David R. Mueller, pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church of Goodland, Indiana and St. John’s Lutheran Church of Rensselaer, Indiana.

St. Matthew 2:13-18

            Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more.

            Have you ever listened to Rachels weeping? Or perhaps you are yourself Rachel. The groans and screams of a pain that begins in the very womb that carried your child; a pain that is itself the pain of death, but you still live, and so it is a tiny temporal sample of that deathly pain that has no end. Refusing to be comforted, for in this life, there will be no end to the pain.

            Death of any kind is evil and horrible. Death is the wrenching separation of people whom our Father did not create be separated. But I’ve thought about it a lot in the last three years, and I truly cannot imagine any pain greater than the death of your own child. For one thing, in your child God has given you a most profound participation in His own loving creation. And in your child you see a promise of the future. You see the miraculous gift and promise of God for now and for the rest of your life in this age, and even in the Age to come. When you hold your newborn in your arms, you are holding an amazing gift of hope. But when you put the body of your own child into the ground, that future is cut off. Hope and anticipation has ended.

            Every child conceived is a gift of God, a gift of hope. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. Every faithful Israelite mother knew that there was one Singular Masculine Seed promised by God to be born of a woman who would crush the serpents head, destroy Satan’s power over the whole world. So marriage and procreation was an act of faith in that promise. Every missed monthly time for an Israelite wife was a moment of Hope in Gods Promise for her and for the whole nation, even if they didn’t think of it consciously in that way.

            But for the mothers of Bethlehem, well, its no wonder they refused to be comforted, for in their arms this hope lies dead. Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more. Certainly, someday God would keep His promise. Indeed, in the One who escapes Herod, He has now kept that Promise. But now, today, for the mother of Bethlehem, there is no future. There is no hope, for that down payment on, reminder of the Promise that is her own infant son, even though he isn’t that Seed of the Woman, is no more.

            Dear friends, do you realize what the battle over abortion really is? It is a war over hope. Every death of a child, even in abortion, is all about hopelessness. In this horrific, satanic monstrosity of choice, of freedom, forced upon our whole country by 7 black-robed men on this day 47 years ago, the forces of hopelessness took hold. The truth is that every abortive mother has been deceived, in some way, into believing that the presence of that child in her womb robs her of hope. That deception comes in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, it’s the deception of hopelessness in a life trapped in poverty, in the violence of a neighborhood, the violence of a twisted version of the one-flesh relationship with the unborn child’s father. Sometimes, its the lie of hopelessness regarding one’s own career future—that if I don’t abort my child, I will never reach the goal I have of winning a golden statue or other great fame and wealth. Sometimes, its a deception of pressure from the outside, from the father, from parents, from friends, from the culture of death as a whole; sometimes it’s a miserable, selfish self-deception.  But the fact of the matter is that whatever deceptions lead the mother into that hopelessness, it is still a culpable, sinful hopelessness. For hopelessness, in the end, is unbelief in the Word and Promise of God.

Indeed, here is another horribly frightening aspect to all this: Any nation and society that institutionalizes such hopelessness by legalizing such murder is well on its way to societal suicide. And after decades of this, in places all around the world, after literally billions of children murdered, isn’t it obvious that our whole human race is hopeless, culpably hopeless?

            And every single abortive mother bears the lifelong wound of that hopelessness, whether she will acknowledge it or not, in the deepest recesses of her heart and soul. And the devil is constantly prodding that wound, always trying to push her farther and farther into despair and pride. And though the violence was not perpetrated literally within his own body, that scar is there for the abortive father, too, whether he wanted the abortion or not. For the woman is deceived, but the man stands by and either will not or is not allowed to defend her and her child, and thus, he bears his own culpable, sinful hopelessness.

            Certainly, in this Holy Innocents Gospel reading from Matthew, you can see in Herod the very antithesis of what a father and husband is created by our Father to be. In contrast, by the grace of God, Joseph is the icon of a real man, who bears the image of the True Father, by hearkening to the Word of the Father sent to him through the angel in his dream. He didnt hesitate; he didnt wait even until daylight, but when he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, to a place of safety.

