Matthew 2:1-16
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by
the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and
around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he
had learned from the wise men.
What do you do when
confronted by a murderous tyrant
intent on killing innocent members
of his own population?
This is neither an
ancient nor a rhetorical question.
‘Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they left for their own country by
another road’
…and
so, Luke tells us, the great Herod was left waiting.
And
here we meet the wisdom of the wise men,
echoing down the centuries to us.
There’s
always a different route.
There’s always an alternative path.
There’s. Always. Another. Way.
Especially
when you’re dealing with a murderous,
self-aggrandizing, self-important
ruler
who is intent on
protecting his own power, whatever the cost.
When
the wise men arrived in Jerusalem
asking where the new-born king of
the Jews was to be found.
They
could hardly have asked a more worrying question of Herod…
In a superstitious age, to a
paranoid man,
their quest must have made it seem
like even the universe
was conspiring against
him.
And
they nearly fell for Herod’s quickly-hatched cunning plan:
let the wise men find the child,
and then arrange to have him killed.
From
the point of view of the wise men,
the obvious course of action would
have been to return to Herod,
make their report, and be on their
way.
But
as we know, an angel warned them to return by another route,
and so they just left Herod waiting.
Predictably,
perhaps, he reacted badly,
and Matthew tells us the terrible
story of the massacre of the innocents,
based
on the story of Moses in the book of Exodus,
helping us understand that Herod is
just another Pharaoh,
just one more psychotic
paranoid ruler
in a long
line of tyrants,
and also that Jesus, like Moses,
would lead people from
slavery to freedom,
by pointing them to another way,
another path,
by offering a new route
out of the seemingly endless spirals
of violence and
intimidation and retribution.
And
so the wise men,
in their encounter the infant
Christ,
heard the wisdom to take another
route.
They
discovered what we need to discover in our world;
that sometimes, the wise route is
not the obvious one,
sometimes,
the wise route is not the expected one.
Sometimes, the wise route is walking
in the opposite direction
from the way the world
is pointing.
Sometimes, the wise route is
refusing to engage
the systems of
oppression that so desperately seek conflict
in order to legitimate
their own position.
Sometimes, the wise route is robbing
the tyrant of his power
by walking away from the
fight that the bully so desperately craves.
And
this is a tough path,
because it flies in the face of
common sense.
Common
sense tells us that if we meet a tyrant
we must engage him and defeat him.
‘You
can’t let the bullies win, you know!’
But
the wisdom of the angel to the wise men
was that while we may not be able to
stop the murderous regime
from killing its own
population’s innocent children,
taking the 'other way' offers us an
act
which denies the regime its
power
by undermining its
legitimacy.
And
this is more, far more, than symbolic action.
The departure of the wise men by
‘another route’
re-wrote the story of
Herod definitively;
it left him nowhere to go
but further into his own
depravity,
and as he acted to kill the
children,
he revealed himself to
be just another Pharaoh,
and so the mythology of ‘the great
Herod’ took a fatal blow.
By
taking the other path,
the wise men not only avoided
complicity in Herod’s sins,
they also acted to set in place the
downfall of his carefully constructed ideology.
And
here’s the point:
when faced with a murderous tyrant,
there is always another way.
The
wise men who followed the star that led to Jesus
found an alternative path through violence
that
not only disempowered the mighty Herod,
but which effectively
re-wrote history’s verdict his life.
He
wanted to be remembered as ‘Herod the great’,
and he could have done it.
But,
as they say, history is written by the victors,
and the unfavourable association of
Herod with Pharaoh,
through the parallel stories
of the massacre of the
innocents
and the killing of the
Israelite children,
has become history’s verdict on his
life.
Whether
it happened or not is not really the point
– it’s a story that summarises his
life,
inviting eternal
judgment on him, and all those like him,
who would
seek to impede the coming
of the
prince of peace in this world of sin.
The
‘other way’ of the wise men is the ‘other way’ of Jesus,
it is the path of nonviolent
resistance,
it is the route of
subversion,
it is the path which,
once taken by the few, becomes open for the many.
Mary
and Joseph in their turn followed the ‘other way’ of the wise men
on their flight to Egypt
as they too sought a path out of
Herod’s murderous clutches.
And
so we come to today,
and what the ‘other way’ of the wise
men might look like
in our own world of sin and
violence.
The reality of our world is that now, as then, in so
many ways
Herod still reigns.
And
so now, as then,
Herod must be resisted.
