January 8, 2012

THE PEOPLE AND PLACES OF CHRISTMAS – HEROD OF JUDEA

Scripture – Matthew 2:13-18

Last Thursday, January 6, was Epiphany. It takes place twelve days after Christmas and reminds us of the visit of the magi to the home in which they found the baby for whom they had been searching – Jesus. These wise men also serve as a symbol of Christ’s manifestation to non-Jews, called Gentiles by the Jews, and point to the universality of God’s presence in the world and his love of and for all people. As I mentioned last Sunday, we do not know a great deal about the magi. The bible tells us very little. So we surmise, based on whatever we do know about the Middle East of that time, that they were perhaps (and I emphasize the “perhaps”) Zoroastrian priests from Persia who, as astronomers and astrologers, saw significant happenings through their studies of the heavens and had the wealth and the curiosity to leave home in search of what they perceived that significance to be – the birth of a Jewish “king” in Palestine. As they neared the end of their travels, which might have taken as much as two or three years, they, according to Matthew, stopped in Jerusalem to ask for guidance from the king of Judea, Herod. The Hebrew scriptures were consulted and Bethlehem was determined to be the location they sought. So that is where they went, found Mary and Joseph with their newborn, paid their respects, presented their gifts, and went home without first returning to a ruler they had grown to distrust. That’s it. At this point, except for our keeping them as part of our Christmas story and traditions, they disappear.

Now, when it comes to Herod, we know a great deal more. He was a historical figure who, regardless of the factuality of his association with Jesus, greatly influenced what happened in his country while he ruled it. Herod was born in 73 B.C., the son of an Idumean named Antipater and Cyprus, the daughter of an Arabian sheik. Antipator supported Hyrcanus in his struggle to become king of Judea…and when Hyrcanus won (with the help of the Roman general, Pompey), Antipator’s star began to rise…especially since he always cooperated with the Romans as much as possible. In the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar, Hyrcanus and Antipator sided with the eventually victorious Caesar - they obviously knew which side “their bread was buttered on” and did not let Pompey’s previous assistance interfere with their self-serving and side-changing loyalties. For his actions, Antipator was appointed regent and received Roman citizenship.

Antipator was the real power behind Hyrcanus’ throne. As such he secured the appointment of his son, Herod, to the governorship of Galilee. He also launched a small crusade against bandits, which made him temproarily popular with the people. After Julius Caesar was assassinated, Octavian and Marc Antony announced that they would punish his murderers, Brutus and Cassius, who had fled eastward with their armies and demanded money from all provinces and municipalities now under their sway to pay for the impending conflict. Antipator, with his sons, took harsh measures to get what was required of them and in the ensuing troubles, Antipator was killed. Herod, with Roman help, killed his father’s murderer. In 43 B.C., Herod (as Hyrcanus’ general) defeated Hyrcanus’ nephew, Antigonus, in his struggle to take the throne, and then married Hyrcanus’ daughter, Mariamne, thereby enhancing his own future claims to rulership. Are you with me so far?

When Octavian and Marc Antony won their civil war, Herod was able to convince Antony that he and his father had been forced to side with his opponents and Antony believed him. In fact, he made Herod tetrarch of Galilee (a title used for rulers of vassal kingdoms)…and Hyrcanus remained the Jewish national leader in name only. After the Jews allied themselves with the Parthians in a war against the Romans, Hyrcanus (who had remained true to his Roman commitments) was taken to Babylon as a prisoner and Antigonas became king in his place. Herod managed to escape to Rome to tell his side of the story and subsequently, with two legions, returned to defeat Antigonas and begin his reign as sole ruler of Judea.

The Jews over whom he was to rule resented his appointment…a feeling which never changed. After all, Herod was not a Jew – he was the son of an Idumean and an Arab. And even though his father had been a pious man who worshiped the Jewish God, the Jews looked upon the Idumeans as racially impure. And to them the Arabs were even worse. Additionally, Herod was so closely attached to Rome that his people hated him for his and their oppression and cruelty. After all, his monarchy was based on foreign power and his reign was marked by bloodshed.

Herod was smart. Upon assuming the throne, he got Hyrcanus back from his Parthian captors and seemed to hold his father-in-law in high esteem, thus giving at least an appearance of legality and legitimacy to his own rule. He started an extensive building program – Jews could now take pride in the new walls of Jerusalem and the citadel which guarded its temple. He had coins minted in his own name – coins which pictured an incense burner on a tripod in an attempt to show Herod’s care for orthodox Jewish cult practices. And he continued to please the Romans to make sure of their continued support…especially by sending lavish presents to Rome’s representative in the east, Mark Antony, and to his mistress, Cleopatra. These gifts almost became Herod’s undoing. Strained relations between Marc Antony and Cleopatra in the east and Octavian and the Senate in the west led to another civil war in 31 B.C. The relatively short conflict ended with Octavian’s victory, thus putting Herod in a real bind. For the first time in his career, he had backed a loser!

He managed to resolve his problem by executing Hyrcanus (thus eliminating the one rival to his throne)…imagine what he did with people he didn’t like…and then meeting with Octavian to assure the Roman ruler that he would give him the same loyalty he had shown to Marc Antony. Impressed with Herod’s audacity, Octavian confirmed his monarchy while adding territory to his realm.

