January 11, 2004

   There once was a king who had fallen into a deep depression, and everyone in his court did his best to cheer him up, including the court jester with his jungle bell hat. The jester asked the king why he was sad, and the king quietly explained that he would soon depart on a long journey; in other words, he was dying. So the jester asked him, “King, have you made any preparations for this journey,” and the king admitted that he had not. With that the jester took off his jingle bell hat and placed it on the king’s head. Imagine knowing you’re going to die and doing nothing to prepare.

Well, that’s the picture of King Herod, the one the history books call “Herod the Great,” at the time of our gospel story for this morning. As the wise men appear in his Jerusalem palace to ask “Where is the baby born to be king of the Jews,” he is a man about to begin the journey we all must take, but he is in no way packed and ready for the trip.

He is old and sick—physically, mentally, spiritually. Completely paranoid, probably demented. Josephus, from whom we get most of our historic knowledge of Judea at the time of Christ, wrote that Herod suffered from dropsy, uncontrollable itching over his whole body, an ulcerated mouth, stomach and colon resulting in breath so foul it could gag a horse. Josephus said Herod suffered from abdominal pain, constant diarrhea and—here’s the kicker—genitals that were so full of gangrene that the lesions were infested with maggots. You better believe he was about to take his final journey.

Now Herod was called the King of the Jews, but no Jew had crowned him. Far from it. The Roman Senate had actually awarded him the title. It took him three years and an awful lot of bloodshed to get it. He was power-mad, literally. Power-crazy. He killed his wife, her mother, her brother, her grandfather and even at least three of his sons, maybe four, to secure the title. In fact, Caesar Augustus joked that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son. You think Macbeth or Hamlet were bloody? Herod killed everybody who stood in the way to his royal title.

Herod is a bizarre character but also a fascinating one. He was capable of being very generous, even compassionate. Around 25 B.C., when a famine hit Palestine, Herod had his gold dinner plates melted down and the money given to the poor. More than once, historians tell us, he refunded taxes for those who were having trouble. But when he knew he was soon to die, he ordered the arrest of 100 prominent citizens of Jerusalem and left strict instructions for their murder at the exact moment of his death. Why? To ensure that someone would weep at his funeral.

No king since Solomon had built so much in the kingdom of the Jews, and he did it so that his people would love him.

He built Israel’s first seaport at Caesarea, he built a royal palace, a theater and a number of fortresses. You remember the movie Masada, where the Jews held out on top of a mountain against the Romans? Herod’s the one who built the fortress there. Most impressively of all, he rebuilt Solomon’s temple at Jerusalem. And he bent over backwards to do it. When the priests complained that the noise of stone cutting was drowning out their prayers, he had the stones cut far away and dragged to the site. When the priests complained that only Levites could be allowed to build the temple, he started a massive jobs program to train them in construction.

All this is history and documented, but in Matthew it becomes wrapped up in things we must accept on faith, such as the wise men and their gifts, the dreams that guided Joseph and the wise men out of Herod’s clutches, the flight by Mary and Joseph and the baby into Egypt, the murder of the innocent children and the family’s return after Herod’s death. These events are not documented.

Or are they? Listen to verse 15 of Matthew’s Chapter 2, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” Or verse 17, “Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.” Or the last verse of this chapter, “And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.”

So is Matthew history? I say it is—God’s history. Matthew’s version of events fits perfectly to bridge the gap between the wicked king Herod we know and the historical Jesus who began his ministry from Nazareth and called it his home town. But it’s more than just history. It shows how God is the true author of our story, from the dawn of time to the present and into the future. Hold onto that thought, gang, we’ll get back to it. But let’s look at Herod and his raging paranoia a bit more.

Herod became frightened when he heard that foreigners were coming to pay tribute to a baby king. He had spies everywhere, naturally, and word of wealthy travelers would have reached him long before they reached Jerusalem. When he learned when and where Jesus was born, the text says he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. He and the rest of the city should have been troubled that these foreigners could see the star and they could not, but no, he found it to be just one more challenge to his power, and by his evil logic even a baby who posed such a challenge had to die.

 He thought he had these foreigners tricked into revealing exactly where this baby would be found, but the wise men were warned and did not return to the king. Once Herod learned that he was the one who had been duped, he flew into a rage and ordered every boy two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem to be murdered. Jesus never would have seen his second birthday if Herod’s plan had worked.

Human history can be depressing, can it not? And Herod’s story is just one more sordid slice of that history. Let me tell you a sad statistic that I came across as I prepared today’s sermon: how many people would you say were killed in war in the 20^th Century? In the last century around the world, 191 million people were killed. And for every one killed, 40 more were seriously maimed.

Nor do things tend to get better as time passes. Thus far in the 21^st Century, we are killing each other at the rate of one per minute.

A casual study of history can convince a person that man’s story is tragic, futile and headed for a very bad ending.

Note that I said a casual study of history. Sometimes it takes a more subtle reading of the story to get the true picture, to see how God is really the author of this story. Take the wise men and their role. There’s nothing in Matthew’s gospel to say that these three men were kings; that’s just tradition. In fact, there’s nothing in the story to say there were three of them. We just assume: there were three gifts, so there must have been three gift-givers.

In fact, if you look closely, they may not have been men at all. Maybe they were women. Why? Well, they did stop to ask directions, didn’t they? Matthew says they stopped in Jerusalem and asked, “Where is he who is born king of the Jews?” The plain truth is that we don’t know much about these wise men, except that they definitely weren’t Jews. If they knew the stars and their meaning, they probably were part of an educated group of astrologer priests in Persia called Zoroastrians. Matthew brings them into his story to show the Jews, “Look, even priests from far-off lands knew that the baby Jesus was your king, your Messiah. Why can’t you believe?”