Just
as the wise men returned to their own country by another route,
so those who would be wise in our
time,
need to find ways of bypassing the
scheming Herods of our world.
Herod,
and those like him, all too readily embrace violence:
it is how they deal with their
enemies:
they kill or co-opt, by
force if necessary.
We
have too many deal-makers in positions of power
who would do a deal with the devil
himself
if it ensured their ongoing
appearance of success.
But,
what the path of violence does not know how to deal with
is a movement, a kingdom,
whose citizens refuse to believe
that violence will determine
the meaning of history.
The
rise of the alt-right ideology in America,
and other far right groups in
Europe,
will
mean that the need is very great for us, in our own time, to discern what it
means
to non-violently disarm and disable
powers of oppression.
In
this, we will need the alternative wisdom of the kingdom of God,
and those who embrace this wisdom
will
become those who bear witness to the new way of being human
that comes into being in the
Christ-child in the manger.
There
is always another way.
Violence does not get to write the
rules we must follow.
It's
easy for those in favour of a military solution to the Herods of our world
to characterise those who take a
stand of principled nonviolence
as fuzzy peacenik cowards who go
weak at the very thought of danger.
And
compared to a man with a gun in his hand,
the unarmed man will always look
vulnerable.
But
the 'other way' of Jesus teaches us that this is a false dichotomy,
it's not a straight choice between
'hero' and 'coward'
- there is, as the wise men discovered, always
another way.
And
here’s the thing.
Being
nonviolent isn't about doing nothing.
It is the world of the aid worker,
the military chaplain, the journalist,
the international
observer, the International Accompanist;
not cowards, but heroes to the cause
of peace.
Carrying
a gun does not automatically make someone a hero,
and neither, if I may say so, does
being injured on active service.
When
we designate our combatants as heroes,
we end up inferring our peace
workers are cowards.
Our
society constructs narratives that sanctify violence,
and we learn to live with
casualties, deaths, and collateral damage,
and we do so them by
telling ourselves
that it's all a
necessary sacrifice because the end justifies the means.
In
other words, we walk straight into Herod’s trap.
But what if there is another way?
What
if the way to hell is indeed paved with good intentions,
and the road taken by the many is
indeed wide and broad enough to take a tank?
And
what if the way of Christ is truly narrow and steep,
and taken only by some, who have the
courage to speak out
and act against a
prevailing ideology
of violent retribution
and intervention?
When
I was a child, I developed a philosophy of game-playing,
and it was this: if you can’t play
to win, don’t play the game.
It’s
why I don’t play rugby, or football, or tennis, or cricket…
well, you get the picture.
But
I wonder if we might rephrase this philosophy slightly,
in the light of the wise men, to:
If you can’t change the
game, don’t play it.
We
may not be able to stop ISIS in its tracks,
we may not be in a position to
prevent the Herods of our world
from killing their own
innocent people.
But
we can take action to de-legitimise their ideology,
we can work to subversively
undermine their power,
we can re-write the narrative of
history
away from retribution
and towards peace.
We can, in other words, refuse to
play their game.
We
can, as the wise men discovered, take another path.
It
remains to be seen whether President Elect Trump
will carry through on some of his
more potent and extreme election promises.
But
the fact that he made them, and that they won him votes rather than lost them,
tells us much about the culture of
Western liberal democracy,
and our enslavement to
spiritual powers
that are ultimately
destructive of peace and stability.
And
so we’re back to the wise men.
And the world has never needed their
‘other way’
more than it does today.
We are still playing our games with
rules set by Herod, and we need to stop.
And
as the wise men discovered, there’s always another way,
and in the name of Christ we need to
discover this path of Christ.
As
Martin Luther King Jr. put it,
‘The arc of the moral universe is
long, but it bends towards justice.’
We
need to learn what it is to walk away from the games of violence,
and do something different.
And
what we will discover, of course,
is what Martin Luther King, Ghandi,
and so many others
have discovered before
us,
which is that walking the different
path
undermines
the power
that was legitimating
the game of violence in the first place.
The
game-changer will not be Brimstone missiles in Syria,
nor will it be boots on the ground
in Raqqa.
The
game-changer is the way of Christ,
and the wise need to listen and act
or we all continue on the path to
hell.
It
is my firm belief that the eternal hope
made flesh in the baby who comes to
us at Christmas
is
the only path through death and violence
to resurrection and new life.
And
it is our calling as the people of Christ,
to live that eternal hope into being
in our midst,
as
we learn to be wise,
and to read the signs,
and to have the courage to tread the
‘other path’ as Christ leads us.
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