But Herod’s position was still less than completely secure – something which was to plague him his entire life and which he would do anything to change (perhaps even kill the toddler boys of Bethlehem?). He continued his building policy, partly to win the hearts of his subjects. He constructed markets, amphitheaters, palaces, fortresses, temples, aqueducts, and even cities…his crowning achievement being a splendid new port he named Caesarea. So with his building projects, the expansion of his territories, the establishment of a sound bureaucracy, the success of his foreign policy, and the development of financial resources, Herod did much for his country. But even all this did not make him feel more loved and secure because, in fact, some of it earned him the additional hatred of many of his subjects who were furious regarding the extent to which he exhibited Greek tastes, his building of pagan temples as well as Jewish ones, his transgressing of Mosaic law, his termination of the old royal house, and the excessive taxation which he instituted to accomplish his goals. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that Herod often reverted to violence, through hired mercenaries and secret police, to enforce order and retain leadership – think Hussein and Assad, Khomeini and Gaddafi, as modern parallels.

Herod was married ten times. He was particularly devoted to wife number 2…but this Hasmonaean (the former ruling house of Israel) “princess” hated him with equal passion. And despite his love for her, Herod had her executed. He also killed several of his sons, mainly to, once again, prevent others from trying to supplant him and seize his throne. It is believed that Herod was responsible for the violent and deliberate destruction of Qumran, the home of the Essenes, in 8 B.C. He also had two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, burned alive for inciting their students to remove the golden eagle from the entrance to the Temple. Nice guy...and this, as noted before, indicates that he could have ordered the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem (although there is no evidence aside from the bible that this ever happened)! – perhaps the story primarily reflects the type of person Herod was.

So there’s a synopsis of the historical facts concerning the life of this real and brutal king. I hope you’ve been taking notes – there will be a quiz later. But it is not for any of this that Herod is principally remembered. He is remembered because of an account in the gospel of Matthew which details a meeting he had with several magi who stopped at his court in Jerusalem to ask for directions to the place where the young “king of the Jews” was living – the place to which the star which they were following was leading them. Why they had to stop is not really explained – after all, they had made it from Persia to Judea without AAA assistance, and according to Matthew’s account they knew, certainly, the general area to which they were going. The star had gotten them this far, but it was Herod’s advisers who, after consulting scripture, said that it was prophesied the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Perhaps they thought he, as a fellow king, would have an address for Jesus (and we are talking here about a house inhabited by Jesus and his family about two years after his reported birth in a stable). Herod told them where to go and asked them to report back to him when their search was over. And when they did not return, the bible tells us that he, Herod, ordered killed all the children of Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. In any case, he failed in his attempt to get rid of what he perceived to be this threat to his reign because Mary and Joseph had fled with Jesus to Egypt after Joseph had seen the danger they faced through a dream.

Here we are, over two thousand years later…and there are still “Herods” and “magi” in our world. The “Herods” are those who will do anything to keep what they have or attain what they want. They might be “big”, like Assad in Syria, killing his own people because they are protesting the harshness of his rule. They might be “smaller”, like the bosses of some companies or the heads of governmental bodies who run roughshod over anyone and everyone in their quest for the top and will do anything to stay there once they get there. They might be “tiny”, like heads of households who run their homes with an “iron hand” while usually tyrannically and perhaps abusively keep everyone “in line” through their harshness because they must be in control and/or they are just flat-out mean. Do you know anyone like that? Can you, under certain circumstances, be someone like that? How much Herod is there in each of us…and how do we get him out?

It seems to me that Herod’s significance in this story is more symbolic than real. He represents evil. He represents selfishness. He represents the dog eat dog mentality that afflicts so many people who lust after power. He represents the opposite of what Jesus stood for - love, kindness, compassion, selflessness. Herod represents an outlook that proclaims: The ends justify the means. Good guys (and girls) finish last. Do whatever it takes to get ahead. Do we want to live like that?

In contrast to Herod, and symbolically representing openness and acceptance, tolerance and awe, the magi came from outside the Jewish faith and the Jewish world to find the Christ. They were inclusive. And, unlike Herod, they did not worry about their possessions or their power – indeed, they used their possessions to follow a dream to a power higher than any they could even imagine. Interestingly, it was shepherds (pretty much the lowest of the low in Jewish society) and magi (outsiders from a different religion) who first recognized the Christ as the Christ – it was not renowned big-shots or religious mucky-mucks who went to town to see the baby they had been told about or visited a humble house to present valuable gifts. That should make us think about who and what are really important and in whom we might most readily find the inspiring and motivating presence of God.

Herod died a horrible death – kind of fitting, don’t you think? It was probably a cancer-like affliction called Fournier’s gangrene. And when he was buried in one of the fortresses he had built, Herodion, few would have wept.

Who remembers Herod now…except at Christmastime when we retell the nativity story? Yet he was “top dog” in the country in which Jesus was humbly born – Jesus, the child of peasants who was placed in an animal’s feeding trough when he came into the world…but it is Jesus we remember and revere. And Herod, to us, is no more than an addendum or a footnote, recalled only because of his scant association with this same humble Jesus. What does that tell us about priorities? What does that tell us about fame? What does that tell us about power? And what does that tell us about how we should live our lives if we want to be remembered for more than the evil we have done and the people we have hurt? Herod or Jesus – which one was really “the Great”?

Rev. Herb Freitag