When the Roman Emperor Augustus was asked about King Herod, he reportedly quipped that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son. The joke played on the fact that, as a Jewish person, Herod would not eat pork—but he had no such hesitations about killing his own children. Three of his sons were sent to the executioner on his orders. His beloved wife Mariamne was strangled. His mother-in-law was eliminated. Drowning, strangulation, execution—Herod used them all with a terrifying efficiency that made everyone around him, including the Roman Emperor himself, uneasy – to say the least.

This is the king who appears in our Gospel reading this morning. Matthew emphasizes calling him ‘King Herod’—not just Herod the Great, but King Herod—because he wants us to grasp the full irony when foreign astrologers walk into Jerusalem asking, ‘Where is the one born king of the Jews?’

There was already a king of the Jews sitting on his throne, and he did not want to share that throne.

The Troubled Tyrant

Matthew tells us that when Herod heard the news of this newborn king, he was ‘troubled.’ Other translations say ‘frightened’ or ‘disturbed.’ The Greek word describes a kind of agitation—a stirring up of the soul. It is the same word used elsewhere in the Gospels to depict the disciples’ fear when Jesus walked on water, Zechariah’s alarm at the angel’s appearance, and the disciples’ terror in the upper room when the risen Christ appeared.

In other words, Herod’s trouble is not just a minor annoyance. It’s the shaking that occurs when something disrupts everyday reality. But while the disciples’ fear shifted to wonder and worship, Herod’s disturbance turned into something much darker.

Notice that all of Jerusalem was troubled by him. The city knew this king well. They knew that when Herod’s brow darkened, blood would flow. Near the end of his life, paranoid and dying, Herod gathered the leading men of Israel and imprisoned them with orders that, upon his death, they should all be executed—so that the nation would be forced to mourn when he died. This was a man who could not bear the thought of being unmourned. His need for control extended even beyond the grave.

And then there are the Magi.

Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine highlights the clever irony in the Magi’s arrival. Coming into Jerusalem and asking ‘Where is the one born king of the Jews?’ while Herod is king is, as she explains, ‘not the most astute question.’ My image of these Magi is more along the lines of court jesters or clowns. Think Peter Falk’s character from the 1970s television show Columbo. Was he a bumbling slob of a man wearing a trenchcoat, or was he a wise, masterful detective using his image as a ploy? And who wears a trench coat in Los Angeles, anyway? These wandering astrologers have unknowingly entered a dangerous situation. However, their lack of awareness about political danger is exactly what gives them the freedom to act. They follow a star. They seek a child. They are unburdened by the fear that holds everyone else back in the story.

It’s as if these three Magi are bumbling their way into history-making events.

Fear Behind the Fury

What was Herod afraid of? A baby in a manger? An infant who couldn’t walk or talk yet? Herod had armies at his command, control over the Temple, and the power to tax an entire nation. How could a child pose such a threat?

The answer, of course, is that Herod’s fear was never truly about the child. It was about himself. Contemporary research on bullies—and make no mistake, Herod is the archetype of the workplace bully writ large—shows a consistent pattern: beneath the desire for power and control are usually traumatic experiences that have left the bully feeling inadequate, insecure, and afraid of being exposed. As one psychologist states, ‘The bully is always the weakest kid on the playground.’ Their aggression is not a sign of strength but the last gasp of someone with a limited skill set, someone who cannot envision any way to relate to the world except through domination.

Herod’s grip on power was always fragile. He lacked royal blood and was installed by the Romans. Many Jews viewed him as a usurper—a half-foreigner whose family had been forcibly converted to Judaism just a generation before. His entire reign was about managing the distance between the throne he held and the legitimacy he could never fully establish. Every rumor of a rival sent him into fits of violence—because deep down, Herod knew he was a fraud. Some Kings, or wanna-be kings, are like that.

