Verses 1-14
Chapter 60
Herod Hears of Christ
It must not be supposed that Herod had not heard of Jesus Christ until this time, but at this particular juncture the fame of Jesus made a new impression upon the ruler's mind. There are some hours that are historical, although the very things we remember in those hours have not been unknown to us or even unfamiliar to us aforetime. Notice the kind of fame which Herod heard of Jesus. Was it the fame of his eloquence or the fame of his spirituality? Was the governor struck by the breadth and grandeur of the spiritual conceptions of the new teacher? Probably not. What struck him most, and therein showed the vulgarity of his nature, was the miracles. Some men are more fascinated by lightning than by light. Herod heard of mighty works, grand wonders and astounding signs, but it is not said that he had heard of the beatitudes and revelled in sympathetic appreciation as he listened to the dripping music, the sweet pensive words which fell from the lips of the Teacher on the mountain.
It is even so today: we do not see men in their grandest point; it is some little incidental and transient thing that attracts our vulgar attention, some trick of manner, or tone of voice, or method of assault: but what of the intellectual purview, the spiritual unction, the groping after the infinite, the passion of love, the redeeming care, the eternal patience? No reference is made to the higher qualities of men until long after their ascension. At first we talk about their miracles, their prodigies, signs and tokens, and not a word do we say about the subtle process that has in it ten thousand miracles of insight and sympathy and eloquence of the heart.
Mark the wisdom of Jesus Christ in this matter, he knew how the world must be approached, he understood the value of collateral helps such as miracles; Jesus Christ never intended the miracles to be continuous in the Church, because he knew they would soon drop into commonplace. Man has a wonderful capacity for absorbing miracles, of forgetting the last wonder, and of asking for another. Yet miracles have their place; they are great trumpets that call attention, flashing, dazzling signs that awaken men and make them look, and whilst they are looking, the great Teacher seizes his opportunity to touch and bless the inner nature.
What have we been in these matters? Mere starers, wrought upon by fancy, the victims of our own wonder? Why, what is this but worshipping idols of our own making, bowing down before mean things of our own fashioning? The call to us is to the inner sanctuary, the upper chamber, the place where the Shekinah shines. We are stunned by miracles; we are saved by truth.
Given a mighty thought and a mighty deed, to know which will soonest win the attention of the world and secure its paltry fame, and the deed will outrun the thought. A man who goes into a dangerous place or takes a daring leap, or does some act of romantic madness, is known across a wider horizon than the man who has the divine gift of prayer, and who can work the all but infinite miracle of opening the door of the kingdom of heaven. Who heeds thought or cares for sympathy, or adds up in positive value the tears that flow in commiseration over human distress? The world is a ready reckoner, quick at great batches of figures, totalising them into millions that fill the mouth and daze the imagination where miracles are concerned. But where thoughts, feelings, impulses, inspirations, beatitudes, commendations of virtue are concerned, where is the ready reckoning? We shall learn better by-and-by. Keep in the school of Jesus, and you will learn that there is an arithmetic that is valueless but for momentary convenience, and that the true riches are within that the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit is in the sight of God of great price, that miracles of the ordinary kind, such as are found in the gospels, are but introductory, when rightly used, to the light that is meant to shine upon the mind, and to lead the heart upward into the great mysteries of truth and fellowship with God.
Herod, having heard of the fame of Jesus, even upon the comparatively low ground of miracles, gave an explanation of what he heard. I cannot tell how many hours of silence preceded the utterance, but the utterance itself came with the suddenness of an unexpected shock. Herod said with startling abruptness, "This is John the Baptist." We thought his name had been forgotten. No storied marble stood above the headless body to remind the tetrarch, no brass memorial was to be found on all the walls of Herod's palace to remind him of the death. How was it that he knew so distinctly the name of the murdered man? Is there a recording angel, are there invisible presences dogging our steps and whispering to us unwelcome words now and again, even while the wine is half-way to the livid lips with thirst for its fire? Immeasurable life, mysterious life, accursed memory! Cain took to city building, he will fill his head with masonry; still the dead man looks at him from every foundation he lays. He will build high, but the red blood incarnadines the topmost mortar, and oozes upward to remind him of what he once did.
