Homilies BY Pastor Paul
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Sermon for 29 December 2019 The Slaughter of the Innocents Matthew 2:13-23
13 Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20 “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”
The Gospel of the Lord
Holy God, give us grace to open our hearts and minds to hear your true and living word Jesus the Christ
This is a very difficult text to hear after Christmas isn’t it? Many people choose to not talk about this text because it seems like such buzz kill to the Christmas spirit. It is our natural human tendency to avoid topics that are difficult and painful, but Christmas is not just about a lovely baby and the adoration of him. The other side of the coin, ‘the rest of the story’ as Paul Harvey would say is that the birth takes place in the context of how difficult and cruel the world can be. Jesus entered a world of crushing political oppression and real pain for the majority of its citizens.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister, theologian and dissident in Nazi Germany. His resistance to Hitler, the euthanasia program, the persecution of the Jews and his strong opposition to the cozy relationship between the church and the Reich got him hanged 75 years ago in April 1945. In a sermon he observed that our tendency is to turn Christmas, the incarnation- the coming of God into this world- into cheap sentimentality.
He wrote ”We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.”
Now - Herod the Great. It’s easy to dismiss him as some kind of evil monstrosity based on what we heard here in this text. But many people probably saw him as ‘Great’ - or at least making Judea great again. He kept the economy bustling in Judea with lots of building projects. He renovated the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and expanded Temple Mount, he constructed a port at Caesarea Maritima (around 30 miles north of Tel Aviv), the fortresses of Masada and Herodium, as well as roads and aqueducts. The economy was booming we might even say, though little trickled down to the Judean people who were an oppressed minority (and Luke tells us that the ‘census’ was a way to exact even more taxes from them to pay for all these projects).
Whether Herod had a conscience or not -- he was frightened. After the visit of the Magi, Herod perceived the child in Bethlehem as a threat to his power. He made a strategic decision to kill children in and around Bethlehem. It was a casual cruelty. Just enough to eliminate the threat, but not enough to encourage an uprising by the general populace. Rome’s control was so pervasive and powerful that for those outside of the immediate Bethlehem area, parents probably just hugged their children a little tighter and were glad it wasn’t their children. They were likely used to events such as these. Authoritarian leaders always have a present cruelty. So the general populace did not rise up, partly out of fear and there were probably some who didn’t want to upset the economy. Some of them shrugged it off because they weren’t Jews and didn’t think they had anything to fear. They wanted things to just remain the way they were.
We should feel a shiver of fear. Because evil does not act alone. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing” was made famous by John Kennedy quoting Edmund Burke. Evil dresses itself up in respectability, it can even put on a uniform. It can frequently look and sound like the preservation of safety or security.
Evil demands accomplices. Agents to do the dirty work. To give the orders, to patrol the region, to turn the populace against each other so they will ‘rat out’ each other. The accomplices will be the prison guards and deny access to those who would provide food or medicine or legal aid. In this way, evil gets embedded in the societal systems.
This is the world of Herod. An earthly kingdom whose values were the acquisition of power, the primacy of wealth and the ends justifying the means. Herod is committed to protecting and brandishing his power. Herod was a practiced politician who knew how use favoritism, nepotism, brutality, racial tensions, deception and arrogance to advance himself and his desires. He didn’t feel accountable to anyone.
The world of Herod is the counterpoint to the kingdom of God. The kingdom where true power is found in service to others, where wealth is a gift to be shared, where the process – how we do things is important because the ends will take care of themselves. The kingdom of God is where power is in forgiveness and reconciliation, where all are children of God, where doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God are the simple requirements.
We should feel a shiver of fear. Herod’s earthly kingdom still exists, because it has become embedded in our human desires. It surfaces over and over again in times and places all over the world. Bonhoeffer certainly recognized it in his. Do we recognize it in ours? Where are we complicit in the evils of this world? Where do we see the resistance to the reign of God?