The birth of Jesus reopened that wound. Here was a child born in the city of David, from a lineage that could truly claim God’s promises, with a star announcing his arrival to distant lands. Everything Herod had spent his life trying to kill to achieve, this baby received as a birthright and divine acclamation.

Herod’s reaction was to kill. It was the only way he knew to respond.

When Herod Is Your Boss

Most of us, thankfully, do not face tyrants with the power over life and death. But many of us have encountered our own Herods—the supervisor who blasts off without warning, the coworker who undermines and manipulates, the authority figure whose moods hold an entire people hostage. Half of American workers have faced bullying from a boss or manager. The research on bullying is alarming: it leads to anxiety, insomnia, depression, and a constant feeling of dread that follows you home and poisons every other relationship in your life.

What should we do when we find ourselves in Herod’s court?

First, we need to identify what is happening. Bullying flourishes in silence and denial. We tell ourselves it’s not that serious, that we’re too sensitive, or that we should try harder. But you can’t outwork a bully. You can’t appease a tyrant. The first step in resisting is to acknowledge, even if only to yourself, but better to others as well: this is wrong.

Second, we need to understand the bully’s fear. This isn’t about excusing their behavior; it’s about reclaiming our power. When we realize that the person who demeans us is driven by deep insecurity—that their aggression masks their fear of being exposed—something shifts. We stop believing that their cruelty accurately reflects our worth. Instead, we see them not as all-powerful but as fractured individuals, someone to pity (or maybe to pity disdainfully), even as we protect ourselves from them.

Third, we need to find allies. The Magi traveled together. They were warned together. They left together by a different route. Isolation is the bully’s strongest weapon; community is our best shield. Find trusted colleagues, mentors, parishioners, and friends who can witness your experience, validate your perceptions, and help you plan next steps. You don’t have to confront Herod alone.

The Fear Within

But there’s a tougher question this scripture from Matthew asks us: what do we do with our own fear? Not just our fear of bullies, but the fear that can lead us to become bullies ourselves.

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The same word that describes Herod’s disturbance—etarachthē—also describes what happens to all of us. Something in us is stirred, shaken, and unsettled. In that moment of agitation, we face a choice. We can, like Herod, respond with control, violence, and a cold iron ‘no’ to whatever threatens our carefully built kingdoms. Or we can, like the Magi, choose a different path.

I wonder if Herod sensed that the birth of this child was not just a threat but a gift. The ripple that went through the universe when Christ was born touched him, too. Perhaps that is why he was troubled. Maybe something in him recognized that here, at last, was something real—a king whose power did not depend on violence, a kingdom not taken by force, but by grace.

But Herod could not accept it. He had spent his whole life building walls against exactly this kind of vulnerability. To accept the child would have meant accepting his own insufficiency, admitting that his entire bloody reign had been a lie. And so he chose the only response his wounded soul could muster: if he could not possess this new king, he wanted to destroy him.

Another Road, Another Path

The Magi found the child, knelt before him, and offered their strange gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These treasures meant nothing to an infant but everything to those who gave them. Oddly, these gifts anticipate the crucifixion, as two of these gifts are used in the ancient burial practice of anointing the body. Then, warned in a dream, they took another road home. They chose a new path.

This is the Epiphany invitation: to see the light, to follow it wherever it leads, and choose a new path. We cannot go back the way we came. The encounter with Christ changes the geography of our lives. The old roads—the paths of control and domination, of fear and self-protection—no longer lead anywhere worth going.

Herod couldn’t take this route. He was too invested in the kingdom he had built. But the Magi—those comical, star-gazing foreigners who wandered into Jerusalem asking all the wrong questions—went home changed.

The bullies in this world, whether they sit on thrones or occupy other offices, are to be both pitied and held to account. They are trapped in prisons of their own making, consumed by fears they cannot name. They do not need our admiration or our compliance. They need something else, though they would never admit it. They need what the Magi found in Bethlehem: a true king whose power is made perfect in weakness, vulnerability, and grace.