Steering Clear of Herod

Sermon for Epiphany, transferred, Jan. 2, 2022

Matthew 2:1-12

OK, let’s pretend we’re in seventh-grade English class.  Who are the main characters in today’s Gospel story?  Here’s a hint:  They’re really tall, and they get impressive music for their entrance and exit.

OK, who’s another main character in today’s Gospel story?  Here’s a hint:  We don’t have a puppet for him because he’s a scoundrel.  Yes, it’s King Herod, the man we love to hate.  When he’s named in the story, it makes you want to boo and hiss and throw peanuts.  Herod is awful – no redeeming social value, the contrast to everything good and holy.  But interestingly, Herod gets most of the ink in today’s reading.  In fact, I think he’s absolutely necessary to this story.  But what luck do you think we’d have getting somebody to wear the Herod puppet when we celebrate Epiphany?  We’re much happier when we get to be one of the good guys.

And while we’re thinking about who gets the ink in this story, it’s interesting to think about who is not a main character.  In that category, I’d put Mary, who has nothing to say.  Joseph isn’t even there, completely absent from the story.  And maybe most surprisingly, the Lord and Savior himself doesn’t do anything but lie there, with all the action revolving around him.

Well, let’s look at these main characters and see what they might have to say about us.

First, the magi.  They were astrologers and magicians, but not with the baggage those terms carry for us.  When we hear “astrologer and magician,” that might say to us “entertainer” or, worse, “con man.”  That’s not what it meant to be an astrologer and magician back in the day.  They were seen more the way we might see scientists, people with specialized knowledge who could carefully observe and even manipulate the created order to serve human purposes.  Magi were respected across Ancient Near East cultures, even within Judaism.  One ancient historian reports that the curtain in the Temple protecting the holy of holies was decorated with constellations of stars.¹  And there was a prophecy in Hebrew scriptures about how “a star shall rise out of Jacob” – that the nation of Israel, led by God’s anointed king, would one day throw off its oppressors and regain a lost empire of its own.²  So, it wouldn’t have been all that strange for watchers of the skies from a distant land to come to investigate the reality on the ground after they’d seen a star that seemed to indicate this prophecy might be realized.

So, our first main characters are the magi, however many of them there were.  Then we have the other main character – King Herod.  Now, Herod was a “king” in title only; his Roman overlords allowed him to play that role among his own people as long as he did what he was told.  Herod was Jewish, and he went by the title “King of the Jews” – so it must have been a surprise, to say the least, when these respected astrologers came looking for “the child who has been born king of the Jews” (Matt 2:2).  Like a stereotypical gangster, Herod isn’t powerful enough to allow his rivals to thrive, so he immediately goes into self-preservation mode.  He cozies up to the magi, drawing them into a plot to kill the baby before anyone has time to follow him as the true king.  A few verses later in Matthew’s story, we find out just how awful Herod really is – that he’s basically a terrorist as he kills all the babies of Bethlehem two years old or under (Matt 2:16-18).  Herod represents the human heart at its worst: someone so afraid of losing power and control that he kills the innocent to protect his own interests.

So, what was Matthew trying to say about Herod, and the magi, and the baby king?  As is true of the best stories, I think this one can say several things at once.

Is the story about the gifts the magi bring to Jesus?  Sure.  For centuries, interpreters have seen symbolic power in the gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and the famous carol we sang frames this theological reflection nicely.  Gold would signify kingship, indicating that Jesus is the ultimate ruler.  Frankincense, used in Temple worship, would signify deity, indicating that Jesus is God Most High having come to dwell as God With Us.  And myrrh, used to anoint bodies for burial, would signify sacrifice, foreshadowing the death by which this king and God would defeat death itself at Easter.  Did Matthew intend all that symbolism when he named the magi’s three gifts?  I don’t know, but it sure works nicely with the way Christian theology developed.

So, what else might this story mean?  Is it an indictment of the power of Herod, and the emperor, and every secular government or culture that sees itself as greater than the reign and rule of God?  Sure.  Given that the Gospels were compiled soon after the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, God’s own dwelling place on earth, the early Christians definitely wanted to stick it to the empire.  So, putting Herod in his place in this story is a great way to show how the power of self-interest, evil, and death embodied in human institutions does not get the last word.  Instead, God intervenes to lead the nations of the world to come and find Jesus, outsmarting and overturning those who think they can compete with the Lord.

Now, it might be tempting to stop there.  In fact, it might be in our self-interest to keep this Epiphany story at arm’s length.  If it’s mostly a reflection on the person of Jesus, that’s safely interesting.  If it’s mostly a reflection on the reign and rule of God, and an indictment of governments and cultures that stand in God’s way, well, that’s safely interesting.  But I think Jesus would probably like us to go a little deeper, too, and see what this story has to say about us.

It's easy to look at King Herod as a stock character – Snidely Whiplash from the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, or Darth Vader from Star Wars.  In good stories, we need to see evil embodied as a contrast to the power of goodness and light.  But in our personal stories, we don’t need Snidely Whiplash or Darth Vader.  We carry them with us every day.  As much as I might like to caricature the dark side of my heart, or ascribe that darkness to whichever political leaders I might see as the Romans of today, Herod is there to remind me that the urge for self-preservation, maybe even self-promotion, always lies close at hand.  We justify the dubious decisions we make, saying they were necessary or that the good outweighed the bad.  Often, that’s right and true.  Life is complicated, and none of us gets to live in the land of black and white.  But still, it’s good to have Herod there, staring back at us in our own self-reflection, making us ask the hard questions about our motivations as we navigate our way through oceans of gray. 

You know, maybe we should have a Herod puppet for Epiphany after all.  It might be a good way to remember this truth: that God always opens the door so that, like the magi, we, too, can go home by another way.  But we have to decide to follow the magi’s lead and choose that path instead.

1.      Albright, W.F., and C.S. Mann.  Matthew.  Vol. 26 of The Anchor Bible.  New York: Doubleday, 1971. 15.

2.      Numbers 24:17.  See Hare, Douglas R.A.  Matthew.  In Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.  Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993.  14.