Matthew 2:16-18
The Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion should be
commemorated on December 28, the day of the Holy Innocents. Churches should be decked in black for the
hideous American crime of abortion which matches in its brutality Stalin’s
extermination of the Ukranians in the 1930's, Hitler’s destruction of Jews in
Germany and Poland in the 1940's, and the near obliteration of the Cambodians
by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's. Our
slaughter is more thorough and covers the 70's, 80's, and now the 90's. We could very well pray the collect for the
Day of the Holy Innocents:
“O
God, whose martyred innocents showed forth Thy praise not by speaking but by
dying, mortify all vices within us that our lives may in deed confess Thy faith
which our tongue doth utter; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Our opposition to abortion is part of our confessional
commitment. With Luther in his
explanation to the Fifth Commandment, we say that we should “help and befriend
our neighbor in every bodily need.” And
no bodily need of our neighbor’s has a greater claim on us than the unborn who
die their deaths not by their own desire or God’s, but by the will of those
whose bodies have given them life.
Though burdened with inherited sin from Adam in their conception, they
have not been born to a life of sin.
Though they are among those who are redeemed by Christ, they hear not
the Gospel of that redemption. Their
infant bodies, washed in salt, never are comforted by the saving flood of
baptism.
Thomas Jefferson said that: “A single human being is of
infinite worth.” This non-religious
principle is sufficient to oppose abortion with every fiber of our bodies and
every thought of our souls and every emotion of our spirits. But the sacredness of human life has been
raised to an even higher dimension by the coming of the Son of God in the
flesh. “In Him was life and this was the
life which lightens everyone who is coming into the world” (John 1:9). Now through the incarnation, the Son of God
shares in the life of every man, woman, and child; and not only those children
who are born, but those who were conceived and never born. The incarnation is bound to one place and
time, but it has a universal dimension infiltrating every life, filling every
place, and affecting every time. We
human beings are not a collection of individuals, but we are all taken out of
the flesh of Adam so that we are part of one another. By His conception the eternal Logos permeated
all of humanity, and all of humanity became part of Him.
In the moment of our conception we are all without
visible race or gender, without culture or inheritance, without language or
skill. We stand coram Deo, before
God, with the first Adam to hear a verdict of condemnation and death: “in sin
did my mother conceive me.” And more
importantly we stand coram Deo, before God, with the second Adam, our
Lord Jesus Christ, to hear a verdict of righteous acquittal and justification,
of holiness and innocence, of life and resurrection. “This was the light which lightens everyone
who comes into the world.”
If life which exists between the conception of one simple
cell and a fully developed baby is so insignificant that it can be arbitrarily
snuffed out for whatever reason, then our Lord’s life within His mother’s womb
was equally unimportant and we would be without hope and salvation. But life within the womb is the most
significant of all lives, and our Lord’s conception of His pure mother and His
life within her womb raised to a level of perfection that life already sacred
before God. The womb of the virgin was,
as Luther says, the throne room of God.
It was here as St. Paul says, that the man Jesus saw Himself with all of
the attributes which are God’s. The womb
of His mother was the temple of God where Christ ruled the world and still
offered Himself in continual prayer to God and His Father not for His sake, but
for ours. Here even He before He
received the adoration of the shepherds and the worship of the magi, He
received the worship and adoration of the Baptist, who though still unborn was
already the greatest of all the prophets and in whom all the prophets from Adam
to Malachi were present.
We are here to commemorate those who were once alive, but
are never born. Yes, we offer our
prayers for ourselves and for a nation which permits the holocaust to continue
and even for the mothers who out of ignorance or willful design or simple
inconvenience or apparently legitimate financial reasons abort their own
children. These, however, still have
time to pray for themselves, to perform their own penitential vows, and to cry
their own tears of sorrow. But let us
shed our tears for those who were never able to shed their own tears of
repentance. Let us ask God to remember
in His mercy those who will never be able to ask mercy for themselves. As did Luther and the fathers of Lutheran
orthodoxy, we pray that God in His mercy would provide a way for those who
forever remain unborn in this world to be born into the next world. For if John the Baptist could at the voice of
the mother of God confess the faith by leaping in Elizabeth’s womb, perhaps God
in His infinite grace and mercy may provide a word of redemption which these
children may hear and believe before their lives are snuffed out. They no less than the Holy Innocents
slaughtered by Herod are entitled to be called innocent and deserve our
commemoration on this day of remembrance.
“Rachel is still weeping for her children, because,” as Jeremiah says, “they
are not.”
If their lights are not permitted to shine on earth
before men to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps they
can still shine in heaven. God can
perfect praise from unborn babes, as easily as He can from sucklings.
If with these words we trespass into the land of divine
mysteries, we have done it not only out of a sense of our own frustration, but
out of the knowledge that these children have been redeemed by the one who
lived His life in the womb specifically for their sakes. When the church confessed, “incarnatus est
de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine et homo factus est,” “He was incarnate
by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man,” let the church not only
genuflect in devotion to this greatest of mysteries, but may her corporate
heart bend in sorrow and contrition for those who go from conception to grave
without birth, for those whose mothers’ wombs are not temples of safety but
halls of slaughter.
Will He, who reigned over heaven and earth from His
mother’s womb and who in his infancy escaped the butcher’s hand of King Herod,
not hear our prayer and join His prayer with ours before God and His Father in
heaven even now for those for whom no way of escape is provided?
I am not one for drawing banners. But I would be pleased to march with the
community which is Concordia Theological Seminary this Saturday morning at the
City-County Building behind a banner which said, “The Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us.” Let us pray.
O
almighty God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained
strength and madest infants to glorify Thee by their deaths, mortify and kill
all vices in us and so strengthen us by Thy grace that by the innocency of our
lives and constancy of our faith, we may glorify Thy holy name; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
I ran across this sermon early in the 1990's (though I don't recall exactly where). A very similar sermon is included in “In Christ: The Collected Works
of David P. Scaer — Volume 1, p. 282. Published by Concordia Catechetical
Academy. Used by permission.
