When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. - Matthew 2:13-23
Maintaining your position is exhausting. Like Herod, you must always be on the lookout for competitors-peoples who might take away the position that you have fought so hard to obtain--and ruthlessly suppress them. When the magi showed up, saying they had a supernatural sign pointing them to the one who was destined for the very title that you yourself claimed, you use them to find out the truth in the matter and when they don't report back, you kill every possible future rival to your throne that they might have encountered.
Maybe we don't murder our rivals, but we can feel resentful when someone else starts getting the credit. When Guinness Book of World Records listed the kid with the highest IQ in the world, I remember feeling annoyed at that kid even though I never new him. Maybe he or she is socially awkward or had super geniuses for parents or the IQ tests were inherently biased towards people of a certain socioeconomic level. Some way to explain why they weren't listing my name.
When someone else has what we feel we deserve, we find some reason why they didn't deserve it, some way that they cheated, some way that they were unfairly advantaged or someway to remove them from being seen as a competitor. Or we feel they were right to win and the anger turns inward in remorse.
Saying that you don't deserve something and someone else does in front of a crowd is a tough path to humility--and we will often do almost anything rather than go down that path. Herod didn't. Joseph, bringing back Mary and Jesus from Egypt didn't want to settle where Archilaeus, Herod's son, was, because he would have not liked his father being shown up by a refugee, so they went to Nazareth.
One thing we can learn: even in the unfair jealousy of others, God still has a hand, since he used that very anger to get Jesus to exactly where he was supposed to be, per the prophecy.
Another think we can learn: we can't get closer to God if we don't see Him as more important than everything in our current situation. Herod was so tied to being "king" that he got literally and metaphorically farther from Jesus. He couldn't let it go. Sometimes, we can't let it go. Then we can't get closer to Jesus. Learning how to live without attachment to anything but God is the art.
No comments:
Post a Comment