Herod, I get you. Forgive me, God.

Matthew 2:13-23

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." 16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 18 "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." 19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20 "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." 21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."

This year, the church readings are a little jumbled up.  In two weeks, we will read the story of Epiphany where the wisemen follow the star first to Jerusalem and they ask King Herod the Great about this new King of the Jews that has been born.  Herod is flummoxed and anxious, but plays it smooth and slyly says to the wisemen,

“yes, yes, follow that star and when you find the child, bring him back here to me so I can worship him.” 

The wisemen leave and follow the star to Bethlehem where they find baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger.  God then warns them in a dream not to return to Herod and they bypass Jerusalem on their return trip back to the East. 

Today, just when we’re settling into the peaceful afterglow of Christmas, our Bible story picks up Joseph has a dream.  And he knows, he knows, that there is danger on the horizon.  He tells Mary that they have to leave. They are not safe here. They have to go.  You can almost feel the hair on Mary’s arms rising as they pack what they can and flee the terror in the middle of the night.  Joseph acted well on his dream.  Because Herod goes off the rails and orders a genocide of all the boys under the age of two.  Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus are already on their way fleeing as the violence enshrouds Bethlehem.

It’s not hard to make Herod out as a madman.  In many ways, he was.  The ancient historian, Josephus writes that Herod ordered that when his own time came and he himself died, that the state was to assassinate all of the beloved political prisoners just to assure that there would be widespread mourning and grief in every household at the time of his death.  [i]

We know factually that Herod was obsessed with who would succeed him.  He had seven wills, lots of family problems and sibling rivalries—he ended up executing his favorite wife and three of his own children.  He drowned one of the high priests he didn’t get along with in a pool in Jerusalem.  It’s not hard to imagine that he would have gone off the rails to hear the news of a King of the Jews who would have been born in Bethlehem. 

However, the thing is that Herod the Great[ii] was that as a politician and as a ruler, he was, as Matt Skinner calls him, “a mixed bag.” 

For starters, he was a Jew.  I don’t know that historians would say he was the world’s most pious Jew. But he was appropriately devoted to his ancestors, the temple in Jerusalem, and worship of Yahweh.  Herod the great is, in fact, credited with rebuilding the Jerusalem temple over a period of many years.  He worked closely with the chief priests and innovated new things like special courts for women and gentiles within the temples which likely won him some points. 

While some folks were critical of how much money was spent on the temple, no one could deny that it was staggeringly beautiful.  Some sources say that over the long period of rebuilding, up to 18,000 people were employed in the city of Jerusalem (speaking of winning points).   The Pax Romana meant that there was more travel to Jerusalem for festivals and that pilgrims had more disposable income to pay for lodging and buy animals like turtledoves to sacrifice.  All of this was a solid boom to the ancient economy.

Herod won a lot of good will with his support of the temple.  And truthfully, being the savvy politician he was, “that fox” as Jesus famously called his son, Herod Antipas, Herod the Great knew how to win good will in all the right places.  He threw a little support to the other religious groups that worshiped, Apollo or Ba’al, or the gods of Olympia and Athens.  He also built three other spectacular temples for worship of the Roman emperor (who incidentally was also known as the prince of peace).  As a good diplomat, Herod built these temples for the emperor in Jewish areas of that weren’t likely to offend anyone.  Historians and commentators say that Herod loved beautiful spaces: he built public theaters, amphitheaters, baths, gardens and pools.  In the city of Tyre, He repaved the main street and fitted it with colonnades to create the first known covered/paved shopping street. 

Under his governance, the economy was booming.  He developed new trade routes with Damascus and beyond that to Syria and the area known as the fertile Crescent.  He made roads, reservoirs and aqueducts to modernize the cities. Josephus praises the sewers Herod constructed in the city of Caesarea calling them an “engineering marvel.” (I get it. I would probably have kind things to say about effective sewers too). 

There was much to export from the region under his reign.  There was fertile farmland that produced consistently healthy crops of grapes, grains and olives.  There were all sorts of tradeable goods from perfumes, ointments, date wines, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.

