Angels, Shepherds, Wise Men... and a Mass Murderer?

Preached at The Church-in-the-Gardens, December 28, 2025.

What figures do you usually find in a nativity scene? 

In other places, including some Eastern European countries, you might also find a mysterious figure dressed in a robe, with his arms folded and a great big frown on his face. Not the Grinch or Ebenezer Scrooge, but someone who goes back to the very first Christmas. There with the angels and the shepherds and the wise men stands a mass murderer named Herod. How weird is that? Does he belong there? Is Herod really a part of the Christmas story?

During Advent, we began the year of Matthew for our gospel readings. Only in Matthew do we get the story of the magi from the east, following the star to find Jesus and bring him gifts. And only in Matthew do those same magi stop along the way to ask Herod for directions. And only in Matthew do we get… “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.”

It’s an abrupt ending to what had been a merry little Christmas. Merry, right up until the point where the evil king starts killing innocent baby boys. 

You may have never heard a sermon on this text because most preachers avoid it. I mean, really, who wants to hear this right after Christmas? But in Matthew’s gospel, there is no Christmas without King Herod.

Now, Matthew also makes a point of inserting stuff throughout his narrative to prove that Jesus was a fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures. The parallel he draws here, of course, is with what story from the Hebrew Scriptures where all the babies are killed and one child is saved? And remember where that story of Moses took place? Yes, it happened to be the same place where Mary and Joseph fled with their baby boy. (A part of the story we also only hear in Matthew.) So, perhaps Matthew just threw in this story about killing all the little boys as a literary device, and we don’t need to fret over it. 

But I’m afraid that might be letting us off the hook too easily. For Herod is a key part of the story Matthew wants us to see. 

When the Magi ask him about the king of the Jews, Herod is miffed because, after all, HE is the king of the Jews. Seeing a threat, he has the power to eliminate it, and he goes for it.

Matthew wants us to know, from the get-go, that Jesus was born into a world mired in violence. In fact, the reason Jesus was born into this world was because it is mired in violence.

Now, if you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you know that its pages are dripping with blood. Often, the violence is attributed to God. God is angry. And when God is angry, somebody’s gotta pay. 

Those who told the stories we have in our Old Testament were trying to make sense of the world and their relationship with God, and they were speaking from their own limited experience. The early writers held a primitive worldview that’s reflected in a primitive understanding of God. God rewards the good and punishes the wicked, and you’d better do everything you can to appease God’s anger because when God gets angry, somebody’s gotta pay. That’s a primitive understanding of God.

And then, along comes Jesus. “Do you really think that’s what God’s like?” he asks. That God smites entire cities just because they don’t do what he wants them to do? Nothing could be further from the truth. God isn’t about violence. God is about love.

That means that when someone strikes you on your cheek, you don’t strike them back, you turn the other cheek. That means you don’t fight your enemies, you pray for them. That means you don’t retaliate when someone does you wrong, you forgive. The secret to being happy in this life is in giving yourself in love.

That’s what Jesus taught, again and again, in as many ways as possible right up to the very end. As he was leaving them, he taught his disciples one last time about the most important commandment of all. “Love one another.” He said this after he demonstrated what that love looks like by kneeling before them and washing their feet.

Love isn’t just a mushy feeling inside. It’s something we do. We show it in our actions. The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s violence. And, by violence, I don’t just mean when we physically harm another. I mean whenever we assert our power over another in a way that causes them harm…physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual… whenever we assert our power over another in a way that causes them harm, that’s violence. 

We seem to have a blind spot when it comes to violence. Maybe because we’re so accustomed to it in our culture that we have little awareness of what it’s done to us. It’s like the proverbial fish unaware that they’re swimming in water. It takes something really big for us to notice, something so shocking that we can hardly bear the thought of it. Like the slaughter of innocent babies in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago, or the slaughter of innocent schoolchildren in our time. 

We’ll look at these events as if they’re anomalies, strange occurrences that appeared out of the blue, for no apparent reason, and we wonder, how could such things happen? When, in fact, they are the inevitable result of what happens when you eat, sleep and breathe violence. 

We have an addiction to violence in our culture. And what is the first step in dealing with an addiction? The first step is admitting that you have a problem.

Have you ever looked at the shows that are on T.V., movies, video games, the sports we follow, and considered how much of our entertainment is based on violence? At the top, or near the top, of nearly every list of favorite Christmas movies in America is Die Hard. Can you believe that? Perhaps that’s appropriate for a nation whose Christmas morning surprise this year was the bombing of a small African nation.

Isn’t it incredible how even a grave tragedy like the murder of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, 20 of them children 6 and 7 years old, couldn’t get our nation to budge an inch by passing a single law that would make gun regulation more reasonable?

We obviously have a violence problem. But it runs deeper than that in ways that may not be so obvious to us.

When the people we encounter in our everyday lives become objects to manipulate or control so we can get what we want from them. Or when we think nothing of belittling other people to make ourselves feel bigger?

We have a violence problem.

