holy innocents

I have been contemplating Holy Innocents today - with no real resolution. The truth is, and I suspect I am not the only one, that I fin it a difficult commemoration. It is not a pretty story. It is the sort of atrocity which there is no ignoring and to which there is no reasoned explanation.

In Biblical terms Herod's flight of fury against these children mirror Pharoah's fury with the Israelites at the time of Moses birth - Moses fled to the Egyptian court in the arms of its princess - Jesus parent's fled to Egypt. The link is obvious - but it does not overcome the tragedy.

That terrible things are perpetrated by human beings is no secret. That is breaks God's heart (to anthtropomorphise) is not hard to understand. But why do terrible and evil things continue to happen.

I have heard many explanations of evil but I have found that the more people try to pin the whys and wherefores of wickedness down the more nebulous it seems to become. It is like trying to wrap a large present with not quite enough gift wrap on the end of the last roll - you tug and pull and it falls off here and there - and if you are unlucky you pull too hard and the whole thing tears in half.

I do not have a simple answer that fits neatly into a blog - but I do believe that the incarnation - this coming of Jesus means that God is somewhere in all of our suffering. This is not just a hopeful excuse for not having an answer - it is a heart of being. I do not know why human beings cannot tie things up tightly in neat packages and make ourselves a lot more perfect than we are - but we can't. And at that point we need Jesus, we need to be returned to God.

It is through these eyes of our own return - through eyes which have witnessed a wonderful thing in Jesus' birth - that we witness the tragedy of Holy Innocents - not, I think, in order to convict ourselves but in order to see that we live in a world where evil fear the good and will go to great lengths to ensure evil's own victory.