The sinister scene embraces the clickbait ingredients of a viral TikTok video.
When the Wise Men from the East innocently ask him about the newborn King of the Jews, Herod’s blood pressure undoubtedly spikes. His Grinch-ly face starts turning beet red, and thick veins commence to popping in his neck.
Then, as last Sunday’s Scripture lesson moved forward, the mean-one-Mr. Herod plays the Magi like fools, offering up dishonest desire to worship personally this new king – if only the Big Three wouldn’t mind texting him the tiny monarch’s contact information once they get it themselves. At that point, in steps God to press the pause button and prevent Herod from discovering the infant king’s whereabouts.
But, as we’ll hear shortly, that divine intervention spurs a mini-holocaust. If he can’t take out the new king with a drone strike, Herod will try carpet-bombing every child under the age of 2 who’s toddling around the places where the Wise Men visited. Herod executes his evil deed to protect his precious throne and his stranglehold on power from this new rival crown.
However, as with all the sinister plans of evil despots, Herod’s schemes are all in vain. The baby Jesus escapes Herod’s wholesale annihilation, and Herod himself ends up dying not long afterward. According to those who study such things, Herod dies a slow, miserable death from some decaying bowel ailment. He literally putrefies from the inside out, which seems a fitting end, since Herod’s been rotten to the core all along.
Listen even if you don’t understand to the Word that God has spoken in chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel –
Now after the Wise Men 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.”
Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 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.”
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. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through 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 are no more.”
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “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.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.
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. 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.” (Matthew 2:13-23)
If ever there was someone whom you’d cross the street to avoid, it would be the cruel, reckless, and vicious Herod.
Into the orbit of our lives teeters Herod: Drunk with power, sporting the homely, moth-eaten sweater of sin that Creation first slipped on the day when Adam and Eve decided to stage their own palace coup and seize control from God. Connect Herod with all that’s gone wrong with our fallen, broken, and fearful world since Day One, and you’ll begin to understand why the powers-that-be react so violently to the advent of the One whose mission in life – and in death, and in life again – is to wipe-clean sin from the face of the precious earth and wipe-away tears from the heavenly faces of God’s beloved people.
As another observes, Herod fears that somewhere out there in the Judean countryside is someone in diapers who poses a threat to all that he stands for. And to his credit, Herod makes the right call about that. Even though Jesus holds not the kind of political ambitions that would have threatened Herod’s royal position, in the longest possible run the greedy, self-centered sin that fuels Herod’s political machine will be drained away through the life-saving work of God in Christ.
In Jesus, God dreams of bringing the engines of sin to a grinding halt and sending off into exile the engineers whose designs only contribute to making the world more broken and fearful. Hard as it is to hear and wrap your head around – much as it further cuts to the bone like subzero chill, the only way life can ultimately triumph through the work of that little Babe of Bethlehem is if, first and foremost, sin and death are met squarely and head on.
In other words, you don’t experience the joy of Christ unless first you encounter the sorrow of Jesus, whose tent pitches smackdab in the middle of human suffering, sin, and death.
As go the lyrics, our hope is built on nothing less: Jesus’s blood and righteousness! Advented right here on this earth, in this life chock-full of things that vex and annoy, grieve and hurt, Jesus tells us that it’s not for angels and heavenly realms that he comes down to dwell among us. No, God in human flesh dwells in our midst precisely for all the folks who weep without end – all the Rachels and Roberts past and present whose lives are nothing more than never-ending strings of bitter tears and sword-pierced hearts.
As the earth begins another annual trip around the sun, we take a deep breath in grim anticipation of all that can and will go wrong in our lives and in the world. We’ve certainly had unhealthy shares of disappointment, heartache and grief in the year that was, and those sorrows will carry over into the new year. Until Christ comes again, we know it won’t all get better.
But if that Child of Bethlehem is who Herod and those Magi dimly suspect he just might be, then hope endures through even the darkest of times. A letter from the apostle Peter re-frames the understanding of our suffering –
For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.
If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. (1 Peter 2:19-25)
Not so very long ago in this country, it was both legal and common to cordon off public spaces with placards labeling “whites only” everything from drinking fountains, to bathrooms and theater seating. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, protesting such segregation came, among other acts, in the defiance of Rosa Parks, who silently took a “whites only” seat on an Alabama bus, thus punching her ticket of admission to the Montgomery jail.
So also of the Deep South were the stools that lined lunch counters “whites only.” Then, one day, some black college students breached the racial boundary and sat themselves down. Sympathetic white classmates were among their ranks. Of course the manager refused them service. But the hungry assembly refused to move, its congress sitting in silence as other customers hooted and jeered. Still others on their flanks cussed and cursed!
Just to add to the fun of counter-protest, first one person, then another, began pouring ketchup and mustard onto the heads of the silent minority perched stone-faced along the counter’s rim. Next came opened packets of sugar and coffee-creamer cups, emptied onto the already-gooey heads of the protesters – who took the slimy, granular abuse but did not move.
God’s good purposes in such human suffering remain veiled in mystery. But one thing’s for sure: God does use our suffering to prepare us to comfort others.
You and I often suffer, sometimes terribly, for reasons beyond mortal understanding, because the Holy Spirit has yet to connect us with souls who’ll one day find hope and comfort in our stories of suffering. Greater suffering requires greater comfort, which makes us greater comforters for others – perhaps worse for the wear, but surely better-abled to console the weary. The English language labels such grace as “empathy.”
In attitude and behavior before the eyes of the watching world, all our words and actions must exhibit empathy; they must demonstrate gracious comfort – even, and never more so, when we are hurting or suffering, weeping or mourning. Because in this life we should expect some measure of deep hurt and profound sadness. And when disaster strikes or chaos looms, the wounded soul connects such grim circumstances to the Cross of Christ. When the world throws its worst – when criticism is unfair, when the test results are grim, those dark, wilderness times are precisely when you need to be the most mindful of our God and of the grace God delivers in Jesus.
Not “grace under pressure,” as you sometimes hear that phrase used, nor generic poise or being “fast on your feet” – the grace we exhibit when persecuted connects directly to how we received God’s grace in the first place: By way of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Memory of the Lord’s willing suffering – with back lashed but without lashing back – prevents our striking out and giving in. And when we can resist that natural tendency to seek revenge, then, well, that’s a grace in God’s sight. Because we ourselves embody the result of our having received the grace of God.
Those condiment- and creamer-coated folks at the lunch counter weren’t trying to witness to Jesus necessarily. But something in the moment does highlight the apostle Peter’s thinking. Discerning the good in a one-sided lunch-counter food-fight isn’t easy to do. But it is all-but certain that those rabble-rousers did more good in keeping still and by doing nothing than if they had turned around and started throwing salt-and-pepper shakers at the angry mob or smashing ketchup and mustard bottles on their heads.
Indeed, what the world needs now is love sweet love. But so also does the world need now is the faithful witness to the Gospel of more disciples suffering well.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, January 26, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Marshall Segal inform the message.