The Tyrant, and the Child within
Our passage today from Matthew 2:13-23 is among the most disturbing in the Christian story.
It speaks of raw unadulterated political power, terror, and the slaughter of innocent children.
Interestingly, historically speaking, we have no independent evidence outside Matthew’s Gospel that King Herod ever ordered a massacre of children in Bethlehem. Ancient historians who describe Herod’s reign don’t mention it. But his reign was brutal, and the fact that he killed even his own sons to protect his own power shows he was entirely capable of carrying out such an atrocity. Even so, many scholars over time have also noticed that this story closely parallels an earlier story: the story of Pharaoh ordering the death of Hebrew infants, while the baby Moses is hidden and saved.
This strongly suggests that Matthew is not simply reporting an event, but telling history through what some scholars call ‘typology’. In other words the echoes of an older story and an older sacred pattern is used to amplify a deeper truth in the story of Jesus. And so in Matthew’s hands, Jesus becomes the new Moses. Egypt becomes a place of refuge while on this occasion it is the land of Judea and it’s ruler that becomes the land of oppression. Once again, a tyrant fears and exterminates little children. And once again innocence is threatened by power.
And so many scholars today would say that this story is theologically true, even if it is not historically provable. It represents a universal pattern, not just an event. It tells the truth about how power reacts with ruthless cruelty towards the vulnerable and the innocent when it feels it is under threat.
Matthew is revealing how easily entrenched power and privilege is threatened if the only truth it knows is the truth of power and dominance. He also reveals that when a truly alternative way of being human enters the world, empires of power respond with violence.
And so firstly in this story, we can say that King Herod, is not merely a historical king. Herod is the embodiment of all fear-driven power: ego, paranoia, the ruthless need to control and dominate.
And we can recognise the spirit of Herod all too easily on the world stage. We see it when civilians are bombed in the name of security. When children are killed as “collateral damage.” When terror is unleashed to protect ideology or territory or wounded pride. When the power of the state is misused and abused and innocent people become its victims.
When we see such events unfolding on our TV screens in various places in the world, they express the same ancient pattern: fear defending itself through ruthless violence.
This is the truth that Matthew is telling us about the world. But the story is not just about events that occur outside of ourselves that we can point to in judgment somewhere else. The story also invites each of us to turn inward so see these patterns within ourselves.
And this is where Jungian psychology and Voice Dialogue Therapy invite us to tread carefully, because it is always easier to point outward and say, ‘There is Herod’. It is much harder to ask: Where does Herod, the fearful tyrant live in me?
According to Carl Jung, those things that we refuse to see in ourselves don’t simply disappear - they go underground and gain power. Voice Dialogue therapy puts it like this: Every voice within (and we all have multiple voices within) that we disown controls us from the shadows.
Both Carl Jung and Voice Dialogue Therapy would suggest that the tyrant Herod is an inner voice that lives inside each of us. He is the part of us that reacts when we feel threatened. The part that tightens, hardens, lashes out. The part of us that says, I must stay in control at all costs or I will not survive. He is the tyrant within, desperate to stamp out the voices that leave us feeling threatened and vulnerable.
And the inner Herod shows up in ordinary relationships: When criticism feels unbearable and we respond, lashing out with anger. Heod appears when fear makes us manipulative or dismissive towards others. When we protect our ego rather than our integrity. When we sacrifice compassion for the illusion of control and safety.
Left unchecked, this inner Herod builds a fortress around the heart with weapons pointing outward always ready to attack.
And I guess the question we are left with is this: How does this voice of Herod lose power within us and also outside of us in the world?
As with so many things in life the answer to our inner healing (and the healing of the world) always begins with awareness: This is the surprising strategy for dealing with tyrants both of the outer and inner varieties.
Awareness does not say: Deny Herod exists. It says: Name him. And in the light of such awareness the inner Herod already begins to lost his grip. It is like the story of the Emperor with no clothes… as a child names the truth about the Emperor’s nakedness so the Emperor begins to lose his power. It begins with awareness and the willingness to name the Herod’s that live within us and indeed the Herod’s that live in our world.
Identifying the Herod within, can begin when we can say to ourselves, “This is my fear speaking inside of me”, “This is my need for control”, “This is my inner Herod reacting”. And when we do this, the Herod within us already begins to lose his the grip on power. This is true also of outer tyrants. Behind every tyrant in this world fear is speaking, a deep seated need for control. But the more people can name tyranical behaviour for what it is, the more the Herod’s of this world will lose their grip on power.
