Advent 2024 : 12

 

The biographer Matthew fills in parts of the infancy narrative that the biographer Luke leaves out. It is Matthew who records the visit of the magi. They come, fearless, to Herod’s court: and why would they fear, for they are envoys, ambassadors from one royal court to another, come to congratulate Herod on an heir whose birth secures his kingdom? Herod had many sons, including those he would send into exile, those he would have murdered, and those who would rule after him in a more limited fashion; but this was not one of them. It turns out that their fearlessness is their fatal flaw, with tragic unintended consequences. Fear is a gift from God, literally a lifesaver. God will send an angel to teach the magi the fear of the Lord – whose actions God fears, and how God would respond – to instruct them, in this circumstance, to flee, to take flight by night.

Herod is afraid, and all his court with him. Fear spreads through Jerusalem, for who can be sure how Herod will respond, and who will survive his response?

As it happens, the first response of Herod, a convert to Judaism, is wise. He turns to those who can instruct him in God’s wisdom, who inform him that the one who is to shepherd God’s people will come from Bethlehem. They are quoting from the Book of the Prophet Micah (one part of a single scroll that collected the short writings associated with twelve prophets, which, along with other Jewish scrolls, found its way to the Great Library and Museum – research institution – of Alexandria, where the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Alexandrian – koine – Greek) who foresaw the defeat of Israel by the Assyrians, and of Judah by the Neo-Babylonians, and a future restoration for a remnant under a leader who would enable them to live securely – free from fear.

Herod is instructed in the ways and promise of God, that a time of fear that has existed for centuries – including Herod’s own paranoia – is about to come to an end. For fear cannot be sustained forever.

But Herod is not able to relax – his body, so shaped by fear at a physiological level, is not able to regulate. His sympathetic nervous system is stuck on ‘on,’ and his parasympathetic nervous system is stuck on ‘off.’ And the population of Bethlehem will suffer a massacre as the result.