            But of course, Herod is the forerunner and icon of those seven so-called justices of 1973, and of Planned Parenthood, and of all those who have sought to overcome their own hopelessness and sinfulness and death through the destruction of the life of the weakest and most helpless. But Satan himself, the deceiver, the liar, the murderer from the beginning, he stood behind Herod. He stood behind those seven blood-stained men in Washington. He stands behind every abortionist. With his lying, murdering words and whispers of selfishness and hopelessness he stands behind every one of us who actively supports this bloody hopelessness, behind every one of us who passively participates in the oceans of blood, when we won’t speak or act to defend and protect the child in the womb and his mother from the lies of the serpent, and the weapons of the clinic and the pharmacy.

But then, with all this in mind, perhaps the lie of the serpent isn’t such a lie. We really are pretty hopeless in our sinfulness.

Nevertheless…!

 

Ah, what availed King Herod’s wrath?

He could not stop the Savior’s path.

Alone, while others murdered lay,

In safety Christ is borne away.

 

Ride on, King Jesus! No man can hinder Thee! No earthly king, no earthly court, not the entire mass of sinful humanity, and not even the prince of this world, the devil. The infant Savior has a road to travel, and helpless Child though He be, He will travel it all the way. His path leads down to Egypt, to the place of a far greater slaughter of Israelite sons 1500 years before. Then it leads back to Israel, to Nazareth of Galilee; then down to the Jordan River where John baptizes Him for our sake, and then points to Him and declares Him to be the Lamb of God who lifts up [upon Himself] the sin of the world. And then He carries it all along His path, finally down to Jerusalem and out to Calvary. And there, He is crucified, and His Life is poured out for this whole world full to the brim with sin and death. Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities…and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. For the sake of every sinful, hopeless, abandoned mother, every Rachel weeping in her soul for her dead child; for the sake of every cowardly, hopeless father; for the sake of every hopeless king, judge, and politician; for the sake of every human being hopelessly sinful from the moment of conception, He becomes The abandoned, hopeless One for eternity in those hours on the cross: Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani? In order to restore to us Hope—the Hope that cannot and will not disappoint. What is Gods answer to the incomprehensible horror of abortion? The death of His own beloved Son for all those children, mothers, fathers for all of us with blood guilt on our hands.

 

Here the King of all the ages,

Throned in light e’er worlds could be,

Robed in mortal flesh is dying,

Crucified by sin for me!

O mysterious condescending!

O abandonment sublime!

Very God Himself is suffering

All the sufferings of time!

 

Thus says the LORD: Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; There is hope in your future, says the LORD, That your children shall come back to their own country.

Dear mother or father, grieving for your child in soul and body, there is Hope for you, for the sake of Gods own Son, and hope for your children. Surely, He has borne your griefs and carried your sorrows. Know that Jesus Himself, who bore your sin, knows and carries every ounce of your grief, and is here even in His Body crucified and blood shed for you, to carry you through every moment of pain, and to be your unshakeable ground of Hope through all the days of your life, and into the Life to Come. And know that Jesus, the eternal Son of God, became Man, fully and truly for us from the moment of His own conception in Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that He could redeem all men even from the moment of our conception. There is hope in your future, says the LORD, That your children shall come back to their own country. There is hope in Christ the crucified.

Dear mother or father, brother or sister, terrified and burdened by the blood you know you have on your own hands and hearts: that infant Son of Mary was saved from Herod for the sake of His death on the cross for you. And now, Jesus lives, and you live in Him. And He is here now, even from the altar in His true Body and Blood to strengthen and preserve you in the certainty that no matter how great your sin, His forgiveness is even greater.

 

Sins debt, that fearful burden, cannot His love erase;

Your guilt the Lord will pardon and cover by His grace.

He comes for you procuring the Peace of sin forgiv’n,

His children thus securing Eternal Life in heaven.

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

 

This sermon was preached by Fr. Mueller at a Divine Service prior to the Indianapolis, Indiana March for Life on January 22nd, 2020.