Please read the Scripture passage before the homily.
Let us first study King Herod. He inherited one fourth of his father’s kingdom and so his official title was tetrarch, not king: a tetrarch is one who rules only a fourth of a kingdom. He had great power: his wife overruled him, and a girl got him to make foolish promises and then persuaded him to kill John the Baptist. He thought more of the leading men of Galilee than of his obligation to pursue justice and integrity. All-powerful Herod was a puppet for his wife, for a child, for those of lower social position than he was.
To see what kind of King Jesus was, look at the next chapter where Jesus had compassion and fed the five thousand. Jesus came to the crowd as a shepherd to his flock, and this image of shepherd was often used to describe good kings in antiquity. Jesus fed the hungry and poor. Jesus presided at his banquet and controlled the action. Jesus was the antithesis of King Herod.
King Herod was non-king; who asked who Jesus was. He must have thought that Jesus was John the Baptist who had come back to haunt him.
There is one final note about John the Baptist. His disciples took him and buried him. In other words, John the Baptist had died. He did not, however, as Jesus did, rise from the dead. He had a large following in the early Church, as the Acts of the Apostles witnesses, but he was not the Christ.