Sunday Times 2
Christmas: A tale of two kings, then and now
The first Christmas was a tale of two kings. While one king, Jesus by name, was just out of Mary’s sacred womb, breathing in his first draughts of air from the world which he came to fill with peace, the other king Herod by name and described by one biblical scholar as a pathologically paranoid individual suffering from long-term neurological effects of gonorrhea, was struggling unsuccessfully to withhold his dying breath as long as possible; but he died in the same year Jesus was born, not without giving a nightmare to Jesus’ parents. Even with death staring at his face, he was plotting the death of the new-born Prince of Peace.
Herod’s power-hunger caused the disappearance of many who were suspected of being a challenge to his political status; even his own wife, mother-in-law and three of his sons were deprived of life allegedly for being a threat to his position as a vassal king in the Roman Empire; for he thought he could attain peace by eliminating all his personal enemies. Even from his death-bed he ordered the imprisonment and execution of some of his popular Jewish rivals lest there would be rejoicing after his own death. For he felt no peace in his heart, a heart agitated by a restless greed for power which made him so insecure as to threaten the security of so many others. Hence the first lesson that the first Christmas teaches us is that political power as such can never bring peace to one’s own self or to others.
By contrast, the other King chose political powerlessness as the spiritual foundation of his kingship. Luke shows that this royal bringer of peace was so helpless politically that in forced conformity with an imperial command he was destined to be born outside the comfortable environment of his own home. Mathew adds a horrifying detail that makes this princely baby the prototype of child-refugees seeking safety in alien territories to escape from a power-drunk politician’s savage persecution. Herod unleashed a reign of terror to get rid of his presumed rival. Whence comes the second message of this feast: that the painful circumstances of the birth and childhood of the King of Peace were both a non-violent protest and a severe sanction against the brutal leadership of power-thirsty tyrants.
There was another episode, also recorded by Mathew, that sends a warning signal to the clergy who directly or indirectly support the political agenda of today’s Herods in exchange for temporal benefits. This is the third message that the first Christmas reveals. The honest truth-seekers living outside the Promised Land, whom Mathew calls ‘Magi’ and whom many Jews condescendingly regarded as “non-believing gentiles”, were provided with the Light that guided them to this King of peace but not before they passed through the royal abode of the same ruthless Herod who was surrounded by his priestly stooges; neither he nor the priests joined the Truth Seekers in their search. But these gentile outsiders were finally guided by that Light to its Infinite Source: a human bundle of divine peace nestling in the bosom of a peasant woman, a labourer’s wife.
Alas! That Guiding Light, says Mathew, was not shining over the Palace and the Temple. For the priests, who collaborated with the oppressive ruler, had no right to celebrate the first Christmas; nor any Christmas any time after. For by serving the wrong king, they have forfeited the privilege of enjoying the peace that the politically victimised Messiah-King offers to all who seek him.