Today's Devotion

Monday of Lent 2, March 2, 2026 - Mark 6:14-34

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

St. Mark’s Gospel gets right to the point. The narrative moves along at a quick pace, getting us to the cross in a hurry. But here, Mark freezes the story in order to give us a backstory. He lingers on the circumstances of the earlier beheading of St. John the Baptist, spending thirteen verses to explain the details.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus – who was not a Christian – also believed that John’s execution was critical to the history of the Jewish nation. Josephus likewise spilled a good bit of ink on it – focusing on the political rather than the personal. And it is from Josephus, not from the Bible, that we learn that Herod’s stepdaughter was named “Salome.”

Our Lord’s cousin John was immensely popular as a prophet – but not among everyone. John was also feared and hated by the political and religious rulers. God used the vanity and wickedness of Herod to move along the historical events that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. Maybe we don’t recognize just how important John the Baptist was as not only the one who inaugurated our Lord’s ministry by baptizing Him, by introducing Jesus to the world as “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), but also as the embodiment of all of the prophets who came before the Christ. And it would be a wicked alliance between the political and religious leaders that would try to silence the prophetic Word by cutting off the head of the final prophet.

But Herod’s worst nightmare comes true in Christ, even though Herod misunderstood what was happening. For this was not a reincarnation of a prophet, but rather the incarnation of God in fulfillment of all the prophets. The Word proclaimed by the prophets takes on flesh as the incarnate Word of God (John 1:1, 14). Herod’s ill-fated attempt to keep the proclaimer of the Word “safe” was really an attempt to keep himself safe: safe from the political fallout of either killing John, or allowing him to preach. Herod tried to keep himself safe from the divine consequences of trying to replace God’s kingdom with his own illegitimate regime propped up by his Roman overlords.

John will lose his bodily voice and his physical head, but John’s prophetic voice is in the Word that cannot be silenced, and John’s spiritual Head is the Christ whom John has come to announce.

The very same political and religious leaders will likewise put Jesus to death in an equally futile attempt to silence God. But without knowing it themselves, they are doing God’s bidding. Herod would later be banished by the Romans. And in forty years after our Lord’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, Jerusalem will be destroyed, the temple forever razed, the phony kingdom of the Herodian family lost forever, with the entire religious system of priests and sacrifices forever abolished.

Some seven hundred years before, an earlier prophet who proclaimed the Christ, is said to have been likewise put to death, by being sawn in half by the wicked King Manasseh of Judah. This prophet was Isaiah, who wrote, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa 40:8).

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.