In Christmas pageants, I have played most of the male roles-Joseph, a wise man, a shepherd, and even a sheep. I have directed pageants and watched my children in them. I have yet to see Herod’s massacre of the innocents portrayed, or even mentioned off-stage by the narrator. That would end the pageant with a dark note. What Christmas carol would you sing afterwards? But here it is, following the magi’s visit. The slaughter of the innocents only shows up every third year in our lectionary, on this Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s, where church attendance is sparse.
Therefore, you can imagine my surprise to find this scene portrayed in a church. On Sabbatical in Italy in 2019, Jeanne and I squeezed in Siena on our way to Florence. After 9 days biking through Umbria near Assisi, we had seen numerous artistic portrayals of the Nativity, tender Madonna and child, Annunciations galore, and the adoration of the Magi. We entered the Duomo of Sienna, with a crush of tourists. We all immediately looked up at the massive dome, ringed with the busts of popes up to the moment of construction. The walls and pillars are stripped, made with alternating layers of white and green-black marble.
It was some time before I looked down, and there it was—a 30-foot-wide marble-tiled mosaic of Herod’s massacre of the innocents. Women are weeping, swords are still drawn, one baby is being tossed through the air, and lifeless infants are strewn across the floor. I said to Jeanne, “Well, here’s an under-utilized motif in church art. I always thought our floor would be well-suited to a marble mosaic of murder.” How could anyone pay attention to a sermon with all this stimulation? If I had gone to church here when I was seven, I would have asked to stand at this spot every Sunday to gaze at the mayhem.
The deeper question on my mind was-why was this there in the Cathedral anyway? Who commissioned it? What was the occasion? Who was the artist, and what was the point? We might ask the same of Matthew. Neither John’s Gospel nor Mark’s even bothered to have any birth narratives about Jesus. Mark launches straight in with John the Baptist. The writer in John’s Gospel gets philosophical about Jesus as the Word in the beginning and the light shining in the darkness. Luke pays a great deal of attention to Mary-the Annunciation, the Magnificat, the journey to Bethlehem, no room at the inn; but leaves out wise men and Herod. So, let’s look at Matthew’s Christmas pageant, to see why violence invades the gentle nativity. Then look at how the mosaic came into being in Siena.
Here is the Christmas pageant according to Matthew. First, he starts with genealogies, with 14 generations between Abraham and David, and 14 more between David and Jesus. You love genealogies, right? Where did we come from? Is there any royal blood, great heroes, villains, big adventures? Matthew wants us to know the highs and lows of what was in Jesus’ blood. He is from the lineages of Abraham, Ruth, and Boaz, and from kings like David, Solomon, and Hezekiah. He is from the mainstream of Israel’s story. Joseph’s line has endured Babylonian exile and now languishes under Roman exile.
We all inherit stories from our lineage. The Weirs were Presbyterian Covenanters, driven from their land in Scotland by the Catholic King, James I. The Kernens were Jews who left Switzerland during a pogrom and became Methodists in Iowa Issues around religious persecution and freedom are in my blood.
Matthew sprinkles his Gospel with dozens of prophecies from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah, pointing to the Messiah. Jesus is of David’s line through Joseph, but he is also of the prophet’s line, through the Holy Spirit.
Next the pageant returns to Joseph. He is grinding out a living, found a decent bride, but learns she is pregnant. He is a decent guy, so he seeks to divorce her quietly without shame for either of them, until angels get involved in his dreams. This child is from the Holy Spirit. Today, we might think this is nuts, a weird dream. But then many great leaders were believed to be born of the gods, such as Achilles and Alexander the Great. The gods chose people who changed the world.
The Magi arrive, giving an interfaith blessing to Jesus’s status. Even the stars in heaven get involved. This prophecy gets Herod’s attention, which leads to the atrocity in this morning’s scripture. The Holy Family’s flight into Egypt gives us a clue to Matthew’s intention throughout his Gospel. Matthew’s Gospel portrays Jesus fulfilling the work of Moses. The central Jewish story of the liberation from Egypt is being repeated. Herod is going to play the role of Pharaoh and kill the children who could be a threat. Remember, Moses escaped the massacre by floating down the Nile in a basket.
How do you know power has become too corrupt? When leaders decide to sacrifice the innocent, God will raise a leader to liberate people from despotism. That is what his Christmas pageant is telling the reader. It is why the story of the slaughter needs to be there. While there is no independent documentation for this event, it is entirely consistent with Herod’s nature. He murdered brothers and sons to protect his throne, so the story rings true. Matthew is also telling us that God does not let oppression stand. People often question why God allows terrible things happen in the first place. Matthew leaves the blame with human actions, but God does not stand idle. God will stir a response to make the world bend toward justice.
So, what about the cathedral floor in Siena? What is going on there? Matteo Di Giovanni commissioned the marble floor in the 1480s in memory of the massacre of the Italian city of Otranto. The Ottoman Turks tried one last time to invade southern Italy, landing 18,000 troops near the town of Otranto. The 800 inhabitants left in the city held out for 15 days under bombardment, refusing to surrender even when offered clemency. Once the walls were breached, the few survivors were slaughtered or sent into slavery, including all the children. Those 15 days gave the King of Naples time to fortify neighboring cities and gather an army to drive the Ottomans out of Europe for the last time. Throughout Italy, these martyrs were venerated for their courage and faith and actually canonized in 2013 by Pope Francis. In this sense, the marble mosaic is a memorial to lives lost but not forgotten, much like the 9/11 memorial in New York City.
As I stood there, I could feel the power of the scene for a 15th-century Sienese citizen. For them, the threat was real. History could have gone in a different direction. I wondered if anyone had stood there and wondered about all the Muslim and Jewish children who were also killed with as much brutality throughout the five major crusades to recapture Jerusalem, wars fought as much for plunder and control of trade routes as for faith. I wondered what it meant for people now.
Matthew’s story of Herod’s ruthlessness keeps playing out in real time. While I was first surprised such violence would be portrayed in church, I think it is good that sometimes our hearts are broken when we gather to sing and pray. Not all hymns can be “Joy to the World,” and not all sermons are inspirational. If we don’t allow the heartbreaking misfortune and injustice into our liturgy, then we likely won’t find the will and courage to resist the subsequent massacre. Can we recognize God’s work in the midst of injustice?
Herod does not only live in palaces. He appears wherever power secures itself by sacrificing the innocent to further wealth and an unjust status quo. And the Gospel asks us—not simply what we believe—but whether we will cooperate with that logic, or listen for the dream that calls us another way.
When the preservation of order matters more than the protection of the vulnerable—when harm is explained as necessary, regrettable, unavoidable—what do we accept? What do we excuse?
Matthew tells us that everything was at stake with God’s plan for Jesus. What if the Magi or Joseph had not listened to their warning dreams? Who else unwittingly assisted Mary and Joseph on their journey, perhaps at great cost or risk to themselves? They were part of God’s plan for humanity, simply by doing the right thing, helping one family survive. Sometimes God’s plan—the hope for the world—is that small and precarious, waiting for us to participate. And you may be the one the story is waiting for, the one who refuses to cooperate with harm, who does the next right thing.
