Episode 24: 2/09/09

Readings:

Psalm 80
Isaiah 58:1-12
Galatians 6:11-18
Mark 9:30-41

Sermon:

"Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."
Mark 9:37

It was not the welcome any child would look forward to: after surviving three days of induced labor in preparation for a late-term abortion, the tiny baby was born alive when the doctor arrived too late to perform the deadly procedure. But instead of being greeted as a miracle, the birth was viewed as an embarrassing failure to be covered up. The newborn girl was shoved into a biohazard trash bag and left to suffocate to death, her remains thrown into a cardboard box and left to rot in the hot Florida sun.

This incident which has shocked so many this past week only came to light because the mother of the dead child is suing the doctor for botching her abortion, for which she paid $1200 --- if the doctor had arrived 15 minutes earlier, the baby would have been killed in the birth canal instead of in a plastic bag and no one would have given the matter a second thought.

As much as we may shudder in horror when we hear of such cases, many in our society feel helpless against this evil. Abortion is legal in this country up to the moment of birth, and judging from the lack of murder charges brought in this case, for several moments afterwards. Not only is it legal, but it is regarded as a fundamental freedom, a right of every citizen under the constitution, as if the brave men and women who have died defending our country sacrificed their lives so that women could freely kill the child living in their wombs.

We, as a society, tolerate and even celebrate this horror in the name of compassion for women, sparing none for the unwanted, inconvenient child. In cases of babies with genetic defects such as Downs Syndrome, we even tell ourselves that we are being merciful to those children, saving them from a life of hardship and suffering. We claim that we love these children so much that we would rather see them dead than living what we consider a less than perfect life.

We are not the first society to value the lives of our children so low. From the beginnings of time, the pages of human history are littered with the bodies of dead children, slaughtered, abandoned, sacrificed to idols whose greed for blood could never be satisfied.

The Canaanite people who inhabited the land given by God to Abraham and his descendants were infamous for their practice of burning children alive in sacrifice to their god Moloch. Later the Carthaginians developed a high-tech version of this practice where the baby was placed in the spring-powered hands of a bronze statue which would propel the doomed child into a furnace in the belly of the idol.

The ancient Greeks were horrified by this blatant form of sacrifice but defended the practice of abandoning sick or deformed children on the sides of mountains, leaving them to die of exposure or hunger or the attacks of wild animals, claiming it was more merciful to both the child and the society at large to be rid of such unproductive future citizens. The Romans continued this tradition, making the right of the paterfamilias to determine the fate of his children a sacred tenet of the law.

Out of all this darkness, a tiny light shone. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the true God of the Universe, repeatedly condemned this practice and through His prophets and psalmists declared human life a sacred gift from the Creator, to be protected and defended from those who would cheapen it.

In the Book of Exodus we see the first recorded Scriptural reference to a tyrant seeking to oppress a despised minority by killing their children at birth:

“15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?"

19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."

20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.”

These brave women risked their lives to preserve those innocent lives, and their names are recorded in Scripture with honor.

Despite this, Israel would repeatedly fall into the error of her neighbors after taking up residence in the Promised Land, and instead of regarding their children as a reward from the Lord would instead consider them as expendible commodities who could be offered as living bargaining chips to pagan idols. This would continue until the time of conquest and exile, when God would no longer overlook the abominations committed in His land by His people.

Our Lord was not being sentimental when He proclaimed that whoever welcomed a little child in His name would be welcoming Him. He knew that the world would reject Him just as it rejected those little children. And yet, His words have been a rallying cry to generations of Christians who have sought to answer that challenge: from the first believers who built hospitals and orphanages and worked to outlaw abortion and infanticide, to modern-day volunteers who run Crisis Pregnancy Centers and work to make adoption a realistic alternative to “reproductive choice.” May those who welcome these little children with love and true compassion be blessed when they come face to face with Our Lord and the Father who sent Him.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.