Then again, we look at Matthew’s version of the Christmas story and we see the figure of Joseph, the man we think of as Jesus’ surrogate father. Certainly God is using him to advance his plan for the world. God sent him dreams to reassure him and to propel him, including a dream to take Mary and the baby and flee from Herod into Egypt, where they probably used the gifts of the wise men to live on. He fled out of fear of Herod, and he fled out of love for this child who was not his own, and yet in a real and wonderful sense, he was totally his.

Matthew writes that these things happened so that the words of the prophet could be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” That’s a reference to the prophet Hosea, writing 700 years before the birth of Jesus.

He was talking about God sending Moses to call the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, but look how the pieces of history fall together: God used the same words to foretell his own son’s return from Egypt to save the world from sin. Catch this: Herod’s angry threats were no surprise to God, and no problem, either. Hundreds of years before Herod was even born, God’s plan was in place.

However, even if you buy this argument, that God was working out his plan for the world through special providence in the story of the birth of his son, you might ask, “So what? What does this whole account have to do with life in the 21^st Century? What’s it say to me today?” I’m so glad you asked. I have three answers to that question I’d like to suggest this morning:

The first is to persevere, even when history says the odds are totally against you.

Have you read about the tremendous success of the landing craft on Mars? In 1972 NASA launched an even more remarkable space probe, Pioneer 10. The primary mission of Pioneer 10 was to fly past the planet Jupiter, take pictures and report on its moons, its magnetic fields and atmosphere. This was considered a very risky project, because no probe had ever gone beyond Mars, and it was feared that asteroids would destroy the craft before it even got to Jupiter.

But Pioneer 10 persisted. Not only did it get to Jupiter, the giant planet’s gravity whipped Pioneer 10 into deep space.

Picking up speed, this little explorer, about the size of a coffee table, was about a billion miles from the sun when it raced past Saturn, two billion miles from the sun as it hurtled past Uranus, three billion as it passed Neptune, four billion past Pluto in 1997. And as it passed each of the planets and headed into deep space, Pioneer 10 faithfully reported back to earth with radio signals coming from an eight watt transmitter. Think about that—it was sending messages across the solar system using less power than the night light you have in your bathroom.

Pioneer 10 was never designed to last more than three years, but for all I know it’s still out there beaming back signals from its tiny transmitter. By simple longevity, it achieved more than anybody thought was possible. Doesn’t that sound a lot like us? Sometimes people don’t expect much from us. Sometimes we don’t expect much from ourselves. But I stand before you as proof that God can use somebody with only eight watt ability, and our great God can use anybody for his purposes in history. But God can’t work with anybody who quits.

Second thing this story tells us is to look up, not down, if you want to see the star.

In October 1989 a new star was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, placed next to the stars for Julie Andrews and Wayne Newton. But this star was an extremely unlikely choice to be added to singers and actors. Any guesses? It was Billy Graham, who has preached the Gospel to millions upon millions of people around the world. In fact, they had tried to put him on a star 40 years previously, but this time he relented, because it gave him further opportunity to share the word of God. At the unveiling he said, “We should put our eyes on the star, which is the Lord.”

Herod was troubled, and lots of people in this world are troubled today. I’m sure you’ll agree with that.

Maybe they’re troubled by the shaky state of the economy. Maybe they’re troubled by the threat of terrorism which all of our power can’t seem to wipe out.

Some people are troubled because disease is getting the upper hand in their body, and their time in life is short but their future is unknown. Some lonely people are troubled because they want to be loved, but instead are only feared. Some people are troubled simply because they hate any change that threatens the status quo.

What’s God’s answer to such people? Remember the words of the wise men to Herod and Jerusalem: A baby has been born. There’s a new factor in our seemingly hopeless condition. Second, this baby is already the king of the Jews. He is truly royal, a title granted by God himself, not gained by kissing up to the Roman emperor or secured by an intra-family bloodbath.

Third, our worship of this baby is not submission to a tyrant by force, but loving adoration of a savior who brings only peace for the world.

Finally, we are reminded that the story of Christmas includes the story of Easter. Just as the computer you may have received for Christmas comes “bundled” with software to make it useful, the story of Christmas is not complete with the sobering reality that this baby is born to die. To die for love.

At Christmastime we are never far from the love of God. We experience that love in things that are soft and tender, in memories sweet and fragrant, in stories poignant and touching. We hear that love in the music that is sung, we see it in the excitement of children, we taste it and smell it and touch it. That’s why we love Christmas so much. That’s why we hate to see it end.

That’s why I wanted to extend the Christmas season one more week and share it with you, my church family.

But in the story of Herod and God’s actions in history, we bump up against the sacrificial side of God’s love, and the high cost of that love. Mary and Joseph’s baby boy was saved from death, but only for a few years. The baby Jesus would grow and teach and heal and preach. Making friends with lepers and sinners and every kind of outcast, he would make real his father’s love for the world.

 And he would lay down his life so that we—his beloved—can live. History may look like just a bloody, chaotic mess that has no meaning, but God says otherwise.

Just beyond the world that we can see—just beyond the anger of Herod and the weeping of the mothers of slain innocent baby boys—just out of our despair at the bloody pages of history, God is working to make a miracle.

It’s really true--he’s got the whole world in his hands.