News of Jesus reaches Herod's court, and his first reaction reveals what has been living underneath his ordinary life. 2"This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead." There is no good theology in the sentence. John performed no miracles while alive, so a resurrected John gaining sudden power makes little sense. A guilty conscience needs no logic, only enough fear to reach for any explanation except the one Herod cannot bear, that the man he killed is simply dead and that Herod is the one who killed him.
Matthew backs up to say why John was in prison, and the reason was more personal than politics: one sentence aimed at Herod's own bedroom. Herod had taken his brother's wife, and John told him so, plainly and apparently more than once, with no diplomatic softening available for a charge like that. Herod could tolerate a popular preacher. He could not tolerate being personally named.
A thin margin almost saves John's life. 5"though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet." Herod's restraint comes from public opinion. Take away the crowd's respect for John, and nothing is left in Herod to hold his hand.
That thin protection collapses at a birthday party. A dance, a rash oath made loudly enough for the guests to hear, and Herodias's daughter, prompted by her mother, asks for what Herodias has wanted all along. 8"Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter." 9"the king was sorry." Herod's conscience is not entirely dead, and he knows this is wrong even as he gives the order. But two things outweigh it, 9"because of his oaths and his guests." A weak man is often more afraid of looking weak than of doing evil. An unlawful vow made in a moment of flattery feels more binding to Herod than the commandment against murder.
It happens with terrible casualness. 10"He sent and had John beheaded in the prison," arranged around a dinner party's schedule, with no trial and no charge read aloud, the head brought on a platter as though it were the evening's next course. John, who spent his ministry calling Israel to repentance in the wilderness, dies in private, without dignity or a public hearing, and the crowd who loved him learns what happened only after it is finished.
His own disciples do the one thing left. 12"his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus." They are faithful in the only way available that day, long before any miracle or vindication was in sight.
John's death and Jesus' death rhyme in many details. Both drew crowds who called them prophets, both faced rulers who hesitated out of fear of the people, and both were killed unjustly by men who knew better. John the forerunner went first, as he had in his preaching. What Herod's guests saw at the party was a tyrant's cruelty. What the crowd at Golgotha would later watch, without knowing it, was the ransom for many being paid.
Whom have you avoided naming the truth to because of what it might cost you?
Prayer
Father, give us John's courage to name what is unlawful even when the person doing it holds power over us, and spare us Herod's cowardice, caring more how we look before others than about doing right. Thank you for disciples who do the unglamorous work of bearing witness when there is no victory yet to report. And thank you that the innocent death this chapter foreshadows was purposeful, for us. In Jesus' name, amen.