The disciples are on their journey, proclaiming and healing by the authority of Jesus: in the name and in the character of Jesus.  They’re taking the name of Jesus with them.  They’re on the move because they are part of the movement of the Holy Spirit, the coming kingdom of God.  Glory, hallelujah, what a movement!  The kings of this world recognize a threat.  They’re also confused.  They aren’t on the move, though it can feel like they are on the march.  The kings of the world know who the Christians are.  In Canada, they arrest them while, with tacit government approval, radical groups burn down churches.  In China, Christians must register with the government, which then crushes Christians.  And here?  Beloved, if their new age and new order are to come, the rulers know we have to go.  A Christian is almost always inconvenient.

          Herod doesn’t know who Jesus is.  Herod isn’t alone: his people don’t seem to know, either.  They don’t know what to make of Jesus or make of what people say he is doing.  There are different opinions: sound familiar?  Like those in Nazareth, what they know is that the name of Jesus is well known (6:14).  People are talking about Jesus.  Are we?  Name recognition is great, but Mark is telling us something more.  He isn’t saying only that people have heard about Jesus.  The Bible uses the word “name” for character.  The character of Jesus “had become well known” (6:14), through his deeds, certainly—the deeds reported about him, anyway.

          The character of Jesus “had become well known” also through his teaching.  Jesus wants us to know him, to know who he truly is, through his teaching: is this truly God’s Word, or is it impossible to receive it as such?  It’s the blindness and stubbornness he continually encounters along the way that prompt Jesus now and again to work some act of power, but these works are effective only for those who have faith.  His works cause anger and rejection among those with no faith, just as his words cause anger among those whose faith is on their own terms: self-serving, self-congratulating, self-justifying faith.

          What is Herod hearing?  This Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth is the second coming of John the Baptist (6:14).  This Jesus is Elijah, come again (6:15), like some call to an earlier time of Jewish history, an old time of great promise and great failure, great power and great devastation.  To mention Elijah was to say that Jesus is the one foretold by the prophet Malachi: Elijah, who would come “before that great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mal 4:5).  Some were saying Jesus was the forerunner of the Messiah.  The Messiah, among other things, heralded the end of the age, heralded hope and also judgment: that great and dreadful day of the Lord when God once and for all would set all things right.  Glorious day!  Terrible day!  The prophet Amos was right about that day.  As Simeon foretold as he held Mary’s baby, “the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed” by Jesus (Lk 2:35).  Jesus invariably reveals where our true loyalties lie.

          Others, more timid, less sure, were willing only to say that Jesus seemed to be “a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago” (6:15).  Like five hundred years before, a long-gone age.  Who knows anything about 1521?  I guess we know something about 1619, now, but that was just four hundred years ago.  1521—that was like Shakespeare and portly King Henry VIII, right?  Off with her head!  Lutes and jousting and turkey legs—like some Renaissance Faire.  In ancient Israel, even more ancient than in Herod’s day, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel all came for warning, warning particularly for the authorities, secular and religious.  The prophets’ warning was this: God’s judgment was about to come on His people for their sins . . . it was time to heed and repent.  It’s time for a change.  Let the shepherds shepherd, shepherd after God’s own heart, rather than the fickle, greedy, self-seeking, self-congratulating, self-justifying hearts of the authorities, secular and religious.

          The sin of the people and their rulers was their continual, defiant disobedience; their stubborn pursuit of their own ways rather than God’s way, the way God gave them to know Him, bless Him, and enjoy His glory together with Him forever.  No.  The people wanted their own way, wanted God to bless their own way.  Then they would bless God’s way: that’s the covenant to which they were willing to agree.  But one doesn’t tell God, in so many words, and deeds, “My way or the highway.”

          The prophets were sent not primarily to condemn but above all to call to repentance.  Condemnation was reserved for those who would not, who resolutely chose not to repent.  People talk about change, wanting it, but they also want to have authority over the change, over what changes.  The one thing we know about change is that we have no authority over it: it comes when and as it wills, for its own purposes, like the Spirit of God.  Often, the change many long for is a change back to the good old days: the days of their childhood, their youth.  It’s not so much that we long for the good old days themselves, though, as for the traditional values we associate with those earlier times: a sense of stability, familiarity, shared values, neighborliness, connection.  We sigh and even weep for change, but do we long and cry out for God?