Imagine how our relationships with those closest to us would be transformed if we could stop posturing and protecting ourselves from one another, and instead, give ourselves in love by forgiving, and showing mercy, and daring to reveal our vulnerability to one another? What would happen if a person really lived without violence in our violent world? Well, actually we know what would happen. And perhaps that’s what we’re trying to avoid. 

Jesus lived a life of non-violence, a life given in love. And he ended up nailed to a cross. But even then, he met that act of supreme violence with love. He could have cursed those who unjustly crucified him, or worse. Instead, he forgave them. And, to my way of thinking, that was the most significant moment of his life. Not when he was executed on a cross. Lots of people were executed on crosses. But only one forgave the ones who put him there.

Ironically, many Christians completely miss this point and have used the cross to project their own violence onto God, assuming God is as violent as we are, and God is angry with us and somebody’s gotta pay.

Doesn’t that primitive explanation of the cross completely miss the whole point of Jesus’ life? He died as he lived. As a God who confronted the violence of this world with love.

So, where does that leave us, as people who want to follow Jesus and yet may be, in fact, a lot more like Herod than we are like Jesus? As people who are addicted to violence, how do we love as Jesus loved? Could we turn our church into something like a twelve-step group that meets regularly to support one another as we struggle with our addiction to violence?

I don’t know what it would look like if we dared to be that honest and vulnerable with one another. But I do know that in a church like that, when we read about Jesus’ birth, we would always include Herod in the story.

Precrastination

 In June, I was pushing my daughter and son-in-law to get tickets to go to a Mets game in August, and they were resisting me. It made me nuts. Not long after, they had an end-of-the-school-year party where I met people who will be going to Paris in a couple of weeks and, other than flying from NY and landing in Paris, they have no plans. What?! This is beyond comprehension for me. How do people live like this? 

It’s a gross understatement to say that I’m not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of person. I can do it in a pinch, but the very thought of it has me on the ceiling. I don’t understand people who are just asking to be stressed out. Like procrastinators. 

A number of people in my life are procrastinators, to one degree or another, and I’ve spent some time researching why they are the way they are. There is a common understanding that procrastinators tend to be perfectionists. I’m not sure about that. What I do know is that they tend to make their lives more difficult and stressful than they need to be.

It's important for me to have all my affairs in order in case I die today. I have a file for my daughter that includes all the details. In it she will find passcodes for my accounts, my will, payment for all final expenses, instructions for my funeral (including a worship bulletin ready to print after filling in a few blanks like the date of death), and even a slide show. I update this information on a regular basis. God forbid I should exit this planet with loose ends! (Of course there are always loose ends, but I’m in denial.) How can any adult sleep at night if they don’t have a will? Or how can they sleep at night with credit card debt? Or unresolved conflict with another person? Or unfinished shopping the week before Christmas?

It suddenly occurred to me that I am the exact opposite of a procrastinator and that’s why they make me nuts. What is the opposite of procrastination? Perhaps, planning ahead? Or thoughtfulness? When I looked it up, I discovered that there's actually a word for this. One I’d never heard before: precrastination. Is that really a word? Wikipedia tells me, “Precrastination is the act of completing tasks sooner than necessary, often at the expense of increased effort or diminished quality of outcomes.” Instead of feeling vindicated, I feel unfairly judged by this definition. Further reading told me that precrastination is as problematic as procrastination. Could this possibly be true?

This revelation has caused me to rethink my entire life. How I abruptly changed the direction of my life in college. The way I married a man before I really knew him, fully aware that if I waited I would never go through with it. How, whenever I move to a new location, which I’ve frequently done, I always unpack as quickly as possible and can’t rest until it’s done. The way I have all my big trips planned and paid for through 2027. The way I can’t leave an email unanswered. How I can’t leave tasks undone, or thoughts unshared, or decisions unmade. Never before have I ever considered this behavior a problem.

Why am I like this? I’ve tried on a variety of explanations. I can’t leave things unresolved. I don’t want to be caught unprepared. I must clear things from my mental “to do” list to ease my load. I have to act while I’m thinking of it before I forget (an excuse that makes more sense for me now that I’m older).

I’ve long known that I’m a glass-half-empty person. The culture around me tells me this is not a good way to be, so it’s difficult to admit that. But it’s true. No matter how hard I try, I can’t become a glass-half-full person. I always expect something bad to happen, especially when I’m in the midst of lots of good things happening. And guess what? Eventually something bad happens, of course. When it does, it’s okay, because I was prepared for it. It doesn’t knock my feet out from under me. Now I’m wondering, is this just another manifestation of precrastination for me? Could my glass-half-empty outlook explain why I obsessively prepare for what’s to come?

I don’t know exactly what to think of this recent self-revelation. I can’t believe it’s taken over 70 years of my life before I could see it. I could easily have lived without ever seeing it. But it’s there now. So, what do I do with it? I’m going to try my best not to force an explanation for it. Instead, it’s my intention to let it unfold and come to me when and if it comes. Am I capable of that? We’ll see.

 

Don't Trust the Cameras

 About 10 years ago, Donald Trump decided to run for president. I was among those who didn’t take him seriously. So much that he said was antithetical to the life and teachings of Jesus that I assumed others would see this, and he wouldn’t stand a chance. Of course, I was completely wrong about him and the voters in my country.

