As the Forerunner . . . So the Runner

Matthew 14:1-2

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

Matthew has put down a marker, a signpost, halfway through his gospel: if this happened to the prophet who went on ahead, this is what will happen to the one who follows.

So he invites us to reflect, as we see the story unfold, on what is taking Jesus himself to his fate, and how we should view it when it comes. Jesus, like John, has urged people to repent. He, like John, has challenged the present powers, though he has done so more cryptically, in riddles that will only become plain and blunt when he arrives in Jerusalem. He has already had the threat of death suspended over him, not just at his birth but when the Pharisees, rightly seeing his plans as cutting clean across their own, decide they should get rid of him. And, behind it all, we learn to recognize what every first-century Jew knew well: that anyone announcing the kingdom of God was challenging a power that stood behind even Herod, the power of Caesar himself (183).