What time are we in? A curious
question but one that frames our gospel reading today. What time are we in?
Today’s gospel begins, “In the
time of King Herod”. This is more than just establishing a date. The time of
King Herod is the time that Herod controls. In Herod’s time, it is he who
determines how people live, what they do with the time he allows them, how much
time they will have to live.
The time of Herod is a time
when power is held on to by fear and the one final reality is death. As so many
of Herod’s subjects knew, and as the poor children of Bethlehem and their
families were to find out.
But Herod’s time is not really
his own, and he knows it. He owes his position as a vassal king to the Roman
Emperor who appointed him and gave him his official title: the King of the
Jews. Herod’s fear of losing his own power is but part of the iron network of
fear that kept the Empire going.
So fear is the order of the
day, then, when the wise men from the east, those mysterious strangers, arrive
and ask “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” That was
Herod’s own title, so naturally they would come and ask at Herod’s palace,
probably supposing that an heir had been born.
But the palace has had no royal
birth. Herod indeed had sons, several of whom he had murdered when he thought
they were threatening his power. But the wise men are seeking a child whose
birth has been signalled by momentous events in the heavens. A new star has
been seen at its rising. This is not any old royal birth, but the birth of the
Messiah, the one who will be king and ruler of his people in his own right, and
not by the will and pleasure of Rome.
That is a threat not just to
Herod, but to the whole system of power and fear of which he was part. It is a
threat to the time of Herod. The wise men studied the stars and the planets,
whose movements marked out times and seasons. And suddenly into that cosmic
order of time there has come a new star.
The time of Herod now has a
rival, an alternative account of time that is not ruled by violence but by the
will of God. God alone brings all things into being, and a new star has
appeared in the heavens to mark a new birth on the earth. The time of Herod is
being invaded and overcome by the time of God.
And Herod knows this. The
priests and scribes tell him of the prophecy of the Messiah’s birth at
Bethlehem, a town up till then of little account, which had never been a centre
of power. But it is the new centre for the new thing that God is doing. And the
old centres of power, Rome and Jerusalem, tremble with fear.
But the wise men are
enlightened by faith as well as by the cosmic sign of the star. They follow the
star to Bethlehem and find the Child. And when they do so they are overwhelmed
with joy, and they fall down and worship. The new reality of God’s time and
God’s rule has broken upon them, and they have left behind the shadows of fear
and death that marked the time of Herod.
Last week we recalled Luke’s
account of the shepherds, those outsiders who were brought into the centre of
God’s action and whose lives were changed so that they praised and worshipped
God. This week we have heard Matthew’s story of the wise men, the other visitors
to the infant Christ. They too are outsiders, gentiles from far away. But they
too have been brought by faith into the centre, where the Kingdom of God is
becoming real in Jesus. For them too this results in the same transformation:
freedom, joy and worship.
As Christians we live as those
who believe in God’s time. Sure enough, the time of Herod is still with us. The
time of fear, anxiety and terror still holds its grip on the world, as we can
see well enough. But now there is an alternative: the time of Jesus, the
Messiah. The old world order founded on violence and the fear of death is no
longer the only way of living.
In the birth of Jesus God’s
time entered the world, and began to overcome the time of fear and death.
Through his life he proclaimed its message. In his death those two world
orders, those two accounts of time, came to their great collision and final conflict. The
time of fear could not bear any rival for its dominion. And so it sought to wipe
out the threat with the one final reality it knew: death. But that very
conflict, Jesus’s freely surrendering himself to death out of love, became the
final victory.
In the resurrection eternity
was opened. Jesus now lives entirely by God’s limitless and deathless life,
life that pours itself out in love without ever being diminished. The time of
Herod has no hold on him. From now on, what is there to be afraid of? Death is
not the final word, not the ruling principle of the universe. In Jesus we find
that we do not need to hold on to our life as though it were our own, for it is
God’s gift, freely given. We do not need to count out our days and years from
their ever diminishing stock, for we have an alternative account of time which
is not based on our poverty but on God’s eternal abundance and generosity.
This means that we can live as
though death were not, even in the midst of Herod’s time, the time of fear and
death. Because in the end Jesus is Lord and Messiah, and Herod is not.
God’s eternity is present in
every moment, if we have but eyes to see. And, like the wise men and the
shepherds, this opens to us overwhelming joy, and the capacity to worship, to
pour ourselves out at the feet of Jesus who pours himself out for us.
And like the wise men we too
find that we have gifts to offer, bread and wine that become the body and blood
of Christ, the food of eternal life and the cup of salvation. So the wise men,
like the shepherds, bring us to the feet of Jesus at the altar, as we celebrate
the Eucharist. Here, above all, we inhabit God’s eternity, God’s account of
time, the alternative to the time of Herod, the time of fear and death. Here we
worship with the saints and angels and the church in every age and every land.
And here we are filled with joy, for the worship we offer is none other than
the worship of Christ himself, into which he draws us.
For his worship is the eternal
pouring out of himself to the Father in the Spirit, the eternal life of the
Trinity, the endless dance of love for which we were created.
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