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The redemptive purpose of God’s coming to earth was revealed under many symbols and figures; one of the most striking was foretold in what happened to John the Baptist. Although John sought no earthly honor, he received it; for he was sought out by King Herod Antipas, the son of the bloodthirsty Herod who had tried to take the life of Our Lord when He was not yet two years of age. “Herod feared John,” knowing that he was a “just and holy man.” The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.
Herod was typical of all worldlings who sent for what they call “learned men of the cloth” (as Felix sent for Paul); they love their brilliance, their turn of phrase, their abstract wisdom; but as soon as these men begin to make the teachings of Christ concrete and personal, they are dismissed at once with the words “too intense,” “intolerant,” or “Do you know, he actually tried to convert me?” Herod, always looking for new stimulations and excitements, invited the court to hear this thrilling preacher who was all the rage at the time. What text would John the Baptist choose? Would he talk about brotherly love (without the Fatherhood of God), or about the necessity of reducing armies, or about the great need of economic reform in Galilee? John knew that all these were important, but he knew that something else was more important still; so he decided to address himself to consciences.
Herod probably looked at him with a half-smile of satisfaction; Herodias, his wife, must have glared out of the corner of her eye; the others were curious, but not really interested. Herod and Herodias had both been married before, she to Herod’s brother. It was one of those nasty, festering messes which become commonplace in a nation that is beginning to rot. Herod had been married previously to Aretas, who left him when he began to be involved with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. Herodias had a daughter Salome by her previous marriage to Philip.
If there was one subject that, from a worldly point of view, John would have been wise to avoid in that court, it was this situation. But John was bent on pleasing God, not men; he resolved to talk against such lustful living. He was too kind to excuse Herod’s sin, too interested in moral health to leave the wound unprobed, too loving to have any thought except to save Herod’s soul.
John followed Our Divine Lord’s teaching that marriage was holy and indivisible: “What God has joined together let no man put asunder.” He cut straight into the quick with words that were clear, decisive, and abrupt. Pointing his finger at Herod and his wife seated on their golden thrones, he said:
It is wrong for thee to take thy brother’s wife.
MARK 6:18
Herodias winced. She knew that John was recalling the fact that she had seduced Herod, who was already in her power. One look from her was enough for Herod. Before John could finish the next sentence, iron chains were thrown about his wrists and guards began dragging him from the court to throw him into the black dungeon below. The preacher was imprisoned, but his words were not—they would echo in conscience long after the voice had been silenced.
For months John was kept in the dark dungeon of Machaerus. Did this enforced inactivity cause him to doubt the Messias and Lamb of God of Whom he had spoken? Did his faith waver a little in the darkness of the dungeon? Perhaps he was impatiently longing for God to punish those who had refused to receive His message. In any case:
He summoned two of his disciples,
And sent them to Jesus to ask,
Is it Thy coming that was foretold,
Or are we yet waiting for some other?
LUKE 7:19
The very way John put the question indicated that he had faith both in the great Messianic promise and in Him Whom he was questioning.
When the question was brought to Him, Our Lord did not answer it with a promise that John would be released from prison, or that He Himself would destroy his enemies. He answered only by pointing to His own work of healing, comforting, and teaching.
Go and tell John what your own eyes and ears
have witnessed;
How the blind see, the lame walk, and
the lepers are made clean, and the deaf hear;
How the dead are raised to life, and the poor
have the gospel preached to them.
Blessed is he who does not lose confidence in Me.
LUKE 7:22, 23
Divinity and its ways will always be a scandal to men. The poverty and worldly insignificance of Our Savior had been the earliest objection to His gospel. This prejudice arose from a very false conception of the power and the majesty of God, as if the achievement of His purposes really depended upon the means which the world associates with success. In effect, Christ was giving a twofold answer to John’s disciples, pointing to both His works and His word, His miracles and His teachings. His miracles would not just be things to wonder at; rather they would be signs of a Divine Kingdom of righteousness and mercy; and the power by which He worked them would be a power outside nature, which could control nature. His teaching, in particular, would be another proof of His Divinity: the poor would have the Gospel preached to them.
