The Dark Infancy Narrative of Matthew Part Two: In Which God Does Nothing

Slaughter of the Innocents

We have seen the latter half of this reading before, for it is used three days after Christmas, when the glitter has worn off and we can no longer remember the magic, as the reading for the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The Wise Men, come ot Jerusalem to ask where the new king of Israel is, upset Herod and with him the entire city. Herod consults his own wise men who tell him that the child is to be born six miles southwest in Bethlehem. Herod sends our Wise Men to Bethlehem and tells them bring him word of the child that he may worship him. The Wise Men go, following the star, which makes one wonder why the hell they had to stop un Jerusalem in the first place,, and finding the star rest over the house—no stable in this story-- where Mary is with the child, they enter, offering gold frankincense and myrrh.

            Mary’s house must be spacious, or either they stay at an inn, or they just stay in the tents they’ve been traveling in, because but the Wise Men stay the night, for we are told that God warns them in a dream not to return to Herod. Would Herod have killed them? And so the Wise Men leave. Because the Wise Men did not think to tell Joseph or Mary about this, Joseph has to have his own dream on the same night or the night after. We do not know. And so Joseph packs up Mary and Jesus and they are off to Egypt.

            Now, because neither the Wise Men or Joseph thought to say anything to anyone else in Bethlehem, when Herod realizes he has been deceived by the Magi—who we should properly call the Wise Men, he raises a small army to kill all the male children in Jerusalem who are “in the neighborhood” of up to two years. Even though this story is not read on Epiphany, there’s really no way to think of Epiphany without thinking of it.

            God does not stop the hand of Herod or wake up all the parents of babies in Bethlehem. Anyone who has ever lived in this world or read the Bible knows this is out of God’s character. Rarely does he show his hand. From the moment that Cain kills Abel, God seems to have a policy of stay the hell out of human affairs. This is our world and his involvement is on the sidelines, in time, in small ways, at last and not right away. Those who would argue against this are arguing on one hand against reality, but also forgetting that when the biblical God takes a more direct hand, bad things tend to happen. When God does take notice and intervene, floods destroy the world and arks have to be built. Babel Towers stop being constructed because everyone’s language is changed. Sodom and Gomorrah are burned up in sulphur and fire.

The psalmist joyfully sings of the days when Israel was out in the desert, and God lived with her, but in the actual books of Exodus, Numbers, Levitus and Deuteronomy, God’s proximity often means wrath, the earth opening up and swallowing disobedient people, leprosy spreading, serpents biting the wicked. From a biblical perspective the proximity of God, the eminence of God, also means the judgment of God and the swiftness of his punishments. One wonders if the biblical writers, like most of us, don’t actually prefer God up in his heaven, and for most of the lives we know, and for most of the Bible, believe it or not, heaven is where he stays.

As we watch Joseph and Mary ride away to Egypt let us remember that this very tension, of the God of justice we long for and the God of justice we fear, the eminence of God and his apparent distance are what the life of Jesus and the incarnation are all about.