Rachel Weeping
Matthew 2:13-18

Feast of the Holy Innocents, 2003

It has been said that King Herod was a combination of Saul and Solomon. In His person he mixed the cruel tragedy of King Saul with the successful materialism of King Solomon. On the solomonic side of his personality, he was a brilliant politician and highly efficient at getting things done. Herod was able to build colossal buildings throughout the Near East. He constructed everything: fountains and baths, theatres and stadiums, gymnasiums and amphitheatres, citadels and highways, colonnades and harbors. Few people were as enthusiastic about athletic contests as Herod. He was the one who revived the Olympic Games and made them famous after they had almost vanished. Of course, rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem was his lifework. In order to surpass Solomon he made his Temple much higher and wider. His builders covered the exterior with gates of gold, fittings of silver, and exceptionally white stone. The glitter of the stone and the gleam of the gold reflected many miles away in the bright sun. Dazzled travelers regarded it as one of the great wonders of the world.

What about the other side of his personality, the part that mirrors the cruelty of King Saul? Historian Paul Johnson describes him like this: "he was naïve, superstitious, grotesquely self-indulgent and hovering on the brink of insanity ­ sometimes over it." Why a reputation for madness? Paranoia could propel him into paroxysms of unspeakable cruelty. Exterminating anyone who seemed a threat became normal policy for King Herod. Jealousy caused him to turn even against his own family. He started out by drowning his brother-in-law. Then he killed his wife on the pretext that she had attempted to poison him. After killing his mother-in-law, he had soldiers strangle two of his sons. His suspicion and reckless brutality led him finally to massacre the babies of Bethlehem.

That story of the slaughter of innocent babies is told in our Gospel lesson from Matthew. The wise men informed Herod that a King of the Jews had been born in Bethlehem. The Magi assured Herod that as soon as they discovered the whereabouts of this king they would come back and let him know. In a lovely piece of deceit the wise men, after finding Jesus, and worshipping Him, never returned to notify Herod. The Magi escaped to the East while the holy family escaped to Egypt. Angels had told them to do this. Herod, however, thought the baby king was still in Bethlehem. He simply didn't know which one it was. What was Herod's solution to the problem of not knowing which child to kill? Kill them all, every boy-child under two.

His henchmen pulled babies from the arms of screaming mothers and ran them through with a sword. The little town of Bethlehem wailed with grief. This butchery fulfilled a horrible prophecy: Rachel weeping. Matthew 2:15 cites Jeremiah 31:15, "A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, because they were no more."

Since January 22, 1973 when the Supreme Court legalized abortion, it has become the custom in the Church to use the feast of Holy Innocents as a time to take up the topic of abortion. Approximately 35 million unborn American children have been legally killed. Bishop Grote has charged the ministers of our diocese to preach a pro-life sermon at least once a year on this date. Our goal is to educate and eventually halt the Herod-like slaughter of the unborn. [I borrow freely from Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews; R.C. Sproul's, Abortion; and Marvin Olasky's, Abortion Rites.]

Let's begin with the personhood of pre-born babies. Does the Bible tell us when human life begins? No, not explicitly. But it does show God concerned with unborn babies just as He is with you and me. Several Bible passages bring this out. Reading them one gets the impression that babies in the womb are little people. Psalm 139:13 says, "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed." That word "unformed" is the translation for the Hebrew word "embryo." In other words, God was molding this baby in the womb. The prophet Isaiah has a similar thing to say, "The LORD has called Me from the womb; From the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name" (Isaiah 49:1-5). God called Isaiah while in the amniotic sack. If this is not a case of pre-natal regeneration, then at the very least, God is doing some serious spiritual formation on Isaiah. Jeremiah undergoes a parallel experience. God tells him, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5). God had personal knowledge of Jeremiah before Jeremiah was born. The Lord was sanctifying him in the uterus.

The New Testament provides another passage along these lines. Luke 1:41 depicts Elizabeth encountering Mary. They are both pregnant. The Virgin Mary is carrying Jesus, the incarnate Son of God while Elizabeth is six months with John the Baptist. The text says that when Mary greets Elizabeth, "the babe leaped in her womb." The presence of the Messiah in Mary's womb caused baby John to leap for joy while in the matrix. Somehow, before John was born, he exhibited cognition and emotion. What conclusions can we draw from these passages? Though the Bible never says directly that life begins at conception, it nevertheless strongly implies it.

Science shows amazing things taking place early in the pregnancy. The more we learn about pre-natal life the more we see how quickly the baby develops and becomes a tiny human being. You have probably seen the pictures of babies sucking their thumbs three months after conception. Two weeks after conception there is a discernible heartbeat. After six weeks, fingers form on the hands. At forty-three days the unborn baby has detectable brain waves. By nine weeks the fetus has developed a unique set of fingerprints. By the end of the twelfth week the baby can cry. In three months time a separate and truly unique individual has come into being.

Given the speedy development of a baby how did the Supreme Court majority justify their decision to allow abortion on demand? They based it on a constitutional "right to privacy." Is the "right to privacy" written in the Constitution? No, not in the least! The justices pulled it out of thin air. What does the right to privacy have to do with abortion? According to the pro-choice people, a woman has a right to her own body. It is none of the state's business whether a woman terminates her pregnancy or chooses to carry it to term. Abortion is a private decision. The government has no business intruding into a personal and difficult choice a pregnant lady must make. Why? She has a right to privacy. This has been a successful argument for the pro-choice side.

