Thought for the Week

 

Sunday 9 December 2007 – 2nd  Sunday in Advent

 

Collect:

O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power,

and come among us,

and with great might succour us;

that whereas, through our sins and wickedness

we are grievously hindered

in running the race that is set before us,

you bountiful grace and mercy

may speedily help and deliver us;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord

who is alive and reigns with You

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.   Amen.

 

Readings

Isaiah 1, 1 – 10

 

Psalm 72, 1 - 19

 

(Romans 15, 4 – 13)

 

Matthew 3, 1 - 12

 

One of the students with whom your Chaplain trained for the Sacred Ministry was an ex-policeman, and his wife was still serving as a police sergeant while they were at Theological College.  One evening, she was on duty in the control room of the Salisbury Division, when she received a ‘phone call from a man with a strong Irish accent.

 

“Could you tell me how to get to Devizes, please?”

“Yes, sir, where are you?”

“I’m in the ‘phone box.”

“Which ‘phone box would that be, sir?”

“It’s just outside the Pub.”

“Sir, to tell you how to get to Devizes, I need to know where you are.”

“But I’ve told you, I’m in the ‘phone box just outside the pub.”

 

You might have thought that is we were going to explore together what the heart of Advent is, we would start with Jesus’ message.  After all, it is for Jesus’ first coming as the baby in the stable in Bethlehem, and for his second coming in power and glory on the Day of the Lord, that we are supposed to be getting ready during Advent.  But no, we start today with the message of John the Baptist, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is close at hand.”

 

In fact, this is exactly what the Prophets had been saying for the previous thousand years, and the Judges before them, so John’s message was not exactly new.  Equally, this is exactly the same message as Jesus had for the people then, and for us now.

 

In those days, things were very much as they are today.  Yes, the technology was a bit different, and people were not continually bombarded with words (both spoken and written) and figures and images as we are today, but most people were just the same.  There was a faithful few who seriously tried to follow God.  There was a large proportion who sort of nodded towards God from time to time, but were two busy with the things of this world to bother much about the things of the next.  Then there were the rich, both those who inherited wealth and power, and the self-made people who took wealth and power, often being none too gentle as they did so.

 

There was one real super-power, Rome, fulfilling much the same role that the United States does today.  Some of the culture of the previous superpower, the Greek Empire, lingered, especially their language, just as echoes of the British Empire are still to be found across the world, and English has now become the common language everywhere.  There would surely be more conflict with the Barbarians in Babylon, (which we call Iraq today), but basically Rome was free to run the world as she wished, and she wished to run it as a business.

 

The Herodian dynasty was extremely unpopular.  There were six main reasons:

  • They were not Jewish but Idumean, or to use the Old Testament term, Edomites.  They were therefore foreigners who had long been enemies of the Chosen People of God.
  • They had no right to rule, because even if they had half-heartedly converted to Judaism, they were certainly not descended from King David, and only one of the Davidic line could rule Judea.
  • To make it even worse, they ruled not on behalf of God, which might have been acceptable, even though they were foreigners, but they ruled on behalf of the pagan Emperor of Rome.  This was absolute anathema to the Jews.
  • They were part of the Roman system of collecting taxes.  This was deeply offensive to the Jews, not least because the coins they had to pay the taxes with bore a “Graven Image”, usually of Caesar’s head.  Besides, the taxes were heavy, and the Herodians took a good percentage to line their own pockets.
  • They had all enjoyed a really good Roman education.  This was not a bad way of keeping subject rulers in line “Oh, and don’t forget, your children are at school in Rome if you should put a foot wrong ...”.  But it made them despise the Jewish culture and Law, and they kept trying to introduce Greek ways.
  • Then, as we shall see in a moment, there were their private lives.

 

To all of this must be added their cruelty.

 

Herod the Great had died in 4 BC, so probably one of the last things that he did, before he fell ill of the liver disease that was to kill him, was to order the massacre of male babies below the age of two in the Bethlehem area.  This atrocity was a futile attempt to get rid of the King of the Jews, whom the Magi told him, had just been born.  All too often, despite their appalling cost, atrocities fail to achieve their object.

 

Herod the Great was succeeded by three of his sons.  He had many more sons, but had had most of the older ones murdered – the innocents of Bethlehem were by no means his first victims.  Archelaus ruled Judea from Jerusalem.    Archelaus’ half-brother, Philip, son of Herod the great and his fifth wife, Cleopatra of Jerusalem ruled Iturea and Trachonitis.  

 

But the one we are really interested in was Herod Antipas who ruled Galilee, building himself a Capital at Tiberias.   Like Archelaus, Antipas was the son of Herod the Great and his fourth wife Malthace.  

 

All of the Herod dynasty treated their marriage vows with a degree of laxity.  Herod the Great had at least ten wives, and he did not always bother to sort out the last divorce before marrying the next.  Most of them married cousins, which is still permitted under most modern law systems, but also nieces, which was allowed under the Law of Moses, but partly in reaction to the Herod family habit of marrying nieces, was to be forbidden by the Rabbis a little later, as it is today in most of the world. 

 

However, Herod Antipas went one step further.  He married Herodias, the divorced wife of his half-brother Herod II Boethus, while Boethus was still alive.  This was a really dangerous thing to do.  Archelaus had been deposed for less.  He had married Glaphyra, his half-brother Alexander’s widow (Alexander and his brother Aristobulus had been murdered by their father, Herod the Great, in 7 BC).  Glaphyra’s second husband, King Juba of Mauretania was still alive, but that was less important than her previous marriage to Archelaus’s half-brother.  So great was the common revulsion, that, in 6AD, the leaders of the Jews persuaded the Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar, to get rid of Archelaus. After that a Prefect was appointed by Rome to rule Judea; Pontius Pilate would be the fifth Prefect of Judea.

 

Does this all sound a bit like a soap-opera? 

 

They say that a nation gets the leadership it deserves, a sobering thought in view of this week’s Russian elections.  The utterly devoted, self-giving example of our own Queen Elizabeth with her view of ruling as a spiritual duty, and a sacred contract with her subjects, stands in stark contrast to the Technicolor goings on of the Herodians.

 

Does this mean that they, the people of first century Palestine were evil, and that we, the people of modern Britain are good?  Absolutely not!  How many of us seriously try to follow the human leadership of our Queen Elizabeth, let alone the divine leadership of our Saviour Jesus?  How many look up to the “Celebs” many of whose private lives are as chaotic as the Herodians’?  How many have at least a sneaking admiration for the self-made millionaires today, like the Herod family then, who came from nowhere to rule a country for 140 years?

 

The way needs to be made straight in our own materialistic age just as much as it did in the wilderness of Galilee nearly two thousand years ago.  People are just as distracted from the things of God by the pressure of this world, by all its vanities, and by all its glitter, as they were then.  We are still just as easily seduced by riches, and just as willingly do we trim our decision-making to the standards of the passing age.  

 

The message of John the Baptist is every bit as relevant now as it was then, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is close at hand”.   To repent, you need to know where you have to go, but like the Irishman in the ‘phone box, you need to have a clear idea of where you are now.  The first part of repenting is to take a good, long, hard look at yourself, not with the judgemental eyes of the world, but with the loving eyes of God.  Despite the sin and the tarnish, and wounds (both His and yours), when He looks at you, He loves what He sees.  Yes, He wants you to change, to grow in that love, but He loves you already.  How can you look at yourself, or for that matter anybody, without God’s love in your eyes and in your heart?

 

May God bless you in your looking, and in your repenting, that there may indeed be a straight way for the coming of God and his Kingdom in your life.  Amen.

 

Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

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