Br. Lain Wilson

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

Matthew 14:1-12

Last week, while camping in western Massachusetts, I experienced something completely unexpected. Two nights in a row, in the middle of the night, I was seized by overwhelming, crippling terror. I honestly don’t know if I was dreaming or awake. As I lay in my tent, I felt frozen in place, trapped, unable to move. I remember wanting to sit up, to open the rain fly and look out into the dark, but I could not move.

We all feel fear. Some may experience that same crippling terror; others, perhaps the more typical fears of failure, pain, rejection, aging, or death. We all fear something—and most of us, many somethings—and we all respond differently to those fears.

Herod is a fearful man. Matthew and Mark’s gospels both note this, and Matthew crucially adds that his fear hinders him from acting as he desires. He wants to kill John the Baptist, a thorn in his side, who is denouncing his unlawful marriage. Herod wants to kill John, but he’s afraid of the crowd, who views John as a prophet (Mt 14:5).[1]

Underlying this, I suspect there’s another kind of fear. “Fear pervades his whole life,” Plato writes of the tyrant.[2] Herod fears what all petty tyrants fear: the voice of a courageous man speaking the truth. It’s a fear that all too easily gives way to the tools of the tyrant: silencing and suppression, intimidation and violence.

Standing against him is a single, courageous man. Our text doesn’t tell us that John is afraid when facing this petty tyrant and the political theater of the court. He may or may not be afraid of the death he is heading toward. But I suspect that John, standing in the tradition of the prophets, does experience a different kind of fear: the fear of God.

The Scriptures are full of references to the fear of God, or the fear of the Lord. Proverbs notes that the “fear of the Lord is life indeed; filled with it one rests secure and suffers no harm” (Prov 19:23). In Luke’s gospel, Mary sings that God’s “mercy is on those who fear him” (Lk 1:50). This fear isn’t terror, but rather the awareness of God’s glory, the awe-filled trust in God’s faithfulness, the conviction of abiding presence, safety, and security. “For you are my hope, O Lord God, my confidence since I was young,” we hear in today’s Psalm (Ps 71:5).

But I think most important here is Isaiah’s depiction of the ideal king: “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. . . . Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins” (Is 11:2, 5). The fear of God is an integral part of life in the Spirit—as integral as justice and righteousness and faithfulness. The fear of God is about being obedient to the true self that God has created each of us to be.

We all experience fear. There’s a lot to be afraid of. Some of that fear is healthy; most of it is not and brings out what is worst in us. The fear of God, the conviction of God’s abiding faithfulness and provision, the trust that God is our refuge through it all, offers a path of freedom through and past our fear. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” the psalmist sings. “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” (Ps 27:1).

What are you afraid of? What fear is freezing, trapping, or dominating you?

The fear of God offers us a path of freedom from fear so we may respond in faith, so we may act with justice, so we may be courageous in speaking truth.

As in so many other things, John the Baptist points the way.

Amen.

[1] Mark states this differently: Herod’s wife Herodias wants to kill John, whom Herod fears and protects (Mk 6:19-20).

[2] Republic 9.579e, trans. R. Waterfield (New York, 1993), 325.