Back when he first ran, I remember the time he was going to speak at one of our ELCA universities, Lenoir Rhyne in Hickory, North Carolina. I was among those who were outraged by this, but he had a right to speak there if he chose. College campuses are all about the free exchange of ideas, after all.

Many Lutherans, including our synod Bishop and about 100 clergy, decided to show up on campus that day, not to protest, but to witness to our faith. As people waited in line to enter the auditorium, they could hear us singing hymns and see us holding up signs with scripture verses. We wanted to show them Jesus because surely they would see that DJT was not of Jesus. We sang until we were hoarse.

As we gathered outside the auditorium and the line of those waiting to go inside snaked all around the campus, other groups were gathering as well. They had come to protest. It looked a lot like there was going to be a violent confrontation. I watched it all unfold on the green space before me. The T.V. camera people were watching, too, as they moved in on the two groups who were moving closer to one another, almost face-to-face, screaming. A real life rumble was about to happen! This was going to make for some great T.V.

Then something unexpected happened. A long line of people in clergy collars joined hands and lined up smack dab between the two groups and started singing, “Jesus loves you this I know…” Immediately the groups dispersed. And here’s the thing. So did the cameras. They had been zooming in for the big smack down and there wasn’t one. So, they all put their cameras down and walked away, disappointed. To me, they missed the biggest story of the day!

I remember that event whenever I watch T.V. these days. We are seeing what the T.V. crews decide to show us. And they decide to show us, not the good, but the bad and the ugly.

I’m getting ready to head out for a No Kings Protest today. I pray that they will all be peaceful and millions of people who resist the actions of the current administration will be safe.

If you’re not a part of one of the protests, I urge you not to believe everything you see on T.V. or on the internet. If you want to know what’s happening, talk to someone who was there.

Now that Bishop Budde has your attention...

Along with many others, I cheered as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde spoke truth to the most powerful man in the world at the national prayer service after he was inaugurated. She exemplified the love of Jesus, not only in her words, but also in the way she spoke them. As a preacher myself, I have been gratified by the attention she has received from the media. But a part of me also is feeling unsettled because I suspect many of those who are cheering her on have an incomplete picture of the movement she represents. Here’s what I want you to know… 

Bishop Budde is not an anomaly. There are many Christians like her. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen all Christians attacked on social media and tried to assert that not all Christians are horrible human beings only to have my words met with animosity. A whole lot of people in our world want to have absolutely nothing to do with organized religion in general, and Christians in particular. I can’t really blame them. Christians don’t exactly have a great track record. Just consider the crusades, inquisition, witch trials, slavery, fascism, clergy sexual abuse and other atrocities that are a part of the Church’s history. But the Christian Church has also given us hospitals, universities, schools, great art & music, abolition, Civil Rights, prison reform, safer lives for children and immigrants, and so many other things that have made our world better. There have always been faithful people who have devoted their lives to following the life and teachings of Jesus, often despite the actions of the Christian imposters around them. Christian Nationalists and MAGA-Christians are not followers of Jesus. I know they are the ones you see in the media these days, but their ways are not the way of Jesus. For all those who assume that’s what it means to be a Christian and want nothing to do with us, please know that there are people in the world around you who are faithfully seeking to follow the Jesus way. (No, not perfect people, but people who are doing their best to live and love like Jesus.) Perhaps Bishop Budde opened your eyes to that reality. Know that she actually represents millions of Christians. She is not an anomaly. 

Did you know that on inauguration day there were anti-Trump protests all around the world? You would never have known this from American media. But Google it and you’ll see the pictures. It really happened. Many of the people involved in those protests were clergy and people of faith. I know this because I have friends who were protesting. Bishop Budde wasn’t the only person of faith who spoke out against injustice and made a plea for mercy and compassion. She was simply the only one who was given the opportunity to speak publicly to the newly inaugurated President’s face for 14 entire minutes. 

Please know that Christian leaders from a variety of denominations are doing their best to preach faithful sermons based on Biblical principles like justice, peace and love. Just as the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, Bishop Budde and so many others enter the pulpit fearfully week after week. Not knowing how their words will be received, but sensing a responsibility to show people Jesus, they are compelled by their calling and the Spirit to speak the truth. Just as Jesus did, they advocate for the poor and marginalized people in our world, including the homeless, LGBTQ folks, people of color and undocumented immigrants. 

Some of them preach in communities that receive their message with enthusiasm. Others struggle to open minds that are less than receptive. Many have reminded people of Jesus’ words to “be merciful as God is merciful”, and their congregations have been so offended by the gospel that it has cost them their ministry. This is a precarious place to be for those worried about providing for their children or retirement plans. There may be no group more maligned and more necessary in our nation than those who faithfully preach the gospel of Jesus in our churches in 2025. Unnoticed by the world, they are all heroes to me. (I’m giving myself permission to say this because, as a retired pastor, I find myself listening from the pews these days.)

I want you to know all this because Bishop Budde’s sermon caught your attention, and she represents so much more than her 15 (okay, 14) minutes of fame.