Herod and the King

Jesus is a striking historical figure. Attempts to summarize him, to boil down his message or his work, have often failed for the basic reason that he comes to us, not as a simple person, but a complex one. He offers grace to the weakest and the most unholy of people, yet demands more from them than anyone in history had before. What are we to make of him? How do we rightly speak about these two distinct parts of Jesus’ own message? What insight might Matthew’s text today provide for us?