8th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 10, year B – Bill Harkins
The Collect O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Gospel: Mark 6:14-29 King Herod heard of Jesus and his disciples, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised…”
Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this Eighth Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting with us today, please introduce yourself to us and thank you so much for joining us this morning. Visitor or regular attendee, we hope you will find Holy Family to be a place of hospitality, compassion, and grace. And, in light of the difficult Gospel text for this morning, we hope we are a place of practicing humility as well, about which, more in a moment.
First, let me confess that I spent several days trying to find an alternative to preaching on the Gospel text appointed for today. Truth told, it’s an awful story about the misuse of power and about the need for those in power to be aware of the temptation and remain in power at any and all costs. Once I greeted at the door of consciousness my own anxiety and opposition to this story of Herod and John, I became curious as to why I had such a strong reaction to the narrative, other than, of course, the horrific and graphic nature of the story. I realized that what lurked in my own shadow side was a deep fear of the misuse of power, and a profound distaste for narcissism in any form—an emotional reaction of anger, fear, and sadness in relation to narcissists that goes back many years. And to be sure, Herod was a narcissist, and this passage is an example of gas-lighting if ever there was one. I also recalled a time many years ago when I was tempted to let power and status cloud my own judgment…a sure sign of my own capacity for narcissism and control…I had to acknowledge the Herod that lurked in my own soul; but more about that in a moment.
Let’s remember that Herod was actually drawn to John, had heard him speak and found him compelling, and yet as we heard today, when Herodias’ daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the young woman, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” and she replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.
Had Herod been able to find a place of humility and grace in his heart, and some healthy self-differentiation—that is to say, making his own decision in response to this horrible request rather than caving in…and cave he did, essentially saying “I’ll do what my girlfriend’s daughter and guests are requesting”—the outcome might have been different. As Hannah Arendt said so well, “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is one among many reasons that theocracies are so very dangerous. As Marcus Borg and Jon Dominic Crossan said so well, the kingdom—or “Kin-dom” of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were ultimately in charge, and the rulers of this world were not. This is the challenge in relation to Empires of any kind. The political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless — peace-making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, embrace rather than exclusion. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being. Entrance into this kingdom requires a counter-cultural choice. John the Baptist, Jesus, and his first followers invite each one of us today: repent, confess, and believe that in Jesus God’s kingdom has arrived. That’s the narrow way to the good news. John urged his listeners to prove their spiritual intentions by concrete deeds of compassion rather than by claims of religious or political affiliation. Some among the crowds took John at his word, but neither the political powers in Rome nor the religious establishment in the temple did. To their credit, they understood that his message was not only deceptively simple; it was deeply subversive.
As Borg and Crossan remind us, about six months after John emerged from the desert like some locust-eating version of Jerry Garcia and baptized Jesus, he was beheaded at the whim of Herod the tetrarch. At the dinner party that night, Herod capitulated to the sadistic demand of his girlfriend’s daughter. “John was a forerunner of Jesus, but he was also a truth-teller to Herod, having rebuked Herod for sleeping with his brother’s wife (Mark 6:14–29). But as with many perverse politicians, Herod reacted with violence to one who had spoken truth to power, so John was murdered. The prophetic word of God from John the Baptist, then, did not originate with the state powers or the religious establishment, nor did it find a receptive audience with them. The claim of God’s kingdom upon my life, John preached, is ultimate. That means that the claims of the state and religious establishments, of race, gender, culture, and money are, at best, penultimate. The earliest and most radical Christian confession was simple: “Jesus is Lord.” By direct implication, Caesar is not lord or god, and neither are all the other many false gods of religion, money, sex, power, politicians who would be theocrats, and so on.
