Matthew tells the Christmas story with Herod included. It is gruesome and we'd rather not read it. But there it is, and we're reading it on New Year's Day.
History shows that Herod was the sort of man who would slaughter children for his own political ends. Everything we know about him suggests that he was exactly the sort of man who would have had all the babies in a particular village executed if he had had the slightest suspicion that anyone was talking about a future king being born there.
Herod was a man who knew no bounds in asserting his political will. He was so paranoid of plots against his life, he even had several of his own family members murdered, including his own son. His brutality was well known and feared. Emperor Augustus, the one who ordered the census, said of Herod, “It’s better to be his pig than his son.
A telling story is told about Herod when he was near death. Deathly ill with what some think was final stage gonnhorrea, Herod was in his summer palace in Jericho. His servants were lowering him into his bathing pool when he fainted. The servants thought he had died. And so they started to rejoice and dance and celebrate that Herod had died. Unfortunately for the servants, Herod came to, and saw the fun and celebration that would surround his death. This made him determined to have mourning at his death. So he arrested 200 of the most popular rabbis of the day, with the order that those rabbis would be put to death the moment Herod died. If the people wouldn't mourn for him, at least there would be mourning in the land because of his death. As Herod said it,
So shall all Judea weep for me, whether they wish to or not.
Thankfully, when he did die, the rabbis were released. But people still didn't really believe that he had died. Just like with Elvis Presley, for many years later there were rumoured sightings of Herod causing people to be traumatized again and again. They couldn't believe such a brutal man would just die. Maybe it was one of his tricks. The people lived in such fear of him.
Herod is in the story of Jesus' nativity as a cold, realistic reminder of what sort of world this is for many of God's people. Herod puts to flesh the vision John has in Revelation 12 of a virgin having a child and a red dragon standing in front of her so that he might devour that child. Only the woman and her child got away and there was a pitched battle between the angels and the dragon and his angels.
Kerry Bond points out in a meditation, if Jesus incarnates God, then Herod incarnates evil. Herod is the dragon seeking to devour the child. Herod ensures that this is a very realistic story, a very political story.
But then you have to ask yourself, what good could the incarnation do us if God had not become incarnate in this world, among us? Why is it that we sentimentalize Christmas, make it all sound so calm and sweet and insipid? Is this just another means of keeping Jesus irrelevant? Detached from the "real world"?
Matthew's nativity, with Herod and all, reminds each of us this Sunday after Christmas that into this world, the real world where we live, and work, and struggle, and grieve, and feel outrage has come a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.