The Second Sunday after Christmas Day
January 4, 2009
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector
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Herod said to the wise men, “Go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and
pay him homage.”[1]
We know or think we know the evil intent in Herod’s heart. Matthew tells us that Herod, being told that magi from the East had come
seeking the one born king of the Jews, “was frightened, and all of Jerusalem with him.” When the king worries, everyone worries. And
why not? Herod was king of the Jews. Thus, the revelation that the long foretold messianic prophecy had been fulfilled couldn’t have
been good news. It could only have meant the end of Herod’s reign. And no one relinquishes power and authority easily or gladly. So,
when Mary had her baby, Herod had a meltdown.
History hasn’t been kind to Herod. Installed on the throne by the reviled Roman Empire, Herod was viewed as an enemy collaborator, a
traitor to the cause of Jewish political independence. His mother was an ethnic Arab, his father, an Edomite, making Herod an outsider,
an interloper, a “half Jew,” according to the historian Flavius Josephus in his monumental work, The Antiquities of the Jews. Matthew
portrays him as a murderous monarch. Having “been tricked by the wise men” who did not bring word of the birthplace of the one born
king of the Jews, Herod ordered the slaughter of all the children of Bethlehem under the age of two in a vain attempt, literally, to
kill the competition.[2] Herod. First century Palestine’s irredeemably bad man.
However, a careful reading of Josephus’s Antiquities reveals a more nuanced portrait of Herod, painted not only in dark tones, but also
bright colors. Herod’s entente with Rome was the act of an astute politician. His creation of the cities of Caesarea and Herodium, the
first named for his patron, the roman emperor, and the second, for himself, and the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem – of
which still stands the Western or Wailing Wall, a sacred site of both Judaism and Islam – mark him as a bold and imaginative builder.
He was a generous ruler, caring for his people in times of famine and natural disaster and an enlightened benefactor who filled his
court with artists and artisans, poets and painters from the Roman and Greek cultures. Herod, then, was like all of us. Human. Therefore,
a mixed bag.
So, too, the great Antonio Salieri, Italian composer and conductor, Austrian court Kappellmeister, teacher of Beethoven and Schubert, and
the rival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is in this last feature that Peter Shaffer found his inspiration for his play, Amadeus.
The Salieri of Amadeus lives to serve God, desires only to praise God, labors long hours with his God-given talent, practicing the art
of listening for and reproducing through music, for the blessing of all, God’s Voice. Yet, despite his faithfulness, success eludes him.
He does hear the vox Deus, but only in the music of Mozart. Salieri, in full meltdown mode, is jealous of the genius of that “giggling
child,” the “infantine Mozart.”[3]
So we might understand Herod. His authority was great. His accomplishments, grand. Yet, he was bedeviled by the news of the birth of his
supplanter, the one to whom, he feared, the whole world would run.
Here I see the mystery of the quest for God. The mystery of God’s very existence and, if God exists, then our having to wrestle with that
terrible wonderment of why God seems so uncaring, allowing life to be filled with contradiction. For Herod, a successful monarch whose
throne was unsteadied by the birth of a baby. For Salieri, a celebrated musician whose stature was threatened by the coming of a child genius.
There is yet another mystery. No less – perhaps more – significant than the first. It is our quest for our selves and, in that, having to
wrestle with that terrible wonderment, that inherent vexing contradiction of our existence – that all at once complex connection between
our intentions and our actions and, therefore, at times, disconnection between the good we would do and the less than good we sometimes do
or even the less than good we would do and the good we do.
I guess what I’m getting at in talking about these dual mysteries of the quest for God (a metaphor for the external) and our selves (a metaphor
for the internal) is that connection among our outward circumstances, the environments and situations in which we find ourselves, and the
chances, the opportunities, we are given to make choices, and the choices that we make based on our inward thoughts, feelings, and will.
This connection, a constant aspect of human living, is always complex, sometimes conflicted, often where we find ourselves contradicted by ourselves,
and never by any of us held and kept in right relation (whatever “right” means for each of us).
But perhaps in recognizing afresh this “mess” of our human existence, the cause of many a meltdown, we may hear anew the message of Christmas,
this season of celebration of the incarnation of God’s love and justice. It is our lot, we who would follow Jesus, to enflesh that love and
justice in our lives – in our words and deeds.
We spend a great deal of time here at St. Mark’s probing the depths of the mystery of what and how we each think and feel and why. And in that quest,
discovering and rediscovering how sometimes conflicted and always complexly ambiguous each of us is. But maybe that, too, can help us turn up the
volume on the Christmas message – that we, in our living, are to practice love and justice. For in the first and final analysis, as important as
what we each think and feel is, that is not nearly as important as what we do.
[1] Matthew 2.8. The gospel passage appointed for the day is Matthew 2.1-12.
[3] This paragraph paraphrases the text of a scene at the end of Act I of Amadeus. That scene was performed as a part of our Sunday morning liturgies as a prelude to the upcoming production of the play by The St. Mark’s Players, our resident theater group.
