Hark, the Herod!

Epiphany Sunday January 4, 2026

The texts for this sermon are Isaiah 60:1-2 and Matthew 2:1-18

It’s customary, I know, that on Epiphany we talk about the wise men.
They’re so compelling. So endearing. Traveling so far, bringing very expensive gifts, entering in a smelly stable, kneeling before an infant, and
offering him really expensive gifts. Don’t think me flippant about these men. I’m not. These are indeed wise men. I have immense respect for them, and they deserve our attention. But the Matthew account isn’t just about them, is it?  

It’s also about Herod.

Herod isn’t mentioned very often when we tell the Christmas story. Why would we want to ruin this lovely bucolic story with a mad villain like Herod? He’s the guy, you might remember, who killed all the little boys, newborn to two years of age, in Bethlehem. He ordered their murder after the Wise Men visited him, looking for the new king whose birth was announced by a blazing new star.

Why does our Christmas story include the likes of Herod? Why is he allowed to occupy any room in this beautiful pastoral narrative of angels, the birth of a baby, a loving mother, a protective father, adoring shepherds, and eager, generous sages? 

I think it’s because we need reminding that there’s more than one message in this lovely story. It is not just an accounting of how it came to be that God comes to earth in human form. It is also a reminder of the cosmic push-pull between good and evil. Our Isaiah text recognizes this by speaking of both darkness and glory.

Evil always wants to destroy good. The great preacher, Fleming Rutledge, in reflecting on the “prince of power” cited in Ephesians 2:2, says: 

The “prince of power of the air”…[This] Enemy of God is a personal intelligence possessed of an implacable will and an unrelenting purpose.

And good often looks utterly vulnerable in the face of this “prince of power,” this evil.

It is also true that no human being is spared grief. Grief can break in upon us even in our most righteous or holy moments. Most everyone agrees that there is no deeper grief than the loss of one’s child, but we all can relate to some degree with this lamentation that screams within our Christmas Story:  

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.” (Matthew 2:18)

Thus it is that the Christmas account also speaks to both darkness and glory.
Joy and sorrow, good actors and bad ones. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be in keeping with the unflinching candor of our Scriptures.

And speaking of that unflinching candor, doesn’t the Christmas story, with its inclusion of Herod, tell us the truth about human nature, about us? How does the likes of Herod show up in our own lives? This might seem a shocking thing to say, but let’s think about it. Herod, to be sure, is on that further end of the continuum with respect to human disposition and behavior, but he’s not on a separate continuum, is he? We reside on the same one, though no! We are nowhere near where he sits.

But consider what he does and why. He has position and with that position, great power. He can have whatever he wants and do whatever he wants so long as Rome isn’t offended. He loves his power. He doesn’t want to lose it. He doesn’t want to share it. He wants to keep all that he has. So when someone appears who could threaten him, he lashes out.

So let’s back down from that far end of the continuum of human capacity and consider the things we hold dear—those things that give us a sense of wellbeing and safety. We might think of money and material things. Folks have done bad things to keep what they have. But there are internal factors we should consider, like our ego, our sense of worth.

Think about those impulses with which we struggle, like reacting defensively when a loved one hits that nerve; of maneuvering for the last word in a dispute; allowing busyness to overpower patient attentiveness. These things can be like little herods moved to preserve our emotional equilibrium, and in doing so, they short-circuit the goodness in us.

These little herods threaten budding goodness in us. They can kill grace or blessings that seek to break into our lives. 

In other words, we all fall short of the glory of God. That’s why we need the Christ Child. 

Now consider what, in our lives, represents the advent of a holy child. What might there be in our life that is a gift from God meant to bring us grace and blessing—meant to save us from ourselves and our ego-driven impulses. These gifts from God often come as did the Christ child—in small and fragile form, in need of attention and nurture. And these gifts are at risk of being destroyed by those darker aspects of our personalities that do not want to be unseated by or vulnerable to grace. It is wise to be aware of them and their virulence.

When God shows up in a manger in a stable corner of your life, take note. That which is herod-like in you will seek to destroy that holy infant. But it need not be so. You can thwart Herod as did the Wise Men—by resistance, by defiance, by doing as the Wise Men did—by going “by another way.”

And not to deflect from our personal accountability, but this same dynamic plays out in our wider world, too, as we very well know.

This year, may we all defy the Herod and nurture the Christ: within our own hearts and out there where the world’s ‘Bethlehems’ are under siege.

May 2026 be a Christ-nurturing year for you, for our community.

Linda Quanstrom, Pastor

Cornelius UMC

Cornelius OR