"The Festival of the Holy Innocents"

Zoar Lutheran Church, Advent Paraments

First Sunday of Christmas, December 28, 2025

sermon by Pastor Peggy Luckman

Today is The Festival of the Holy Innocents - or the Feast of the Holy Innocents in churches around the world. It is a day to remember the children massacred by King Herod in his jealous rage over the possibility of someone else taking over his power.

It is a day we remember the story in the Gospel of Matthew of the Wise Ones who visited Jesus, and the movement of the Holy Family in the years of the infancy of Jesus.

I would like to share with you how the story impacted me this year, and hopefully speak about how we fit into the story in our time and place.

The theme that stood out for me this was displacement - - -the source of pain and sadness, the source of so much suffering.

As Mary and Joseph cared for their newborn baby, I suspect they were anticipating returning home with joy to show their baby to family and friends. But Joseph is warned in a dream to not return home, for there is danger there under King Herod. To be safe he must not take his family back to familiar surroundings, family and friends.

Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt. There they will be forced to deal with a strange language, different food and customs, unfamiliar surroundings. They will be refugees.

Why? because of Herod, an angry, immoral, vengeful, person, wanting to secure his power as King at any cost. When his chance to find the new King of the Jews fails, he orders the death of babies two years old and younger. Imagine the grief, the wailing, the lamenting, the brokenness.

As we just heard in the Children's time and the Gospel reading, Mary and Joseph and Jesus went to Egypt - a foreign land - until Herod would die, at which time they thought they could return home. In a dream Joseph learns Herod has died. "Go Joseph" he is told. "Take Mary and the little one and return home to Israel."

Let's not skip over that single sentence in this narrative. Let's pause for a moment and imagine the joy Joseph and Mary must have felt, how they must have been so happy as they thought about going back to their homeland.

So home they go to Israel, only to find that Archelaus (Ark-a-LAY-us) had replaced his father Herod. Joseph and Mary soon discover that Archelaus is even crueler than Herod had been. Roman powers didn't worry much about cruelty in their rulers, but Archelaus so cruel that eventually the Romans actually removed him.

Joseph we learn, felt unsafe under the rule of Archelaus, and in another dream he was told to go to Galilee, back to his hometown of Nazareth, which he does, and there he settles his family.

In Matthew we have no angels singing Alleluias. We have no adoring shepherds and their cuddly sheep. We have wise ones, who bring gifts. We have a threatened, jealous, murdering King, a family on the move, forced out of home, into a strange land, moving and moving again for safety in the early years of their life together as a young family.

Let's pause for just a moment to remember the meaning in the gifts that were given to Jesus:

Gold: for the King

Frankincense: burned on the alter in the holy of holies, signifying priesthood, honor, holiness; also used as anointing oil for royalty.

Myrrh: used for medicinal reasons, to ease pain, and as embalming oil.

Myrrh was offered to Jesus in wine when he was on the cross, maybe to ease the pain of his dying, which he refused to take. After he died, he was wrapped in a mixture containing Myrrh.

Now back to the story in early we see how God protected Jesus. As was posted in a video of our current bishop talking to the children, Jesus was a special baby. A very special baby.

Reading this passage in scripture this year wasn't just a story of events of long ago.

I felt hurt in my heart - as usual for Mary and Joseph and for the children under two that were massacred by Herod's forces. This year this passage made me think of the people today who are fleeing their beloved homeland or who are being forced to leave home and safety because of persecution, war, famine. I thought of refugees and of immigrants and US Citizens being taken from home and sent away, some to foreign lands where they know no one and where they are imprisoned in violent settings.

In thinking about the refugee Jesus, I decided to find out more about refugees today. The United Nations Refugee Agency reports 122 million people worldwide today have been forced to flee their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or disturbances in society that make for danger.

Over half of these 122 million people are children, 61 million holy and innocent children.

As of June this year when the total was a bit lower, there were over 42.5 million refugees, 67.8 million people displaced within the borders of their own countries, 8.42 million asylum seekers. There are also 4.4 million stateless people, who have been denied a nationality and so lack access to basic rights such as education, health care, employment and freedom of movement."

It is hard to imagine the numbers and what they mean, so let me give you another way to think about this: In June of 2025 331 million people lived in the United States.

