It leaves the viewers in shock -- the evening news this week documenting the arrest of a parent in Toronto, charged with failing to provide the necessities of life to a newborn. The child is dead - abused.
Or the account of a a grown man defending his right to read, own and distribute child pornography. Celebrating a victory in the courts.
Or pictures from war zones of children in pain - hungry children because fighting sides won't allow food convoys through; wounded children; children executed in blatant acts of genocide.
How?
Why?
It's part of a long, a centuries-long, story of horror.
The horror of war and violation.
It's the story of the human race and how evil descends on it in deadly ways with distressing regularity.

This morning's bible reading is another blood-filled and heart-wrenching chapter out of that distorted human story. Life. New life. Life abruptly ended.

Let's read it together -

It all begins so nicely, so sweetly, so beautifully.
The way Christmas should be - little baby Jesus, wise men kneeling before this baby pauper king.
Almost a fairy tale aura to it.

So why this abrupt turn of events?
What do blood-stained cribs have to do with the coming of Christ?
What possible sense does it make?
What word of hope and comfort can possibly be given to the mothers with breasts full of milk and no child to suckle?

The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. Given historical estimates of the size of this town, it would seem that about 15-20 babies were probably murdered. Killed by order of a madman king. We've seen such people at work in our own day - Hitler, Stalin, Amin, Hussein, Milosovich.

King Herod stopped at nothing to protect his power and position. He murdered his own wife, his three sons, his mother-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his uncle, and whomever else posed a threat to his throne. He arranged the murder of his son Antipater while he was lying on his deathbed. In his will, Herod commanded that the leading men of the Jewish nation be rounded up and executed publicly at the time of his death, to ensure "an honorable mourning at the time of his funeral." Caesar Augustus once sneered that it would be safer to be a pig in Herod's pen than a son in his house.
The Bethlehem slaughter is just a blip on the screen of his life.

Leaving us to ask - What sense can we make of all this?
The short and blunt answer is - very little.
It is a totally senseless act.
There is no glory, no light, no hope in it.

It is a story of horrible intrusion - the intrusion of death and evil into Bethlehem.
Some of you have been in that space. Faced with some evil act in your life, or face to face with what is from a human perspective untimely death. And you sense down in the deepest corners of your being that it doesn't fit. It wasn't originally meant to be this way.
And you are right to sense this. Destructive acts, and the very presence of death were NOT built-in elements of creation; they were not part of the original package deal.
Order.
Life.
That's what God designed.

Human rebellion against God and Satan's evil presence changed all that. Creation fell under judgement. A curse descended on it. Pain, frustration, sickness, bondage and death have been the order of things ever since.
And conflict. God promised that He would work to undo the curse; to bring back life. Satan, the dark intruder, works to inject as much harm, chaos and pain as possible. Between them is war. Earth is the theater of operations.

Christmas is the turning point in the war. Jesus Christ, son of God, laid aside His heavenly glory and became one with the human race. He came to live a perfect life and walk the road to Hell so that we wouldn't have to.
He came to face Satan right in the middle of the chaos and pain, and beat this evil tyrant at his own game.

For those of you with a sense of Bible history, you may notice that in Jesus' flight to Egypt, his time there, and eventual return - in that He was retracing the history of Israel. Israel began as a family who fled sure death by famine and found shelter in Egypt under the protection of Joseph. Eventually they returned and settled in Palestine.
Jesus, new and perfect Israel, goes down to Egypt to find shelter under the protection of Joseph, and eventually returns to settle in Palestine.

The ancient nation of Israel faced annihilation because of the desperate rulings of a power-hungry Pharaoh. All males were to be drowned in the Nile to make sure that Israel didn't become powerful. But their leader, Moses, is spared and leads the people to freedom from slavery.
Here power-hungry Herod kills all the young males so that his power isn't threatened. But the new Moses, Jesus, is spared in order to grow up and one day provide freedom from the horrible slavery to sin.

But along the way,
oh - along the way, what horrible pain there is!
There was pain for ancient Israelite mothers in Egypt.
There was pain for the mothers in Bethlehem.
No comfort for them!

And as we see their tears, and hear their cries, we come to sense just how great the destruction and chaos is that sin has brought to earth.
Awful, insane, random sheer horror.

Which is how Satan works - bent on chaos and destruction. Wherever and however possible.
I think that sometimes in our Western society one of the greatest victories Satan has achieved is to have people underestimate his power and aims. We laugh at little devil jokes and smile benignly at children dressed in little red costumes at Halloween. Many shrug it off as pre-scientific superstition. Most, I think, simply ignore it all.
And what a victory for Satan!
That gives him all kinds of room to maneuver undetected.