But awareness alone is not enough to loosen the power of the Herod within. Herod loses power within us not only when he is named, but also when other voices inside of us are strengthened. And especially the Christ voice within us, the voice of humility, of trust, integrity, and love. These must be nurtured and given space to grow. Not dominance. Not suppression. But a wiser authority.
Secondly in the story there is the figure of Rachel: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Rachel represents all innocent victims of history. But she also represents something within each of us us. Rachel is the part of us that feels, the part that grieves, the part that knows pain and refuses cheap consolation.
If Herod builds walls and lashes out with violence, Rachel weeps. And here is a crucial truth:
Listening to Rachel is one of the strongest antidotes to Herod.
A colleague of mine in South Africa, Rev. Trevor Hudson, early on in his ministry asked a mentor what would help him grow to become a good minister. The mentor replied: ‘When you preach, always remember that there is a pool of tears next to every person sitting in the pews.’
That is not only pastorally true, it is psychologically true. When we attend to suffering, our own and others’, our hearts begin to soften. And softened hearts begin to break down the walls of protection and defensiveness that Herod builds.
And so Rachel in our story asks of each of us: What pool of tears do you sit beside today? What grief in the world are you tempted to ignore because it feels overwhelming? What grief within yourself have you learned to silence?
Listening to Rachel, both out there in the world and in here, in our own hearts, keeps Herod from building defensive walls around our hearts and from ruling unchecked within us.
And finally in the story, there is the child. The Christ child does not confront Herod head-on.
He is hidden, protected, and taken into exile. Psychologically, this is the inner child of joy, truth, and tenderness, the most vulnerable part of us.
When fear dominates us, the inner child goes into hiding, creativity and playfulness dims within us, a sense of wonder retreats, and our love becomes cautious. But the story does not end in exile. Herod dies. Not through violence, but through time, truth, and the slow work of transformation. And when fear loosens its grip, the child can return from Exile.
And as the inner Herod loses power, space opens for joy. For trust. For a more spacious way of being human.
And so this is not just a story about ancient cruelty alone. It is a mirror held up both to history, and to the soul.
And it asks us, gently but firmly:
Which voice will rule our hearts? The voice of Herod? Or the Voice of the Holy Child of Inocence and Joy?
Which child will we protect?
And which tears are we ready to hear?
Amen.
Our passage today from Matthew 2:13-23 is among the most disturbing in the Christian story.
It speaks of raw unadulterated political power, terror, and the slaughter of innocent children.
Interestingly, historically speaking, we have no independent evidence outside Matthew’s Gospel that King Herod ever ordered a massacre of children in Bethlehem. Ancient historians who describe Herod’s reign don’t mention it. But his reign was brutal, and the fact that he killed even his own sons to protect his own power shows he was entirely capable of carrying out such an atrocity. Even so, many scholars over time have also noticed that this story closely parallels an earlier story: the story of Pharaoh ordering the death of Hebrew infants, while the baby Moses is hidden and saved.
This strongly suggests that Matthew is not simply reporting an event, but telling history through what some scholars call ‘typology’. In other words the echoes of an older story and an older sacred pattern is used to amplify a deeper truth in the story of Jesus. And so in Matthew’s hands, Jesus becomes the new Moses. Egypt becomes a place of refuge while on this occasion it is the land of Judea and it’s ruler that becomes the land of oppression. Once again, a tyrant fears and exterminates little children. And once again innocence is threatened by power.
And so many scholars today would say that this story is theologically true, even if it is not historically provable. It represents a universal pattern, not just an event. It tells the truth about how power reacts with ruthless cruelty towards the vulnerable and the innocent when it feels it is under threat.
Matthew is revealing how easily entrenched power and privilege is threatened if the only truth it knows is the truth of power and dominance. He also reveals that when a truly alternative way of being human enters the world, empires of power respond with violence.
And so firstly in this story, we can say that King Herod, is not merely a historical king. Herod is the embodiment of all fear-driven power: ego, paranoia, the ruthless need to control and dominate.
And we can recognise the spirit of Herod all too easily on the world stage. We see it when civilians are bombed in the name of security. When children are killed as “collateral damage.” When terror is unleashed to protect ideology or territory or wounded pride. When the power of the state is misused and abused and innocent people become its victims.
When we see such events unfolding on our TV screens in various places in the world, they express the same ancient pattern: fear defending itself through ruthless violence.
This is the truth that Matthew is telling us about the world. But the story is not just about events that occur outside of ourselves that we can point to in judgment somewhere else. The story also invites each of us to turn inward so see these patterns within ourselves.
