Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard B. Wilke (1930-2025) was a retired United Methodist bishop and co-author of the popular DISCIPLE Bible Study series. Bishop Wilke served the United Methodist Church for more than forty years. More recently, he served as the Bishop in Residence at Southwestern College. Bishop Wilke and his wife, Julia K. Wilke (1932-2016), established the Foundation for the Institute for Discipleship at Southwestern. Widely known as a speaker and preacher, Bishop Wilke often served as conference preacher and keynote speaker at regional and national meetings. Other books by Bishop Wilke include: And Are We Yet Alive?, Signs and Wonders, Tell Me Again, I'm Listening, Our Father, and The Pastor and Marriage Group Counseling.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Christmas: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Abingdon Press

Chapter One

Scripture: Read Matthew 2:1, 7-8, 16-18.

Herod, the Man Who Tried to Kill Christmas

Herod "the great," as he was known, was a bad man; a cruel man; an evil man. Here is some background. He was born in the deserts of Sinai, a descendant of Abraham through Esau (or Edom). The Edomites, later known as Idumaeans, had been forcibly converted to Judaism by the Maccabees, who led the revolt that freed Judea from Syrian rule, so the Idumaeans were not descended from historically Jewish families. Thus Herod and his people were known as Edomite Jews.

The world was in turmoil. In Rome, Brutus and Cassius had murdered Julius Caesar. In the struggle for power, Cassius was defeated by Mark Antony, who was killed by Octavian— who later became known as Caesar Augustus, the first ruler of the newly named Roman Empire. Rome was trying to subjugate and control Greece, the Near East, and Egypt. Rome needed help governing Palestine.

The Hasmoneans, a Dynasty descended from the Maccabees, were the Jewish high priests and kings who ruled Israel from 143 to 37 B.C.; but the dynasty grew weak due to infighting, and Herod's father, Antipater, who allied himself with the Roman leadership, was named ruler of Judea. Herod, a young soldier, charismatic, adept with javelin and bow, was sent to Rome to build friends among key Roman leaders. Later he was dispatched to become governor of Galilee. He proved to be a friend of Rome by brutally crushing a local Jewish rebellion. Herod became expert at playing both ends against the middle.

When Herod's father was poisoned, Rome named Herod ruler of Judea. To solidify his authority, Herod married Mariamne, a beautiful Hasmonean princess whose father was the High Priest Hyrcanus. Eventually Herod had a number of wives to solidify political ties, but Mariamne was his favorite. He loved her insanely; he was passionately jealous. When she urged him to appoint her brother Aristobulus as high priest, he did so. But Herod had the popular Aristobulus, who was only seventeen, drowned within a year, and his mother blamed Herod. (The emperor Augustus is reported to have said at some point, "It is safer to be Herod's pig than to be his son.") Mariamne accused Herod of killing both her brother and her grandfather. Herod's sister, Salome, told Herod that Mariamne was sleeping with an uncle, so, according to Jewish historian Josephus, Herod ordered Mariamne's execution.

Herod was brutal. He wanted absolute control. He murdered important Hasmoneans, Pharisees, and priests of the ruling body, the Sanhedrin, while installing "yes men" in their places. So by the time the wise men came to Jerusalem, it was Herod's men who served as the elders. And Herod reduced their power by continually changing high priests.

Herod pacified most of the Jewish people under his rule by allowing them to worship their God in the Temple, instead of worshiping Caesar. In return, he placated Rome by demanding a huge temple tax, then sending that vast wealth to Rome. He kept the international trade routes open— incense from Yemen, olive oil from Galilee— with crushing taxes, again forwarding great wealth to Rome. Any uprising, he quashed brutally.

Herod, in part to elevate his own name, was a great builder. He lavishly remodeled the second Temple, with a solid gold altar, magnificent imported marble walls, and a beautiful "heavenly" blue ceiling. The Temple was so magnificent that millions of Jews, scattered all over the Mediterranean, returned to worship and admire. (This temple is the one Jesus visited. The Temple and all Jerusalem were destroyed by the Romans following an uprising in A.D. 70.)

To pacify Rome, Herod built a golden Roman eagle, placing it at the temple entrance. Some of the Jews became angry and tore the eagle down— its presence in the Temple being a sacrilege, they believed. Herod had the young men captured, placed in chains, dragged the thirteen miles down "The Valley of the Shadow of Death" from Jerusalem to Jericho, and burned alive.

