Sunday, Dec. 30 - First Sunday of Christmas
Christmas was cancelled this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Roman Catholic Archbishop Imad al-Banna told Christians in that region that they ought to commemorate the birth of Christ with their prayers, but no celebrations with tree trimming or family gatherings with gift swapping should be undertaken. It was too dangerous, for one thing. And it would seem irreverent to the dead, for another.
Canceling Christmas was also a form of protest against the murders of a Christian sister and brother. Maysoon Farid, a 30-year-old cashier at a local pharmacy, and her brother Osama, 33, were found dead in mid-December, their bodies dumped in a neighborhood controlled by the Shiite Mahdi Army militia. The brother was kidnapped first, and then the kidnapper used his cell phone to contact the sister to meet with him if she wanted to win her brother’s release. A friend of the family reported that word on the street was that the killings were intended to make Christians live in fear until they leave.
This isn’t the first time someone tried to cancel Christmas in the Middle East. It isn’t the first time someone tried to use murder to intimidate those who hold the Christ child dear. Even today, Christians in Bethlehem are in danger. Palestinian Muslims control the streets of that little town so holy. The harassment of Christians is a daily fact of life that includes the stealing of land. The population of Christians has dropped under Muslim control from about 80 percent to 15 percent since Israel pulled out of Bethlehem in 1991, in keeping with the Oslo Accords. More than half of the suicide bombers in Jerusalem come from Bethlehem, and a bomb-making factory was even discovered recently right near Manger Square.
I know we are supposed to be all about the merry and the jolly during these 12 days of Christmas. I hate to be the Grinch that stole Christmas. By now your true love has given you six geese a-laying to go with your five golden rings and all the rest, down to the partridge in a pear tree. And I’ve got my Christmas tie on. But with Santa Claus and Rudolph gone back to the North Pole, a note of realism has to set in. You won’t find King Herod in the nativity alongside the three kings from the East. All those who made it to the stable worshiped Jesus as the new king of the Jews. Herod, however, fancied himself King of the Jews, and he was not about to relinquish his crown to the child of Bethlehem.
Herod was a petty and paranoid dictator. The only one in the history of the world, don’t you know?! He was ethnically Arab, religiously Jewish, culturally Greek, and politically Roman. In other words, Herod was whatever he needed to be. He was his own biggest fan. His most famous accomplishment was rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. Herod’s Temple may not have equaled Solomon’s in glory, but it was the best the Jews had had for seven hundred years. In return for Jewish loyalty, Herod largely stayed out of the way of the Jews.
Herod ruled Palestine with an iron fist. In fact, he killed three of his own sons in order to prevent them from seeking his throne. That prompted Caesar Augustus to say, only partly in jest, about him: It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son. The phrase is a pun in the Greek: pig is hys and son is huios. It’s no wonder Herod was capable of slaughtering the innocents in Bethlehem.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s follow the story a little more closely. The Magi come to see King Herod to find out where the newborn king of the Jews may be found. Herod himself couldn’t be more interested. But whereas the Magi want to find Jesus in order to worship him, Herod wants to find Jesus to kill him. There can be only one king, and Herod isn’t giving up his throne without a fight.
Ironically, the way Matthew tells the story, you see that Herod has lost before he even kills the babies. Up until this story, Matthew had always referred to him as King Herod, but the moment the Magi find Jesus and worship him, King Herod is dethroned; he is thereafter in the story only Herod. There’s a new king. The king is dead; long live the king.
But Herod is having none of that. When he finds out the Magi have deceived him and gone home by another way, he orders all baby boys under the age of two massacred by his troops. Admittedly, because of the size of Bethlehem at the time, that may have been only about 20 boys, all told. I’m sure that low number was a comfort to their mothers. We assume Herod chose that age because of the story the Magi told him about the star they saw rising in the East. They followed it for a long time before reaching the child.
