HEROD'S CURIOSITY

September 24^th, 2020: Luke 9:7-9

        “Herod was curious to see Jesus,” Luke tells us. This Herod, called the Tetrarch or Herod Antipas, was ruler of Galilee and one of the many sons of Herod the Great, who ruled Palestine at the time of Jesus’ birth. He was the one who, when told by the Wise Men from the East that they were going to Bethlehem to venerate the infant king of the world, ordered the killing of all children there, two years old and younger, in the hope that one of them might be the infant king these Kings from the East, as they were called, had told Herod about.

         At a drunken party in his palace, this Herod Antipas was so carried away by the erotic dance of a young woman named Salome that he promised her any reward, up to half of his kingdom. Salome’s mother told her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist, languishing in Herod’s prison for criticizing his adulterous marriage to the mother. And the head was promptly brought to Salome on a platter.

Herod’s curiosity to see Jesus would be satisfied after the Lord’s arrest by Pontius Pilate, who sent him to Herod, because Jesus came from “up north,” in Galilee, which belonged to this Herod’s territory. Hoping to see Jesus work a miracle, Herod questioned him at length, but Jesus spoke not a word. Whereupon Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate.

Luke reports all this to contrast the indifferent indifference with which so many of Jesus’ contemporaries looked on him -- “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son, they asked scornfully – with the faith of the minority who “saw and believed.”

The story in today’s brief gospel reading challenges us with the question: how do we look on Jesus? Is he just someone we call on when we’re in a jam and want help getting out of it? Or is he the Lord of all my life and a deeply loved friend?