – which is all the more reason to thank God for sending us his Son to be
our Savoir from sin. I’ll bet you really
wanted to that this morning. Now,
aren’t you glad you came? Well, as much as I’d like to
develop this idea of the parallels between Herod and ourselves a little more, I
trust that you’ve caught the drift of it and know where I might be heading were
I to use a standard Law and Gospel approach; so we’ll save it for another
time. What I want to do instead is move
in a different direction and address a few other important issues that are
stirred up by a story as distressing as this of the slaughter of the innocents. I mean, doesn’t it strike you as cruelly unfair that God should allow such a tragedy to befall these miserable people whose only crime was that they had the misfortune to live in the city that God chose to be the birthplace of his Son? Think about it: through his prophetic Word, the Lord even told Herod and his assassins where to strike – shouldn’t he have prevented it somehow? But no, the massacre goes on even though the intended target has already safely escaped to Egypt. Near as we can tell, the murderers go unpunished. The only ones who end up suffering are the helpless infants and their families. And St. Matthew records the results: the anguished cries of the Bethlehem mothers united as one voice in bitter grief and mourning, “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” With them, we want to cry out, “Why? How could God permit such a thing to happen?” It turns out that our gracious God
anticipated and answered that question over 500 years before the brokenhearted
mothers of Bethlehem first asked it.
Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, he said: "Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for
your work will be rewarded," declares the LORD. The Lord says, “Your work will be
rewarded”, or to say it another way, “You’ll receive due compensation for this
tragedy. In the end, you will see that
it was worthwhile”. Well, I don’t know
about you, but at first glance that doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory
answer. Imagine comforting a woman who’s
just had her child torn from her arms and run through with a sword by telling
her, “It’s best this way; you’ll see.”
Try it, and you’re likely to become a murder victim yourself – and not
without some justification.
Nevertheless, this is what the LORD says; so rather than argue with him,
it’s best to ask for his guidance as we consider what kind of reward could be
so great that it might possibly make up for and vindicate this senseless
massacre. And so, let
me ask you this: What would you
want? What kind of reward would you
choose to compensate for such a loss?
Can you even to begin to imagine a reward sufficiently great that it
would make the loss of a child seem acceptable?
It turns out that the society we live in has a ready answer for that
question: money. Hurt me or my family and we’ll sue the pants
off of you. Kill somebody, and we could
be talking a multi-million dollar settlement.
Yes, we see them weep in front of the cameras about how their law suit
“has nothing to do with the money”, and we see them keep weeping all the way to
the bank – and make no mistake, I’m sure that there is genuine grief in their
hearts; but let’s face it, if they didn’t think the money would help they
wouldn’t ask for it. And I’m not sure
any of us are immune to the lure of materialism to compensate for the loss of
our loved ones. Before I
went to live in South America, I had the opportunity to talk to a Brazilian
Army Colonel who was serving as a military liaison here in the U.S. Wanting to know what sorts of things I had to
look forward to, I asked him what was the one thing he missed the most about
his country. We had been talking for a
while, and up to that point the conversation had been bright – but suddenly it
turned a little sour. With some sadness,
because he supposed that as an American I wouldn’t quite understand, he said
that the thing he missed most were his people, his friends and relatives. He had lived in our country long enough to
know that we Americans are far more likely to hang their happiness on things
rather than people. And I suppose that’s
because, as a rule, we have more, and we tend to think of a direct correlation
between happiness and the accumulation of things. But, of
course, the Colonel was right: our
greatest joys come from the people in our lives. And we all know of cases in which someone has
clawed to the top to attain wealth and fame in his field – only to discover
that he was miserable when he got there because during the climb he had
forsaken the people that should have filled his life with joy. And don’t we all do this to some degree? We sacrifice relations with people in order
to acquire things that can only be enjoyed with the people we “sacrificed”
along the way to get them. And no, we
didn’t attain the reward over their physical deaths – but because the
relationships have suffered irreparable damage, these people are “dead” to us
even while they are alive. So, even
though we would agree that no material benefit could ever compensate for the
loss of a loved one, it doesn’t stop us from trying. But
returning then to the original question, “What kind a reward would make
this loss worthwhile?” We might be
tempted to throw up our hands and say, “Nothing! There is no way that anything could
make up for such a loss. The only thing
that could make up for the loss of a child would be to have that same child
returned alive and healthy (which is impossible); and even that wouldn’t make
up for the pain of the separation!” And
here, at last, I think we’d be on the right track. But suppose the child could be
returned alive and healthy ... for how long would you have him back? Sooner or later, death would separate you
from him again – and along the way there would be sickness, pain,
disappointment, and heartaches of a hundred different kinds. Why?
Well, because in this fallen world, the people we love not only bring us
our greatest joys, they also bring us our greatest sorrows. Sooner or later they all leave or die, and
that breaks our hearts. It’s with the
people we love that we argue, and fight, we say hateful things, and hear the
same from them – it’s them that we hurt the most and by whom we are most hurt,
both intentionally and unintentionally.
