READING HEROD: "Epiphany and a Preacher's Imsomnia"

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?  For we have observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."  When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquire of them where the Messiah was to be born.

Matthew 2:1-4

Strange, isn't it, how Herod shows up tonight, on Epiphany?  Herod, brooding in his nation's capitol; Herod, seething that another might soon be king; Herod, frightened and sowing his own fear into the hearts and minds of his followers and friends.  We are plunged, on this twelfth day of Christmas, into the narcissism of unbridled power, into the authoritarian mania of a king.  He will not go.  He can only be king.  He knows nothing else.  

Then Herod secretly called for the magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.  Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "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."

Matthew 2:7-8

Herod's making secret calls (though everybody knows, so not so secret) to secure favors; and he's lying through his teeth every time he opens his mouth.  He's played this role for so long, now, that he's convincing to some.  That he's genuinely concerned with the greatness of their traditions.  That he's particularly committed to the forgotten and left behind.  That he's a champion come to set things right.

But he has no interest in setting things right.  Just as he has no interest at all in homage or worship or sacrifice of any kind.  He's a slave to the empire, a zealous defender of his own accounts, and an insecure and broken man whose ego requires adulation and sychophancy.  When he has a chance he'll pillage every town and slaughter their children, if he has to.  All that he sees he sees in his own damned mirror.

---

What we've watched all afternoon long is not only about Donald Trump, however.  He's as much symptom as he is cause of our disease.  Somehow we've settled for a kind of governance that seeks only its own embellishment, only its own enrichment.  We've settled for a way of choosing leaders that prioritizes huge sums of money and indecent amounts of fundraising, as a matter of course.  And that very path has perverted our institutions and decisions.  Instead of brave, wise and discerning citizen-legislators, we've settled for well-endowed representatives of big pharma, the defense industry, the oil conglomerates, and you know the drill.  And their world has ruined lives, desecrated small towns and cities, and taken a whole lot of folks to the proverbial cleaners.

Herod is happy to trade on their misery, delighted in fact to "love" them as his own.  He deflects, though, and points to other enemies: immigrants are to blame, he says; or uppity people of color; or viruses from CHI-nah.  And once he's sown all that hate into the hearts and souls of Jerusalem ("all Jerusalem with him")--he deploys his troubled troops, to disrupt and to desecrate, to destroy and to die.

---

When they had heard the king, the magi set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.  When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.  On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and knelt down and paid him homage.

Matthew 2:9-11 

Who knows what these wise ones thought about Herod, to begin with anyway?  Obviously, they felt some obligation to hear him out.  But Herod doesn't make the trip to Bethlehem; he doesn't follow the star.  The magi do.  They follow the star until it stops over the place, and they kneel down before the child and worship.

And, for all the chaos today, for all the madness at the Capitol today, Epiphany leads us to this very simple choice.  Will we worship the child in Bethlehem or buckle to the brutish king?  Will we follow the light, even in the darkest night, even when the light is hard to track, and keep following and following, all the way to the cross and beyond?  Herod promises mayhem.  That's really all he's got.  Herod inspires bloodlust and greed.  That's his daily fare.  But the child in Bethlehem offers the wisdom that matures in compassion, and the courage that blossoms with love, and the mercy that opens doors to communion and community.

A few sweet and well crafted speeches on the Senate floor will not heal today's madness.  I'm glad to hear a few rightwingers finding their love-voice at last.  But their oratory won't do a damned thing about the corruption that created Donald Trump and fueled his authoritarian rise.  What's needed now are practitioners of jubilee, prophets of chesed and tzedek, and maybe too disciples of the Child in Bethlehem.  We need more Stacey Abrams' and we need more Raphael Warnocks, and we need more Abraham Joshua Heschels and more Dorothy Days and more Greta Thurnbergs too.  We will heal the madness, after all, by turning: turning toward the star and away from Herod, turning toward righteousness and away from rage.

It'll be a long journey, but worth every minute, every step and every breath.  And only then, only there, will we know what wisdom really means.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another road.

Matthew 2:12