Receive the Gift of Music!
Let’s keep on with Matthew’s opening chapters.
Last week, the Magi got our attention. But this week, we’re going to steel ourselves a bit and look at the villain of Jesus’ birth story: King Herod.
We actually know a lot about Herod the Great outside of the Bible. He was installed as “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate around 40 CE (it’s hard to get an exact date) and returned to rule for 44 years. History remembers him mostly as a skilled and ambitious builder. On his list of accomplishments you can find Masada and the Second Temple.
Herod’s family had cultivated ties with the Romans that he continued to steward and shape throughout his career. His own politicking got him named king. A lot of other men fell to leave Herod standing. If you want to get into all the details of it all, you can read pretty much any of Josephus’ historical works. But the point is this…
Herod was an expert, seasoned, successful wielder of power.
So when king-makers appear under the guidance of a star, Herod knows to be nervous. He knows well as anyone that a single crack in the armor is a weakness – even if it’s just a newborn with a reputation. And so it is that King Herod attempts to stamp out the Kingdom of God in order to preserve his own throne by killing every male child under two years old.
Herod is only the first of a long line of kings who can intuit that the Kingdom of God means something troubling for them. For centuries, people of power have followed in his wake. People in positions who can just sense in some, shall we say, spiritual level that the reign of God is king would mean the end of their own rule.
We see it again: the remarkable realism of the Christian Bible, a willingness to tell us the inspired truth with all of its grit and grim.
This was a precarious world for Mary and Joseph’s child. It was populated by powers who attempted to stamp out the word of God in order to maintain their own positions. It was only by a God miraculous grace that Mary’s son survived the wiles of a mad king.
This is a precarious world for our children too. It is unsettling, surely, to reckon with the fact that people of faith are trying to raise children in the Kingdom of God, all the while realizing that the world is hostile to God’s Kingdom. How could we possibly face this difficulty?
Well, we can start by recognizing that God did this first. God sent his own Son into the world to be the very first child raised in the warzone between the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdoms of earth. God set his own heart on this fragile little baby who would one day do the unimaginable: die and rise for our sake. It is not a mistake that the life of this newborn son would also be our way of living full, true, eternal lives in this often-violent world.
How can we respond to this God? The God who is willing to become both vulnerable parent and vulnerable child so that we could live in eternal safety as children of God. How can we say yes to the God who is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? This God whose glory does not despise our human nature and our humble existence.
We trust him.
That’s it.
We trust him.
We trust him more than we trust our fears for ourselves and for our children. We trust him more than we trust our own predictions of what might be politically advantageous and effective. We trust him more than we might even trust our past experiences of this broken world. We trust him more than anything we can see, touch, fear, hold, or consider. We trust him.
This is the way into his Kingdom.