I like to share my thoughts on theological and philosophical topics. I am also a student working through an MDiv and occasionally share papers on the blog. If you have any questions on a paper or blog post, send me a message! I’d love to talk with you about it.
Violent Night - Holy Night
Around the same time Jesus was born (possibly the same year) Herod the Great died. His reign was one of terror and paranoia, even for a Roman ruler. He murdered most of his family to secure his throne and was actually in the middle of attempting to execute his son for treason in the year he died. Herod’s paranoid, mass-terrorism reign was the only thing keeping Jewish Palestine from falling apart, however.
Jewish nationalist factions had tried to rise up over the last 150 years in revolt against what seemed to them an idolatrous display of Roman accommodation by Herod. In the wake of his death, his successor Archelaus (the poor kid was 19 years old) was pressured by Jewish mobs to punish elitists who were favored by Herod during his reign and to move the highpriesthood under new leadership.
If your Christmas traditions are anything like mine, you and your family will sit down and read the beginning of the Christmas story from Luke Chapter 2 at some point in all of the festivities. I’ve read these verses hundreds of times, and I’ve quoted them just as many. I used to have to recite the scene with Linus from “Marry Christmas Charlie Brown,” with a blue blanket in my hands and everything. Likely because of my familiarity with this famous passage I’ve taken for granted the brilliance of Luke’s telling of the Christmas story, especially his closing passage in the appearance of the angels to shepherds in the fields:
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest [heaven] and upon earth peace among those favored by God!”
Finally, it hit me—this is one of the most audacious things to read as a first-century Jew in Rome.
Around the same time Jesus was born (possibly the same year) Herod the Great died. His reign was one of terror and paranoia, even for a Roman ruler. He murdered most of his family to secure his throne and was actually in the middle of attempting to execute his son for treason in the year he died. Herod’s paranoid, mass-terrorism reign was the only thing keeping Jewish Palestine from falling apart, however.
Jewish nationalist factions had tried to rise up over the last 150 years in revolt against what seemed to them an idolatrous display of Roman accommodation by Herod. In the wake of his death, his successor Archelaus (the poor kid was 19 years old) was pressured by Jewish mobs to punish elitists who were favored by Herod during his reign and to move the highpriesthood under new leadership. Fearful of open rebellion, Archelaus stationed forces to keep eyes and ears out for sedition during the Passover, when thousands of outsiders would be visiting Jerusalem. Sure enough, some Jewish teachers of the law incited rebellious activity against some of Archelaus’s soldiers, and the result wasn’t just a quelching of rebellion… 3000 people were slaughtered, with many more fleeing to the hillside. Archelaus canceled the Passover Feast, but similar massacres followed at the Feast of Pentecost, and over several months violent factions, pilfering, and chaos broke out across Judea and beyond. Amid the havoc, three popular leaders began terrorizing the countryside and claimed the role of Popular “King.” One of these kings, a man named Judas, violently took over the city of Sepphoris, which was only 4 miles away from the little town of Nazareth.
Rome decided to call in the big guns for this upheaval and summoned Publius Quinctilius Varus, the governor of Syria. Armed to the teeth with 2 legions of skilled soldiers and numerous allies, General Varus sent men on an expedition in Galilee, reclaimed the city of Sepphoris, enslaved the remaining inhabitants, and set the city to flames. Varus continued his march through Samaria, burning cities and punishing Jewish dissent as he slowly made his way back to Jerusalem. History doesn’t tell us if he stopped in Nazareth and plundered it as well, but if he did, it’s possible a young couple named Joseph and Mary were hunkered down nearby. The violence didn’t stop. More revolts would take place, with the Zealot movement coming into existence as a result of Judas’s activism. Cries for political and religious independence would echo through one Jewish uprising after another for the next 60+ years until their temple would be destroyed.
And in the midst of all of this, an angel has the audacity to announce to shepherds in Bethlehem
Peace on earth
Peace? These shepherds are perfectly aware of what’s been happening. They’ve probably seen the pyres of smoke across the hillside. Death and abomination are taking their world by storm, and the “peace” they are supposed to take comfort in is a baby sitting in an animal troff? In the midst of what feels like the end of the world, in the backwoods middle of nowhere Rome, a single baby being born is supposed to give us comfort? God must have absolutely no empathy for what we’re going through.
Or, as always, we’re focused on this present world and its passing trials while God has something infinitely more important in mind. Seats of political power are gone in a moment. Religious influence rises and falls in a day. Power and control are never in the same place for long, and yet everybody grabs for them, thinking they can usher in salvation if they just get enough of it. Then God comes along and reminds us that power, influence, and control all belong to Him, and He’s about to entrust it to this little baby born in Bethlehem, who will save the world by refusing to grasp for any of it. Instead, he will die for us, sinners who always hunger for it. Is the problem of human sin really greater than my social and national identity, or even my personal safety?
Yes. But don’t worry. It’s in Jesus’s hands now.
It Was a Violent Night. It was a Holy Night.