Matthew 14: 1-14
Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA
There is a technique some people use in studying Bible text. They will look at a story repeated times. They will read it to hear if a specific verse or line might jump out at them. Then they will think upon it to allow God’s word to reveal something to them. Then at a later time, they will come back to it and allow another verse in the text to reveal itself to them and then they will ponder it. They will do this multiple times over and over again until they have heard God’s truth revealed to them in as many different ways as they can hear. The technique is called: Dwelling in the Word.
When I read this text in preparation for this message, I was struck this time by the last verse. “…he had compassion for them.” Why? I asked myself. What was so special about this line, this time. Why did it catch my eye? So, I looked more closely at the story of Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist once again.
John, Matthew tells us, had been arrested by Herod because of John’s constant harassment of Herod because He had taken his brother’s wife as his own. John was constantly telling the crowds that what Herod was doing was “unlawful.” Herod’s wife, Herodias, was embarrassed by the barrage of insults John hurled at her and Herod. So, Herod had John arrested and put in prison to silence him. Now Herod had to be careful. He was walking a tight line as John had grown very popular with the people.
What is next described in verses six through 11 is the grotesque beheading of John. It is Herod’s birthday and as a gift Herodias’ daughter performs a sultry and suggestive dance for Herod. In appreciation, he promises her any gift she might desire. Shockingly, she requests John’s head on a platter to bring to her mother as a gift. The gospel writer tells us that Herod hesitantly at first but ultimately yields to the request and orders it to be done. So cheap was human life. The daughter presents John’s head to her mother as if to say, “Here, he will bother you no longer with his sanctimonious insults.”
Verse 13 tells us that when Jesus heard of the news of John’s death and of how he had died, “…he withdrew.”
Was Jesus horrified by the news of how John was executed? He was beheaded and his head served up on a platter. It was a gruesome was to do away with one’s political adversary – even for Herod. As a member of the same religious sect and family, was Jesus next?
Was Jesus thinking that if Herod was bold enough to execute John who had a large following of disciples would Herod seek him out next? Did Jesus go into hiding as a means of self-preservation? This was not yet the time of Jesus’ path to the Cross. That was God’s plan. Did Jesus withdraw in order to uphold the integrity of God’s plan? Perhaps.
But maybe instead, Jesus withdrew out of personal anguish. After all, John was his cousin. You will remember that Mary and John’s mother Elizabeth were related family members, possibly cousins. At the beginning of Luke’s gospel, the writer tells us that the Angel Gabriel goes to Mary and tells her that Elizabeth, your relative, was also pregnant. The word in Greek that Luke uses to describe the relationship is suggenēs. It can mean relative or kinswoman, possibly cousin.
In Luke’s gospel, Mary visits Elizabeth while both are pregnant. Elizabeth’s yet unborn son leaps in her womb at the close proximity of the expected Messiah in Mary’s womb. Growing up as children, they no doubt had many opportunities for family interactions. Later in his life, John becomes the voice crying out in the wilderness announcing the coming of the Messiah telling the people to make straight the way of the Lord.
Now, this terrible death of his cousin had struck Jesus in a very personal way. He needed to withdraw. He needed to be alone to experience his anguish. He needed to be alone with his Father, with his God. He needed to share with God his pain and his grief, the loss of his close family member.
We don’t often, if ever, think of Jesus in this way. But he was human, too, and he experienced the same human emotions we do. Jesus went through all the experiences of life that we all do. He needed to go to God in prayer asking the same questions that we ask when confronted with such sudden violence and violent loss.
Jesus may have gone to God to ask, Why? Why, John? Why so young? Why so violently? Why now? Why?
He needed to take all of his pain and anguish to the Father. He needed to lay all this at God’s feet. It was under God’s wings that he would find refuge and comfort.
So, Jesus withdrew from the crowds that had been following him. He set out on the lake to be alone. Alone in the solitude on the water, he took his grief to God.
But what of the crowds? Many of them were followers of John. What of their grief and sorrow? They, too, were now experiencing loss.
The news of John’s execution must have struck John’s disciples and the people of Palestine in much the same way public tragedy strikes us. If you are old enough, as I am, to remember the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy, you will recall how those events stopped a nation to bring us together of communal morning.
We asked ourselves, why? And in our anguish, we sought out a leader who would console us in our pain and reassure us of God’s continued presence in a time of upheaval. That is what the crowds did.
They were lost and wandering, weeping from the loss of John. What did they seek out? They did not turn to the King or to the chief priests. They sought out Jesus. And since they could not find him on YouTube or via a televised address with him sitting aside a comforting and warming fire in a hearth. They set out on foot traveling around Lake Galilee until they found him when he came ashore.
Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, “he was moved with compassion for them.” The verse jumped out at me.
The people in their pain reached out for Jesus and he without hesitation reached out to console them. That is what stuck me in this text today. Jesus was grieving as they were grieving and he reached out with compassion to share their sorrows with them. He didn’t look down from on high as an omnipotent and all-powerful God. Instead, with compassion he offered them an opportunity to express that grief with their God and their God whose knows their grief bowed down to walk beside them and carry it for them through their darkest valleys. He weeps with us the same tears of anguish, knowing the same pain and loss, asking the same questions.
Jesus does that for us every day, if we seek him out and go to him.
Jesus knows our pain not only because he is an all-knowing God but because our God is one of us. He shares because he knows what pain feels like. He knows it because he experienced it. He knows our pain, and it moved with compassion.
He has compassion not only because his love for us is a perfect love but because he knows the anguish the pain causes in human hearts and he aches to comfort it.
How fortunate we are to have Jesus as Lord. This is a Lord who can save us from the grief of our brokenness. Thanks be to God. Amen.