How do we respond to it? Part of the response is to point out the quick development of the fetus in the womb. A pregnant woman's decision to abort is a death sentence for a separate human being created in God's image. There is simply no denying that fact. The unborn baby rapidly gets a brain, a heart, and fingerprints ­ a unique identity, which is not merely personal but is also physical. The fetus has a different structure and essence from that of the mother. DNA, the genetic makeup of cells, dramatically marks off the difference. Analyze any two cells from the mother and the DNA will be the same. But take the DNA from a cell of the baby and it will be different from the DNA of the mother. This indicates that, at the physical biological level, there is a clear line of demarcation between the body of the fetus and the body of the mother. [Sproul, p. 104] That being the case, a woman's right to privacy is not all that private. Her decision involves somebody else too.

Does the pro-life side disapprove completely to an individual's right to privacy? Do we enjoy governmental intrusion? No. Up against big government, privacy rights actually make a lot of sense. We detest the prospect of a Big Brother monitoring our every action and eavesdropping on our every word. Totalitarian tyrannies like the Soviet Union and Pol Pot's Cambodia were so invasive that they became hells on earth. Paraguay once had a dictator named Doctor Francia. His title was "El Supremo" the Supreme One, and he ruled Paraguay with an iron fist for forty years. El Supremo made a law that you had to keep open all the windows in your home. Why? He wanted to make sure nobody was doing anything bad, like planning his overthrow. He had spies sneaking around, snooping into people's houses, and listening to their conversations. You could be thrown in jail for closing the shutters of your windows. We can be thankful for the locks we have on our doors and the curtains we have on our windows. We appreciate some privacy. But the question remains: does the right to privacy include the right to have an abortion? Is the right to privacy an absolute right? Can we do anything we want as long as we do it in private? Does God, for example, give us the right to blaspheme Him as long as we don't do it publicly? Do I have the right to murder someone or disfigure his property as long as I do it in privacy? Obviously not! There are limitations to the right to privacy. And surely the right to life is greater than the right to privacy. If a fetus is a human life, then the Supreme Court erred in granting the destruction of the fetus under the application of the right of privacy.

In his book on abortion, R.C. Sproul tells about his own daughter delivering a stillborn baby. In the ninth month his daughter noticed that an entire day had passed with no feeling of fetal movement. She called her doctor, and he examined her immediately. His response was grim. "I am sorry, but your baby has died."

Sproul continues relating what happened, "The next day my daughter was admitted to the hospital and labor was induced. She endured the labor experience knowing in advance that she would give birth to a stillborn baby. After the baby ­ a girl ­ was delivered, the nurses cleansed the body and took photographs. The baby was given a name, and measurements were recorded in the hospital records. The nurses then brought the dead child into my daughter's room ­ giving her, her husband, my wife and me the opportunity to hold the baby. This was not an extraordinary or macabre experience, but the customary practice. The nurses explained that by giving the parents an opportunity to hold the stillborn baby and to say "goodbye," the grief process for the lost child would be less severe As I held the child, I wondered how it was possible that anyone could think that the baby was not a human being two days earlier."

Is it any wonder that women suffer trauma after having an abortion? The psychological guilt and sorrow following the termination of a pregnancy is called post-abortion syndrome. One young lady shared her feelings. She said, "I envy a mother who goes to weep beside her baby's grave; because she knows where it is laid, and remembers how it looked in life, and is not ashamed to say, "I have lost a child." And when I hear mothers lamenting over such a loss, I pity them indeed; but I feel like saying to them, 'You think you are deeply afflicted, but your trouble is really light, because it is not mingled with remorse, and you are not to blame for the infant's death.' Truly, all sorrow that I have ever known or heard of is not to be compared with my sorrow, and that of others who have sinned in like manner!"

The women of Bethlehem wept when Herod murdered their babies. St. Matthew called it "Rachel weeping." "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" (Matthew 2:18). Today in America millions of Rachels are weeping, not due to miscarriage, or accident. They weep because they fell for the lies of Planned Parenthood, and the pro-choice rhetoric.

What can the Church do? Worship is our first responsibility. The preaching of God's Word, and celebration of the Sacraments produces the power to turn the tide of public opinion and save the lives of the unborn. Worship is always our first response.

Second, we promote adoption. There are millions of families who yearn to adopt a child, no matter what the race or physical deformity. With so many married couples looking to adopt, no baby should be aborted. Let's not forget the young lady who has to carry this baby for nine months. She faces the nausea and discomfort of pregnancy. She faces parental disapproval and shame. She also faces the Hollywood fad of raising a baby without a father. That option should be vigorously rejected. The Church encourages her to let the baby be born, and the Church encourages her to give it up for adoption. The choice should always be for a child to be raised by a mother and father who are married.

Then Christian individuals and families can get involved politically. We should try to persuade people of the serious immorality of abortion. How? Speak to the people you work with. Speak to the waitress. Speak to your neighbors. Speak to your friends. Speak especially to Christians on the fence. Let us be committed to defending unborn human life.

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