That’s the way human relationships are. They suffer from two critical
flaws: they are all only temporary, and
they are all tainted by sin. But suppose
by losing your child today you could have him back forever, and enjoy an
eternal relationship with him, free of everything that makes human
relationships sorrowful. Then would the
loss be worth it? Moses, you may recall,
was, like Jesus, born under the death decree of an evil king. The Pharaoh of Egypt, fearing the rising
strength of his Hebrew slaves, had ordered the execution of all the infant
Israelite males. His soldiers would wait
around the slaves’ quarters listening for crying babies, and when they heard
one they would burst down the door, check the child’s sex, and when they found
a boy they would take him. In front of
the screaming mother, the child would be hurled by the ankle into the crocodile
infested Nile River. The lucky ones, if
you can call them that, died by drowning. Well, you
know the story: Moses’ mother kept him
as long as she thought it was safe – but knowing that sooner or later the baby
would be discovered, she commended the safety of her child to God, and set
young Moses adrift in a basket on the same river that was the instrument of
death for all the other boys. Can you
imagine how difficult that must have been for her? Ultimately the baby was discovered by the daughter
of the Pharaoh, who decided to adopt the child – and it was she who named him
“Moses” which means “from the water”.
Then she ends up hiring Moses’ mother as the child’s nurse. The princess tells her, “Take this child and
nurse him for me, and I will reward you.”
I don’t need to tell you that Moses’ mother already had her reward –
long before she ever got paid as a nurse.
By losing her son who was certain to be lost to her anyway, she got him
back in a much safer and more secure way.
Her son, who had been a slave under the decree of death, was now a
member of the royal family, and no one could take him away from her again. If you
could lose your child under bad conditions, and get him back in a better way,
then the loss might be worthwhile – and those of you who have brought your
children here to the font for Baptism have already done exactly that. You brought your child conceived in sin and
under God’s wrath and condemnation – born under the decree of death of the
righteous God. And you gave the child up
to the water that would be the instrument of its death; because in that water
the child you brought was drowned and God performed the miracle of spiritual
rebirth. “From the water” was taken a
new person bearing a new name, that of Christ.
And this new birth was into the royal family of God. God himself became the child’s real Father;
and then he handed the child back to you and said, “Here, you raise up this
child for me, and I will give you a great reward.” And, of course, you’re holding the reward in
your arms – a child which will live forever, free of the curse of sin. As I went
through Scripture studying the word “rewards”, I was struck by the number of
times that the reward was a relationship with another person. God told Abraham, “I am your reward”; the Psalmist writes, “Sons are a heritage from
the Lord, children are a reward from him.”
Isaiah writes, “See, your Savior comes, his reward accompanies him
(meaning the saints who are with him).”
The message is clear: God’s
reward is us; and our reward is God and everyone else who is with him. With them we will enjoy perfect relationships
forever. That is our very great reward. Now, you
may be thinking, “Okay, I see that – but I don’t see how that helps those poor
mothers in Bethlehem. I know that they
are all eternally happy now, but surely God could have worked everything out
without the needless slaughter of those innocent children. I still don’t think it’s fair that all those
boys had to die.” Well, maybe
... but let’s consider two things:
first, we have a tendency to forget that there’s a war going on. Satan is actively fighting to keep God from
getting his reward and you from getting yours.
It’s a real war and the casualties are real human lives. In the Epistle lesson, St. Peter reminds his
hearers that if they are doing the right things and living as Christians, they
can count on suffering for it. Satan is
going to put the heat on those who bear the name of Christ. Peter writes, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are
suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that
you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when
his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you
are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” The Holy Innocents and their families truly
suffered for the sake of Christ – even though they may not have been aware of
why they were suffering at the time.
Even so, you may not be aware of your suffering for Christ; but if you
are being persecuted for doing what is good and right, then Peter says, “you should commit yourself to your faithful
Creator and continue to do good.” So
the example of the slaughter of the children in Bethlehem stands as a reminder
to all of us of what it means to bear the name of Christ, and what we can
expect for ourselves at the hands of his enemies; but it should also remind us
that Christ is suffering with us in our affliction, and God’s Spirit of glory is
resting on us in a very special way.
When we are persecuted the tendency is to ask, “Where is God now?” The answer is that he’s closer then than at
any other time. And there’s
something else we should consider in the example of the Holy Innocents. In this case, innocent children were
slaughtered, while the true target of the king’s wrath escaped unharmed. But what happened to them in a merely
physical sense happened to Jesus in the absolute sense. Jesus is
the true and only Holy Innocent. The wrath
of the true King was on all of us –
and because of our sin, we deserved it.
But in order to let us escape unharmed, the true Holy Innocent One took
the wrath of the King upon himself, and was slaughtered in our place. And we mustn’t think for a moment that it was
an easy thing for God to do on our behalf.
The sorrow of the Bethlehem mothers is a picture of what the Father
endured when he gave up his Son. And so we see the whole episode as yet another
window of revelation of what God was planning to do with his own Son for
us. And the amazing thing is that by
losing his Son he got his reward.
Remember, God counts us as his reward.
By giving his Son to death for us, he got his Son back with all of us
who bear his name. And in his sacrifice,
we too receive him as our great reward. God
has already fulfilled his promise to the grieving mothers of Bethlehem. He has brought back their children and
reunited them forever. He makes the same
promise to us – and to the millions of others with whom we share the name of
Christ. In the face of the worst and
most painful of our losses he promises,
“I will turn [your] mourning into
gladness; I will give [you] comfort and joy instead of sorrow”. And God will do it for us for Jesus’
sake. In his holy name, amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
