Well, it’s that time again: the season of New Year’s resolutions.
Now, if you’re making a resolution, there are several important 
steps to keep in mind. Step 1, of course, is the setting of intentions: making one’s resolutions for the new year, and those resolutions are, in essence, about taking steps to move intentionally towards a better life. “Better” can mean a lot of things, but the most popular resolutions every year tend to be about improving health and fitness, personal finances, and mental and spiritual health. So those resolutions tend to be things like exercising regularly, cutting out unhealthy eating and drinking habits and taking up healthier ones, saving a certain percentage of income towards retirement, setting aside daily time to pray or meditate or read the Bible, getting at least seven hours of sleep a night, and so on.
Step 2, then, is about making a plan to achieve those resolutions with specific actions: setting aside time on a Sunday afternoon for weekly meal planning, for example, or getting a gym membership, or developing a new bedtime routine.
Then there’s Step 3, which is probably the most important one. We might call this one “perseverance,” in the sense that it is about not simply acting on the intentions and plans, but following through on them over time. A more accurate label, though, might be failure. The truth is that most New Year’s resolutions fail, because changing one’s habits and mindset is actually a very difficult challenge to overcome, and there is a constant pull back towards the status quo, especially when changing requires us to either give up something that we enjoy but know is not good for us, or to take up something that we know is good for us, but we don’t enjoy.
However “resolved” we may tell ourselves we are in theory, it can be very difficult to summon and sustain the willpower to remain resolved to makes our resolutions a permanent part of our lives. Some of us know that because we have completed steps 1 and 2 in terms of our resolution, and are struggling with step 3: maintaining the willpower to persevere. And some of us have already completed the first three steps and have moved on to step 4, resignation and surrender, and are well on our way to completing step 5, which is known as “well, this wasn’t the right time. Maybe next year!”
The good news is that human beings, from the Ancient Babylonians who were the first recorded culture to make new year’s resolutions 4000 years ago, to U.S. culture today, have tended to fundamentally misunderstand what is necessary in order to fulfill resolutions. There’s been considerable research on the human behavior of habits in recent years, and the findings are consistent. Effectively changing habits require two things. First, you can’t simply give up a bad habit; you have to replace it with a good one; otherwise, the gravitational pull of the ingrained habit is too strong and you end up falling back into it.
So if you want to “eat healthier,” you can’t just give up the unhealthy foods that you enjoy, you have to eat healthy foods that are still desirable. And second, you can’t rely solely upon willpower. Will is important, because it directs your intentions towards action; but you need to change your context or environment too, because willpower is a finite resource that gets exhausted relatively quickly.
So again, if you want to eat healthier, you don’t rely on your willpower to leave that pint of ice cream in the freezer instead of eating it in front of the TV; you don’t buy the ice cream in the first place, and you replace it with a healthy treat like lightly-seasoned popcorn instead (which is fairly low in calories and surprisingly high in fiber and protein, if you’re interested). Willpower alone isn’t enough; success requires an environment that will help fulfill your will.
Herod certainly understood that. King Herod the Great, the puppet king of the Jews for the Roman province of Judea when Jesus was born, was a man of unusually strong and focused will. Everything he said, everything he did, everything he had done, was all in the service of his overriding will to maintain his power and position as king. If the TV show Game of Thrones was real, Herod would have fit right in as a character, because playing the game of thrones, of seizing and holding power, is exactly what he did.
He did not inherit the throne, he pursued it for years before he was finally positioned to overthrow the reigning Hasmonean dynasty and establish his own, skillfully acquiring the backing of several key Roman officials in doing so. And he kept that throne for almost forty years, which takes some doing. He was ruthless, he was conniving, he was manipulative. He married his second wife, a princess of the Hasmonean dynasty, to consolidate his power and legitimacy, then later executed her when he became concerned that her family loyalty might pose a threat. He changed his will multiple times, depending on which child was in favor and which was not, and even executed his firstborn son because he believed he had become a rival. He was, in short, an expert at changing his environment and context to suit his will.
So, when these three magi show up in Matthew’s gospel, asking Herod about the child that’s been born King of the Jews, and Herod doesn’t know what they’re talking about, he acts exactly in character with everything we know about him from beyond the Bible. First, he’s terrified at the news that these magi bring him, and he asks about where the Messiah is prophesied to be born. When he learns it is Bethlehem, he sends them there to find the child for them, claiming that once they come back and tell him where the child is, he will come “pay homage” himself.
What he means by that is made horrifyingly clear when the magi do not come back, but go home a different way in an attempt to protect the Christ child from being found by Herod. But they dramatically underestimate Herod’s resolution to maintain power and eliminate any potential threats. Since he still doesn’t know which child has been born as the Messiah, he decides to change the context to fulfill his will once again: he orders the massacre of every male child under the age of two in the village of Bethlehem.
Now, unlike everything else I’ve said about Herod, there is not an independent historical account verifying this appalling story. Some take that to mean it did not happen. I think that’s being naïve, though. The really horrifying thing here is that massacring the children of Bethlehem was so in line with everything else that Herod did to take and keep his throne that this story was only historically notable to the people who directly experienced it, who refused to be consoled because their children were no more. And Matthew records it, I think, both to honor the innocents who were killed and to tell us that, from the very beginning, Jesus was viewed as an existential threat by those who are resolved to keep the systems and powers and values of this world exactly the way they always have been: ruled by power and protected by violence.
It can be sobering, even depressing, to realize how little some things have changed in the last 2000 years. Our own headlines are filled with stories of the “slaughter of the innocents,” as the Church has traditionally called this terrible story, on a daily basis, perhaps most vividly these days from the very land in which Jesus walked. Human Rights Watch tells us that dozens of Israeli children were killed or kidnapped in the attacks by Hamas on Israel this past October 7, and many are still held hostage. And since then, over 9,000 Palestinian children have been killed in the attacks by Israel on Gaza, and the resolution to continue on this horrifying course does not seem to be wavering in the Hamas or Israeli leadership.
And yet what this story reminds us is not simply that those who crave power and wield violence to get and keep it are a constant threat. It is also that God’s resolution to redeem this world – to overcome violence and hatred with justice and love, to establish peace for all rather than protect power for a few – is what truly and finally matters. Herod’s resolve is strong, but God’s is far, far stronger. Herod does his very best, though sadly not even his very worst, to get rid of the threat of Jesus in this story, but it is Herod’s plans that are foiled when the magi go home another way, not God’s; it is Herod who dies, not Jesus; it is Herod whose kingdom is divided and weakened after his death, while Jesus irrevocably changes the context of this world towards alignment with God’s will, “on earth as it is in heaven,” as the kingdom of God comes ever more near in and through Jesus.
That is the good news in this terrible story that is important for us to hear and not to gloss over, particularly as we are transitioning away from Christmas and into the season of Epiphany. God resolved not to leave this world to itself, but to come down into the midst of it and begin transforming it from within, changing the context to align with God’s will not through violence or raw power, but through becoming one of us: born to show us how God intends for us to live and love and serve in this world, born to lead us in opposing violence and hatred and oppression with love and justice and peace, born to not only show us the way but to be the way to abundant and eternal life. So as we begin this new year, let us resolve to follow Jesus more fully and more faithfully into that future, trusting in God’s resolve rather than our own for us to persevere until the work, and the journey, is finally done.