The Two Kingdoms-Matthew 2

Who is your king? (powerpoint) “…the one who has been born king of the Jews…” (Mt 2:2) “…he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under…” (Mt 2:16). How can you tell if you belong to the king of the Jews or to the Herods of this world? How would you know if you’re living for the kingdom of God or for the kingdom of this world?

At Easter we reflected on the Crucifixion (Mt 27) and the Resurrection (Mt 28). We had studied the Beginning in Mt 1. Mt 2 contrasts the birth of Jesus that ushers in the kingdom of God (Mt 2:2) while Herod represents the world of fear and death (Mt 2:16).

Jesus, the eternal Son of the Father, is born into Herod’s time (Mt 2:1), a time in which rulers rule by power. It’s often said that we live in the American century. Like Herod, Americans believe we are in control of time because all people must tell their time, must tell their stories, in relation to the American story. Apocalyptic time, God’s time, the time of Jesus’s conception may seem unreal, while “in the time of King Herod” is the reality of life. But God’s time intersects everyday time, the time of Herod, creating a political crisis.

A community that rejects violence. Herods are seldom as powerful as they think. Herod is king only because it pleased the Romans to have him rule over this troublesome region of equally troubling Judeans. Herod is a pawn used by Rome to maintain order useful to Rome. Jesus is born in an occupied land, a small outpost, on the edge of a mighty empire. Jesus is eventually killed under Rome’s authority, and his death means nothing to Rome. How could Rome know that this man would be the most decisive political challenge it faces? Rome knows how to deal with enemies: kill them or co-opt them. But how do you deal with a movement Jesus begins, comprised of a community/kingdom whose citizens refuse to believe that violence will determine history? This movement is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatient violence by cross and resurrection.

A challenge to the world. Often the political significance of Jesus’s birth is lost because the church, particularly in America, reads the birth as a confirmation of the assumed position that religion has within the larger framework of politics. That is, the birth of Jesus is not seen as a threat to thrones and empires because religion concerns the private, which deals with the most important aspect of our life, often labeled “morality.” But Matthew, knows no distinction between the public (the political) and the private. Jesus is born into time, threatening the time of Herod and Rome. Jesus, as the genealogy makes clear, is king in the line of David, but he is a king who will redeem kingship.

An alternative to the world. “The revelation of God’s presence in Jesus’ conception and birth (Mt 1:18–25) brings a violent response from one of the empire’s vassal kings (Mt 2). The gospel tells a story of a prophetic figure who suffers the worst that the empire can do to him, execution by crucifixion. But his resurrection and subsequent coming in power expose the limits of Roman power. The gospel constructs an alternative world. It resists imperial claims. It refuses to recognize that the world has been ordered on these lines. It offers an alternative understanding of the world and human existence centered on God manifested in Jesus (Mt 1:23; 28:20). It creates an alternative community [a community committed to him (Mt 18:20)] and shapes an anti-imperial praxis.” (Warren Carter 2003, 42–43)

What is the kingdom? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” is John the Baptist’s sermon (Mt 3:2), which Jesus also proclaims (Mt 4:17). The kingdom is not some inner sanctuary, but rather the kingdom is an alternative world, an alternative people, an alternative politics. That is what it means for Jesus to be an apocalyptic. He is, in his person and in his work, God’s embodied kingdom–that has come and will come again. The temptation for Christians in modernity is to equate the kingdom with ideals that we assume represent the best of human endeavor: freedom, equality, justice, respect for the dignity of each person. These are all worthy goals that Christians have every reason to support, but goals that are not in themselves the kingdom. To equate these ideals with the kingdom is to separate the kingdom from the one who proclaims the kingdom. “Jesus is Himself the established Kingdom of God” (Barth 1936–77, 2.2.177). Or in Origen’s classical phrase, Jesus is the autobasileia—the kingdom in person (1926, 498).

Fear rules the world. Herod, upon hearing the news that “wise men from the East” have come to Jerusalem asking about a child who has been born “king of the Jews” (Mt 2:2) was disturbed (Mt 2:3a). Herod’s fear of this baby reveals the depth of his fragility. Herods know that their positions require constant vigilance, because any change may well make their insecure positions more insecure. Herods rule in fear by employing fear as a means to secure power: if you do not like my rule, if you do not obey me, you will like the direct rule of the Romans even less. So “all Jerusalem with him” is fearful (Mt 2:3b), indicating that Herod’s rule is possible because the fear of those he rules makes Herod’s rule seem necessary. And like all who rule by fear, the last thing Herod, or those he rules, wants is to be surprised. It cannot be good news that strangers appear believing a king has been born, and they wish to worship him.