It may also reflect how Matthew tells the story of Jesus as the new Moses. Herod is Pharaoh all over again. Jesus relives the history of his people Israel. You remember how Pharaoh had ordered a similar slaying of infant Hebrew boys long ago. Pharaoh’s daughter had rescued Moses from the Nile River. And we find that upon learning from the angel about Herod’s plans, Joseph takes the Holy Family to Egypt, for, as Matthew says, Out of Egypt I have called my son.
The Bible is alive. It is more than a history book. Jesus represents God at work to redeem the world at all times. And we find ourselves anew each and every time we read the Scripture. Which, by the way, is another reason that on the brink of the New Year, I urge you to do just that. Read the Bible. Study it. Personally. And in Sunday school. Some of you Sunday school teachers might make a new commitment to return to the Bible as your primary text. I have noted with regret the trend of studying this new book or that, this topic or that. Some of that is fine, but the old book is still the good book, and the good book is ever fresh and new.
Some of us are a little like Huck Finn in the Mark Twain classic. Huck was learning the Old Testament from the Widow Douglas. He says: After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people. But if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Herod was doing just that. He was playing out an old script, just as Herods still do today.
When the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated this week, the government quickly blamed al Qaeda. It was the right-wing Islamic fanatics, they said, who killed this champion of democracy. Maybe so; God knows they are capable. But suspicion is growing now inside and outside Pakistan that the former General Pervez Musharraf was somehow behind it. He had the most to lose by her return to power. Kings by any other name are still loath to give up their thrones.
And that includes kings like you and me. There can be only one king on the throne of our hearts, but there is always a war at work between Herod and Christ. In one sense Herod represents the rejection of the kingship of Jesus, while the Magi represent the acceptance of him. But another way of looking at it is that Herod represents the deep, sinful self-centeredness of humanity that refuses to give up control of our lives to the God who demands it.
There’s a little nursery rhyme that nails us: I had a little tea party this afternoon at 3:00./T’was very small, three guests in all,/Just I, myself, and me./Myself ate up the sandwiches, while I drank up the tea./T’was also I who ate the pie, and passed the cake to me. It’s a cute little saying that seems innocent enough when you think of what little children do. But when it describes the ways of grown-ups, it’s not so innocent at all. In fact, it’s the primary characteristic of evil.
Evil people do not think of themselves as evil; they just think of themselves. And when you are looking out only for yourself, other people are always in danger.
The actor Will Smith was in the news this week. He was talking about how he wants to be infectiously positive in order to help others. But in making his point, he said, Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.’ I think he woke in the morning, and using the most twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good.’ Stuff like that just needs reprogramming. He got hit hard by some for sounding like he was making excuses for a genocidal maniac. But Smith was pointing to human nature in all its Herod-ness. No doubt Herod thought he was doing something good, even if it was really evil. He rationalized his actions the way we all do when we use other people to achieve our own ends.
Smith is right: we need reprogramming. And this account of Herod is Matthew’s attempt to call us to do just that. If you are making resolutions in the next day or two, the most important one you can make is to take yourself off the throne of your heart and put on the throne the only one who belongs there. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, unless that head belongs to Jesus. Jesus is the king of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is room for only one king in your life, for only one Lord. It isn’t you. Becoming a Christian begins with this confession of Jesus as Lord. It involves a conversion of the heart that makes worshiping him the way the Magi did your only concern.
If you want to improve your marriage, do not put your spouse first; put the Lord Christ first. If you want to improve your family life, do not put your children first; put the Lord Christ first. If you want to improve the world or your work or anything else; do not put those things first; put the Lord Christ first. You can make all those others second, but no one else and no thing else is any more capable than you of being in first place. No one but Jesus is king; no one but Jesus is Lord.
What we see in Herod is that if you reject the Child, you will end up rejecting children. If divinity becomes the enemy of your desires, humanity will be your enemy, too. You cannot order your life rightly unless you order it firstly by taking your orders from God.
Unless the power and the glory belong to Christ, the power and the gory of human violence will result. You will hurt others in order to preserve your own power and promote your own glory. That’s no way to live now, and I can assure you it’s no way to live forever.
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