Third Sunday After the Epiphany

Preaching Commentary

John's Imprisonment, Jesus' Debut

John the Baptist is as good as dead when we hear of Jesus’ splash onto the Galilean landscape in Mark 1:14. Mark tells us that Jesus arrives in Galilee preaching the “Good News of God” after his cousin John’s arrest. Matthew 14:1-12 gives color to the story of John’s demise.

It is a story of Herod the Tetrarch and his lustful greed for his brother Philip’s wife Herodias, a forbidden desire that John the Baptist staunchly opposes. For that criticism, Herod has John arrested--not everyone from the region had submitted themselves to John’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins—and later gives into Herodias’s wish to have John…