The Hinge of History

It sometimes seems that God shows his sense of humor with history. Halford
Luccock once noted that Nero was sure that the most important happenings in
Rome were the words he said, the laws he enacted, and the things he did. As
a matter of fact, the biggest events in Rome at the time were some prayer
meetings which were being held secretly in the catacombs. The Medici, he
observes, must have seemed the key figures in Renaissance Europe, with their
palaces, art galleries, and political power. Yet they are overshadowed by "a
little boy playing about on the docks of Genoa,"
who would eventually open the seaway to the Americans - Christopher
Columbus.

So it was in John the Baptizer's time. One can easily imagine the pomp and
circumstance with which Herod trampled about as tetrarch of Galilee.
Wherever he went, people scraped and bowed. They waited for a disdaining nod
and dreamed of some act of preferment from his hand. Herod was, indeed, a
big man in Galilee in the first century. Today, all his pomp is simply
pompous, and all his circumstance only circumstantial. But John the
Baptizer! -- a great human being.

J. Ellsworth Kalas, 'The Hinge of History,' Sermons on the Gospel Readings,
Cycle C, CSS Publishing Company