Some say Herod was a Sadducee, and we know that the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection. If Herod was a Sadducee, this is a startling instance of the power of truth and fact to override our speculative creeds, tear them to pieces, and make us poor indeed. We shall know the value of our creed when the last pressure is put upon it. It is one thing to have a creed over a foaming glass of wine and in the midst of a smoking feast when gaiety fills the house and loud rough laughter is the music of the moment, and another thing to have a creed that will go with us through every hour of the day, through every wilderness, up every steep and rocky place, that will clutch our hand in the dark and say, "You are all right; walk on, and I will take you into the morning." Herod's, if he was a Sadducee, was a speculative creed, a thing that pleased the mere intellect for the time being, a piece of rationalism that seemed to fit the occasion. When this great tragedy asserted itself in all those bitter, cruel memories he forgot his Sadduceeism in the presence of an accusing conscience.
Search your creeds through and through, and see if they be faiths that will carry you across the whole bound and scheme of life, or whether they are little transient pleasures, butterflies that live in the sunshine, ephemera that die in the beam that created them. My own experience deepening every day, growing painful in richness, is this: no faith will go with a man up every hill, through every valley, into every pain and every darkness, and through all the light and joy of life, but the faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only Saviour of the world. Other faiths please me intellectually more, for a little time suggestions coming from other Masters give me some delight within given limits, but the theology of Jesus Christ alone fills the whole horizon, and is equally strong at every point. As a personal experience let this go for what it is worth; if your experience coincides with it, in so far as it does let us add our testimony together until the witness becomes in itself a second gospel, not a gospel of revelation, but a confirming gospel, setting to the gospel of revelation this seal, that we have proved it in actual experience.
Herod felt the pressure of the eternal law of righteousness. There was one sermon he did remember brief as a lightning flash, but so memorable that recollection could never throw it off. Men remember different kinds of sermons. There are some sermons we try to forget, and fail to do so. Sometimes the sermon is in one sentence: it is not at all necessary that you should approve of every sentence in the sermon, or like the sermon as a whole, any more than it is necessary for the man who sits down at the table to consume the luxuries with which it is loaded he may refuse this, or dislike that, but there is enough to satisfy his hunger, and in that satisfaction his contentment should find its pleasure.
If you had interrogated Herod as to the scope of the ministry of John the Baptist in what relation he stood to the ancient prophets and in what precise relation he stood to the coming Messenger, to the Lord himself probably Herod could have given you but lame and imperfect answers. But if you had asked Herod if he could recall one thing that John had ever said, he would have recalled something that was not addressed to the multitude, but that was shot into his own bad heart. He never quoted that sermon but to himself. To himself he preached it probably every day.
The impression made upon Herod's mind was the deeper because John was know to him as a good man and a just. Our sermons derive force from our character. The solid noble character gives weight to the weakest words. A lofty and pure consistency utters what might, from a literary point of view, be of the most imperfect sort, with an accent that makes it eloquent. The grim ascetic, the stern child of the wilderness, draped in camel's hair and fed on locusts and wild honey he on whom there rested no spot of shame, of foulness or suspicion said, "It is not lawful for thee to have Herodias as thy wife." Who dares interfere with such things now? No man of my acquaintance. What preacher dares interfere with the family life of his congregation? Not one. Are there not families that would absorb whole libraries of consolation who would resent the faintest approach towards rebuke? If the preacher sees that you are going to marry the wrong man or the wrong woman, dare he interfere? Only at the expense of his head. The law is the same in all ages. Sympathy at a high price, judgment and rebuke at the price of loss, neglect, persecution, martyrdom. If I were to interfere with your marriages, because of their consanguinity, because of their want of adaptation and proper coincidence and rhythm, what would be your retort? Imprisonment, decapitation. Not in their physical forms thank God we have outlived that vulgarity; but where is there a man who dare ask if the weights are just and the balances equal, or if an enemy has not snipped off part of the yard measure? No man dare interfere with such things now.