          John, Elijah, one of the prophets of old—as though something were at work through them all that could not be stopped, couldn’t be silenced, eradicated, or driven out.  The prophet’s voice, God’s Word, could not be killed.  It returns, like a spirit, to haunt the conscience of the king.  God wants the rulers and powers of this world to hear Him.  He gives them opportunity.

          Herod, hearing what his people are telling him, decides that Jesus somehow is John, again, “raised from the dead” (6:16).  Raised how?  By whom?  The answer would have been obvious.  Raised by the power of God, for the purposes of God, purposes that cannot be thwarted, deflected, or defeated.  Herod had tried thwarting, deflecting, and defeating, to no avail.  Herod has the power to kill, but the power of life is with God.  Earthly powers have the power to kill, to harm—we know!  In our times, we know little of the martyrs, those who died for the sake of the faith, who were killed because they would not renounce the faith for the world.  No power on earth has the power to give life, to create life.  Scientists can take what is already alive and make more living things, with varying rates of success.  To cause life where there was no life, however, to create something from nothing, is a power solely in the hands of God.  God is the Lifegiver.  And to raise from the dead?  Our heads swim with the impossibility, even as our hearts thrill to the hope.  What does it all mean?  It means God.

          Herod is convinced that John is back, but for what?  Why?  From Herod’s limited and mistaken perspective, it can only be to hound Herod, to afflict his conscience.  His conscience needed afflicting; apparently Herod knew it, though he’d never admit it.  He was Herod!  He didn’t have to admit anything.  Who could make him?  He answered to no one!  Such thinking isn’t confined to the powerful of the earth.  The impunity of the powerful can be stunning to behold.  The difference is that they are fully and all too often freely able to indulge their fallenness, while the rest of us are not.  Neither you nor I could be a Harvey Weinstein or a Jeffery Epstein—we lack the money and the machine—but the other ones are still out there, practicing wickedness with impunity while contemplating still greater wickedness.

          Who is this Jesus?  What is the meaning of Jesus?  What has returned, come again, in Jesus, perplexes, frightens, and convinces Herod.  What has returned, because it has never gone away, is the power of God, the power of God’s Word, condemning what is worthy of condemnation and bringing life to those appointed to life.  Sovereignty.  God’s sovereignty—all things, all beings, in His hands, for His purposes, according to His plans.  If we either are or are not appointed to life, though, what does it matter what we do or do not do?  It matters immensely, eternally!  God’s sovereignty does not make us robots!

          We know we are among those appointed to life when we experience the painful, glorious blessing of repentance, when we make good upon that repentance given to us and begin to walk in and remain in the way God shows us in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.  What is outside of that way is worthy of condemnation, and we see many things outside that way, many living outside that way, some claiming Christianity as they willfully, happily walk outside that way.  As though they could indulge sin and praise Jesus in the same breath.

          All of us have merited only God’s condemnation.  That’s not a pretty thought, but it’s biblical truth.  We don’t earn God’s approval.  We don’t get God’s notice by being nice, kind, good; God gets our notice by His freely given grace.  We don’t sit in judgment over anyone, but, in sorrow and Gospel compassion, we do see the same willful waywardness in others.  My imperfection and failure, if anything, mean it’s that much easier for me to see the same in another.  God is not forcing anyone into condemnation against his or her will.  God is allowing them to go where they want to go.  “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death” (Pr 14:12).

          The only thing forcing someone to remain separated from God is his or her own stubborn heart.  The only one who has the power to change the heart is God.  God’s offer of salvation is truly extended to everyone, without exception: that is the glorious hope by which we live, the glorious hope by which you and I can bring the hope for life to others.  Remember, that Word of hope is persistent, dogged; it can’t be stopped, silenced, or driven out.  The powers and rulers of this world have no power or authority over the Word of God.  In God’s Word, all earthly power meets a higher power, all earthly authority meets a higher authority.

          And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.