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Matthew 2
The Magi Visit the Messiah
1After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magifrom the east came to Jerusalem 2and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him."
3When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 "In Bethlehem in Judea,"they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written...
7Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."
9After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
You may or may not be familiar with the statement, Let's keep Herod in Christmas. It sounds so out of sync with the joy and hope of this season that one might figure some Ebenezer Scrooge or unrelenting Grinch dreamed it up. You see, Herod was the conniving, ruthless, merciless King of Judea. Here in the Magi story (vs. 7-8) he seeks to dupe the Wise Men into believing he really wants to worship the newborn Messiah when in fact he wants to kill him. So why in the world would anyone want to keep Herod in Christmas?
In an article several years ago in Sojourners Magazine Joy Carroll Wallis put it this way: Our culture loves a sentimental Christmas, the idyllic picture of sanitary bliss that has little to do with the reality of the world and circumstances into which Jesus came. We need to put Herod back in Christmas. Herod reminds us that Jesus was born an outcast and became a refugee. He didn't enter a world of sparkly Christmas cards or of warm sentiment. Jesus enters a world of real pain, a world of brokenness and political oppression.
Now this may be more Advent-Christmas truth than we want to hear today, especially as we're going about putting final touches on the right presents and the right family preparations for the big day ahead! And yet, as we each know, the world of 2011 into which we welcome Jesus anew is not a world without serious pain and great difficulty. Even persons we know and love this Christmas 2011 are facing real hardships and experiencing life's disappointments.
All this is to say that keeping Herod in Christmas is necessary! For if we cannot connect the dots of this Jesus of history to the real suffering and pain of humanity, then the message of the Christian faith falls on deaf ears. But we can make that connection! We can unapologetically claim that the ways, words, and actions of this Jesus can make this world a better place and bring some healing and hope to strained lives!
Yes, the Herods of the world exist! But so does the life and message of the one whom the Wise Men eagerly sought and worshipped; the one whom you and I seek to love and to serve!
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