This was especially significant, because poverty is only another word for human imperfection and weakness. The strong in body and the keen in intellect and those who possess the bounties of earth receive their reward in this world; but the poor and the weak often hunger and suffer. Christ was saying that in the Kingdom of Heaven there would be a gospel for the poor. God has another world in which to redress the inequalities of this one. While the rich man is told that if he wants to go to heaven he must part with his riches for Christ’s sake, the poor man is told that his weariness and suffering, toil and disappointment, united with the Cross, will bring their own inner peace and reward.
When the messengers had left, Our Lord began to praise John. John had borne witness to Him. He would now bear witness to John. He answered those who might have been judging John by a message that was sent in an hour of trial. He contrasted the multitude who hung upon the words of the messengers with John himself—the fickleness of the crowd with the stability of the prophet. It was not John that was weak; it was their own hearts. It was not doubt that had made John send the enquiry, nor was it a fear of bodily consequences. Using three figures of speech, Our Lord rose to John’s defense. The first figure was the reed that used to wave in the breeze beside the strong rapid stream of the Jordan, where they had heard John preach; the second figure was the soft garments of those who lived in the house of Herod; the third figure was a sign from heaven and a reference to all the men who have gone through the portals of the flesh in human birth.
Then, when John’s messengers had gone away,
He took occasion to speak of John to the multitudes;
What was it, He asked, that you expected to see
When you went out into the wilderness?
Was it a reed trembling in the wind? No, not that;
What was it you went out to see?
Was it a man clad in silk? You must look in kings’
Palaces for men that go proudly dressed,
And live in luxury.
What was it, then, that you went out to see? A prophet?
Yes, and something more, I tell you, than a prophet.
This is the man of whom it is written, Behold, I am sending
Before Thee that angel of mine who is to prepare
Thy way for Thy coming. I tell you, there is no greater than
John the Baptist among all the sons of women;
And yet to be least in the kingdom of heaven
Is to be greater than he.
LUKE 7:24–28
Three times Our Blessed Lord asked, “What was it you went out to see?” This was their error; professing a desire to know the will of God, they had really been bent on sights and spectacles, on enjoying the wonders and popularity of the messenger. They went out just to see someone, not to hear someone; to satisfy the concupiscence of their eyes, but not to imitate the temperance and self-denial of the Baptist. Our Lord was telling the mob that St. John did not ask his question from prison simply because he was a reed shaken by the wind of public opinion, or because he was one who cared for his bodily well-being, as did the courtiers in the house of Herod. John was no frivolous reed shaken by every breath of popular applause. He delivered his rebukes with fearlessness; he was not only severe on others, he was even more severe on himself. He might have dwelt in the houses of kings, and yet he made the desert his home. In his relation to God, he was a prophet, and more than a prophet—the precursor and forerunner of the Messias and the Son of God.
Greatness is of two kinds: the earthly and the heavenly. If John’s greatness had been of the earth, he would have lived in palaces, his garments would have been gaudy, and his opinions would probably have been variable like a reed, blown toward one popular philosophy one day and another the next. But his greatness was of the Divine order, and his superiority was not just in his person, but in his unchanging work and mission, namely, to announce the Lamb of God.
Some months later, the time came for Herod’s birthday to be celebrated with a great feast. To this Balthasarian banquet were invited all Herod’s lords and ladies, the military personnel, and various hangers-on from Galilee. It was evening, and the castle was softly lighted. Faces were painted to look their best in the dim flattering candlelight. The noise of music, the blare of horns, and the shouts of revelry resounded through the stony castle of Machaerus, even reaching down to the narrow dark dungeon below, where for ten months John the Baptist had languished. Nevertheless, the guests were probably bored to distraction; for nothing is more sickening than the organized joy of the jaded.
Herod’s voice rang out in this first great night club of the Christian Era, calling for a sensuous dance to stimulate their weary spirits. The dancer would be Salome, the fair young daughter of the king’s wife by her first husband. This maiden, who was a descendant of the noble Maccabees but who had been utterly debased and corrupted by the connivance of a degenerate mother, danced her way on to the floor. The revelers were charmed, and Herod, following her every movement of grace, soon became as much aroused by the dance as by the wine. When with one last fling, Salome threw herself into his lap, he blurted out in a burst of passion:
Ask me for whatever thou wilt, and thou shalt have it…
I will grant whatever request thou makest,
Though it were a half of my kingdom.
