Power
corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That’s a well-known saying, we’ve all heard it all our lives . . . it’s
well-known, but not well-heeded, unfortunately.
And it’s got a lot of corollaries, too—desire for power corrupts, fighting
for power corrupts, and as Yul Brynner would say, et-cetera, et-cetera, et-cetera. You can see that this is true in almost any
sphere of influence you look at, any organization you study, from universities
to senates to flower clubs, for Pete’s sake.
I saw it particularly clearly—with some interesting and amusing
elaborations—working as a Research Biologist for the Feds at Mississippi State
in the 80s and 90s. I worked for an
outfit called the Agricultural Research Service and I was adjunct professor at
Mississippi State, which along with—well, now a dollar-fifty—will get you a cup
of coffee.
But
anyway. I was in full-time research with
dear old ARS—don’t run that together and say it like a word—and we were organized
into Research Units which were sort of like University Departments, only we
didn’t have to teach. Tenure was
pretty-much automatic after about three years, but our promotion up the ranks
was dependent upon publications, so publish or perish was still the rule. The research leader was our equivalent of a
department head, only with one crucial difference: there was a pot of research money given to
each unit—the amount depended upon a whole host of factors that don’t bear
close attention, don’t get me started on that—and
the research leader got to dole it out in whatever proportion to whichever of
his or her scientists he or she chose.
Can
you see where I’m going with this?
That’s right: the Research Leader
has real power in the Agricultural Research Service, and it’s complicated by
another crucial factor: the Research Leader’s advancement is dependent upon his publications, he is a working
scientist, so you can see that the temptation is to take the lion’s share of
the money yourself if you are research leader, and many of them do just
that. But the smart ones don’t do it quite that blatantly, because that’ll
eventually get you in trouble when unit research drops off, the smart ones
build this system that is not unlike a fiefdom, where tribute is paid to the
leader, only instead of actual money it’s the Research Leader’s name on your
publications, even letting her or him be first author occasionally, so that
your research becomes yours and his, whether he has anything to do with it or
not.
Once
you’re Research Leader, you don’t usually want to stop being it, because it has
real power, so a lot of them do some pretty cold things to their
underlings—they are the direct supervisor of their scientists—I saw something
equivalent to Herod’s slaughter of the innocents several times over the course
of my career in ARS. Only without the
actual bleeding, of course.
And
it propagates up the ladder: in the administrative system, they tend to
maintain themselves not necessarily because they do any good but because the
people, once up the old ladder, like the power and want to stay there. Thus are top-heavy organizational structures
maintained, and this is one way power corrupts: once you get it you don’t want
to lose it.
Herod
was in exactly that same position the day he heard about this new King—he had
ultimate power over the little pond called Judea, though he was just a little
tiny fish in the big Roman lake. By the time of Jesus’ birth, he had been King
of the Jews for 37 or so years, and he was used to the trappings of power. Some historians believe he was also mad,
suffering from depression and paranoia.
Whatever the case, he was used to power by the time Jesus was born, in
the final year of his life, and so when some foreign dignitaries—the Greek text
calls them magoi, magi—when some magi
show up at his palace in Jerusalem, talking about another King of the Jews—that
was his title, the Emperor had
crowned him King of the Jews—he was
frightened, and affronted.
And
so there was setup a rivalry—or so Herod thought, anyway—between Herod and the
infant Jesus for the power, in a typical triangular structure with the
title—along with its absolute power—at the apex, and the infant Jesus at one
corner and Herod at the other corner, and even though Christ would not be that
kind of king, Herod didn’t know that, he thought he was a threat to the throne,
and he was prepared to do anything to hold onto that power, and we know this
because he’d already killed his own children when he felt threatened by
them.
So. He calls for all the chief-priests and
toadies, all the grafters and royal hangers-on, and asked them where this
Messiah would be born, and they tell him “Bethlehem, the city of David, O great
and wise and wonderful one, and while we’re on the subject, please don’t kill
us all” but that’s not good enough for Herod, for some reason he wants to know
the exact house in Bethlehem where Jesus is, so he calls the three wise men
together in secret, and tells them “Go turn over every rock, search every hill
and valley, every house and barn in Bethlehem until you find this king, then
come back and tell me so I can go worship him myself.” Undoubtedly he told them this in secret to
preserve their remarkable gullibility, the wise men weren’t very wise, because
if anybody in Jerusalem had heard
that line they would have bust a gut laughing.
They knew Herod all too well.
So
the magi go to Bethlehem, following that remarkable star, and they bring gifts,
and we all know the song, so I’m not going to say it again, and when it’s all
over, when the presents have been opened, and all the birthday cake eaten, they
dream a dream—where it’s from Matthew doesn’t say—they dream a dream, they’re
warned not to go back to Jerusalem, so they go home by another way.
And
though Matthew doesn’t say where the dream comes from, Matthew’s first century
auditors would know, and we know as well, don’t we? The dream comes from the divine, where all
dreams come from, it comes from God, but Herod is enraged when hears about the
wise men wising up, and in his power-mad rage he orders all the male children
under two killed in and around Bethlehem, which were a drop in the bucket
compared to all the people Herod had killed over his long reign to preserve his
position, his power, and his title of King of the Jews.
And
thus the massacre of the children—and we’re right to see echoes of Pharaoh in
this—the slaughter of the innocents, but there is one innocent, you might say
the ultimate innocent, who is spared the direct intervention of God. This is not the usual case in set-ups like
this, in any contention over power, any fight over position or title or money
or market share, the strong win out and the weak are crushed. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it? The strong get stronger, they get more power
and wealth and influence, and the weak get . . . the shaft.
But
this shall be a sign unto us, that ten days ago, a baby was born in a manger; a
baby, the most vulnerable, the weakest, most helpless human being in the
universe, who is nevertheless Christ, the anointed one, the Lord. And as if that isn’t enough of a sign,
this too shall be a sign: that God will warn the baby’s parents, that God will
tell them to go to Egypt. Egypt,
for Pete’s sake: the kingdom of the god-king Pharaoh, the land of Jewish
enslavement. This shall be a sign unto
us: that God sends an angel to warn
Joseph and Mary, to warn them that their baby is danger.
And
if it’s a sign, if it’s a pointer to some other reality than is right before
our eyes, what does it signify? That in the Kingdom of God the tables are
turned, the weak are saved, the innocent are rescued, and the strong are
denied. In the Kingdom of God, which we
as Christians are commanded to help bring about—in the inbreaking,
coming-yet-not-fully-realized Kingdom of God on earth, the ground is reversed,
up becomes down, might becomes wrong.
As that babe himself would put it later on, all grown up, the first
shall be last and the last shall be first.
The
Christmas season is ending in two days.
It is a season of signs, a time of miracles and wonderments, as Paul
Simon might put it, and they all point to one thing: that Christ the Lord,
Savior of the world, has been born. But
contrary to the ways of that world, contrary to the Jewish Messianic
expectations swirling around, contrary to Herod’s fevered night sweats, he
would not be a standard-issue, by-the-book earthly leader, a back-stabbing
king. He wouldn’t step on others on the
way up, sequester all the resources for himself or drain the people of taxes to
build an army as did Herod. He wouldn’t
create a hierarchy then use it to protect his point of view like so many
denominations do, nor would he battle for position, for getting his way within
a church congregation. His whole life
was a sign of the coming and already-here kingdom, where the lion shall lie
down with the lamb, the hungry will have enough to eat, the last shall be
first, and the first, last.
Hallelujah. Amen.
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