In case you missed it, in the days before Christmas, a right wing Christian group called Repent Amarillo, based in Texas, released a youtube video in which a member of the group shoots a Santa Claus-shaped piñata repeatedly, including at close range, while another member explains the evils of the secular celebration of Christmas. Repent Amarillo encourages viewers to share the video with their children. Of course, they offer a disclaimer that they don’t advocate actual violence (which is why they chose a piñata, not the actual St. Nick for the exercise). I will note, however, that on their website, which includes many military images, they declare, “We are the Special Forces of spiritual warfare, [and] we’re looking for a few good warriors” and that one of their slogans is the “coexist” sign with a big “no” sign—you know the signs, the ones you see on bumper stickers on Priuses all over this town—through it.
Well, you can guess that I have some significant criticisms about this group, but they did remind me, amid the gingerbread houses and sugar plums, that Christmas is, in large part, a story about violence. It’s not the one we depict on Christmas cards or in Christmas pageants, but if “Jesus is the reason for the season,” we might also add that Jesus was also the reason, inadvertently, for the Massacre of the Innocents, a scramble for political power, and the refugee status of Joseph’s family. When Jesus declares in Matthew 10 that he came “not to bring peace, but to bring a sword,” we might remember that it was his birth, not just his ministry, that inspired violence.
Today’s text from Matthew 2 is a familiar one. The text doesn’t clarify this, but Herod is actually Herod the Great, the first of at five men named Herod (Herod the Great, two of his sons, and two of his grandsons) who will rule. The second Herod is the one who beheads John the Baptist when John rebukes him for his affair with his brother’s wife. His father is equally violent. Herod the Great has been declared “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate and, presumably, he likes the job. He’s ruled for more than 30 years when the magi enter his life with this weird warning that a child has been born king of the Jews. That sounds like a far more valid claim to authority than Herod’s appointment by the Romans.
Further, the NRSV says that the magi identified the place of the new Messiah’s birth because they witnessed “his star at its rising.” If there is one thing old farts hate to hear, it’s news of a rising star.
Herod recognizes the threat to his power, but he’s not the only one afraid. According to Matthew 2:3, Herod “was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.” It’s hard to say why. Maybe by “Jerusalem” here, the author refers to the powerful and elite, which may make sense since the next verse describes the scribes and Pharisees with whom Herod consults. Or maybe it really means that everyone was afraid because, after 30 years under Herod’s rule, the people knew that their king was unstable, so they feared any threat to him not because they loved him but because they feared his response.
In any case, Herod’s anxiety sets in motion a terrible genocide: all male children two years of age and younger in the Bethlehem area are killed. It recalls Pharaoh’s genocide of Hebrew boys in Moses’ day and even the death of Egyptian first born males at Passover. In a time period when children regularly died before reaching maturity, this episode of infanticide was particularly horrid. Matthew later tells us that the women were inconsolable. The loss wasn’t just the loss of their sons, which would have been enough, but the reminder that they were under the absolute authority of a tyrannical, impetuous, and violent king whose only goal was the maintenance of his own power.
But, as Herod knew, his power wouldn’t last forever. Unlike the rest of us, who get to retire, though, the end of a king’s power happens at his death—so when a new king was born, it didn’t just mean that Herod wouldn’t be king anymore; it also was a prediction of his death, which he well knew, and, in his defense, as one of my favorite Tom Waits’ songs says, “It’s the same with dogs as with horses and men—nothing wants to die.” Herod wasn’t just fighting against this infant for his throne.
We don’t know if Herod reacted to all potential threats by going nuclear, so to speak, by killing an entire birth year of boys. It could be that these magi weren’t the first to visit Herod with news of a new king. Could be that Messiahs were popping up all over and that Herod was waging a perpetual War on Messiahs. But what we do see, at least in this case, is that Herod is a believer.
What do I mean? I mean that, if you or I were approached by some pagan astrologers who told us that our replacement had just been born, we might be creeped out but we probably wouldn’t believe it. And in this regard, Herod shows perhaps his only redeeming quality: he believes that Jesus very well might be the Messiah, the new King of the Jews whose birth promises the people of Israel a new shepherd, as Matthew 6. What exactly his new king will bring is unclear, but Micah’s prophecy, quoted in Matthew, suggests a peace, a return to God, and a justice—themes we know concern Micah. And that, of course, is in opposition to Herod’s plan for the Jews.
And here is the real tragedy of Herod’s life: He believes. He—along with Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, Elizabeth and Zechariah, and the magi—is one of the first to hear the good news of the birth of the Messiah, and he suspects it might be true. He believes enough to kill an untold number of children. He believes enough to use terror and violence against the people over whom he rules—a tactic that cannot endear him to them and can only, ultimately, foment dissidence and revolution. (I wonder: When all those women who saw their infant sons murdered see Jesus, will they be reminded of their own lost sons? How will they feel?) He does this because he believes. The tragedy isn’t his belief—it’s in his response to it. Because, although he believes, he continues to think of himself as more powerful than God. What an act of arrogance to think that he can change a plan that, as Paul tells us in Ephesians, is eternal if only just revealed in Jesus!
We see in Herod a man whose love of power produced an anxiety to protect it and a paranoia. As a result, he could never be a good ruler, whether the Messiah came during his rule or not. Imagine if, instead of attempting to protect his power, Herod heard the news that the magi brought and did as he told them he would—sincerely worshipped the new born king. If he valued, as Micah did, peace and justice in his kingdom. If, when he believed, he had responded with compliance to God rather than defiance of God, if he had loved the Jews as the their true King.
I’ll leave the connections to the present day to you today, but here are some questions to get you started:
- When do we believe but fail to act? When do we believe and yet act contrary to what that belief ought to produce in us?
- When we are confronted by God’s desires for the world, do we comply with it or defy it (or even just deny it) in order to maintain our own power?
- Who are our Herod’s today—our leaders who prefer to maintain their own power over anything else?
- Who are the magi today—the ones who draw our attention to God’s will for the world?
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