Holy Innocents and St Thomas Becket
Sunday 28 December 2025, The First Sunday of Christmas
Revd Tom Clammer
Isaiah 43:1-7
Matthew 10:28-33
The liturgically astute will have noticed that we are trying to do probably too many things tonight. Today is the First Sunday, and the fourth day of Christmas – hurry home to your calling birds -. It is also the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It is also the Eve of the Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, political big-hitter of the twelfth century, and, when his political big hits started to irritate the King, Martyr. And it is that third liturgical observation, the Feast of St Thomas Becket, that has led to the long-standing tradition of the Mother Church inviting the choir and congregation of St Thomas’s, Salisbury, your nearest neighbours in the faith, to gather here tonight. So, on behalf of the churchwardens, thank you Mr Dean. It’s lovely to be here. And if anyone here happens to be a priest looking for a new job, see me afterwards. We need a Rector, and we are lovely.
As I say, at first glance this liturgical traffic jam on this Sunday evening seems messy and weird. And it is. But that is okay, because our life of faith is messy and weird. Of the four feast days that follow immediately on the heels of Christmas Day, three of them commemorate martyrs. St Stephen, stoned to death at the command of he who would go on to be St Paul. The Holy Innocents, babies slaughtered at the command of paranoid and jealous authority. Thomas Becket, one of a number of political opponents through the years who find themselves silenced in the most extreme manner. Death and Christmas, all mushed up together.
Our second lesson this evening, selected from those for martyrs, presents Jesus telling his disciples, as he is sending them out for ministry, three important things. The same three important things that shine a Christmas light on the fates of Stephen, Thomas Becket, and even those little boys who couldn’t possibly understand or exercise any agency at all: three important messages which sum up what happens as a result of the extraordinary events of Christmas: ‘even the hairs of your head are counted. You are of more value than many sparrows. So do not be afraid’: You are known by God. You are valued. You don’t need to be afraid.
And our first lesson, verses of which of course are inscribed on the font here in this extraordinary cathedral, reminds us that this is a story that God has been telling through the ages. ‘Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.’
But as with all things when it comes to God, there is no coercion. This is an invitation, not a command. And that is very Christmas too. God comes as a baby becradled in the manger. When God wants to show us what love is like, he becomes the most vulnerable thing in the world, for us and for our salvation, he becomes a child and trusts us not to drop him. And so he shows us what strength and power look like when they are uncorrupted by our greed and insecurity and vainglory.
So the invitation is to meet grace. But, as we know, grace is not cheap or it would not be grace. St Stephen knows about that. So does Thomas Becket. So do the Holy Innocents, or certainly their parents. And so indeed does Mary, patron of this great cathedral, whose heart, bursting with love at the birth of her child is destined to be pierced by the sword of sorrow, on a green hill far away.