herod the king, in his raging

1st Sunday after Christmas

            One of the most beautiful carols sung at Christmastime is “The Coventry Carol.”  What I love most about it is its tenderness.  It sounds like a lullaby, to the baby Jesus, I thought.

Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

I must have mentioned my delight at this carol to Bev one day.  She asked me if I had listened to the words.  I hadn’t.  Not very closely.  At Bev’s urging, I listened to the words.

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day.

This poor youngling for whom we sing

By, by, lully, lullay.

And then the carol comes directly to its point.

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day.

His men of might, in his own sight,

All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!

And ever morn and day,

For thy parting neither say nor sing,

By, by, lully, lullay.

This tender Christmas carol is about little boy babies who died at the hand of Herod the king.

            Well, by all accounts, Herod was one mean monarch.  “He had no sooner come to the throne,” reports William Barclay, “than he began by annihilating the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews.  Later he slaughtered three hundred court officers out of hand.  Later he murdered his wife Mariamme, and her mother Alexandra, his eldest son Antipater, and two other sons, Alexander and Aristobulus.”  Now here comes Matthew telling of yet another heinous crime.  In order to make sure that he had eliminated the Christ child, Herod ordered all the boy babies, in and around Bethlehem, two years old and younger to be killed.  By one estimation, this would have involved perhaps twenty to thirty babies.  While outside of the Gospel of Matthew there is no other account of the slaughter of the babies, it clearly was within Herod’s character to do such a thing.  Certainly, Matthew has a reason for telling this story.  Herod, the powerful king, wanted to eliminate any rival king.  He wanted the baby Jesus dead.
 

            Notice.  Notice how, by the use of this story, Matthew lets us see the kind of opposition Jesus will face in his life.  Matthew would have us see the beginning of a pattern that will develop throughout his gospel.  There will be people who oppose Jesus, even as King Herod has.  Throughout his adult life, people will stand in the way of Jesus’ ministry.  And what is Jesus’ ministry?  It is to accomplish God’s saving purpose.  But some people will react against him with hostility.  Not so much ordinary people, who will be attracted to Jesus and his message, but those in high position in government or religion.  Jesus will upset certain people.  He will tell people that anyone who lusts in the heart has already committed adultery.  He will tell them, “Do not resist an evildoer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”  And he will say, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  Are these the things that will threaten people?  He will teach with authority, his own authority.  He won’t quote the experts.  He will say, “You have heard that it was said . . . But I say to you. . . .”  Is that what will threaten people?  Will it be because he will hang out with sinners?  Will it be because he will break the rules?  The religious experts will object to him allowing his disciples to pluck heads of grain on the sabbath.  Jesus will tell them, “. . . if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”  Is that what will bother them?  Or will it be when he says, “For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath”?  Will it be because of the way he will ride into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey like the coming king?  Will that be the reason the religious leaders will oppose him?  Or will it be his behavior in the temple, driving out the sellers and buyers, overturning the tables of the money changers?  Will it bother the religious authorities when he tells the buyers and sellers, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers”?  Will that disturb them?  Jesus will tell the religious leaders themselves, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.”  Will this be what disturbs the religious leaders?  Matthew’s story about King Herod opposing Jesus is but a preview of opposition Jesus will face in his ministry, opposition to God’s own saving activity through him.
 

            Of course, there are those who have the power to take action to eliminate Jesus.  The enemies of Jesus have their ways of attempting to remove him from the scene.  It is not simply Jesus himself they seek to remove, but God’s saving activity through him.  In this Jesus, God is working to reveal his purpose:  to renew humanity beginning with a clean slate, the forgiveness of sins.  But this new life would require a change.  It would require working toward justice, and not oppressing people.  But some powerful people don’t want to change.  With Jesus out of the way, the powerful can maintain their hold on power and control human affairs in the fashion they desire.  Look at them:  There’s Herod, the king, in his raging.  See how he orders the slaughter of the boy babies, in and around Bethlehem, two years old and younger.  He’s one who has the power to have his will done.  And there is Caiaphas the high priest.  There is Pilate the governor.  There are the chief priests and the elders and the people.  See what they can do together.  One of Jesus’ own disciples betrays him, and an armed posse sent by the chief priests and the elders of the people arrests Jesus.  Now see Caiaphas the high priest.  He puts Jesus on trial, and he finds Jesus guilty of blasphemy, so he sends him to Pilate the governor.  See Pilate again.  He finds no reason to condemn Jesus, and so he puts the matter to the gathered mob.  They shout for the death of Jesus, and Pilate caves in.  The religious authorities, the government official, and the crowd—they wanted Jesus dead, and he was put to death.  See the powerful Japanese emperor in the early twentieth century.  His government occupies Taiwan.  The Japanese police seek to enforce the law prohibiting Christian worship.  There is to be loyalty only to the Japanese emperor.  Up against this power is a feisty little woman named Chi-wang.  She simply seeks to serve Christ as his evangelist.  She does so, and the Japanese government punishes her.  We’re not told exactly how.  This much we do know, they intend to stop her preaching.  Those in power have their ways of holding on to their power and creating life in the world according to their own self-serving plans.  Frankly, it looks like people in power can put a stop to God’s saving activity.
 