The Bible scholars know their Bible but… Herod is crafty. He is an experienced ruler. He could’ve told them that they were confused. Herod is the king of the Jews. But intrigue is a way of life for Herods. Although frightened by the new threat to his power, Herod knows what to do. He calls the chief priests and scribes (not always his natural allies) and inquires where the Messiah is to be born (Mt 2:4). They are the intellectuals of the day—educated, as intellectuals are, to serve those in power. They know their Bible and, like many who know the Bible in our day, know how to read the Bible in a manner most useful to suit their ruler’s desire.

The ruler with no political power. The prophecy in Mic 5:2 says that the ruler of Israel, the one who will be a shepherd for the people, will come not from Jerusalem but from Bethlehem (Mt 2:5-6). The difference between Herod’s rule and the one to be born in Bethlehem could not be more stark. The one to come does not depend on power associated with politics. He will enter Jerusalem when the time is right on a donkey (Mt 21:1–2). He is to be born in Bethlehem, which has never been one of the power centers of Judah. Moreover, his rule is to be that of a shepherd. He will have no power but the power that comes from his love of the lost sheep of Israel.

The cosmic signs heralding this birth should not be surprising, given that the love born in this humble place is the love that moves the sun and the stars. It is the same love that Jesus will use later to calm the winds and the sea, amazing his frightened disciples (Mt 8:21–27). And though the king comes to shepherd the lost sheep of Israel, this love is clearly not restricted to Israel. Wise men, non-Israelites, have observed a star signaling the king’s birth (Mt 2:2b).

False assumption. The wise men confirm the church’s conviction articulated at Vatican I that we should believe that God’s existence is in principal open to rational demonstration. In 1 Cor 14:22 Paul says that even those who speak in tongues may be a sign for unbelievers, i.e., to those who do not know the prophecies made to Israel. Guided by hope, the wise men follow the star, but it is not sufficient to lead them to the place of Jesus’s birth. They assume that the king of the Jews will be born in Jerusalem (Mt 2:1b), the capital city, but they need help. That help came from the most unlikely source, Herod, who has been taught by his advisors who know the scriptures where to find the child.

Herod’s unlikely role. Herod learns from his wise men when the star appeared and sends them to Bethlehem (Mt 2:8a). He calls them in secret because he does not want to make credible the presumption that a king has been born (Mt 2:7). But he tells the wise men that he would also like to go and pay homage to the one who has been born a king (Mt 2:8b). Without Herod the wise men might not have found the one they sought. The enemies of the kingdom often serve the movement begun in Jesus.

Wise men worship the one worthy of worship. The wise men, heeding Herod’s advice, continue to follow the star that goes before them. The star stops over the place where Jesus is born (Mt 2:9), paying homage to the child and eliciting from the wise men overwhelming joy (Mt 2:10). These wise men, men schooled to appreciate the complexity of the world, see the mother and child, and they worship him (Mt 2:11). If this is not the Messiah, if this is not the one born to be king, if this is not the Son of God, then what these wise men do is idolatry. That they are able to see the worthiness of this one who alone can be worshiped was surely a gift from the Father. The same gift gives hope to all Gentiles, for through this child we have been called to participate in the alternative world signaled by his birth. Moreover, like the wise men, it turns out that God has given us gifts of bread and wine to be offered so that the world may know that there is an alternative to Herod–representing the politics and the power dynamics of the world.

A journey on “another road.” The wise men are warned in a dream not to return to Herod but to return to their own country by another road (Mt 2:12). It is quite significant that the wise men return to their own country. It seems that God did not mean for them to stay in Israel, which, given the joy they experienced, must have been a temptation. Rather, they are charged to return home, becoming an outpost, a witness, to the joy they have experienced. The journey they undertake becomes for us part of the story that brings us joy. That journey might well be called “another road” that we too must take. The kingdom is a journey, another road, whereby followers of Jesus may well find that they are strangers even when they are “at home.”

