The Gospel for this coming Sunday, The Epiphany of the Lord, is a familiar one. The Gospel is Matthew 2:1-12, which tells us about The Wise Men travelling to see the baby Jesus. On the way to their destination, they speak with the evil King Herod.
The Gospel explains that when The Wise Men stopped in Jerusalem on their way to see the baby Jesus, Herod hears that they are travelling to see the newborn king of the Jews. He asks The Wise Men to give him the baby’s location when they find him, so he can pay the baby homage. (In reality, Herod wishes only to destroy the child because Herod sees him as a threat to his power.) The Wise Men travel on, eventually finding the baby, and they each pay him homage.
But after the visit, being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, The Wise Men avoid Herod on their return to their homeland and never tell Herod where the baby was. The story continues, though not in the reading for this week, that Herod went on to have all children under two years old killed, clearly in an attempt to make sure that the infant king of the Jews would be killed.
What a mixture of pure joy and pure horror this part of the Gospel delivers. The birth of Jesus was the greatest, most blessed event in all of history. The birth of the world’s wholly benevolent king. Jesus was holy. He was purely good. But the story feels marred by being linked with a great evil, the evil of Herod having innocent babies killed. Herod was threatened by Jesus and unleashed horrible violence against much of his world, hoping to destroy Jesus.
I am greatly vexed by this same reality in our lives; evil people are “troubled” by good and therefore seek to destroy good. It is as though evil people cannot contemplate that the goodness is real, or at least logical, and therefore they must eliminate good so the world can “make sense” again. The warped perception held by evil people is that good must be eliminated to maintain order and their own dysfunctional power. Have you seen this phenomenon?
Yet, with all the sadness and horror of this section of the Gospel, it is more memorable to us as the telling of the wonderful event of Jesus’ birth. The story is more memorable as the best news ever, despite the tragedy which follows. Why is that? Why is the taste that’s left in our mouths from this story often a sweet one, when there is so much bitterness and gall in the story taken as a whole?
The answer, I think, is because good triumphs over evil in the end. Herod, for all his scheming, did not win. Herod caused untold heartbreak, which would unfold for generations to follow, but he did not win. He caused pain and damage, but he did not succeed in destroying goodness. The goodness of Jesus, and indeed the goodness of The Holy Innocents who were slaughtered, persisted. Indeed, the evil of the slaughter only made the goodness brighter by comparison. Evil was the dark contrast that made the light visible. Good won, evil lost.
Jesus is the light and the goodness. All survivors of the trials and tribulations of this world, current and past, and all those who fall under the weight of same, are the beneficiaries of the light and the goodness. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have made it so. We may not feel like part of a victory, but we are. It's just a victory that can often be very hard to see.
Goodness and light always, always, always triumph over evil. All too often, it does not feel that way. But without exception, it is true. That is my belief. This is our creed.
May God bless you, each and every one of you.
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