The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Learning to Do Ministry Under Pressure:  Mt.14:1 – 13

^14:1 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the news about Jesus, ² and said to his servants, ‘This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.’ ³ For when Herod had John arrested, he bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. ⁴ For John had been saying to him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her.’ ⁵ Although Herod wanted to put him to death, he feared the crowd, because they regarded John as a prophet. ⁶ But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod, ⁷ so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. ⁸ Having been prompted by her mother, she said, ‘Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.’ ⁹ Although he was grieved, the king commanded it to be given because of his oaths, and because of his dinner guests. ¹⁰ He sent and had John beheaded in the prison. ¹¹ And his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. ¹² his disciples came and took away the body and buried it; and they went and reported to Jesus. ¹³ Now when Jesus heard about John, he withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by himself; and when the people heard of this, they followed him on foot from the cities.

         We begin with the day author Max Lucado calls ‘the second most stressful day’ in the life of Jesus.  In one afternoon, Jesus and his disciples faced political danger, emotional hardship, and a big logistical challenge.  First, the political danger:  they were being watched – stalked, even – by an increasingly paranoid ruler.  The sensualist Herod had a record of killing people who challenged him, like John the Baptist did.  Now Herod had ‘heard the news’ about Jesus’ miraculous powers and feared it was a remix of John the Baptist.  Second, the emotional hardship:  Jesus wanted to be alone, presumably to grieve the death of his cousin, colleague, and friend.  John the Baptist was the person who had been the closest to understanding Jesus.  Not only that, but Jesus had the foreboding sense that something similar would happen to him, and wanted to pray about that.  But a huge crowd flocked down upon him like birds hungry for bread crumbs.  So, third, we have the big logistical challenge:  How in the world do you minister to five thousand men, plus women and children?  Here they were, beseeching him to heal their sick, pray for them, bless them, etc.  This was at just the time when Jesus wanted to lower his profile and not be noticed by Herod!  And the day wasn’t even over yet…

In other places in the world, Christians face obstacles like that.  My life, by comparison, is mostly filled with inconveniences, and sometimes I respond quite poorly in those moments!  For example, recently, my laptop was infected with a computer virus.  It came from an email that looked like it was from a friend of mine, but it immediately started downloading internet ads.  I hurriedly turned off my wireless networking switch so the virus couldn’t go out and grab anything else.  The virus slowed down my computer and caused me the inconvenience of being unable to connect to the internet for a couple of days.  Then when I could finally free up a 2 hour time block, I called Hewlett-Packard’s help desk, spent $50 to get a 2 week service contract, so they could get rid of the virus.  But because of this inconvenience, I fell into a strange malaise of self-pity where I just wanted to curl up in bed.  ‘Look at all this opposition,’ I murmured to myself.  ‘It’s so frustrating…’  I turned not upward, but inward, in an unhealthy way.

Jesus, in the few precious minutes that he had privately with his Father, finds not only strength but a new direction.  Jesus sees behind this event the pressure mounting in Israel.  Soon, all the official powers of the land will be searching for him.  So Jesus will use this time to travel to the boundaries of Israel and beyond, into the lands of the Gentiles to serve them and teach there.  The geographical distance covered in this section is significant:  his hometown Nazareth (13:54), the other side of the Lake Gennesaret (14:34), the district of Tyre and Sidon (15:21), along by the Sea of Galilee (15:29), the region of Magadan (15:39), the district of Caesaria Philippi (16:13), Capernaum (17:24), and finally back to the region of the most conflict, Judea near Jerusalem (19:1).  In essence, Jesus will take his disciples back and forth between Jewish and Gentile lands.  He knows his time is limited, and there was much still to impart to his followers.  Opportunities cannot be squandered.  Jesus will make of this time his most substantial training of his disciples toward his multi-ethnic global mission.

Furthermore, many Jewish and Gentile people will be exposed to Jesus and wrestle at a foundational level with the question of what to believe about him.  Sadly, the third major section of Matthew’s Gospel ended with the phrase, ‘When Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there,’ and a brief paragraph about Jesus not performing miracles in his hometown due to the people’s lack of faith (13:53 – 58); the Jews of Nazareth tended to reduce Jesus down to a miracle-worker and nothing more, scornfully asking him to prove his power again.  The fourth section, however, ends with the familiar phrase, ‘When Jesus had finished these words,’ and a note that Jesus was doing miracles again (19:1), presumably because during this season of Jesus’ ministry, observers get the clearest sense yet that Jesus came to be Lord of the whole world.  The people in these other places will have a genuine openness to him.

This whole section is a challenging but helpful reminder to me.  To Jesus, hardships are not cause for moping.  Nor is superficial interest in miracles a cause for rejoicing.  I tend to get bogged down in both mistakes.  Such things are simply occasions for changing the practical expression of the mission:  Jesus says, ‘It is now time for others to hear.’