Joseph discovers through another dream that he must take Mary and the child to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath (Mt 2:13-14). Joseph’s namesake could interpret the dreams of the Egyptians, but Joseph is given the gift to trust his own dreams. So Jesus is taken to Egypt, fulfilling God’s declaration in Hosea that he will call Israel, his son, out of Egypt (Mt 2:15). “The son of David, the son of Abraham” is also the new Moses called to lead his people to the land of faithfulness.

Jesus, the new Moses, will like Moses be burdened by his people’s unfaithfulness. Hos 11:1–2 says that the more God loved Israel, even calling them from Egypt, the more they sacrificed to Baal and idols. Jesus’s disciples will be tempted to mimic Israel’s unfaithfulness and idolatry. Like Moses, Jesus will give us the law to help us guard against the temptation to create our own gods, but even though the law is now embodied in Jesus’s flesh, we still find ways to distort what we have been given.

The insecurity and destructiveness of power. The wise men do not return to Herod (Mt 2:12), but he is no fool. He trusts what he has been told. The threat to him is to be found in Bethlehem. We must remember that Herod is frightened by the news that a king of the Jews had been born (Mt 2:3). Realizing that power can never be secure, Herods know no limit when they sense that their tenuous holds on power are threatened. Such fear—fear born of power—recognizes no limit because it draws its strength from death. Accordingly Herod orders the killing of all children born in and around Bethlehem two years old and under, the time he estimates that it took the wise men to reach Israel (Mt 2:16).

Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants. No event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children. Christians are tempted to believe that the death of the children of Bethlehem “can be redeemed” by Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection. Donald MacKinnon insists that such a reading of the gospels, in particular the destruction of the innocents of Bethlehem, is perverse. For MacKinnon, the victory of the resurrection does not mean that these children are any less dead or their parents any less bereaved, but rather resurrection makes it possible for followers of Jesus not to lie about the world that we believe has been redeemed (1979, 182–95).

Matthew’s account of the death of the children of Bethlehem is stark. “Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more'” (Mt 2:17-18). No attempt is made to explain or justify this horror. Matthew reminds us that Jeremiah prepared us for such a horror (Mt 2:17), warning of the loud lamentation that would come from Ramah. There Rachel would weep for her children, rightly refusing to be consoled (Mt 2:18; Jer 31:15). The gospel—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus—is not a consolation for those whose children are murdered. Rather, those who would follow and worship Jesus are a challenge to those who would kill children. The Herods of this world begin by hating the child, Jesus, but they end up hurting and murdering children. That is the politics, the politics of murder, to which the church is called to be the alternative.

The prevalence of fear. Herods must be resisted, but don’t forget that the fear that possessed Herod’s life is not absent from our own lives. “All Jerusalem” was also frightened by the news of this child’s birth (Mt 2:3). And the same fear continues to possess cultures—our culture—that believe they have no time or energy for children. Abortion is one of the names for the fear of time that children make real. Children rightly frighten us, pulling us as they do into the unknown future. But that pull is the lure of love that moves the sun and the stars, the same love that overwhelmed the wise men with joy. It is that love that makes the church an alternative to the world that fears the child.

The good news is that Herods die. Crafty as he was, his craftiness could not save Herod from death (Mt 2:19a). Kings come and go, but God’s people endure, because God has made endurance possible through the kingdom begun in Jesus. While in Egypt, an angel appears and tells Joseph of Herod’s death, stating that he should return to Israel (Mt 2:19b-20). Joseph never hesitates. With Mary and Jesus, Joseph returns (Mt 2:21), but the return is not without danger. Archelaus, Herod’s son, now rules Judea (Mt 2:22a). Again Joseph is warned in a dream to avoid Judea, and he instead goes to Galilee, to Nazareth (Mt 2:22b-23a), thereby, according to Matthew, fulfilling the prophecy that Jesus will be called a Nazarene (Mt 2:23b).

Galilee. No OT text says that Jesus will be called a Nazarene. But we begin to sense the significance that geography has in Matthew’s gospel. Galilee (Mt 2:22) was a notorious area of Palestine peopled by Samaritans, Jews, and Gentiles. Throughout his ministry Jesus will move to and from Galilee, which means that he will inevitably encounter Gentiles who are as diverse as the people of Israel. Some of these Gentiles will recognize him as the Messiah. The one who has come to Israel to call Israel to repentance, to announce the advent of the kingdom, discovers that Gentiles will hear and respond. Matthew’s gospel is the story of that great surprise.

Reference: Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 2006.