To honor himself, Herod built a mountain, over two thousand feet high, near Jerusalem. He constructed a palace on top, which made it higher and taller than the Temple. He modestly named it the "Herodium." He also built the great Western Wall as part of the temple complex— the ruins of which are known by some today as the Wailing Wall. The platform, the size of 150 football fields, took ten thousand men ten years to build.

Herod built a huge seaport and named it Caesarea Maritima— which made the Romans happy, but not the Jews. (It stimulated trade but carried Caesar's name.) He also built amphitheaters for Greek and Roman theater and games, giving the people jobs but offending Jewish religious teachings.

Suspicion, fear, brutality, and jealousy permeated Herod's life and rule. He was considered to be an old man for those times, nearly seventy years old after forty years of ruthless rule, when the wise men came to Jerusalem. Matthew's Gospel tells the story. Those pilgrims inflamed his paranoia when they said they were looking for a baby who would become "king of the Jews." Herod's perverse mind flew into high gear as he lied to the wise men, saying that he too wanted to go to Bethlehem, to worship the baby. He sent the wise men to Bethlehem and ordered them to return to him afterward, so that he could learn of the infant Jesus' location. But after visiting the baby Jesus in Bethlehem, the wise men, "having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, ... left for their own country by another road" (Matthew 2:12). Herod "was infuriated" (2:16) and, to stop the threat of losing his kingship to this newborn baby, "he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under" (2:16).

Just picture the soldiers breaking down the doors of every house in Bethlehem, killing all the babies right in their mothers' arms. The Bible explodes in grief. It recalls Rachel, wife of Jacob, who died in childbirth. She had become the generic term for women in tragedy. You can visit Rachel's tomb near Bethlehem, even today. You can weep and remember the children who were "no more" (Matthew 2:17-18).

At the time Jesus was born, Herod the Great was a seventy-year-old man plagued with illness and incessant family disputes involving his ten wives and fifteen children. Ancient sources like Josephus claim that, in his old age, Herod's illness grew steadily worse, complicated by high fever, intolerable itching, and inflammation of the abdomen. Herod's suspicious temperament and ruthless determination to remove any possible opposition intensified. Obsessed and paranoid, he had another son executed, Antipater, son of Herod's wife Doris. When he realized his own death was near, Herod ordered the arrest of all the leading citizens of all the villages. Then they were to be slaughtered at the moment of the king's death— thus tears would be shed and the nation would be plunged into mourning, even if not for him. Mercifully, his sister Salome countermanded the order, and all were later released.

Historians say that Herod was a godless man, reckless, willing to slay young or old, relative, friend, or enemy, showing no mercy.

Across the centuries, Herod the king has become a symbol of evil. We may rather want to forget that he is part of the Christmas story. But let's keep Herod in Christmas to remind us how desperately we need a Savior in this evil world.

Evil

Some folks think that evil is long ago and far away, like Nero feeding Christians to the lions in Rome or Hitler herding millions of people into the gas chambers in Europe. But with today's lightning-quick communications, we learn quickly of brutality, cruelty, deception, and crime, at home and around the world. At almost any given time, it seems, the headline news will tell us of a governor who was caught sleeping with a prostitute, a senator who has lied and cheated on personal income taxes, a corporate executive who has scammed billions of dollars from stockholders.

Evil around the globe crashes into our living rooms. A dictator in Zimbabwe grabs land and seals off the water that brings life to it, causing hundreds of thousands to die of starvation and cholera. Young Palestinian terrorists strap dynamite around their waists, blowing themselves up in a crowded Jerusalem mall. In return, Israeli planes bomb Palestinian schools and places of worship. Civil strife in Sudan slaughters thousands of women and children.

I live in a peaceful little town in Kansas. The police called me the other day: a woman who clerked at the local store was using our credit card number to gain money to buy drugs. Last week an alcoholic driver drank two bottles of vodka and ran over and killed a young mother with her four-year-old daughter. In a nearby town, a young man stalked, raped, and murdered a high school cheerleader. There is evil in the world.

The Bible says that evil is not "out there"; it's "in here." Evil is not limited to the Herods and Hitlers of history; evil resides in the human heart, like dormant seeds in fertile soil, ready to sprout and grow when given the opportunity.

Adam and Eve dramatize rebellion from the beginning. Instead of God's way, they did it their way. Their farmer son, Cain, murdered his rancher brother, Abel. Biblical history and all human history is replete with evil and its consequences. Scripture tells us that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). You and I are to pray, "forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us" (Luke 11:4).

Humankind is desperate for a Savior— a person of God powerful enough to save us from our sins, not only to forgive our iniquities but to turn our hearts from selfish self-seeking toward God in trust and compassion for others.

