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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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From December 30, 2007
Herod Who?
Matthew 2: 13-23
Christmas Eve seems so long ago already. The
low light of the sanctuary, our breathless waiting, and then
at last the gentle peace of Christ's birth. Don't you wish
those feelings could remain forever? That what we received
that night could flow from us into others' lives? Each one
sharing what was given, so that Christ's peace spread out to
blanket the whole earth.
No matter how much we might wish otherwise, we cannot will
holy moments to stay. We cannot force feelings to endure.
Everything changes. And often so quickly. Even our
scriptures today make this point.
In very short order we have gone from the sacred to the
profane, from the peak of quiet holiness to the depths of
human depravity. The Christ Child comes to us and before we
know it, a king's fury forces Jesus' family to flee into the
safety of Egypt. All because of Herod. All because of a
fearful ruler who calls for violence because a baby
threatens his political power.
As much as we might wish otherwise, we are not given a
morning to admire Gods gift of love asleep in the manger.
Instead, the world has forced its way into our sanctuary.
There is no way to avoid it. Not anymore anyway.
It used to be we could. For many years when this Sundays
gospel was read, Herods infanticide was not. It was
omitted. For generations of worshippers, somewhere in the
liturgical backgroundoffstage, as they say in theatremamas
were wailing in the streets. But not up front and center.
Not in church.
Episcopal priest Joy Carroll Wallis thinks that we
Christians are Herod-averse. We look away when the king
steps onto scriptures stage; we avoid him if we can.
Collectively, we do. Sure Herod gets mentioned in a couple
of Christmas carols, but as far as I know no one has ever
given him a full four verses of his own. Even if that
happened, who would ever sing that hymn?
We see the same thing happening with visual artists.
Painters and lithographers throughout the ages have loved
depicting the adoration of the magi. But the slaughter of
the innocents? No way. The flight into Egypt is as close to
the horror as most have been willing to get.
But without Herod, Joy Wallis insists, we are left with what
can easily become a sanitized, sentimental Christmas. And a
gospel that wont hold up to real life.
A tidy, two-dimensional Christmas is always the temptation,
always the risk. Even before we get to Herod, were already
well on our way to the seduction of sentimentality.
Take the stable where Jesus was born. We grow up learning
that there was no room at the inn, which indeed might have
been true. But it may have been more than that.
Some scholars contend that Mary and Joseph were forced into
a stable not because Bethlehem was overcrowded but because
Josephs family rejected them, outraged that he would show
up with a woman whose pregnancy occurred while they were
betrothed but not married.
It's tempting to knock the hard edges off the Christmas
story. But it was a stable, remember. Even if Mary had been
in possession of a broom, a can of Febreze, and a woven
birthing mat, a stable is no place for labor and delivery.
And what about the babe, so tender and mild? No newborn,
even the holiest one ever, can go for long without making it
clear that his infant body has a messy little mind of its
own.
Baby Jesus may have had a golden glow and important visitors
from afar, but he also wailed to be fed and fussed because
he needed to be changed.
If we are going to put the Christ back in Christmas, Joy
Wallis says, wed best put Herod back in, as well. Its the
most honest thing we can do. Why? Because the world into
which Jesus was delivered did not undergo a transformation
the night he was born. No one except his parents made ready
for him. No one dusted creations corners, no one swept away
lifes agonies, no one scrubbed out the stains of the human
condition so that we'd be ready for God's son.
Like you and me, on his birthing day Jesus was instantly at
the mercy of the powers and principalities of this world.
There were no exclusionary clauses written with Jesus in
mind.
If we look at the Christmas story in terms of symbols and
themes, King Herod is the embodiment of the forces at work
in the human heart that made little Jesus vulnerable the
moment he was born. To forget Herod, to choose to omit or
sidestep him is to deny the dark side of the gospel. The
dark side of the life into which our Great Light was born.
Without Herod, we are deprived the rest of the story, the
half that doesnt end with welcome and warmth and
wonderment. Without Herod, we might think that the whole
world clapped its hands and shouted for joy at the birth of
the Christ. Without Herod, we might well forget that another
response to the birth of love is to fear it. To reject it.
