Our lives are often punctuated by events which are outside our control. We talk about the post-Covid world, or pre 9/11. The world before the invasion of Ukraine looked and felt very different. These big events are like ‘punctuation marks’ in our lives.
There are several people in the New Testament called Herod. This one is properly named Herod Antipas, sometimes called Herod the Tetrarch. He was the son of Herod the Great (who ruled when Christ was born), and he was a difficult character. John had an interesting relationship with him. We know that Herod was fascinated with John (Mark 6:20) but he was in an adulterous relationship with his brothers wife, Herodias, and it was this which John openly and publicly criticised. It may be that Herod feared the growing crowd who were following John (i), but it was John’s accusations of adultery which led to his arrest (Mark 6:17). He remained in prison for some time, but the important thing here is that the writers of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew emphasise that it was the arrest of John which marked the beginning of the next and decisive phase of Christ’s ministry (Mark 1:14 and Matthew 4:12). We may see John’s arrest as the spark, the catalyst, which caused Christ to step forwards.
‘There is a time for every matter under heaven,’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1). John’s arrest was a significant event in first century Palestine. It stands as a punctuation mark highlighting the time, God’s time, for Christ to turn his steps towards the cross.
John had been openly and publicly proclaiming the Kingdom of God. His ministry was to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. That phase of his work is done. The Lamb of God, the Messiah is here.
His arrest meant that John’s voice, crying in the wilderness, was silenced. Into that silence walks Christ. The One for whom the way had been prepared. The One whose majestic and powerful voice would change the world for all time.
(i) See Barnes, Matthew 14:2
John’s baptism was for repentance and the forgiveness of sin. Why, then, did Jesus, the one who was without sin, need to be baptised? 
In this first quarter of the 21st Century, we have a new concept of what it means to be an ‘influencer’. An influencer is someone who is perceived as having authority or knowledge on a specific topic and who attracts the interest of large numbers of people. Today, we have ‘cultural influencers’, some of whom can claim millions of followers. Their endorsement of a product or a lifestyle choice can inspire a large tranche of their admirers to change their behaviour. For better or worse, social media influencers can be a powerful force in contemporary culture.
Secondly, the purpose of his message. Social media influencers are, for the most part, about self promotion. We can optimise our websites, manipulate meta data and tags, influence algorithms, and play a host of tricks to encourage people to follow us. There are exceptions, but most influencers are generally self interested. We live in a celebrity culture, where success is measured in ‘clicks’, ‘likes’, ‘follows’, and generated advertising income. Whatever the message of John was, it was not about self, but about someone else. The Gospel writers present him as a signpost linking the coming of Christ to the prophets of old. They also describe a signpost pointing towards the future. His message was to herald the arrival of one who was to follow him. One whose sandals John was not even fit to untie. The message was not about John. It was about Jesus.
