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Out Heroding Herod |
Matthew 2: 1-12
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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EPIPHANY Today is the day when many Christians celebrate "Epiphany," a word which literally means an "appearance," a "shining upon," the light shining upon - Jesus at his birth - Jesus at his baptism - Jesus on the nations - those who get the point about Jesus, his presence and his power. The "nations" is "a light to the nations" (Isaiah 49: 6) meant "the Gentiles," us, you and me. The Gentiles in Matthew 2 are the wise men and Herod, who was not fully accepted as Jewish in his own day by the Jews. The light shines on Herod, and under the power of sin he makes a bad response. The light shines on the magi, and under the power of grace they make a good response. This is a light to shine upon the nations, "a story to tell to the nations," the Gentile nations represented by the magi. (Isaiah 42: 6) "The wise men are often pictured as members of three different races: one white, one African, and one Asian. This suggests that all races need Christ. Sometimes they are pictured as a very old man, a middle-aged man, and a youth, since all ages need Him." ("Epiphany," More than Words [Greenwich, Connecticut: The Seabury Press] 1958, p. 64) There is no specific biblical support for these ideas in Matthew 2, although the Bible's overall teachings show that all peoples and all ages need the Lord. I would like to take a closer look now at the "bad Gentile" in the story - Herod. OUT HERODING HEROD Every one who has passed through high school English can toss off some familiar lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet. "To be or not to be: that is the question:" (III, i, 56) "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be... This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." (I, iii, 75) "Sweets to the sweet...." (V, i, 265) "The rest is silence... Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." (V, ii, 373) Here's one for post holiday gluttony guilt: "O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew..." (I, ii, 92) Today's sermon title comes from a moment in the play when Hamlet decides to trap his murderous step-father by producing what our high school English teachers taught us to call "the play within the play." Shakespeare speaks through Hamlet to give actors instructions on how to deliver their lines: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the towncrier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and I - as I may say - whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, tovery rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. (III, ii, i) (One wonders what the Bard would have said about shouting preachers and arm waving evangelists!) One scholar writes that Herod was "the ultimate villain of medieval dramas, ranting and raging about the stage to the delight of audiences." (Jesus and His Times, Kaari Ward, editor [Pleasantville, New York: Reader's Digest Association, Inc.] 1987, p. 30) One of the most popular medieval plays was Everyman. I would to make a leap and suggest that Herod, the bad Gentile, is a kind of everyman, who represents the dark side of our spirits, the side we control bettr than Herod did his, the side we control, I suspect, because we lack the terrible power Herod possessed to act on his worst impulses. HEROD Here are a few highlights, or should I say, "lowlights" of Herod's life. His father's assassination surely affected him as a young man, as did the imprisonment of his brother, whose ears were cut off to make sure he would be physically imperfect and therefore ineligible to serve as high priest. Violence in the immediate family takes its toll; abusers abuse; hurt people hurt people. As a young adult Herod fled from his enemies to Masada, taking his family with him. From there he sought refuge in Petra, "the rose red city as old as time," but the Nabateans turned him away. He fled next to Rome, stopping at Alexandria to meet with Cleopatra. He latter claimed that she once tried to seduce him (was he bragging or complaining?), but he resisted her charms because of her relationship and his with Marc Antony. In Rome he managed to steer a middle course beween the two powerful political rivals, Marc Antony and Octavian (later to be Augustus) Caesar. He secured their support in a triumph of maneuvering. What a scene it must have been as Herod, Antony and Augustus emerged from the Roman senate house, the Curia. The unholy three of them walked along the Via Sacra, the Sacred Way, where one can walk today. They trudged up the Capitoline Hill and made joint sacrifices, asking the gods' blessings on their plans. Herod returned to Palestine to rule Judea for 37 years, first consolidating his power by a series of executions and murders, then engaging on a magnificent building program. His buildings on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the port city of Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean, and in the palace fortresses at Masada and the Herodium are still architectural marvels, even in ruins. But the high taxes and forced labor it took to build his projects led to continual threats of rebellion. The political murderscontinued. Herod found time to marry ten wives. A few days before he died, he executed his favorite wife and his son. (Augustus, who knew Herod for what he was) said in a grim pun which was offensive to Jews that he would rather be Herod's sow than his son. His own death is described by Josephus in terms too horrible to repeat in a family service. Suffice to say that the old historian reports that as Herod died, worms emerged from his body in all sorts of unmentionable places. (CharlesR. Page II, Jesus & the Land [Nashville: Abingdon Press] 1995, pp. 28-32; Richard A. Batey, Jesus & the Forgotten City [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House] 1991, pp. 30-43) THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS What is usually called "the slaughter