What is most important about the meal Jesus arranges for the people listening to Him? One could say the miracle, and that would be true. But what is a miracle? One could also say the manifestation of the Kingdom, and that too would be true. Yet the Kingdom is...
What is most important about the meal Jesus arranges for the people listening to Him? One could say the miracle, and that would be true. But what is a miracle? One could also say the manifestation of the Kingdom, and that too would be true. Yet the Kingdom is the breath of God, the power of God, and the love of God acting in a particular way. What way is that? The evangelist explains by mentioning that Jesus blessed the food.
One might think that such an ordinary feature of Jewish life as a blessing hardly needed special mention. Yet the evangelist mentions it, and most likely not by accident. What, after all, was this customary Jewish blessing of food? In essence, it was nothing other than an invitation to God to sanctify the table and join the meal, where He was always awaited as the dearest guest. Jesus apparently does the same: He invites His heavenly Father to join the meal He arranges for the people listening to Him. But God's presence always gives the gathering itself a new quality. God's people are a people-community; that is how God intended them to be. Every sacred gathering, including one in a home, reveals and actualizes this quality, making it a reality wherever and whenever those assembled call upon God to bless their fellowship. The place where those who call upon God gather then becomes sacred space; it is no longer merely the meeting place of the community but the place of God's presence.
And what if the meal is blessed by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world in all its fullness? How great must the fullness of God's presence be in that case? Clearly, we must speak here not simply of sacred space as a place of God's presence and His meeting with the faithful, but of the Kingdom, which is precisely such sacred space in all its possible fullness. There God's presence is revealed as nowhere else, and the meeting becomes not merely an episode but the norm of life, for life in the Kingdom is life in God's presence, without which there is no Kingdom. When Jesus blesses the food, everyone nearby becomes, at least for a time, an inhabitant of the Kingdom.
Of course, such participation in itself guarantees nothing; it can be regarded as a kind of spiritual advance. But that advance can also become the first step on the path to the Kingdom, and therefore on the path to salvation.
14
14:1 At that time - When our Lord had spent about a year in his public ministry. Tetrarch - King of a fourth part of his father's dominions. Mar 6:14.
14:2 He is risen from the dead - Herod was a Sadducee: and the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead. But Sadduceeism staggers when conscience awakes.
14:3 His brother Philip's wife - Who was still alive. Mar 6:17.
14:4 It is not lawful for thee to have her - It was not lawful indeed for either of them to have her. For her father Aristobulus was their own brother. John's words were rough, like his raiment.He would not break the force of truth by using soft words, even to a king.
14:5 He would have put him to death - ln his fit of passion; but he was then restrained by fear of the multitude; and afterward by the reverence he bore him.
14:6 The daughter of Herodias - Afterward infamous for a life suitable to this beginning.
14:8 Being before instructed by her mother - Both as to the matter and manner of her petition: She said, Give me here - Fearing if he had time to consider, he would not do it: John the Baptist's head in a charger - A large dish or bowl.
14:9 And the king was sorry - Knowing that John was a good man.Yet for the oath's sake - So he murdered an innocent man from mere tenderness of conscience.
14:10 And he sent and beheaded John in the prison, and his head was given to the damsel - How mysterious is the providence, which left the life of so holy a man in such infamous hands! which permitted it to be sacrificed to the malice of an abandoned harlot, the petulancy of a vain girl, and the rashness of a foolish, perhaps drunken prince, who made a prophet's head the reward of a dance! But we are sure the Almighty will repay his servants in another world for what ever they suffer in this.
14:13 Jesus withdrew into a desert place -
14:15 The time is now past - The usual meal time. Mar 6:35; Luk 9:12.