Well, happy new year when the time comes, and just to put us in the mood, let’s reflect on the massacre of the innocents, shall we? It is a charming reading for the middle of the holiday season, is it not? So why did Herod do it? What was in it for him? Well, popular wisdom tends to have it that he was a ruthless and nasty bit of work who valued his own precarious status above the lives of all or any of the people he ruled, so he was doing it out of purely selfish motives.

But W H Auden in the Christmas Oratario mused on the thought that he might actually have been a closet liberal, anxious for the future of society and the culture and values of his people: if I don’t kill them, he had Herod thinking, and if there were to be a Messiah among them, then heaven help us:

Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions. Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish . . . The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.

It’s pure speculation, of course, but a wonderful parody of the way even such extreme repression can usually be justified by clever use of words as being for the so-called greater good of society. And it certainly rings enough bells, over sixty years on from when it was written to sound pretty convincing. Knowledge degenerating? Who needs knowledge when you can Google it? And how clever of him to guess that “New Age” phrase with all its airy-fairy associations! I could go on, as plenty of our favourite newspapers do endlessly even now.

But did Auden have Herod being right in another way? Consider this:

Herod failed to kill Jesus at this early stage in his life. Jesus got away and went on to fulfil his ministry and proclaim his message, until as we know, they got him in the end. Thirty years on another group of people, also fearful for their status, but also couching their reasons in terms of the greater good, managed to persuade Pilate that he had no choice but to kill Jesus lest worse consequences follow. So there he was, 30 years later. It ought hardly to have mattered – he had acquired a small following, but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with. There he was, on a cross, the suffering victim, but crucially, understanding our suffering because of his own.

So at the heart of our faith is suffering and victim-hood, and arguably, out of that has grown a Christian tradition of sympathy, empathy even with the victim and the needy. Auden’s Herod fearing justice replaced by pity may have had a point to many people’s way of thinking. There are still those who think a little more discipline and a little less caring might be a good thing. But we Christians do care, and it would be nice to be able to claim that Herod’s failure to kill Jesus resulted directly in an era of worldwide care and concern for the orphan, the widow and the stranger at the gate.

But of course it is not that simple, is it? Christianity has had its share of associations with oppresssors as well as with the victims throughout the centuries. History tells us that the name of Jesus can be used in clever words to justify the actions of tyrants and bullies, just as the love of Jesus has prompted many to devote their lives to the poor and the needy.

But while we could explore that paradox, it is probably more a job for the historians, and perhaps we do better to wonder for a moment how all this affects us. We who, on the whole, I suspect, are neither desperate victims nor horrible oppressors.

We can ponder the actions of Herod and maybe draw some present day parallels where extraordinary measures are justified by questionable assertions about the good of the world/society/whoever.

We can reflect on the horror of killing babies and the grief such actions bring and wonder how anyone can harden their hearts enough to order or perform, and even indeed justify such deeds. But it does happen, doesn’t it? In Africa, in the Balkans, in the name of religion.

And we can perhaps notice how quickly after the glad tidings of Christmas we are confronted with the obligation to temper our joy. And how deeply the eventual suffering of Jesus is rooted in the suffering of the world. I find it too trite to go on to say that there is any sense in which good comes out of this evil, but the gospel of Christ would be no good news at all if it could not confront such evil and this is part of what Matthew’s telling of this story is trying to tell us.

So what does it say us – this story is so desolate that if we’re not careful, it just leaves us numb. No doubt it is supposed to have resonances with the original exodus, but it does occur to me this morning to wonder instead whether Jesus knew that this had happened, during his childhood, and as he grew up and began his ministry. We know that Jesus was the man without sin, but he was a man, with human feelings, what did it do to him to know that it was him they were after when they killed all those babies? Ponder a moment - that sort of knowledge could be a crushing burden to carry – it could really get to you, on the one hand, making you feel guilty in some contorted way; and on the other hand, placing an unbearable burden of expectation to achieve something for all those lost lives. It really doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? And even if, by the way, you are of the camp that thinks perhaps Matthew embellished the facts a bit here, what was he trying to tell us in placing Jesus’ young life in this story of such generic suffering? How could the story of one man’s journey be worth all this?

The thing is, as we know, Jesus stood tall and fulfilled his ministry. He did what he had come to the world to do. He did not let the demon doubt, the burden of the past, tell him he was not worthy. It’s not recorded that he had to face an angry mother bawling him out “my baby died while you guys had some hotline from God which just happened to tell you to take your annual mini-break in Egypt this year – what are you telling me that’s worth that? Can you bring my boy back to life? I don’t think so.” But such thoughts must have been there and even if we do think this story is a bit of a device by Matthew, then he was asserting that he had seen enough of the work and ministry of Jesus to know it worthy of being placed in the context of such ghastly suffering.

So maybe there is something we can take from this – obviously we can’t draw close parallels, because none of us is worthy, all of us have history, as they say, but nevertheless, we are all called on to live our callings, (in whatever way that may be) witnessing and living for Christ. And when there is something to be done or said, it’s all too easy to say no, I’m not worthy, let someone better do it, look at all the bad stuff in my life, who do I think I am to be standing here telling people stuff?

And sure, we are not worthy, we have all failed and we’re subject to charges of hypocrisy and goodness knows what. But we dare to witness in the name of Christ, who died to set us free from all that. We may have burdens, but multiple dead babies in the closet? I’d hazard a guess there are not too many of us burdened by such horrors here.

And even if there are, if we don’t witness who will? If we don’t care, who will? If the suffering around us leaves us hopeless, what good news is there? Of course the world will try to shout us down. Of course our little bit will always seem like a drop in the ocean. But if there is suffering and we don’t address it because there’s been too much suffering already – where’s the sense in that? ….. If we believe there is good news amongst all the horrors of the world, but we are cowered into keeping it to ourselves, then what good news is it?

Happy new year? I do hope so, but there will be challenges to face. Let us pray for the courage to face them in the strength of Jesus, born and raised amongst suffering and pain, but living his life to bring good news and salvation to the world.