Sermon for Sunday, January 5th 2025

The Epiphany of the Lord (observed), rcl yr c, January 5th 2025
ISAIAH 60:1-6; PSALM 72:1-7, 10-14; EPHESIANS 3:1-12; MATTHEW 2:1-12

bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage

There is no doubt about it: King Herod was a cruel ruler.

We get a small taste of that today. Herod, according to Matthew, was “frightened” when he hears word of a caravan  of strange and wealthy astrologers looking for the one they were calling “the King of the Jews.”

And I suppose if you were a ruler over a place as unstable as Jerusalem and Judea, and you had already been given the title “King of the Jews” by Rome, you might fear this development, you might feel a bit threatened by this news of some supposed pretender to your rule.

So Herod puts into motion a plan to remove the threat he fears, and says to the Magi, ‘once you’ve found this King of the Jews, do let me know! I’d like to pay him a visit too.’ “[B]ring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” Herod has in mind though, to pay a visit more like Calo does Don Lucchesi in The Godfather Part III. The sort of visit that doesn’t turn out so well for Don Lucchesi. And Herod’s plan is just as murderous. Sometimes, though, you tell the truth when you don’t know you have; and Herod, despite his murderous intentions, tells the truth here—he does want to pay Jesus homage; he just doesn’t know it yet.

Herod’s more murderous plot is foiled, according to Matthew, by a dream, and the devout strangers from the East take a different road home, never informing Herod about where exactly Jesus is. But this will only postpone Herod’s eventual meeting with Jesus.

What Herod does immediately after being spurned by the Magi wasn’t told this morning, though it is one of the more infamous passages of the New Testament. According to Matthew, Herod—armed with the approximate age and the general vicinity of the chid he sees as such a threat—dispatches a squad to kill all the children that might be Jesus. And what comes next is what’s come to be called the Slaughter of the Innocents.

Historians are divided as to whether this slaughter actually took place, as there’s no other recording of it outside of Matthew’s Gospel; but when you are a Herod, and you’re already known to be willing to murder your own sons, relatives, and other perceived threats to your rule, ancient historians may well have found it to be not even worth a footnote, that a man so treacherous as Herod would have a half-dozen innocents killed in some backwater town. Which only speaks again to the reality of Herod’s cruelty.

I do find it curious when it’s suggested that such a story as the Slaughter of the Innocents shouldn’t be in the Bible, and that we shouldn’t tell the story; but let’s not be fooled. This is clearly not a story of moral uprightness, and no one is suggesting, when pondering what to do in any given situation, WWHD: “What Would Herod Do?” If you are, I can clear this up. Don’t do what Herod does. It is far better to lose this sort of game of power than to win it.

And besides, Herod had already lost his bid for power the moment God put into motion the long history that led to the birth of the Messiah. And if you’re concerned that God would allow for a thing to happen such as this sort of a slaughter, this is a far bigger problem than this particular Biblical episode. Because we all have reason to question why the world is the way it is: why is there cruelty? Why do the innocent suffer? These are the sorts of questions that have as much to do with our own unconverted hearts, our own deadly political settlements, and the many things suffered on our doorstep and around the world. Why do the innocent suffer, indeed.

 And so despite Herod’s massive infrastructure projects, he is clearly a cruel man who was quick to dispatch perceived threats to power, threatened as we was by an apparent pretender to his throne. I’m left with a question, though: Was Herod right? Was this child, born in Bethlehem, and visited by religious weirdos from the East, the threat he thought Jesus was?

The answer seems at first to be a clear “no.” Because Jesus survives, led to Egypt by parents who also heeded a dream; the infant grew to a child, and adolescent, and then to a man. And much of this long after Herod’s own death, a death Jesus had nothing to do with. Jesus, it seems, is no real threat to Herod, no real threat to the political balancing act maintained by the royal custodians of Jerusalem’s fate. Jesus, it turns out, is no ruler like Herod.

There will be no going to the mattresses, there will be no gun hidden in the bathroom, there will be no shootout at the toll booths. Offers of this sort can be refused. Jesus is just not the threat that Herod thinks Jesus might be.

It’s actually far far worse than that for Herod. Because of course Jesus is a threat, just not the one Herod was anticipating. Of course Jesus is a hazard to Herod. Of course Jesus is dangerous. Jesus is the son of the living God, whose power reveals Herod’s paltry sum of influence, wealth and power, to be nearly meaningless.

This is the child who will come to bear judgment on us all.

This child is the one who ends war not through war, but through peace; this child brings abundance, not through theft, but through self-offering; this son of the one, holy, and living God brings power to bear on the injustices of the world not through might, but through weakness.

It won’t end well for Herod, and I don’t mean that he will die in excruciating pain—though that does appear to have been his fate. But rather, what Herod pretends he wants, but what he actually fears most, will come to pass: Herod will pay homage to this Jesus.

Because even the knees of the most despicable of us all, the knees of your adversary, the knees of your friends both false and true, indeed your own knees will come to bend, and homage will be made before this King, the King like no other. Before the King of the Jews, and the Lord of our Salvation, every knee will bow, and we will all give our homage, and not by hatred or coercion or control or malign influence or threat or harassment.

Instead, all will be revealed, in time, in light of the terrifying beauty of true holiness. Every knee will bow, and tongue confess, the Lordship of this one, with a love that is hard, a love that is difficult, but a love that is in the end beautiful—and a love which none of us will be able to resist. And we will each bow and give homage, only to be drawn into the embrace of this, our crucified King.

The Revd Canon Preston DS Parsons