“John I beheaded. Who then is this about whom I hear such things?”
Herod is concerned; perhaps he feels like he is losing his mind. For a man who preaches and seems remarkably like John the Baptist is gaining fame in Judea, and his conscience is pricking him. We may recall that on his birthday, in order to save face in front of his guests, he honored his offer to give his daughter anything she asked for and his wife, taking advantage of the girl’s innocence, convinced her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, and so Herod had him killed. Yet in Mark’s Gospel we read that when Herod heard John speak “…he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him,” (Mark 6:20). Now he was hearing that same word of God again, and perhaps he wished he had listened the first time.
Alas, he does not, as our Gospel today notes that Herod “…kept trying to see…” Jesus. But Jesus—the Word made flesh (John 1:14)—is not merely meant to be seen, but to be heard: as John writes in his first letter, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and touched with out hands concerns the Word of life—for the life was made visible…” (1 John 1:1-2). Does not Jesus teach that it is the pure of heart that shall see God (Matthew 5:8)? If Herod has not listened to the Word of God from John, nor the Word he has heard from Jesus—evident by his manner of life, unchanged since beheading John—he will not have the purity of heart to see Jesus at all, such that Our Lord could say to him as He would say to Peter, “Blessed are you…For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father,” (Matthew 16:17). We know this to be true, for later in Luke’s Gospel Pilate sends Jesus to Herod, and we read that “Herod was very glad to see Jesus; he had been wanting to see him for a long time, for he had heard about him and had been hoping to see him perform some sign…Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and mocked him…” (Luke 23:8, 11). Herod would not, could not listen: the very One who could have brought his troubled heart the peace it would never know stood before him, and because he was deaf to God’s Word…
…we was blind to God Himself.