We desperately need more than just another prophet; we crave more than a good teacher; we must have better than a great physician. Like a drowning person crying for help, we plead for a Savior— for One who can save us from evil, turn us from our sinful selves, root out the "Herod" from our hearts.

Christmas is the fulcrum of history: Bethlehem marks the encounter between God's goodness and man's inhumanity to man, between salvation and self-centered sin, between God and evil, between the Savior and a satanic Herod.

Christmas Eve

My dad owned a funeral home with an emergency ambulance. I was fourteen years old, young, strong, restless— so Dad put me to work, lifting a cot or carrying a body to the embalming room. Doing this work, I saw something of the seamy side of life. On a rainy night, a drunken man crashed his car into a family van; an angry man shot his wife with a shotgun, then turned it on himself; and a child was left in a car to die of heat exhaustion. I saw the results of much evil.

Around that same time, the Battle of the Bulge— a major German offensive near the end of World War II— raged in Europe. I went with Dad to the railroad station to pick up the bodies of dead American soldiers— sometimes the father or older brother of a friend of mine. So on this particular Christmas Eve, I was depressed. Even at Grandma's house, with a room full of family laughing and opening presents, I was, understandably, withdrawn and blue.

I knew that the tiny Episcopal church two blocks away was holding Christmas Eve Holy Communion. No one else wanted to go, so I walked up the street, alone, discouraged, hoping to find a little peace in a troubled world. I sat down; the organist softly played "Silent Night"; a lighted candle burned on every window ledge. Thank God. A moment of peace.

Then the priest stood up to read the Scripture. Oh no! I couldn't believe it. He read the Scripture about "the slaughter of the innocents"— how Herod killed all the babies in Bethlehem. Blood rushed to my head. Not on Christmas Eve! Not to a kid who was sick of war, tragedy, evil, and bloodshed!

Then the priest said, "Jesus Christ was born into the real world— our world— a world where women and children are brutalized, where men are machine-gunned, where babies are murdered— a world riddled with sin and evil."

As I ate the bread and drank from the cup, a Spirit of joy and peace flooded my soul. My Savior came into Herod's world— our world, my world— to change evil into goodness, hatred into love, violence into peace, sin into salvation. I'll always remember that Holy Communion.

Let's keep Herod in Christmas to avoid sentimentality, to remember that a world saturated with sin desperately needs a Savior who can transform the human heart. Oh, if only Herod had, in fact, gone to Bethlehem to "pay him homage"! But let us go; let us allow the Savior to root out the evil in our world.

Issues to Ponder

Ponder for a moment your knowledge of evil. Let your historical memory focus on airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center or on a brutal murder in your town. Or picture yourself as a slave in 1840, your family members being sold on an auction block, sent to another state. Or visualize yourself as a descendant of that slave, being refused service in a café, or laughed at and turned away from a hotel late one night when you are tired and need a place to stay. Contemplate rich, powerful people deceiving the government, paying themselves outrageous bonuses, absconding with fortunes. Think about evil in the world, and consider the following questions.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Where do you think evil comes from? How does it invade the human heart? What stimulates evil, increasing its power?

2. Where, in your own life, have you experienced evil hurting you, damaging your health, your family, your resources?

3. In your inner life, where do Jesus the Savior and Herod the evil one do battle? Where are the secret seeds of sin in your heart that sometimes burst forth like weeds in spring?

4. How do you allow Jesus the Savior to help you defeat sin in your life? How do you make amends or obtain forgiveness? How does Jesus change a person's heart from evil to good?

Carol

    How silently, how silently,
    the wondrous gift is given;
    so God imparts to human hearts
    the blessings of his heaven.
    No ear may hear his coming,
    but in this world of sin,
    where meek souls will receive him still,
    the dear Christ enters in.

    O holy Child of Bethlehem,
    descend to us, we pray;
    cast out our sin, and enter in,
    be born in us today.
    We hear the Christmas angels
    the great glad tidings tell,
    O come to us, abide with us,
    Our Lord Emmanuel!
    — Phillips Brooks, O Little Town of Bethlehem

Prayer

Good and gracious Savior, we know that evil creeps into our human experience like a snake in a swamp. Lying, betrayal, and violence are everywhere— outside us and inside us. Sin is in our hearts, for we "all have sinned and fall[en] short of the glory of God." May the Savior, Jesus, born in Bethlehem under King Herod's rule, be born in our hearts and live in our lives forever. And may we resist evil inside and out, the Jesus way. Amen.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Christmas: The Good, the Bad, and the Uglyby Julia Wilke Copyright © 2009 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.