Holy Innocents

Dear friends in Christ,

Many years ago, I overheard an older woman berating a younger woman for choosing to “live in sin.” She insisted that God knew every hair on her head and the younger woman’s refusal to get married, distressed and angered God.

The younger woman responded she didn’t believe in God (which brought further recriminations from her companion), and argued that marriage is an outdated institution that objectified women and treated them like property, and she didn’t need a contract to demonstrate her commitment.

After listening to this argument for a while I casually remarked that I thought God had bigger things to worry about, such as the fact that a child dies every 30 seconds from hunger related causes. “Oh no,” replied the older woman, “that is part of God’s plan.” According to her logic, God needs children to die so that God can achieve God’s purpose of bringing good from evil!

While I could accept that God could bring forth God’s plan no matter what the world did to try to prevent that, including letting children die from hunger, a God that required children to suffer and die in order to carry our God’s plan was not the God I believed in, and not deserving of my love and respect.

Setting aside the fact that believing this untruth absolves her of any responsibility for or complicity with the suffering of children, I understand why she might think so. How do we explain why an all-seeing, all-knowing God allows any kind of suffering, let alone the kind that allows children to starve to death in a world where some people eat too much?

Innocent children have suffered because of the world’s sin since the beginning of time. Yesterday, December 28th, was the Feast of Holy Innocents, that commemorates Herod’s massacre of all male toddlers in Bethlehem to try and kill the newborn King of Israel. We don’t generally observe this, because even if it falls on a Sunday it is a lesser feast and therefore does not take precedence over the Sunday propers, but the Church recognizes those innocents who died because of God’s incarnation as martyrs and thus deserving of honor. And I wonder about that.

If Jesus hadn’t been born, Herod would not have felt threatened. And if the Magi had stayed home, Herod wouldn’t have authorized the massacre and the Holy Family wouldn’t have had to become refuges in Egypt. And wasn’t there a better way for God to carry out God’s plan of salvation? Which is simplistic and naïve, because the world will always try to thwart the inbreaking of light into the darkness. And bad things happen to innocent people, not because God causes them to happen but because they simply happen. It is the way of the world. And the incarnation is God’s response to the violence and heartbreak of the world. And our job is not to ask why, or to wait around for God to fix everything. Our job is to step up and protect the weak and vulnerable; to make the world less dangerous for children and other innocents. And God has not left us alone with this seemingly overwhelming and impossible task, because when God came to live among us, God came to suffer with us and to die like us, so that we could know that even when things seem at their worst, we are not alone. God is right beside us, and ultimately, God will prevail.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Jane+