Weeping in Bethlehem

Matthew 2:16-18

December 7, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I've been to Herod's house. Actually, I’ve been to at least two of them. King Herod, as kings often do, built magnificent palaces in out of the way places. Some of them he never lived in. But in those he did, Herod could keep an eye on his kingdom and feel a sense of safety in case the kingdom got upset with him. Herod’s houses were fortresses, and the two I’ve been to in particular were built on the tops of mountains. One of them was built on the side of Masada, a huge flat mountain in the middle of the Judean desert that, fifty or so years after Herod would become infamous as the place where the last Jewish rebels rebelled against the Romans. The remains of Herod’s palace still cling to the side of the mountain, 1,300 feet above the desert floor (cf. Billups, An Unlikely Advent, pg. 35). The other palace, known as the Herodium because why wouldn’t you name your house after yourself, is also on a mountain, but it’s a manmade mountain. The mountain wasn’t tall enough, so he moved part of another mountain so that his palace was taller than anything else around—almost 2,500 feet above sea level. Herod could literally look down on everything in the area. In 2017 when we walking up to the top of the Herodium, Pastor Rick commented that Herod must have had as big an ego as a senior pastor.

Honestly, I don’t know if Herod had so much ego as he had fear. He was and is not loved, and that’s part of what makes him an “Unlikely” character in the Christmas story. This Advent, we are looking at this familiar story from the perspective of some of the characters on the edge of the story. You might call them the supporting characters, the ones who often aren’t talked about except by preachers and theologians. And Herod certainly fits that mold because this story, the one we read this morning, is not one that fits nicely, easily, or simply into our traditional Christmas narrative. No one puts a Herod figure in their nativity set (cf. Billups 34).

It’s also not a story that is reported anywhere else except in Matthew’s Gospel. No other writers of that time even mention this particular atrocity, but that’s likely because for Herod, this was just another day at the office. Murdering people was kind of what he did and I doubt he even thought twice about it. For instance, when Herod’s brother-in-law became “too popular,” he had a “drowning accident” in a shallow pool. Officials who spoke out against Herod were beaten to death, two of his sons were strangled because they were suspected of plotting against him, and five days before his own death, Herod had another son killed because that son was planning to take the throne from him. He also had his favorite wife, Mariamne, killed because he believed she was unfaithful to him. There is a famous quote that says, “It was better to be Herod’s pig than his son” (Keener, Matthew [IVPNTC], pgs. 71-72; Hamilton, The Journey, pg. 123). In other words, in Herod’s day, what happened in Bethlehem wouldn’t have made the evening news because it was so common. Herod constantly feared losing his power, and he had the power to get rid of anyone whom he perceived as a threat to that power. Modern psychology would wonder what was in Herod’s past that had caused him to become so paranoid. Herod seems to be the epitome of the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people” (cf. Billups 46).

It’s important to remember that Herod was only a puppet king; he was appointed to rule over the Jews by Rome. And he was not well liked. In fact, at the time when we join the story, the Jewish leaders had asked Rome twice  to remove him, but Rome refused (Billups 39). And so Herod is the one on the throne when the Magi come to Jerusalem. Now, we’re going to look at the visit of the Magi next week, so I’ll just mention this morning that it is their visit that sparks Herod’s latest round of cruelty. They come and ask where the newborn king is, and Herod is surprised. A king has been born and he doesn’t know about it? So he sends them to Bethlehem and asks them to come back on their way home and tell him where the new king is. And I wonder: is it at that moment that Herod begins planning his next move? Or does it only occur to him once it’s obvious that the Magi are not coming back? Either way, even though what happens next is not reported in the so-called “secular media” of the day, it’s entirely consistent with who Herod is.

I want to point out a detail we often overlook in Matthew’s Gospel, and we’ll probably come back to this next week also, but between chapters 1 and 2 in Matthew’s Gospel, there is about a 2 to 2 1/2 year time jump (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 31). We typically lump it all together and our manger scenes have the wise men standing to the shepherds. Movies depict Joseph and Mary leaving that very night to go to Egypt. Mothers, can you imagine just having given birth and a few hours later getting on a donkey to ride three hundred miles into another country? That’s not what happens, no matter what the movies say. Matthew tells us that Joseph, Mary and Jesus are in a house by now (2:11). Assuming the star that appeared over Bethlehem appeared the night he was born, it would have taken the Magi some time to get there. Jesus is a toddler at this point, and that’s why Herod targets toddlers in his murderous attack on the little town of Bethlehem (2:16).