Here’s a few examples that crossed my news feed this past week:
Evil HAS to look like something else to get into our hearts. Evil is seductive. It offers us good things for ourselves – safety, security, wealth, beauty, power, fame. Anything that can make us overlook cruelty, injustice, brutality and mercilessness.
The seductiveness of evil makes it really hard to ‘do the right thing’. To practice orthopraxy. Because the right practices are not about US. They are about others. Jesus came to show us what love in action is like. How love and sacrifice must go hand in hand. The ‘rest of the story’ is that we easily get entangled in the Herodian way of doing things and do not see it or are blinded by our own comfort or privilege.
This is ultimately why Jesus and the prophets all tell us why we need to pay attention to the poor. Showing compassion for others is THE antidote to the evil in ourselves and the evils that have become embedded in our societal systems. Even the evils we don’t recognize as such. God wants us to look at the world through the eyes of the least, the lost, and the lonely because then we are seeing the kingdom of God coming nearer. There is little word of grace in this text except that God will do what needs to be done in God’s time. Herod dies, then Joseph returns to Israel, even though Herod’s son was even worse. God’s salvation for us will come despite the efforts of the Herod’s of the world.
Christmas should frighten us. The kingdom of God came and comes here. It should be uncomfortable and even difficult because we need to be jarred from our complacency and comfort. Because we ALL - all too easily fall prey to the seductiveness of evil. We all too easily overlook or ignore the Herod’s of this world. We should be terrified of Herod, but also be terrified of becoming Herod.
We should shiver in fear. God came to us and lays claim to us. God has seen our indifference and our complicity. This is why the Lord’s Prayer is so radical – we pray “thy kingdom come”. But in order for God’s kingdom to come, ours and Herod’s kingdoms have to go.
Amen.
13 Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20 “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”
The Gospel of the Lord
Holy God, give us grace to open our hearts and minds to hear your true and living word Jesus the Christ
This is a very difficult text to hear after Christmas isn’t it? Many people choose to not talk about this text because it seems like such buzz kill to the Christmas spirit. It is our natural human tendency to avoid topics that are difficult and painful, but Christmas is not just about a lovely baby and the adoration of him. The other side of the coin, ‘the rest of the story’ as Paul Harvey would say is that the birth takes place in the context of how difficult and cruel the world can be. Jesus entered a world of crushing political oppression and real pain for the majority of its citizens.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister, theologian and dissident in Nazi Germany. His resistance to Hitler, the euthanasia program, the persecution of the Jews and his strong opposition to the cozy relationship between the church and the Reich got him hanged 75 years ago in April 1945. In a sermon he observed that our tendency is to turn Christmas, the incarnation- the coming of God into this world- into cheap sentimentality.
He wrote ”We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.”
Now - Herod the Great. It’s easy to dismiss him as some kind of evil monstrosity based on what we heard here in this text. But many people probably saw him as ‘Great’ - or at least making Judea great again. He kept the economy bustling in Judea with lots of building projects. He renovated the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and expanded Temple Mount, he constructed a port at Caesarea Maritima (around 30 miles north of Tel Aviv), the fortresses of Masada and Herodium, as well as roads and aqueducts. The economy was booming we might even say, though little trickled down to the Judean people who were an oppressed minority (and Luke tells us that the ‘census’ was a way to exact even more taxes from them to pay for all these projects).
Whether Herod had a conscience or not -- he was frightened. After the visit of the Magi, Herod perceived the child in Bethlehem as a threat to his power. He made a strategic decision to kill children in and around Bethlehem. It was a casual cruelty. Just enough to eliminate the threat, but not enough to encourage an uprising by the general populace. Rome’s control was so pervasive and powerful that for those outside of the immediate Bethlehem area, parents probably just hugged their children a little tighter and were glad it wasn’t their children. They were likely used to events such as these. Authoritarian leaders always have a present cruelty. So the general populace did not rise up, partly out of fear and there were probably some who didn’t want to upset the economy. Some of them shrugged it off because they weren’t Jews and didn’t think they had anything to fear. They wanted things to just remain the way they were.
