Herod's Follies

Gospel:  Matthew 14: 1-12

Herod was a man who, like many in high positions of leadership, viewed the world from within the confines of his palace rooms.  Earlier in the Gospel he stayed within his fortress to muse on the birth of the Messiah.  Seeing that as a threat to him, he sought the death of the child and many others.  In today's Gospel portion and in a later episode, he seeks to understand Jesus not by going out to meet and observe Jesus, but in the abstractions of his mind within his regal environs.  

It is easy to see why powerful leaders who live only in their palace walls and minds arrive at false conclusions so often and inflict violence and death wherever they go.  Jesus, by contrast, left the environs of his heaven and came among the world to understand and love those he encountered wherever he went.  The approach of encounter leads to love and understanding, never to violence and hatred.  The fortress mentality and navel gazing leads to bad judgment, mistrust, and violence.  

John the Baptist and Jesus ministered to people out in the desert, in villages, hillsides, and homes of people in need.  They did not minister in palaces and fortresses of power.  Each was brought to these seats of power in order to be condemned and executed.  Those who choose the court of Herod have their reward - power, influence, wealth.  Those who choose the way of encounter, the way of John and Jesus, have the Beatitudes as their eternal reward.  

We Took Offense

Gospel: Matthew 13: 54-58

Whenever we imagine a homecoming, we think that people will greet us with open arms and a parade.  They will say how proud they are of our accomplishments and host a big dinner in our honor.  We might very well expect that for someone like Jesus should very well receive such a greeting from his hometown.  After all, he had accomplished great deeds in his care of others and has become somewhat famous.  The musings of our own homecomings are just the irrational daydreams of the mediocre.  

So, we are surprised in reading that the homecoming for Jesus did not go as we expected.  They took offense at him.  They did not want him around.  He was just too much for them.  Jesus is too much for us too.  Providing care for all people equally!  Eating at table with people I do not like!  Telling us we have to love our enemies, forgive others countless times, rejecting violence and revenge!  All of this is just too much for us, as it was for his hometown.  

So, we invent other versions of Jesus that are more palatable to our biases and animosities against others.  When we are finished with our editing of Jesus to suit our tastes, we discover that we have chosen Barabbas - a thief and purveyor of violence for nationalism.  We then create an entire system of apologetic and theology to defend this caricature so we can justify the body counts and other atrocities the real Jesus would find repellent.  Changing images of Jesus is easier than changing ourselves to become like him.

Both New and Old

Gospel: Matthew 13: 47-53

Jesus tells us that those who are truly instructed in the kingdom of heaven take out from their storerooms things both old and new.  He asks us if we understand these things, if we understand what his parables truly say to us.  Naturally, the disciples say that in fact they do understand.  We, of course, make the same bold assertion.  Jesus knows better.  He knows that neither his disciples of that time, nor us, really understand the realities of the kingdom.

Take, for example, what he says about the old and the new here.  Traditionalists despise all things new.  They have created an artificial date where all things that come after that date are suspect and rejected.  Similarly, progressives have created a similar criterion where all things that came before their created date of validity are rejected as expired and stale.  If one were to compare the dates of these rival camps, one would discover the one thing these groups have in agreement - their own artificial constructs.

If we tilt to one of these extremes, we have an incomplete storeroom.  We find ourselves impoverished rather than enriched.  We deprive others of great treasures or great discoveries, and what we have in our storeroom is not the kingdom of heaven but a kingdom of our own making, a world of make-believe of one sort or the other.  Today is the day for the progressive to rediscover the treasures of the old, and for the traditionalist to realize the value of the new.