Herod learns of a supposed threat to his throne, and he schemes to find out where this so-called king is, but when he is “outwitted,” his next immediate response is to order the death of every child two years old and under in Bethlehem. Now, granted, Bethlehem was not a big city. Estimates say that between twenty to forty children would have been killed by Herod’s army. And there’s a part of us that sighs in relief at those numbers. Good, we think, it wasn’t thousands. But what if one of those twenty to forty was from your family? What if it was your child (cf. Davis, Come Alive: Matthew, pg. 13)? Did I mention that Herod’s main palace, the Herodium, is just outside of Bethlehem? The land around is flat and I imagine it might have been from there that he sent the soldiers to carry out this grisly task. I picture Herod, walking along the top of the walls, looking down on the village, listening to the cries and wails of mothers coming from Bethlehem. We’re not told, of course, but did he find satisfaction in those sounds? Was it somehow encouraging to his twisted soul that this baby king, this threat to his legacy, was undoubtedly dead by now? Did Herod find reassurance in the weeping coming from Bethlehem?

Herod is a villain; make no mistake about that. He was evil from beginning to end because only evil can assault the youngest and most vulnerable people in society. When Matthew’s largely Jewish audience (Davis 13) read this story, they would have immediately thought back to another time in their history where the youngest were at risk, where one who would become their savior was rescued in spite of the threat. Centuries before, in Egypt of all places, the Hebrews had become Pharaoh’s slaves, but because they were becoming too numerous, Pharaoh became paranoid that they might try to take his throne. Sound familiar? History has no shortage of paranoid rulers. And so Pharaoh, like Herod and countless others after him, decides that the solution is to kill all the baby boys so that the Hebrews would stop reproducing. Aside from the horrendous disregard for human life, what makes this such a ridiculous and short-sighted move is that he was also killing his future work force. But either that fact never occurred to Pharaoh or he didn’t care because the order was given to throw all the baby boys into the Nile River (cf. Exodus 1:22). But through the determination and faith of his mother, Moses was saved and even raised in Pharaoh’s palace. The one who would eventually rescue the Hebrews from slavery ate at the king’s table and grew to manhood in the palace.

In Matthew’s story, Jesus is saved because of a dream that comes to Joseph. An angel comes to him and says, “Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt” (2:13). So Joseph, without apparently saying much of anything to anyone, does just that. They make the 300-mile journey, probably to Alexandria on the coast where there was a significant Jewish community. And they stay there for a while. So when Herod’s rage reaches Bethlehem, Jesus is not there. He is safely in another country.

This story brings us to two observations and a troubling question. First observation: today there is what I believe to be a heretical line of thinking that says if you believe in Jesus you’re supposed to be immune from pain, suffering and hardship. Every day with Jesus should just be a walk in the park. If you’re going through hard times, it must be because you have sinned or you faith is weak. Friends, I want you to hear me clearly: the cross puts the lie to that way of thinking. As I’ve reminded you often lately, Jesus himself said we will have trouble. Not we might—we will. You will have trouble (cf. John 16:33). Jesus did and we will. Believers are not immune to any of the pain, suffering or persecution in the world and it’s been that way for as long as anyone can remember. Matthew quotes from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, and uses an image from even further back in Israel’s history. Rachel was the wife of Jacob who died giving birth to Benjamin (cf. Genesis 35:19); her life and death had become a metaphor for suffering and pain. Jeremiah pictured her weeping for all of the children of God who suffered. He puts it this way: “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” (2:18; Jeremiah 31:15). The story of the murder of the innocents reminds us that the world is a place of pain. I’m struck by the way author Fleming Rutledge puts it: “If it were not for the Rachel passage, I believe that the claims of the Christmas story would be unendurable. In that case, Baby Jesus and the angels and shepherd would have no more significance than Frosty the Snowman. This Christmas and every Christmas, the Rachel passage says to us that we can’t run away from the suffering of the world. The suffering of the world is part of the story” (qtd. in McKnight, Matthew, pg. 23). God’s people “should not be surprised when we face hostility, false accusations or even death for Jesus’ name” (Keener 70); it was there in his story from the very beginning.