Here, however, we see evil fully unmasked in all its dark power and horror.
This is what Jesus came to conquer.
This is what Jesus came to set creation free from.
This is the enemy in the war.
Jesus comes to reconquer creation for the Lord of Life and to cast out the evil intruder. Who fights back. In picture language Revelation 12:13-13:1 describes the rage of the Devil.
It is warfare. Matthew 2 tells us about some of the casualties of this war as Satan lashes out, attempting to derail God's plan of salvation and kill Jesus. And like in all war, children are caught in the crossfire.
It is warfare, and like all war it is painful, messy. No slick answers.

Warfare is chaotic. Especially for those on the front lines. In the movie Thin Red Line two two GI's talk in the midst of battle. The one says, "What difference can one person make in all this madness?" He couldn't see it because he was right there in the middle of it, with people dying everywhere. Only the generals in the back, seeing the big picture, fully understood.
We are on the front lines of the conflict here on earth. And often we don't understand how things happen or why. We don't get it why a young father has to be killed in the auto accident. Or why the mother of 3 gets cancer. Parents don't get it when they have to bury one of their children.
It makes no sense.
And in confusion and darkness they sob, desperate for some hope.

Like we do. As we read this story
And as we enter the hospital;
Or stand by an open grave;
Or struggle through life with chronic pain;
Or watch our family fall apart.
We, too, need hope!

Hope comes today, my friends, as a a single candle in a dark, stormy night.
Hope says that though Satan uses the lunatic Herod to try and kill Christ, he doesn't succeed.
Death doesn't have the final word.
Jesus lives.

Later in the life of Jesus there would be another threat. Luke 4.28-30 describes how people try to throw Him off a cliff. He escapes death again.

And then, in the greatest battle, Jesus hangs on a cross. He dies. And it seems as if this time Satan has won; as if the war is over and God has lost; as if Christmas was in vain, and the battle of Bethlehem didn't matter.

But Easter comes.
And the grave cannot hold down Jesus.
He rises back to life.
And death - the inky power that has swallowed so many of our loved ones, that ripped the babies of Bethlehem out of the arms of their mothers -
- death meets its ultimate match.

Jesus rises to life, never to die again.
As 1 Corinthians 15 says, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

Jesus rises to life.
And all who give their lives to Him in faith will rise to eternal life, too.
Death will not be allowed to hold them in eternal darkness. Satan will have no claim on their soul. Hell will never swallow them.
So it is in this hope that we can go to the cemetery and lay the bodies of loved ones to rest.

In the promise and surity that the war will one day finally come to an end, we can continue to combat evil where we see it.
For it still continues to spread damage, even though the final outcome is certain. One theologian used an analogy from WWII. In that war the turning point came at D-Day. The allies invaded the beaches of Normandy, broke through German defenses and began the push towards Berlin. The end was certain.
But many people - perhaps some of your family - died between June, 1944 and May, 1945 when the surrender finally happened. Enemy soldiers killed many and destroyed much as they retreated.
D-Day happened when Jesus faced death on the cross and eluded its grasp the last time through His resurrection at Easter.
But final surrender is yet to come.

That the war still goes on is very evident:
· The UN reports that between 1985-95, over two million children have died a violent death.
· Since 1992, there are more than 100,000 abortions annually in Canada (EFC).
· 33,000 people die of starvation every day (1 person every 2.6 seconds).•Many young people today feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness about the future, the sort of hopelessness Alanis Morissette sings about.
Yes - the war against Satan and his evil attempts to destroy God's Kingdom, His good earth, and anyone/anything on it -
- the war continues.

We are in the middle of it.
Remember that. Remember the Bible's challenge to be ready as a Christian to fight for the cause of the Lord. Remember that war is not playtime. The Christian faith and living it out, is not a lazy summer recreational activity.
It is serious business. Deadly business.
Keep your spiritual defenses up - for the first to see the wrath of Satan are those who are very overt about their allegiance to the baby that he failed to destroy in Bethlehem.
Keep your spiritual arsenal ready.

Satan continues to fight.
And our outrage against him continues. As it must.
We need to continue to challenge his assaults - however and in whatever way he does it.

And we need to watch for the casualties of war - oh, there are so many. Watch for them, and treat them gently. The ones doubled over with chronic pain of body or mind. The ones feeling terribly lonely. Unemployed or stuck in working poverty. Wondering how they can make it through another pregnancy. Wrestling with the nightmares of abuse.
Casualties.

Remember that God's field hospital is the church.
A place for rest, for bandaging of the soul. For helping people learn how to live again. A community of healing and hope.
Whatever else - may we always be that.
A community of peace in a world filled with the smoke of war.

A community that looks to the living Lord Jesus of Bethlehem, longing and praying for His return; for the day when this prophecy will come to perfect completion:
"…See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God Himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4).