The number of refugees and people forced to be on the move would be equivalent to just over a third of all the people in the U.S having to leave home and families to seek safety, shelter, and work. The hope in these people is the same as the hope Joseph had for his family- a safe place to raise his family, work, find schooling for the children.

Other people who came to mind in hearing todays reading from Matthew are the 68,400 people in detention by ICE today.Think of the number of families that involves, having spent this last Christmas separated. Over the coarse of this policy in our country 527,000 people have been arrested. These numbers represent families divided, many with with children. These are families now broken, deportations and possible separation forever. These arrests and deportations and broken families include children - the holy and innocent ones.

In the spirit of Christ, what can we do to respond to such an enormous world-wide crisis and our nation's crisis?

Here is some of what is being done today:

Resettling today's refugees is being done through many agencies around the world. The United Nations Relief Agency, has been doing this work and recording statistics since the end of WWII. Today the number of refugees is at it's highest number worldwide. We can support the work they are doing to help people who are refugees today.

As people connected with the church, supporting Lutheran World Relief is another way we can respond to the refugee crisis today. In 2025, in just one area and one way of supporting refugees, Lutheran World Relief provided people in 15 countries around the world with almost 316 thousand quilts, over 179 thousand school kits, almost 232 thousand personal care kits, almost 67 thousand baby care kits, and over 9 thousand fabric kits. That is over 800,000 quilts and kits for people in desperate need.

When many individual churches are united together, connectional churches such as Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and other denominations are able to offer these massive acts of compassion and care, thus having a large impact on thousands people in refugee camps and other challenging settings.

You have heard many numbers in the past few minutes. These numbers represent Love in action. Christ present through human beings today. These actions are Christ's kind of love that cares for the vulnerable and the suffering.

In 2025 this church provided close to 200 quilts and 100 personal care kits, many stuffed animals for kids, hats, scarves, and gloves that have been locally distributed to people in need. Imagine being displaced, struggling deeply financially, possibly being homeless in our communities, and being offered a warm quilt, or a stuffed toy to remind you that you matter, or a warm hat, gloves, and scarves to keep you warm.

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Imagine now being a family wanting and willing to welcome a child into their home through adoption but not having the funds, and a group of faithful Christians makes that adoption possible. A holy and innocent child will have a home - love has found a way through you.

It is all connected. Suffering, displacement, separation is real, from large masses of relocating people in war torn countries around the world to individuals in local communities who are being arrested or deported, to people living in difficult or challenging circumstances.

And how and why do we choose to find our faith-directed place in all of it?

The why is in the name of the little refugee baby, that special child of long ago with the face and heart of God. He has shown us how to love and called us to be compassionate and caring people toward the suffering people of today. So one by one we find the way that is meaningful to us, and we respond. The need is always before us. What will your response be in the days to come? Might you consider some action in response to the refugee crisis in your New Year's resolutions? Might this be one way you worship the Bethlehem baby, by remembering his refugee years and offering something of your self to the refugees of today?

Please pray with me.

God who is love, hear us as we pray for the millions of people in refugee camps around the world.

We thank you for the people serving in the camps by providing shelter, food, and attending to needs of refugees. Grant them sustaining strength, and bless them and the people they serve.

We pray for the children, today's holy innocents, for their safety, for their precious spirits of resilience.

We pray for people who are forcing other people from their homes and homelands through acts of violence, war, and terror.

We pray for the people affected by nature, storms and floods, who have become homeless and displaced.

We pray for the children and families affected policies about housing, food, medical care, and family separation in this country and around the world.

We pray for an awakening to compassion in our policy makers, and courage to act as Christ would act. We pray for solutions without cruelty to problems we face today.

We pray for awareness of the presence of Christ.

We offer thanks for the people working with refugees and others displaced today, people in the United Nations Refugee Agency, Lutheran World Relief, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, and the like.

We pray that the Spirit of Love will move throughout the world and bring hope to the hopeless, presence to the displaced until homes can be arranged and people settled in places of safety again.

We pray that wars and violence may come to an end.

We pray that deep compassion and a desire to respond to people who are suffering will be in the hearts and the actions of the privileged.

We pray that these prayers be answered for the sake of all your beloved people, as we remember the refugee baby of long ago who came and showed us the way of Love.

Amen