Thursday, September 25, 2014

9/25/14

Luke 9:7-9

Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening,
and he was greatly perplexed because some were saying,
“John has been raised from the dead”;
others were saying, “Elijah has appeared”;
still others, “One of the ancient prophets has arisen.”
But Herod said, “John I beheaded.
Who then is this about whom I hear such things?”
And he kept trying to see him.

Reflection

Is seeing believing?  Do we have to witness something happening with our eyes to know that it is true? Our answer might be “Yes, we do to need see something to believe it.” Although when we finally see whatever it is we are looking for, that particular instance becomes a fact, the truth, something indisputable. We no longer have to decide whether or not we want to believe it because we know the true outcome.

Is that why Herod wanted to see Jesus? Did he need visual confirmation that he was real and that the stories of the miracles he was preforming were actually true? Did he need to make sure people were not mistaken Jesus for Elijah or even John the Baptist, the man he himself beheaded? If he saw Jesus with his own eyes would he then believe that he was the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary? Was his pursuit to see Jesus driven by his desire to want to believe or was it derived from the fact that he wanted to do whatever he could in his power to prove Jesus could not be our Savior?

Regardless of Herod’s answer to these questions, he was trying to come up with excuses so that he could properly rationalize who Jesus was and what Jesus was doing.   

The problem is that you can not rationalize FAITH! We can and may be able to rationalize why something may be either important or not so important to us, why we need something now, or why it is ok to act in a certain way.


However, we can not and we should not ever try to rationalize Jesus. The rationalization we would do will not lead us to what we are looking for. Are minds can not imagine the unimaginable; that’s why we have Faith! We should not need to know the answers to these questions to believe, just as Herod should not have had to see Jesus to believe. We, instead, need to believe because our Faith gives us the power to, because we know the truth, have heard the truth, are present to the truth, and will one day be witness of the truth, Jesus Christ!

No comments:

Post a Comment