The martyrdom having been committed, we come to the twelfth verse, which reads like the bitter music of despair, ending in one troubled hope. Almost every word of the twelfth verse throbs with pathetic suggestion. "And his disciples came" with heavy feet, with heavy hearts, with tearful eyes, with great groaning, with wonder that might at any moment turn into impiety and hard talking against Heaven's justness. "And took up the body." A heavy load, yet a precious burden; took it up tenderly, lifted it with care, a body that had never known the meaning of luxury, self-care, indulgence; a body whipped, scourged, mutilated, held in severest discipline, every member of it a slave, a gospel in itself of abstention, discipline, severe and inexorable control. Took up the body the lips gone, the eyes gone, who can tell what was being done with that head? When the head of the eloquent Cicero got into the hands of Fulvia, the woman against whom that eloquent tongue had thundered, she pierced the tongue with sharp instruments, that she might avenge herself upon the eloquence she could not answer.
"Took up the body." It was all that was left them. They buried it they had nothing else to do: they must needs hide it away. Give me a place that I may bury my dead out of my sight. We think we will keep the dear body for ever, but a law, higher and more inexorable than our desire in such matters, says, "The time will come when you will say 'Take it out of my sight.'"
Now for the note of a troubled hope. "They went and told Jesus." He was always hearing calamitous news. When did anybody go to him with news that made his face broaden and brighten and glow with new joy? Whenever the door of the house was battered by an importunate hand it was that some sadder tale than ever might be poured into the ear of Jesus. If you saw a woman speaking to his bent ear, she was pouring into it some tale of woe. If you saw a man accosting him, it was that the man might tell Jesus of some bitter distress at home. We could not do without that hearing ear.
"They told Jesus." To tell our grief is something: to put our distress into words is to get relief. We can tell the Saviour everything; we keep back no syllable of the tale. You would be lighter of heart if you would tell the Saviour everything that is giving you distress. He is our priest, and to him we must confess. Tell him about your difficulty at home, your trouble with your child, your perplexity in business, the distresses for which there are no words these you can sigh and hint at in your suggestive and eloquent tears. Let there be no want of confidence between you and your Lord. It is not enough that he knows by his omniscience. He asks us to tell him as if he knew nothing. Herein is the mystery and the grace and the satisfaction of prayer. Though the Lord knows everything we are going to say, he entreats us to say it, knowing that in the prayer itself is often hidden the contentment of its own answer.
What effect was produced upon Jesus Christ? "When Jesus Christ heard of it he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart." It was most natural. There are some occurrences that simply make us quiet. There are shocks we can only answer by eloquent dumbness. He departed and went into a wilderness: it was better to be among the barren sands than amongst murderers and most cruel-minded men. There are times when we are all but inclined to give up our work. Our rain is lost, our dews fall in stony places, our best endeavours are returned to us without echo or answer of joy and gratitude, and we sigh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, some boundless contiguity of shade. This will be only for a while, however, in the case of Jesus Christ. "When he went forth and saw great multitudes he was moved with compassion towards them, and he healed their sick." He was bound to come back again: the sickness would have a greater effect upon him than the murder. He will not relinquish his work because of instances that might have shocked him with fatal distress. He looks upon the multitudinous man and not only upon the individual mischief-doer and murderer. He was the Son of Man, Jesus Christ always took the broad and inclusive view, and this held him to his work when individual instances might have driven him away from it and afflicted him with fatal discouragement.
It is even so we must look at our work, great or small. If we were to be determined by the action of this man or that we should soon abandon the work and have nothing more to do with it. We have not to look at the individual stumbling-block, at the personal fault-finder and heart-breaker, we have to look upon the multitude, the sum-total of things, we have to listen for the universal human cry, and so long as we hold ourselves to universals rather than to particulars we shall be found steadily in our work. Now and again we may be in the wilderness for a while, shocked and distressed, mourning with a great sorrow some unlooked-for calamity, but as upon the air of the wilderness there come the moan and sigh and wail of the world's sorrow we shall go out again and be found faithful servants, working to the last limit of our strength, and working till the last glint dies out of the fading day.
To this Jesus let us cling, to this Jesus let us ever more go. Withhold nothing from the Lamb of God. The bitterer our tale the sweeter his reply, the more agony there is in our prayer the greater grace will be in his answer.
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