To maximize trade, Herod created several new cities including Caesarea Maritima (the city with the sewers) where he developed the largest harbor in the Mediterranean Sea with one of the home ports for the Roman Navy.  In support of trade, he developed warehouse facilities and commercial space.  All of this effectively worked to rearrange economic trade patterns across the entire region.

He was called Herod the Great for a reason.  A couple hundred years before Herod the Great (and his father before him), Jerusalem was an impoverished, dusty city, but during Herod the Great’s reign, archeological excavations show that in Jerusalem had large concentrations of wealthy and elite people as did some of the other larger cities.  Herod was high on Rome’s A-list.  He preformed well. He demonstrated that he was committed to Rome’s policies and was rewarded as an effective governor.  Herod was savvy, diplomatic, a smart politician and he knew how to play his cards.  He had lots of powerful friends and people loved him.  He was the best of all rulers in what he did for the land—he was powerful, visionary, arrogant, and paranoid. 

Into that mix, some exotic wisemen—perhaps Zoroastrian astrologers?--come from the East to pay homage to a new King of the Jews—in Bethlehem? what in the world?  Someone who would upend all of this Roman glory? Bah. The idea was almost comical. Best to eliminate and kill all possible threats. To squash the idea like a flea between his fingers. And Herod orders the genocide of all baby boys under the age of 2 in and around the tiny, dusty agricultural hamlet of Bethlehem.  Given the size of little Bethlehem and the infant mortality rate, this probably would have been a couple dozen baby boys. 

Although Herod’s order or murder of the babies is one of a lunatic, he was so popular in some circles, and his world was so opulent, that you could almost imagine some folks saying, “ah boy, that’s a tough one, (sigh) but that’s just the cost of doing business.” 

So they say, as Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee through the night to Egypt where they will find refuge.

In the genocide that we know of from the book of Exodus, at Pharaoh’s order, the Egyptians kill the Israelite babies.  (this is the part where Moses’ mother hides him in a basket in the river).  But in our Bible story today, its’s the Judeans killing their own people, their own babies under Herod’s orders.  Lest a new King rise out of Bethlehem to challenge Herod’s Kingdom, all baby boys under the age of two are to be killed.

Because that is the power of sin and its’ ability to seep into our systems. That is the power of sin: that we are transformed us into the very worst versions of ourselves.  That is the power of sin: that we become what we hate and critique.  And we are complicit and trapped.

For the several years that I was in Honduras, I worked with folks who worked for the Dole and Chiquita companies on the north coast.  I know the impoverished salary that folks make and sometimes now, I just find myself staring at the bananas in the grocery story.  And then I buy them.  Sometimes, the best I can do is remember how the pesticides made farmers so sick and buy the organic ones for them before I rush back into my daily life.  

Jesus was born in flesh to bring about a different kingdom.  We long to bring about the Kingdom of God, to struggle for justice, to fight for those who have less than us, to share what we have and yet, we are enmeshed in a system that suffocates us. 

Christmas, with all the tenderness and sentimentality and twinkling lights and nostalgia has a dangerous side.  The story of Herod in the gospel of Matthew reminds us of how hard it is to let the kingdom of God break into our world. 

But God couldn’t wait, couldn’t wait, to break into our broken and sin-infected world. God couldn’t wait to break Jesus into our world and teach us what a different Kingdom looks like.  To prompt us to let go of Herod’s Kingdom and even turn it on its’ head. To teach us how to make things right and usher in moments of salvation here on earth while we stand in the promise of salvation beyond. 

Christmas is God’s fiercest determination to be with us and make things right in our lives and in the world.  And we will not despair.  We will not, because God is present here and alive among us.  God’s fingerprints are all over our souls and God’s wisdom is leading us to reflect, often self-critically, on our world today.

In the final verse of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” we pray:

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born in us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
Oh, come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Immanuel!

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[i] For much of the research in this message, I lean on “Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans,” by Peter Richardson, 1996.

[ii] (not to be confused with his son Herod Antipas who ruled when Jesus was crucified)