To want to destroy it.
Although we may revile him, we need Herod and what he
represents to be part of the story. But who was he, really?
Herod the Great was, by all accounts, Herod the Horrible. He
was a formidable political opponent. He had three of his own
children executed for conspiring against him. His years as a
client king were filled with intrigues and manipulations,
many of which came from within his very own family, one that
would surely get the designation dysfunctional if they
were alive today.
Although powerful in a worldly sense, Herod was a tragically
weak and pathetic man. He was profoundly insecure; every
decision was founded upon his need to maintain and extend
control over others, lest the Roman Empire remove him from
power.
If we are prone to sanitizing and sentimentalizing Jesus
birth, we are also inclined to oversimplify Herod; we easily
imagine him as the ultimate ogre.
For all his depravity, it must be remembered that Herod was
the leader who took on the extensive and expensive
rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, matching and then
surpassing the scope of King Solomons efforts centuries
before. In his time, no one was a better or more creative
builder than Herod; his building projects were many and
often visionary.
So, even in his hideousness, Herod was not a complete
monster. It would be easier if he were though, because that
would make him separate from the rest of humanity, radically
unlike the rest of us. Thats how we like our villains;
separate and unequal.
Take the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto for example.
Or any assassination for that matter. Those who are
responsible are quickly demonized, often held up as the most
vile among us. Now this is certainly an understandable
response to entirely unacceptable actions, especially in the
beginning when we look on with horror, shock, and outrage.
But we must remember that monstrous acts are not committed
by monsters. They are carried out by our brethren, by men
and women who are as human as we are, as human as Herod was.
Herod, Hitler, Husseinthe distinction between them and us
but not a matter of kind but of degree. Just as it is for
those we most admire: Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother
Teresa. What differentiates us--in either direction--is
always a matter of degree.
Thankfully, you and I dont come upon full-blown Herods very
often. Mostly we deal with the world's lesser Herods. People
who, like the king, find themselves threatened by what is
innately good and who seek creative ways to destroy that
goodness.
Let me share a story of a most unlikely Herod.
When a colleague first began serving her church, the senior
pastor was extremely supportive of her gifts. The two worked
together with great joy and enthusiasm. Although she was his
associate, he regarded her as an equal and so she grew in
ways that greatly blessed the church.
Then the congregation called a new senior pastor. And that
pastor immediately began to make it clear to my friend that
he was very much the pastor and that she was his associate.
As such, she would no longer be needed at funerals or
special occasions, since parishioners would naturally want
him present. Her gifts for worship planning should be saved
for another time; this was his domain now.
A vivacious, capable pastor became a silent, suffering
partner to a man who was somehow threatened by her. In order
to feel safe in his position, he found it necessary to kill
his associates spirit one day at a time.
Like Joseph and Mary so long ago, my friend knew the threat
and so retreated into a different kind of Egyptshe
resigned. Had she not been wise enough to move on, she could
easily have been killed off by a senior pastor threatened by
her innocent display of gifts for ministry.
Now, as much as Id love for my friend to wear the white hat
here and the senior minister to don a black one, my guess is
that the Herod-esque pastor was no more two-dimensional than
Herod the Great was. And as much as Id like my colleague to
play the role of baby Jesus in this human drama, I am
certainbecause she is as human as any of usthat she may
have done or said things that exacerbated the situation.
We are Herod-esque by degrees, just as we are Christ-like by
degrees.
It is not our identification with Christ alone that is
saving. Our salvation involves recognizing and reckoning
with the Herod within. Salvation calls us to see what is
threatenedhere, inside our hearts-- instead of who is
threateningthere, beyond us.
Our salvation demands that we see into ourselves and then
let the Christ cradle the small, scared self thatif left to
its own devices--will work to protect itself and advance its
power at any cost.
You see, the baby who was held so safely in his mothers
arms grew into a man with great arms of his own. Arms that
ache to hold us. Arms that ache to lead us, all of us, into
wholeness. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) Joy Carroll
Wallis sermon, Putting Herod Back into Christmas, was
posted on the Sojourners website the week of December 20,
2004. |
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