Matthew 2:1-18
Keeping Herod in Christmas
James Sledge December
14, 2014 – Advent 3
At
the church I previously served, we held a “Hanging of the Greens” service on a
Sunday evening early in Advent. Between Scripture readings, Advent hymns, and
Christmas carols, we decorated the sanctuary, and those decorations included a
full-sized, wooden manger.
During
one of those services, I invited the children to gather around that manger as I
offered a short message about the child whose birth we would soon celebrate and
about why he was born. As I spoke, I brought out a four foot tall, wooden cross
that we typically used during Lent. I leaned it against the manger and talked
about this Savior who first slept in an animal feed trough and who would die on
a cross. A few among the small group that attended the service remarked on how
moving the message of manger and cross was. But most seemed bothered by it.
I
left the cross against the manger for the rest of Advent. It was not well
received. Some complained that it sapped the season of its joy, and that cross
may have generated more complaints than anything done in worship during my
eleven years there. I never tried it again.
For
centuries Christmas was a rather minor event on the Christian calendar, but,
for a variety of reasons, it has gradually eclipsed most everything else, with
the possible exception of Easter. It certainly is worth celebrating God’s entry
into human history through the birth of Jesus. But as Christmas has gradually
become so associated with joy and good cheer, with warmth and family, the
“Christmas spirit” sometimes crowds out the Christian message. And if we won’t
allow the cross to intrude on our happy, joyful Christmas, even during the reflective
season of Advent, I wonder if we’ve gotten a bit off track.
Matthew’s
gospel certainly won’t let us linger for long at the manger. In truth, the
manger only appears in Luke. In Matthew, we hear of an angel appearing to
Joseph in a dream and telling him to take the pregnant Mary as his wife. The
birth itself receives only a scant mention at the conclusion of that story. (Joseph)
took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne
a son; and he named him Jesus.
Matthew
doesn’t linger at the birth, but he immediately introduces foreboding. The
birth of a king, a Messiah, may be good news to some, but it is not for many.
Word of a new king does not sit well with the current one. The possibility of a
new order sounds dreadful to those heavily invested in the present one. The
possibility of a world organized around the ways of God prompts the powers that
be to do all they can to cling to power. Herod will enlist the Magi as his
spies to deal with this usurper to the throne. And when that doesn’t work,
Herod will simply kill all the babies in Bethlehem.
Jesus
may be a year or two old by then, but this story is the only one Matthew connects
to Jesus’ birth. And so most of us have associated Wise Men with Christmas, and
if the crèche at your house is like the one at mine, those Wise Men are already
at the manger, or close by awaiting Epiphany on January 6. I wonder if anyone
has ever made a King Herod figure for their nativity set. After all, he is just
offstage, awaiting word from those Wise Men.
The
slaughter of children like that described in Matthew occurs with appalling
regularity down through history. Pharaoh once ordered the slaughter of Hebrew infants
to preserve his power. Dictators, despots, and militias still kill children as
easily as Herod did. In the most recent fighting between Israelis and
Palestinians, Hamas launched their missiles from sites chosen so that
retaliation by Israel would kill civilians and especially children. Israel obliged,
and children were a majority of the casualties.
In
the chapter that provides this sermon its title, Brian McLaren writes, “The
next war— whoever wages it— will most likely resemble every war in the past. It
will be planned by powerful older men in their comfortable offices, and it will
be fought on the ground by people the age of their children and grandchildren.
Most of the casualties will probably be between eighteen and twenty-two years
old— in some places, much younger. So the old, sad music of the ancient story
of Herod and the slaughter of the children will be replayed again. And again,
the tears of mothers will fall.”[1]
Matthew interrupts our Advent planning
and our Christmas merriment with the inconsolable weeping of mothers. We do
well to pay attention, for Matthew insists that the arrival of Jesus will force
us to make decisions, to choose our loyalties. Writes McLaren, “We do not live
in an ideal world. To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to face at every
turn the destructive reality of violence. To be alive in the adventure of Jesus
is to side with vulnerable children in defiance of the adults who see them as
expendable. To walk the road with Jesus is to withhold consent and cooperation
from the powerful, and to invest it instead with the vulnerable. It is to
refuse to bow to all the Herods and all their ruthless regimes— and to reserve
our loyalty for a better king and a better kingdom.”[2]
A
little over a week ago, a line on Twitter caught my eye and recalled for me
that time when I leaned a cross against a manger. The line was from an Advent
blog that remembered the brutal rape and murder of four church women in El
Salvador during Advent of 1980, an event with some American fingerprints on it.
The blog included words from a journal written by one of the women whose work
with the poor and destitute put them in such danger.
“The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is
extreme and they were right to leave…. Now I must assess my own position,
because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave. I
almost could, except for the children, the poor bruised victims of adult
lunacy. Who would care for them? Whose heart would be so staunch as to favor
the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and helplessness? Not mine, dear
friend, not mine.”[3]
The blog continued with a call for us to keep our eyes open during
Advent waiting, not to hide from the reality of Herods and dictators and older
men who plan wars from their comfortable offices,
but to be alert, to weep with those mothers and align ourselves with them. Then
the blog closed with the line that first caught my attention. “Ultimately, if
you can’t stare at the Cross, deeply gazing at the Crèche is not possible.”[4]
In this season of watching, waiting, and preparing the way, in this
season of trivial calls to “Keep Christ in Christmas” that often have nothing
to do with the kingdom, that new day Jesus proclaims, I
hope the crèche does not blot out the cross for us. I think that’s why Brian
McLaren calls us to “Keep Herod in Christmas” with these words.
“So let us light a candle
for the children who suffer in our world because of greedy, power-hungry, and
insecure elites. And let us light a candle for grieving mothers who weep for
lost sons and daughters, throughout history and today. And let us light a
candle for all people everywhere to hear their weeping. In this Advent season,
we dare to believe that God feels their pain and comes near to bring comfort.
If we believe that is true, then of course we must join God and come near,
too.”[5]
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