With his pronouncement and then martyrdom, John counsels us to turn away from anything and everything that might hinder ultimate allegiance to Jesus. As we hear during Advent, he invites us to make our crooked ways straight, to flatten all hilly terrain, and to prepare space for the birth of the Messiah into our own lives. When we do that, we’ll find ourselves in the truly Good News that subverts and transcends all politics and religion. Dear One’s let’s covenant to remember this week’s Gospel text as we consider the text for next week. This is a terrible story. It’s hard to say “Thanks be to God!” after a story like this one. As I thought about our time together this morning I thought that perhaps we should skip this story and read the next one instead…a much happier story about Jesus feeding 5,000 hungry people. In stark contrast, Herod’s horrible banquet runs right into the story where Jesus makes sure that everyone is fed and he empowers the disciples to do so…he invites compassion. Mark is a very careful writer. He wants us to hear these two stories together. Even though we didn’t hear that other story today, I hope we remember at least something about Jesus feeding the 5,000. It’s a story found in all four gospels. But the greatest contrast of all is between Jesus’ banquet of life and Herod’s banquet of death. Mark has placed these two stories side by side. He wants us to see the stark contrasts between two very different banquets. Hard as it is to listen, let’s go back to Herod’s story. This feast was not in a deserted place, but in a lavish palace. There wasn’t a large crowd, but a select guest list of important officials. Herod’s wife, Herodias, was there, even though she shouldn’t have been. Herod had stolen her from his brother. John the Baptist had condemned this unlawful liaison, and for that John landed in prison. Though Herod was a Jew, Borg and Crossan remind us that the empire had replaced Torah for him. He tried not to think about it, especially at his own birthday dinner. Why, then, did he give in to this terrible request? Wasn’t it enough that John was in prison? One wonders, was there something inside Herod that remembered God’s word, some spark of God that drew him to John’s teaching? But he had promised Herodias’ daughter that he would give her anything she wanted. And this is precisely where Herod’s narcissism and need for power had tragic consequences.
And here’s where my own troubling narrative reveals itself… I took AP English with Florence Crooke in the fall of my senior year in high school. Ms. Crooke was a formidable presence and did not suffer fools gladly. She was known to be a difficult grader with high expectations. I walked into the class wearing my football letter jacket. She invited me into the hall and suggested I keep it in my locker. “It won’t help you in here,” she said… “You decide.” Then she left me in the hall and closed the door. And truth told, my first response was to walk to the office and register for another class. Besides, I had not been a particularly good student. I was in over my head in an AP English class before the class even began. I suspect Ms. Crooke knew this. She also knew I loved to write. She saw something in me I did not see in myself. And, being a football player in that school in the early 70’s was a source of power I did not want to compromise. It was a terribly stratified culture where role expectations were codified in myriad ways Its really not too much of a stretch to say that football players in that time and place were demigods for whom the rules that applied to others did not apply. This is, of course, a recipe for narcissism—“I can do whatever I want, and the core values and principles that apply to others do not apply to me…and I will not be held accountable when I break those rules.” Ms. Crooke knew this well. She was presenting me with a choice. She was being John the Baptist to my own personal Herod. To this day I cannot explain why I went down the hall to my locker, turned the combination, and put the letter jacket in my locker. I walked back into that classroom and into what was in some ways the beginning of my own, authentic life.
After my first paper (on Walt Whitman if memory serves) she suggested that I write for the Sentinel (our school newspaper), and I did so (though this was unusual for football players in the social stratification of those days) including serving as the sports reporter for the SSHS Panther basketball games and, in the spring, I covered the track meets though I was on the team. We set school records that year in the spring medley relay and mile relay. Ms. Crooke asked me where I wanted to go to college, and I told her the family script was for me to attend UGA. She asked me what my heart told me, and I said I would prefer a small, liberal arts college where I could continue to play ball in an academically rigorous context. She gave me the courage to do just that. I applied to a host of small D-III schools. My father was not pleased (to say the least) and told me that if I did not go to UGA I could pay for college myself. He wasn’t joking, and he thought I would back down, but we were both two stubborn Irishmen, and I got up the next morning and went to Atlantic Steel Company to ask for a job, where I worked at Atlantic Steel Company for 4 summers to pay for Rhodes College, a place that changed my life. Every time I taught a class, for many years, I thought of Ms. Crooke with gratitude. Oh, and one more thing; my high school hero was Roberto Clemente—who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates until his untimely death on New Year’s Eve of 1992, while delivering supplies to Nicaragua, a country ravaged by earthquakes and starvation. My football number—the number on that letter jacket hanging in my locker—was #21 in honor of Clemente. He could have rested on his many laurels as a baseball player and he chose instead a life of service—and died accordingly—extending compassion to those whom he did not know. My football teammates, in an area still much informed by Jim Crow, gave me grief about my affection for Clemente, a Black man, still relatively rare in baseball. But, you see, he had humility—a sure antidote to narcissism—and as a result he broke down the barriers Herod could not. He gave his power away to serve others. Theologian Miraslov Wolf has written that the Exclusion of the other, the stranger, happens wherever barriers are set up that prevent an authentic encounter with the other. We are called to respect the dignity of every human being, and sometimes our need for power, and control, can blind us to this truth. It is all too easy to assume that difference is to be avoided at all costs including, heaven help me, those who don’t walk the halls of their high school halls wearing their letter jackets. Humility leads to grace, which can save us, sometimes, from ourselves. Amen.