Brief synopsis of the readings: Continuing with the prophet Isaiah, God speaks again of how light will conquer the darkness of the earth. But here the nations will stream toward Jerusalem bringing wealth and riches with them and all shall proclaim the praises of the Lord. Matthew’s Gospel recalls Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and the coming of the magi from the East. In Jerusalem they met with Herod and asked about the “newborn king of the Jews.” Deeply troubled, Herod asked his advisors who told him the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. Herod then sent the magi to Bethlehem and asked them to return and tell them where to find this child. They found Jesus and paid him homage but were told in a dream not to return to Herod and left by another route.

Well that didn’t take long. Last week we celebrated the feast of the Holy Family where they were reunited in Jerusalem and began their journey home. On Christmas we read about how the shepherds learned of Jesus’ birth and came to do him homage. And even today we see the magi learning of Jesus and also coming to pay homage to him. But lurking in the background of today’s Gospel is a dark shadow: Herod. There’s a great deal we know about Herod, but we don’t need his entire biography. Suffice it to say that he was a Jew who cooperated with the Romans and did well because of that and many Jews saw him as a turncoat.

As a Jew he would have been familiar with the expectation that the Messiah would come someday but in his heart he probably counted on this not happening in his lifetime. He had a pretty good life and he was an incredibly ambitious ruler and the coming of the Messiah would have messed up everything. And so when the Magi came and asked about the “newborn king of the Jews” it set off alarm bells. The next part would be humorous if it weren’t so serious. The question obviously troubled Herod but he was clearly fuzzy on the details and needed the help of the chief priests and scribes; they confirmed his worst nightmare. As is often the case a powerful person isn’t necessarily a learned person. This “newborn king of the Jews” meant his greatest fear was at his doorstep.

We don’t read about this but when the magi left and Herod realized they weren’t coming back he gave an order that chills us to this day: he ordered all boys born around that time to be murdered. We don’t know if this order was ever carried out and if it was how many boys were murdered. But it has been with us ever since and we refer to these boys as “Holy Innocents.” Many Catholic cemeteries name the section of the cemetery reserved for children after them.

Looking at this with the luxury of time it’s hard to imagine what Herod was thinking. I think we can all be ambitious sometimes and even let our desire for something outweigh common sense or moral compass but what is more important than the lives our our smallest children? How can somebody even consider this? And while we’re on the subject, did Herod really believe he could outsmart God by killing these innocents? Imagine God calling a meeting of the Holy Trinity and telling them: “Well, we got outsmarted on this one. Anyone have another idea?” The reality is that by the time Herod had gotten to this point he was well beyond anything approaching rational thinking. His head was so full of fear of losing his power that there wasn’t room for anything else. Anything he did to keep his position was not only possible, it was justifiable.

We can look on this with contempt for Herod, and we should, but we need to recognize that our discipleship demands that we keep our ambition, and even our desires, in check. Even if our goal is good it doesn’t mean we can use any means to achieve it. I write this the day after we learned of the death of President Jimmy Carter at age 100. When he left the White House in 1981 he and Rosalynn moved back to their home in Plains, Georgia and lived there until their deaths. He devoted the rest of his life to humanitarian causes, and while he never feared where he would get his next meal, he didn’t earn nearly as much as he could have. We revere him in large part because he shifted his political ambition to serve others. Same passion, same determination, different direction.

Without making too much of a point of this we live at a time when bragging about wealth has become a reality show. Our history has never lacked for magi or for Herods. The good part of this is that no matter how bad things are, they will get better. But it also means that no matter how good things are, they won’t last. The fact that Herod’s plot didn’t work (Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt until Herod died) gives us hope but it can also fatigue us. There is a danger of despair when we think about the ongoing cycle of good news/bad news. But I think one of the things that made President Carter so laudable was that he never let himself slip into despair, even when he saw what some of his successors did. He build houses, witnessed foreign elections for fraud, and declared war on diseases that disproportionately attacked the poor.

And in this way he piled up other kinds of riches. His wealth wasn’t in treasuries but in lives: lives of people who now have a home, lives of people who never had to bury a child who died of an easily curable disease. His wealth lives on in the lives of everyone who found inspiration in a man who refused to allow a political defeat in 1981 define the rest of his life.

And as the magi brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus, Jimmy did (and we can) bring hope from despair to those we meet.