            Truth be told, sometimes we don’t see God’s saving activity.  It is true, is it not, that we go through periods when our minds seem clouded.  Sure.  These are the times when we have little clarity about what God is up to.  Sometimes we can’t make sense of things.  There’s the whole thing about Matthew’s story in which innocent babies are killed in order to eliminate the Messiah, the rival king.  The story tells us that the Christ child escaped unharmed.  God warned Joseph to flee with his family to safety.  But what about the other children?  Why didn’t God save them all?  Why did God save only one child?  If God could warn one family, couldn’t he have warned them all?  Consider:  If you were staying in a crowded hotel and you noticed that one of the rooms had caught on fire, wouldn’t you do everything you could to save as many people as possible?  You would!  You’d go up and down the corridor and pound on each of the doors.  Would you warn only one family?  No.  You would reach as many as you could.  Why didn’t God warn all the families, in and around Bethlehem, with boy babies two years old and younger?  And sometimes it’s hard to see God’s saving purpose in our own lives.  We have each faced our own times of trouble:  sickness, divorce, job loss, some new disability.  So we wonder about God’s saving activity sometimes.  It doesn’t always seem all that obvious.
 

            And yet, ultimately, the forces against God’s saving activity have not been successful.  They have not been able to eliminate Jesus Christ from the scene.  They have not been able to thwart God’s saving activity.  What these powerful people have sought to do, God has found a way to overcome.  Herod the king wanted Jesus out of the way, and, as the story goes, he killed the innocent to work his will.  But, Matthew tells us, God moved Jesus out of harm’s way until it was safe to return.  Herod did not kill Jesus.  God kept him safe.  God’s saving purpose was not thwarted.  No, Matthew doesn’t answer our questions about why the innocent suffered.  In the story he tells, no divine intervention takes place to prevent the slaughter of the innocent babies.  And so it will be with God’s own Son.  There will be no angelic armies arriving to prevent the crucifixion of Jesus, the innocent one dying for the sins of the guilty.  Matthew would have us see that no matter what humans do to try to thwart God’s saving purpose, God’s will ultimately will be done.  The religious authorities, the government official, and the crowd with a moment of power to alter history in its hands all wanted Jesus dead.  As a result of their combined forces, Jesus was pinned to a cross like a notice tacked to a bulletin board.  The notice said, “The powerful win.  They always win.”  But God raised up this same crucified Jesus on the third day, powerfully declaring that the powerful do not win.  Jesus was vindicated.  He was raised to continue God’s saving purpose.  But how about the powerful emperor in the early twentieth century, the one who occupied Taiwan and tried to crush Christian preaching?  God’s saving power was being communicated by Chi-wang.  The government tried to arrest her and put a stop to it.  But Chi-wang’s friends put the tiny woman in a sack and carried carry her around like a bag of sweet potatoes.  When traveling by train, they locked her in the lavatory to keep her from being found.  When she was preaching in a cave, those with her watched both entrances.  If the Japanese police came in one way, they would take her out the other.  There it is again:  God’s saving purpose was not thwarted.  Through the ministry of Chi-wang, her native Taroko tribe came to know the love of Jesus Christ.
 

            So maybe we can trust God to carry out his saving purpose through those who follow his Son.  Maybe we can trust God even when our minds are clouded with doubt.  If God has acted mightily in the past, maybe we can trust God to act in and through us in the future.  When we are going through our troubles, we may find it hard to see where God is working in our lives.  Later, we began to see where God’s grace was reaching out to us to heal us.  When things were too painful, we probably didn’t notice God’s saving activity working in our lives right then.  Later, we began to see how our troubles become tools in our toolbox, helping us to understand and to help others through their own similar difficulties.  Right at the time when we thought we had never been effective in working in accord with God’s saving activity, we got a visit or a phone call from someone who says we did make a difference in his or her life.  The stories of God’s saving purpose in Jesus Christ not being thwarted and even our own memories and shared stories about how God has been working in our lives are what we need to pull us through those times of doubt.  When we don’t see God’s saving activity in our lives in the present, we can remember when it was in history.  And we can remember when God powerfully acted in our lives.