And this is where Jungian psychology and Voice Dialogue Therapy invite us to tread carefully, because it is always easier to point outward and say, ‘There is Herod’. It is much harder to ask: Where does Herod, the fearful tyrant live in me?
According to Carl Jung, those things that we refuse to see in ourselves don’t simply disappear - they go underground and gain power. Voice Dialogue therapy puts it like this: Every voice within (and we all have multiple voices within) that we disown controls us from the shadows.
Both Carl Jung and Voice Dialogue Therapy would suggest that the tyrant Herod is an inner voice that lives inside each of us. He is the part of us that reacts when we feel threatened. The part that tightens, hardens, lashes out. The part of us that says, I must stay in control at all costs or I will not survive. He is the tyrant within, desperate to stamp out the voices that leave us feeling threatened and vulnerable.
And the inner Herod shows up in ordinary relationships: When criticism feels unbearable and we respond, lashing out with anger. Heod appears when fear makes us manipulative or dismissive towards others. When we protect our ego rather than our integrity. When we sacrifice compassion for the illusion of control and safety.
Left unchecked, this inner Herod builds a fortress around the heart with weapons pointing outward always ready to attack.
And I guess the question we are left with is this: How does this voice of Herod lose power within us and also outside of us in the world?
As with so many things in life the answer to our inner healing (and the healing of the world) always begins with awareness: This is the surprising strategy for dealing with tyrants both of the outer and inner varieties.
Awareness does not say: Deny Herod exists. It says: Name him. And in the light of such awareness the inner Herod already begins to lost his grip. It is like the story of the Emperor with no clothes… as a child names the truth about the Emperor’s nakedness so the Emperor begins to lose his power. It begins with awareness and the willingness to name the Herod’s that live within us and indeed the Herod’s that live in our world.
Identifying the Herod within, can begin when we can say to ourselves, “This is my fear speaking inside of me”, “This is my need for control”, “This is my inner Herod reacting”. And when we do this, the Herod within us already begins to lose his the grip on power. This is true also of outer tyrants. Behind every tyrant in this world fear is speaking, a deep seated need for control. But the more people can name tyranical behaviour for what it is, the more the Herod’s of this world will lose their grip on power.
But awareness alone is not enough to loosen the power of the Herod within. Herod loses power within us not only when he is named, but also when other voices inside of us are strengthened. And especially the Christ voice within us, the voice of humility, of trust, integrity, and love. These must be nurtured and given space to grow. Not dominance. Not suppression. But a wiser authority.
Secondly in the story there is the figure of Rachel: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Rachel represents all innocent victims of history. But she also represents something within each of us us. Rachel is the part of us that feels, the part that grieves, the part that knows pain and refuses cheap consolation.
If Herod builds walls and lashes out with violence, Rachel weeps. And here is a crucial truth:
Listening to Rachel is one of the strongest antidotes to Herod.
A colleague of mine in South Africa, Rev. Trevor Hudson, early on in his ministry asked a mentor what would help him grow to become a good minister. The mentor replied: ‘When you preach, always remember that there is a pool of tears next to every person sitting in the pews.’
That is not only pastorally true, it is psychologically true. When we attend to suffering, our own and others’, our hearts begin to soften. And softened hearts begin to break down the walls of protection and defensiveness that Herod builds.
And so Rachel in our story asks of each of us: What pool of tears do you sit beside today? What grief in the world are you tempted to ignore because it feels overwhelming? What grief within yourself have you learned to silence?
Listening to Rachel, both out there in the world and in here, in our own hearts, keeps Herod from building defensive walls around our hearts and from ruling unchecked within us.
And finally in the story, there is the child. The Christ child does not confront Herod head-on.
He is hidden, protected, and taken into exile. Psychologically, this is the inner child of joy, truth, and tenderness, the most vulnerable part of us.
When fear dominates us, the inner child goes into hiding, creativity and playfulness dims within us, a sense of wonder retreats, and our love becomes cautious. But the story does not end in exile. Herod dies. Not through violence, but through time, truth, and the slow work of transformation. And when fear loosens its grip, the child can return from Exile.
And as the inner Herod loses power, space opens for joy. For trust. For a more spacious way of being human.
And so this is not just a story about ancient cruelty alone. It is a mirror held up both to history, and to the soul.
And it asks us, gently but firmly:
Which voice will rule our hearts? The voice of Herod? Or the Voice of the Holy Child of Inocence and Joy?
Which child will we protect?
And which tears are we ready to hear?
Amen.
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