It is the kind of text you might expect on a sanctity of human life Sunday. Most of you, I would guess, are anticipating now a sermon against abortion. Others of you are not so eager. Still others of you may be dreading to hear it because your lives have been touched in one way or another by abortion, and it is not something you have come to church to think about. It certainly would be appropriate to use this text to speak against abortion.
Abortion is our nation's Herod-like tragedy.
That's twenty-two times the number of United States military personnel killed in all the wars we have ever fought beginning with the Revolutionary War. It is equal to the total combined population of twenty-two of our states. That's a lot of death. But there is another tragedy in this text. Indeed, I believe it is the focus of the text, Rachel weeping.