"The
first Christmas came amidst distress over — just imagine! — government and
governmental questions. The rule of the Romans and their Jewish allies would
have been blown away by a good election. But of course there weren't any
elections back then, just notifications of who was the new emperor or king or
prefect. The perpetrators (from the imperial standpoint) of the first Christmas
worked around the realities of power and force. These they did not seek to do
away with. In their stead they erected something higher: the love of
God."*
The contrast between two
attitudes is very clear in the last two people we've looked at in this Advent
season. Herod the Great was a classic politician--he climbed his way up a
ladder based on his father's political contacts and his efforts to make the
right friends in Rome and the right marriages in Palestine. He finagled his contacts in Rome into first a
governorship and then the position of "King of the Jews" over most of
Palestine. Judea had been a more or less independent kingdom from 163 BC until
taken over by Rome in 63 BC. The history of this period was marked by war and
intrigue by Greeks, Jews and Rome.
The other lifestyle we saw is a
young woman we know as Mary. Her faith and obedience to God made her a person
God could use in a unique way: as the mother of the true Messiah. Her attitude, when approached by Gabriel with
this message, was clear and simple: "I am the Lord's servant; let it be as
you say." There was a very good
chance at one point that her son could become victims of the murderous Herod,
but Joseph's immediate and unquestioned obedience to the angel of the Lord
saved their lives. Her grace and obedience carried her through even the worst
possible thing that could happen to a mom, and to a miracle on the other side.
Right now in our country we are
seeing a tremendous amount of faith in politics--of all sorts--to a point that
God is ignored, rejected, or invoked to support human goals. God is not the
servant of our political and social wants--the Kingdom that was the ultimate
Christmas gift is out of this world!
* William Murchison, Creators.com 12/20/16
Judea had been a more or less independent
kingdom from 163 BC when a family of Jewish priests, who were called Maccabee
(probably derived from the word for "hammer") and who had started a
guerilla uprising against a Hellenist kingdom based in Syria who were demanding
pagan sacrifices. The recovery and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem is
commemorated in the festival of Hannukah; and the Maccabee kingdom, always
caught between the kingdoms based in Egypt and Syria and ridden with internal
power struggles, looked to Rome for backing and wound up being invaded by
Pompey in 63 BC and brought under Roman control. There were those who saw Judas
Maccabee as a Messiah figure, but his position and power were based on war and
intrigue. He was killed in battle, and the
military and political struggles continued.
Herod's third and favorite wife, Mariamne, was one of the last of the
Maccabean line; she and her two sons were killed by Herod in the internal
politics of the palace. Herod did keep kosher and observed most of the Jewish
law--it was said that it was safer to be Herod's pig than his son. The only survivor was a
granddaughter--Herodius, who married an uncle: Herod Phillip, one of Herod the
Great's sons, whom she divorced to marry his brother Herod Antipas, which
triggered the murder of John the Baptist.
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