of the innocents" is among his most evil acts. Matthew 2: 16-18 tells how Herod slaughtered all the baby boys in Bethlehem, two and younger. Those interested in calculating the number of children posit a population in Bethlehem of 1,000, with an annual birthrate of thirty. They conclude that "the male children under two years of age would scarcely have numbered more than twenty." "In piety the `Holy Innocents' became Christian martyrs and saints." Scholars see thi part of the narrative echoing the slaughter of male Hebrew infants by Pharaoh in Egypt. (Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah [Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co.] 1977, pp. 204, 206, 216) Like Renaissance artists who depicted the horror of this gory moment with excruciating detail, we tend to concentrate on the slaughter of the innocents, "Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled." (v. 18) But the reference to Rachel's children is from Jeremiah (31:15). His word from the Lord to Jeremiah is "to stop weeping and crying, since the children are going to come back from the land of the enemy (31: 16-17)." (Brown, op. cit., p. 206) The thrust of the passagefrom Matthew's perspective is not so much on the slaughter of the innocents as it is on salvation: - Bethlehem, is the city of David; - Egypt, the land of the Exodus; - Ramah, the mourning place of the Exile. All this theological geography cries out "deliverance!" from bondage in Egypt, from exile in Babylon, from being slaves to international power under David. (Brown, op. cit., pp. 216-217) The biblical response to Herod's horrid act is to summon up these images of deliverance. I would like to suggest that to out herod Herod we must not only control our darker impulses, we must engage in redemptive action for the same kind of humans he sought to destroy. We out herod Herod when we do just the opposite of what he did, when we act not in hate but in love, not in violence but in tenderness, not in murdering but in nurturing, by returning good for evil, by being kind, y loving our enemies. And that thought takes me to a group of people the gospels call "the little ones." THE LITTLE ONES This is a term used in Matthew, Mark and Luke. "The little ones" in Greek are the mikroi ("microbe" is an English derivative). Across the centuries there have been a wide variety of interpretations given to this word. It means the "least" or "insignificant," but the early father of the Orthodox Church, St. John Chrysostom thought it referred to feeble-minded Christians! John Calvin thought it referred to weaker Christians. Some said the "little ones" were simply the disciples. Ohers thought they were obscure and simple believers or vulnerable new believers. The most inclusive view sees the "little ones" as "the lowly in the broader sense, the poor, uneducated, socially inferior; surely children, too..." (F. Dale Bruner, Matthew - Vol. 2, The Churchbook, Matthew 13-28 [Waco, Texas: Word, Inc.] 1990, p. 638) To care for the little ones is more than a mild admonition to "be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 3: 32) The commandment to be kind and its gospel antecedent, the injunction to care for the little ones has serious consequences for those who do not obey. Just how seriously Jesus takes the care of these little ones, however defined, can be seen in the punishment Jesus calls for on those who hurt their faith: "it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were dropped in the middle of the lake!" (Matthew 18: 6-7) In the film Amistad there is a chilling scene in which the slavers realize that they are about to be caught on the high seas with more slaves than they are allowed to have on board. They calculate how many slaves have to go, tie them together, and then tie the rope to a weight of stones. They push the stones overboard and their weight pulls the unwanted slaves one by one across the rough deck, over the side of the ship and down into the ocean. An underwater camera presents us with te horrible sight of the helpless slaves being dragged to the bottom of the sea. Jesus says that it would be better to die with a millstone around your neck than to trip up even one little one. "It would be a blessing if a person died this awful death before misleading a little one by false-teaching or false-living and to suffer eternal damnation...the only thing more terrible than being drowned with a millstone about one's neck is damnation at the Last Judgment." (Bruner, op. cit.) THE CROSS The place where political violence and hatred were answered with triumphant love is, of course, the cross. What happened there long ago brings us here today to assemble at this table, the place of the cross, the place of love's victory over hatred, sin and death, the place where we by grace may have communion with this love, this victory which out herods Herod. Paul warns us before we eat the Lord's Supper to examine ourselves lest we partake unworthily and bring judgment on ourselves. (1 Corinthians 11: 27-32) The purpose of the judgement is not that we may be condemned but that we may be chastened. May the first communion of the Year be an occasion to examine ourselves at the point of our darkness, our often barely controlled evil, our tendencies to hurt the little ones in our midst (and all of us are "little ones" at one time or another in our human fragilit and vulnerability). Our hymn of preparation for the Lord's Supper speaks of these matters: Our Savior's infant cries were heard,And met by human love, Before He preached one saving word Or prayer to God above. In Joseph's arms, at Mary's breast, while Herod's violence spread, God's love by human love was blessed, protected, nurtured, fed. Whoever calms a child by night,Or guides a youth by day, Serves Him whose birth by lantern lightWas on a bed of hay. For Christ, who was a refugeFrom Herod and his sword, Is seeking now, thro' us to be Our children's friend and Lord. (Our Savior's Infant Cries Were Heard by Thomas Troeger, Baptist Hymnal [Nashville: Convention Press] 1991, No. 116) |