The big names in the news

It’s time to trot out the newsmakers of the year—that annual list of people that you and I are never on. For 2014 expect such luminaries as Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Robin Williams, ISIS terrorists, Katy Perry, Vladimir Putin, Kate Middleton, Eric Holder, and Pope Francis.

Here is a partial list of the big names in the news from the first century A.D.: Claudius, Flavius, Caligula, Josephus, Wang Mang, the Han Dynasty, Luoyang, Hillel, and Liu Xin.

But like Zechariah said, “Where are they [now]?” Could you write a dissertation on the Han Dynasty? A paragraph? A sentence? Come on, try a little harder. The Han Dynasty lasted 400 years, surely you can scrape together a few facts.

In Luke’s record of the life of Jesus, the physician cum historian gives us historical context, the better to situate these important happenings in contemporary events. He references the biggest names he can think of, household names of the day:

“In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:1–2, ESV).

Matthew drops names with universal recognition too:

“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem …” (Matthew 2:1, ESV).

What is Herod now but a cardboard cutout of a character in a parochial school pageant played by the crazy kid wearing a fake black beard who’s told to stomp around the stage.

We live in a topsy-turvy world full of people wanting to be big fish in a small pond. We live in a curio shop that some mischievous elf has entered while we were all asleep and switched all the price tags so that the least valuable items are marked up and the precious ones marked down. We can easily be seduced.

The kingdom of God is like a small seed (Matthew 13:31). It is like a bit of yeast (13:33). Its most important people are not often (or even usually) the well-known and the famous and the committee-voted people of the year, but the “weak,” the “low,” the “despised,” and “things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27–28, ESV).

We need eyes to see—pray for spiritual eyes—so that we do not fall into the trap of being overly impressed by what are merely passing shadows.