Second observation: even though we don’t want to admit it, there is a little Herod in each of us. You’ve probably seen the “little Jesus” thing lately, where people place a tiny statue of Jesus somewhere to remind people that we all need a “little Jesus” in our lives? You may have even seen some around here. And that’s true to an extent. Actually, we need a whole lot of Jesus in us because there’s very often way too much Herod already in us. Not that we are ordering the murder or innocent children, because that’s not how it started for Herod. It begins with making a choice to see someone else as less than human, maybe even to label them as something other than worthwhile. When we let our decisions and choices and behaviors be guided by a viewpoint that looks down on someone else, we’re allowing Herod to live in us. Maybe it’s the moment when we tuned into the gossip of the day or even felt the need to share it. You know Christians don’t share gossip; we share prayer requests about other people. Or maybe it’s the time when you would do or say anything to prove you were right in that argument with your spouse. It doesn’t matter if the words are true or not; it only matters how badly the words hurt. All that matters is winning. Or maybe it’s the time you were angry and you posted that scathing attack on some person or some business online. The anger may dissipate but the words are there forever and someone’s reputation can be damaged beyond repair. Here’s how Pastor Rachel Billups describes it: “We want to be right. We want to feel good. We want to justify ourselves…We can destroy the humans around us. We become the Heroes to their hurts, the Pharaohs to their pain, the villains in their stories and our own. It does not take long to become the villain” (42-43). Anytime we treat someone as less than a beloved creation of God, we look down on them and allow the little Herod in us to live. In that sense, this story is a cautionary tale to live like the baby and not the king.

And now the troubling question: why did God send an angel to help rescue Jesus and not send angels to rescue the other children? We can say it’s because Jesus was the Son of God and had to be rescued, and while that’s true, it doesn’t remove the troubling part of the question. And I don’t know that I have an answer that will satisfy any of us completely. It is true that terrible things happen to children and toddlers every day in this broken world. I’ve stood beside the grave of too many children who should not have died so young. I rushed to the hospital to baptize a baby who didn’t have long to live. The world is broken and things happen that are not right. In fact, let me be so bold as to say things happen in this world that are not God’s will. God did not plan for or desire the death of the babies in Bethlehem; Herod did. Could God have stopped it? Yes, he could, but God will not take away anyone’s free will, not even Herod’s. So I can guarantee you that God was weeping right alongside the mothers in that tiny town. The weeping was not only Rachel’s; it was God’s as well. His own Son ended up as a refugee in a land that was traditionally considered a last resort as a place to go (cf. Keener 69). He lived for several years away from the land, and I believe when he came back, when their whole family came back to Judea, what had happened in Bethlehem broke their hearts. Jesus would not have wanted anyone to die for him; he came to die for them. The world is broken; the Herods of this world break God’s heart. The reason he came as a baby in a manger was to begin to repair the world, to put it back the way God the Father intended it to be from the start.

And that all makes me think of another story, a lived-out parable of sorts, from thirty-some years later in the story of Jesus. It’s in the midst of a difficult time in Jesus’ ministry. His cousin, John the Baptist, son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, has angered the wrong people and ended up being executed. When Jesus heard about it, he tried to get away to have some time to grieve, but people found him and he ends up teaching and feeding them—more than 5,000 of them. And then he tries again to get away to grieve. He sends his disciples across the sea in a boat and heads up into the hills to pray, but a storm comes up on the sea and the disciples are convinced they are going to drown. Fear overwhelms them. So he walks out on the sea to the boat and when he gets in, the storm is calmed (Matthew 14). This is the second storm in Matthew’s Gospel (the first is in Matthew 8), the second time these seasoned sailors are afraid they are going to die on the Sea of Galilee. And while I do believe there was a literal storm on the sea that night, I also think this storm is symbolic of everything that’s going on in their lives at the time. And it’s symbolic of times in our lives, too, times when the wind and the waves don’t stop pounding our little boat, our lives. And in both accounts of storms on the sea in Matthew’s Gospel, the difference is made when the baby of Bethlehem steps into the picture. The disciples bring the fear, Jesus brings the peace.

“Peace” is the word for this week of Advent. “Peace on earth, goodwill to all” (Luke 2:14). Into the midst of your crisis, into the midst of your storm, into the midst of your weeping, Jesus offers to bring peace. The Hebrew word behind that idea is shalom, which means more than just an absence of conflict. Shalom means wholeness, everything put back together, life the way it was intended to be. Jesus doesn’t just bring a solution to our problems. In fact, he often doesn’t bring a solution the way we think he ought to. But he is the Prince of Peace, the one who will be with us through it all. He might calm the storm or he might calm you. Do we trust him enough to let him fully step into the midst of our weeping?

You see, Herod doesn’t last. In fact, without his encounter with Jesus, we wouldn’t even remember Herod. The Herods of this world make lots of noise and lots of boasts and even do a lot of damage. But they will not last. Their kingdoms will not endure. But the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ (cf. Revelation 11:15) will last forever. Thanks be to God! Amen!