Slaughter of the Holy Innocents

Sermon by Rev. Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.

Scripture: Matthew 2:11-16, Jeremiah 31:15, Revelation 12:1-17

After worship last Sunday, Rev. Greg let me know he had an orange stole I could borrow, since I had mentioned how ministers are choosing to wear orange stoles in response to mass shootings. I told Rev. Greg I never wanted to need to borrow his orange stole. On Tuesday afternoon he sent a text indicating he would bring the orange stole. More than a dozen children were dead in a Texas school shooting. I spent Wednesday re-planning today’s worship. I wondered, “What can I say?” “What does God have to say?”

Then I remembered the December 28th feast day, the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents. The scriptures Peggy read at the beginning of worship (Matthew 2:11-16 and Jeremiah 31:15) tell the painful story. Joseph is warned and flees Bethlehem with his family to Egypt, but the families of other toddlers were not so fortunate. Another scripture assigned for that day is from Revelation 12, a crucial part of John’s vision which paints a key understanding of the conflict between the church and the Caesars, between the powers of evil and the power of God. John shows the dragon waiting to devour not only the child of the woman clothed with the sun, but also the rest of her children who follow God’s commandments. The heavenly woman is not Mary but the whole people of God (Israel) who give birth to the Messiah, who is swept up into God’s protective presence. The dragon, the presence of evil, cannot defeat God’s plans, but when thrown out of heaven does continue to travel Earth defiantly acting in opposition to God, especially eager to devour the rest of the woman’s children, namely those who keep God’s commands and follow Jesus (in other words, the church). When evil is thrown out of heaven, its power is broken. It may perform some evil acts on Earth, but God’s final victory is assured. We have heard over the last 2 weeks, Revelation ends with the vision of the Reign of God coming in its fullness. All the accursed parts will be redeemed and nothing accursed will be there anymore. Stop now to read Revelation 12:1-8, 13-17.

What a painful week. We are heartbroken. Again. Grief overwhelms us. Again. Violence has crashed into our safe vision of reality. Little children, precious little children, in the middle of the day, in their normal schoolroom, gunned down. Most of us can hardly stand to imagine the terror of the scene. We don’t want to hear the screams. Or the teachers trying in vain to save their beloved students, who instead witnessed their beloved teachers, failing to hold back the horror. Children saw their friends get shot, bleed, and die. And the children saw bullets enter their own bodies. The families of those who died will never be the same. And those who survived the horrible shooting? They will never be the same again, either.

When we heard the reports, most of us were stunned. How can this keep happening? The ongoing information continues to stop our breath. We can’t stand it. We can’t stand it. There have been 272 US school shootings where someone died since Columbine (1999). Sources report more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at their school since Columbine. The NY times wrote there are 400 million firearms in the US. There are only 331 million people in the US. And there has been a 50% increase in gun deaths of children 14 and younger from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. A 50% increase in gun deaths in one year. In 2021, 1500 children under 18 were killed by guns in our country. Words fail when we try to articulate our own feelings. These were our children. Our future. Murdered with perfectly legal weapons. And the survivors forever affected. Of course, we are heartbroken.

So, we have to resist. Standing against violence is crucial. We have to refuse to accept such carnage. Of course, we are furious, but we must not give in to the desire for revenge. As much as we want to roil in hatred for the easy access to guns people have all across the country, we have to face the reality of gun violence without falling victim to a desire for violence against those who make such violence easier. Controlling our own response is crucial. Working to avoid giving in to the waves of anger is difficult, but we must not allow ourselves to get sucked into hatred.

At the same time, we cannot just give in to despair. Allowing frustration and feelings of impotence to take over our reactions will not solve anything, as tempting as it is to just collapse into a grieving heap on the floor. We must focus on stopping the violence, which means we cannot accept the lie that we are powerless.

I am convinced the most important step of resistance is to get filled with God’s vision. That’s where the power is. God’s vision of how the world is supposed to be empowers us to resist. Last Sunday, having no idea we would need it so quickly, I said: “We need to tap into the presence of God, because there are tough times ahead. Really tough times. In working for …justice and mercy, our strength will give out. As opposition grows, our energy will get depleted… Our human strength is not enough. We have to depend on God. That’s what these visions are for.”

John shows us the dragon forces of evil not only want to devour the Christ, which is impossible, but they want to make war on all of God’s children who are committed to spreading God’s well-being throughout the Earth. But the dragon of evil cannot devour us. Evil cannot win. The ways of God are the true ways of creation. We just need to keep the vision before us. How might we do that? The task of John’s vision, one commentator wrote, “was to overcome the unbearable tension… between what was and what ought to have been…the intolerable tension between reality and hopeful faith.”(1) So we must hold onto a vision of children going to school unafraid; a vision of no one able to obtain a weapon easily but finding easily accessible mental health support. Together we share the vision. We remind each other that life and wholeness and joy and justice and generosity and compassion and peace are God’s ultimate plans. So we resist the forces of evil. Instead we get filled up with God’s vision of wholeness.

 Then we get to work. Together, we have tasks to accomplish. We don’t have time to dillydally. Remember? More than a century ago, when women demanded the vote, they were arrested. When they went on hunger strikes in jail, they were shackled and force-fed with tubes down their throats. And Susan B. Anthony said, “Failure is impossible!” No matter how many men said, “It will never happen,” for the women it was never “if,” but only “when will it happen?” They knew they would vote.

Same for gun reform today. Not “if,” but only “when.” And the answer is, “sooner, when we do our part.” The New York Times reported the other day that a gunman killed 16 people in Britain in 1987, resulting in a national ban in semiautomatic weapons, like the one the gunman used. Then in 1996, after a school shooting, Britain banned most handguns. Britain “now has one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the developed world.”(2) Sensible gun laws not only make sense; they can happen in the United States. They can. So we must stop saying “It will never happen.” Sensible gun laws will be enacted in the United States.

There does come a tipping point for getting what God wants accomplished. The movie, The Darkest Hour, shows England on the brink of giving in to Hitler’s demands as he stormed across Europe, but within a day, actually even an hour, there arose a national resistance movement. They would never surrender. Never give up.

We too can refuse to give in to complacency over gun violence. Show up at the rallies. Go door to door talking about candidates’ positions. See if schools are looking for crossing guards or outside monitors to help protect our children. Write letters to elected officials and people running for office. Write letters to the editor. Refuse to lie down.

Andra Day sings it in her song “Rise Up,” “All we need is hope and for that we have each other.” Then the song ends: “We’ll rise up/ And we’ll do it a thousand times again.” Our job is to encourage each other to do what it takes. We can, because we must, for our children. We have to get to work.

We must resist the temptation to give up, refuse to drown in despair. Let’s keep the vision of God’s future before us, filling us with the power to accomplish what God is calling us to do. Sensible gun laws will happen, sooner if we get to work. We can, because we must. We can, because it’s what God wants. For the welfare of our children.

(1) Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Westminster, 1984), 141.

(2) New York Times, May 26, 2022, A15.