We should feel a shiver of fear. Because evil does not act alone. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing” was made famous by John Kennedy quoting Edmund Burke. Evil dresses itself up in respectability, it can even put on a uniform. It can frequently look and sound like the preservation of safety or security.
Evil demands accomplices. Agents to do the dirty work. To give the orders, to patrol the region, to turn the populace against each other so they will ‘rat out’ each other. The accomplices will be the prison guards and deny access to those who would provide food or medicine or legal aid. In this way, evil gets embedded in the societal systems.
This is the world of Herod. An earthly kingdom whose values were the acquisition of power, the primacy of wealth and the ends justifying the means. Herod is committed to protecting and brandishing his power. Herod was a practiced politician who knew how use favoritism, nepotism, brutality, racial tensions, deception and arrogance to advance himself and his desires. He didn’t feel accountable to anyone.
The world of Herod is the counterpoint to the kingdom of God. The kingdom where true power is found in service to others, where wealth is a gift to be shared, where the process – how we do things is important because the ends will take care of themselves. The kingdom of God is where power is in forgiveness and reconciliation, where all are children of God, where doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God are the simple requirements.
We should feel a shiver of fear. Herod’s earthly kingdom still exists, because it has become embedded in our human desires. It surfaces over and over again in times and places all over the world. Bonhoeffer certainly recognized it in his. Do we recognize it in ours? Where are we complicit in the evils of this world? Where do we see the resistance to the reign of God?
Here’s a few examples that crossed my news feed this past week:
- “People who are coming into the US illegally aren’t deserving of food, shelter, medical or legal help”. As we saw in Joseph’s story a week ago, showing mercy is God’s first and greatest commandment which must come before human laws. There are easily more than 30 passages that direct us to care for the refugee.
- Someone else complained that a poor person who received gifts from strangers returned the gifts for cash. In God’s kingdom we are called to give generously, without strings, simply we have been blessed and to bless others. Deuteronomy 15 exhorts us to give freely and spontaneously and never count the cost.
- Someone else said, “You know, my stock portfolio is doing pretty well, I don’t think I can criticize the government for the way things are going.” This is no different than those who would look the other way when babies are killed to not upset the booming economy. Worshipping a booming economy is just our modern day golden calf.
Evil HAS to look like something else to get into our hearts. Evil is seductive. It offers us good things for ourselves – safety, security, wealth, beauty, power, fame. Anything that can make us overlook cruelty, injustice, brutality and mercilessness.
The seductiveness of evil makes it really hard to ‘do the right thing’. To practice orthopraxy. Because the right practices are not about US. They are about others. Jesus came to show us what love in action is like. How love and sacrifice must go hand in hand. The ‘rest of the story’ is that we easily get entangled in the Herodian way of doing things and do not see it or are blinded by our own comfort or privilege.
This is ultimately why Jesus and the prophets all tell us why we need to pay attention to the poor. Showing compassion for others is THE antidote to the evil in ourselves and the evils that have become embedded in our societal systems. Even the evils we don’t recognize as such. God wants us to look at the world through the eyes of the least, the lost, and the lonely because then we are seeing the kingdom of God coming nearer. There is little word of grace in this text except that God will do what needs to be done in God’s time. Herod dies, then Joseph returns to Israel, even though Herod’s son was even worse. God’s salvation for us will come despite the efforts of the Herod’s of the world.
Christmas should frighten us. The kingdom of God came and comes here. It should be uncomfortable and even difficult because we need to be jarred from our complacency and comfort. Because we ALL - all too easily fall prey to the seductiveness of evil. We all too easily overlook or ignore the Herod’s of this world. We should be terrified of Herod, but also be terrified of becoming Herod.
We should shiver in fear. God came to us and lays claim to us. God has seen our indifference and our complicity. This is why the Lord’s Prayer is so radical – we pray “thy kingdom come”. But in order for God’s kingdom to come, ours and Herod’s kingdoms have to go.
Amen.
