January 6th is about an unstable, power-hungry, and paranoid leader with delusions of grandeur. He demanded complete fealty, showing no qualms about getting rid of someone if he sensed even the smallest hint of disloyalty in them…but he was loyal to nobody but himself. He craved power, and once he had it he was not afraid to do terrible things to keep it.
Yes, one of the primary players in the events of January 6th was…King Herod.
What? You thought I was talking about somebody else?
How strange.
Epiphany and Political Power
For churches that follow the liturgical calendar, January 6th is known as the Feast of the Epiphany. It’s the commemoration of when the magi (wise men) visited Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
How ironic that it’s also the day of the year we remember the actions of another unstable, power-hungry, and paranoid leader with delusions of grandeur. Donald Trump may not have ordered the killing of every child under age two like Herod did, but when he whipped a mob into a frenzy and then ordered them to march to the Capitol it did lead to the unjust deaths of several people.
Epiphany and Resistance
Yes, in the Epiphany story of 2021, Donald Trump was Herod.
And the rest of us? We all have the opportunity to play the part of the magi.
The magi were there to worship the Christ child. They brought gifts for him—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But their biggest act of worship was when they directly disobeyed Herod’s instructions and left without telling him Jesus’s whereabouts.
It was, in effect, an act of civil disobedience against a tyrant who planned to kill the Christ child. When told what Herod’s plan was, the magi did the right thing. They realized that although Herod had wanted them to think he was acting in Jesus’s interests, in reality, he wanted nothing to do with Jesus. He was just using these first would-be followers of Jesus as a pawn to retain political power.
Herod, Trump, and the Church
Two thousand years ago, Herod’s plan didn’t succeed because those who recognized Jesus as king chose to resist when they realized what he was up to.
In 2021 on the other hand, Donald Trump’s plan to illegally and unconstitutionally retain power came scarily close to succeeding in large part because he had the support of millions of Christians.
Folks—if we’re on the side of Herod in the Epiphany story, we’re on the wrong side. But that’s exactly where too many Christians and Christian leaders have chosen to place themselves. Donald Trump’s largest source of support throughout his relatively short political career has come from the church, and he has paid lip service to the people of faith who have shown him loyalty.
Power is for Others
For Trump, however, the church is simply a means to an end. And that end is not the well-being of the United States. Reasonable people can, and have, disagreed on which governing philosophy best serves the people, but for his entire adult life, the question for Donald Trump has been which philosophy best serves him. He will wholeheartedly embrace whatever he perceives the answer to be, then completely change course if the prevailing winds begin blowing in a different direction.
It’s all about him, and that has already proven to be a dangerous thing.
As we saw in the original Epiphany story with Herod, and as we saw on the day of Epiphany in 2021, when the primary beneficiary of a person’s power is themselves, the ones who are hurt are the ones for whom Jesus has called us to care.
Let’s not allow the church to be used as a means to the end of satisfying a selfish narcissist’s need to feel powerful. Instead, let’s worship the newborn king by using God’s humble power to serve our neighbors in need.
In other words, Let’s Make Epiphany Great Again.
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