There are times when the best laid plans of mice and humans go awry. There are also times when the best laid plans of preachers go awry. That time comes when one is ready to prepare the sermon only to find that he is grasp by another sermon. He is grasp so firmly by the new ideas, that the sermon topic that was announced must be laid aside even though that topic appears in print in the Sunday morning bulletin. That is the dilemma I find myself in this morning.
I think there are two things that caused me to change my sermon this morning. The first is the haunting part of her own Christmas story this year, a part that cannot be ignored or forgotten. It is the story told to us dramatically through the hollow eyes of little, starving children as they stare at us from our television screens. Indelibly we are imprinted with the unfolding tragedy of hungry people throughout our world today.
The second thing that caused me to change my sermon words a book brought to me by a friend. The book was by Barbara Tuchman called the March of Folly from Troy to Vietnam. This book analyzes a certain kind of perversity that seems to pervade history and causes nations to go awry. It is the kind of self-destruction that Tuchman calls wooden-headedness. It is a perversity that causes a nation or leader go down the wrong road, a road that leads to ultimate destruction.
I find this a most apt illustration of the trait of wooden-headedness in the Christmas story we know so well. It is the story of Herod who is really the villain of the Christmas story. I’m somewhat amazed and chagrinned that to the best of my recollection I have never preached the Herod story. The Herod story as told by the gospel writer Matthew is part of the story of the coming of the Magi. The Magi were astrologers from Persia, who saw the long looked for star of the great king in the sky. They followed it all the way to Jerusalem. They went to the palace of King Herod to inquire as to where the royal child was to be born. Herod was threatened by the news that a king baby was born within his realm. The Magi tuned in on this right away.
Herod called on his own magi and inquired of them if they had ever heard that the Messiah was to be born, and if so where. They were familiar with the prophecies, and they told him that the child was to be born in Bethlehem. Then, Herod summoned the Magi from Persia back into the throne room and told them to go to Bethlehem and find the baby. Trying to disguise his negative feelings, he told them that when they did find the child, they should bring him word and he would pay his homage to the child. He did not fool the Magi one bit. They knew what his designs were and did not return. The did not give in to Herod’s wooden-headedness.
This reminds us of the Trojan horse of Agamemnon and Helen of Sparta. It reminds us of the Pope’s provocation of the Protestants and their secession from the church. It reminds us of the British loss of America and America’s betrayal of herself in Vietnam. It reminds us of the nuclear arms race. It reminds us of our betrayal of the poor as ultimate wooden-headedness.
We have fallen into the trap that Dwight Eisenhauer warned that our world would be seized by the military industrial complex. Our arms sales in our world exceed all other sales. The profile of poverty in the world is revolution and inflation. Productive land is taken for exports to get money to pay for more arms. The farmland is wearing out from overuse. The remaining land and distribution of wealth is held by a few. What can we do about this? There are awful signs for us in our increased awareness of hunger in the world. There’s beginning to be more hope of the mobilization of a middle class in the world to explore the possibilities of a world beyond war and end our wooden-headedness.
Reverend Arthur Schwabe Blog 