MARK 6:22, 23
Salome did not know what to ask, so she turned to her mother. Herod had already forgotten that unfortunate sermon of John the Baptist; but a woman does not forget so easily. Those ten months while John was in the prison below, he was also in the soul of Herodias, troubling it, disturbing her sleep, torturing her conscience, and haunting her dreams. She now resolved to get rid of him, thinking that if she could just do away with this moral representative of God, she could sin with impunity for the rest of her life. With one word to Salome, she would silence her own conscience, and her husband’s, forever. She whispered her answer into her daughter’s ear. Salome approached Herod. The shrill music stopped; silence fell over the assembly; the food became tasteless, and even their hearts were sickened as the young girl asked Herod:
Give me the head of John the Baptist;
Give it me here on a dish.
MATTHEW 14:8
Herod was thrown into confusion because of his oath. He thought of all his past respect for the prophet; but at the same time, he was afraid of the taunts and the whispered jests of the guests if they should see him draw back from his promise. Unfaithful to God, to conscience, to himself, not ashamed of any crime but ashamed of public opinions, he decided to be faithful to his drunken oath. Above all, he trembled at the wrath of his second wife.
Herod called forward a few slaves. Torches were lighted. No one spoke as they heard the slaves descending the stairs, deeper and deeper, the sound growing fainter; then they heard the fumbling of keys in dungeon doors, the creaking of hinges. There was silence for a few seconds, broken by a sickening thud; then a slow march up the stairs, louder and louder, in rhythm with the beating of their hearts. The slaves approached Herodias with the gory gift. She went to Salome, and Salome carried it across the dance floor and gave it to Herod on a golden platter, the bearded head of the Prophet of Fire.
On that dark night, at the bidding of the child of an adulteress, Herod had murdered the forerunner of Christ.
After that, Herod was haunted by fears, as Nero was haunted by the ghost of his mother whom he had murdered. The Emperor Caligula could not sleep because he too was haunted by the faces of his victims; the historian Suetonius says that “he sat up in bed,” or else walked around in the long porticos of the palace, looking for the approach of day.
Herod, hearing of Our Divine Lord some time later, thought that He was John the Baptist, risen from the dead. Herod did not believe in a future life; no sensual man does. Belief in immortality dies easily in those who live in such a way that they cannot face the prospect of a judgment. A future life is denied not so much by the way one thinks as by the way one lives. Herod had convinced himself that the door was closed at death; but now, once he heard that Our Lord was preaching, he began to think that John had risen from the dead. Scepticism is never certain of itself, being less a firm intellectual position than a pose to justify bad behavior. As a Sadducee, Herod rejected the next life; but he feared his conscience after all. And hearing of the wonders and miracles of Our Lord, “he sought to see Him.” And he did see Him. Less than two years later, Pilate would send Our Lord to him:
To have a sight of Him,
Because he had heard so much of Him,
And now he hoped to witness some miracle of His.
LUKE 23:8
Herod had never seen the face of Jesus until that last hour; he never before had heard His voice. When the moment came, Our Lord refused to speak to him.
After the Transfiguration, the Apostles, who had seen Moses and Elias speaking with Our Lord, began asking questions about Elias. Our Lord told them that Elias had already been among them in spirit; they had seen him in the dweller of lonely places, the man clothed in camel’s hair who lived on a meagre fare. Then He dragged the Cross before their eyes again. He showed them that the death of John the Baptist was a prefigurement of His own death. As the people who had seen John believed him not, so neither would they believe Our Lord:
They misused Him at their pleasure,
Just as the Son of Man is to
Suf er at their hands.
MATTHEW 17:12
Through His comment on the Baptist’s fate, Jesus foretold His own suffering and death. He was endeavoring to make the Apostles familiar with the idea of a dying as well as a conquering Messias. As people blundered in blindness by failing to welcome the Baptist when he came in the spirit of a penitential Elias, so they would miss the Messias when He came among them as One bearing their guilt, to ransom it on the tree of the Cross. The Apostles were told that such a destiny was foretold of the Son of Man:
That He must be much ill-used and despised.
MARK 9:11
The Psalms and the Prophets had alluded to His suffering as the Son of Man. Just as Our Lord did not save John the Baptist from the cruelty of Herod, neither would He save Himself from that same Herod. The herald had suffered the lot of the One Whom he heralded; the messenger received violence because he had announced the Message. And once again, the Mount of Calvary looked down, this time across the valleys to the foot of the Mount of the Transfiguration. Everything in His life told of His Cross, including the violent death of John.
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