What was that phrase we said together after the gospel text was read just moments ago? Thanks be to God?!
Did ya’ll hear the story? I’m not sure that you did. This is an awful story. Just awful. What kind of a feast ends up with a bloody head on the platter instead of cake and ice cream? Birthday party gone bad! Way bad. What the heck!
Where is the good news?
Maybe we should just go home. Charlotte? Charlotte Sewell, you’re the deacon chair. Can we all go home and get an early lunch?
There is no good news here.
It occurs to me that when Harry asked a couple of weeks ago if I could preach on July 11 -because we had a guest preacher that cancelled – It occurs to me that now I know why!
This is a curious story for Mark to include, particularly in such detail. I mean, Mark’s gospel is tight. It is the earliest one we have and the shortest. Mark writes as if he’s running out of time and is only able to tell us absolutely what we need to hear.
Mark does not include a nativity story. That apparently was not deemed critical. Mark does not really include much of a resurrection story. There are women at the empty tomb – unused spices in hand - Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and a woman named Salome. The stone is somehow rolled away. You can almost hear Mark impatiently say to us, “What? You need to know more?”
No nativity. No resurrection. And yet – we have this bad news for John / maybe bad news for us story - and Mark insists that the gospel of Jesus Christ is incomplete without it.
Maybe he didn’t have much choice. Everyone was talking about John. We may see him as a supporting cast member. But he had top billing at the time. In their lifetimes, John was more popular than Jesus.
1st century Galilee didn’t have CNN Breaking News but they did have a historian named Josephus. Mark’s telling of the story is more vivid but even a dry old history book tells of Herod’s fear of John. The historian says that people were “greatly moved by hearing his words.” Mark indicates that Herod was moved as well. John’s words “greatly confused Herod, yet he enjoyed listening to him.”
Herod listened. He may have been sitting on the back pew of that hillside somewhere. But he was drawn to him like so many were. It says that he thought him to be a “righteous and holy person.”
But he was also afraid of John – perhaps particularly when he would conclude with, “there is one more powerful than I who will come after me.” To Herod, who is thought by some not to be a proper king, he is likely trying to legitimize his own ruling power and authority – particularly because his “kingdom” was only ¼ the size of his father’s. Herod the Great. One who is more powerful is not good news for Herod.
He enjoys listening to John, but not the point of hearing him. Not to the point of being moved in a life-changing way. That is just too risky. There is too to lose. Pride, reputation, power.
Fear rather than courage finally kicks in. Herod throws John In prison. Now this wild prophet’s powerful, compelling voice can be contained. Suppressed. Silenced. Maybe so but….
It is at this point - after John is put in prison that Jesus returns to Galilee from the wilderness and announces that the reign of God is near. Jesus then calls together disciples because you don’t bring in the reign of God without disciples.
Maybe this is where the tradition of John decreasing so that Jesus might increase begins. We celebrate this every year. All of creation does as the summer solstice – with the sun at its peak – marks the nativity – the birth - of John the Baptist. That was June 20 this year in the northern hemisphere. Each day after that (July 10, July 11, July 12….) the sun takes a lower position - the days get gradually shorter – until a more humble light in the sky can be seen on the darkest night. Merry Christmas.
Prior to our story today, the disciples have been commissioned by Jesus. They are sent out in pairs – in good community organizing fashion. They are given authority by Jesus over unclean spirits. They are just beginning to get in the groove of what will become a servant leadership ministry with healing of the sick.
Soon they will help Jesus with the miraculous event of feeding 5000 people even though they have very little groceries in their cart. But wedged in between these two moments of good news – really fantastic news – is this rude, seemingly unnecessary interruption to the healing and the feeding.
As disciples, we might say, “We really have no time for this, Mark. We are on kind of a tight schedule and there are a lot of hurting, hungry people. We gotta go.” Mark gets the hook, grabs us, and says, “Woah! Hold your horses. Pump the brakes just a bit. You will get there. But you absolutely need to know certain things first.” Like the arms going down at the railroad crossing. Stop. Look. Listen.
Mark needs us to see this ministry to which Jesus calls us for what it is. Herod may see it even more clearly than we do. Our reading begins, “Herod the king heard about these things.” These things are what the disciples of Jesus are doing – and doing still. These things include COVID testing in the church parking lot. These things are what is being done through North Dallas Shared Ministries. These things involve Fellowship Southwest's work on the Mexico-Texas border. These things…these things…
They trigger a haunting memory for Herod; a flashback to a party that was hijacked by cruel power plays within the hosting royal family – power plays and party games rooted in desperation, fear, and self-preservation. Sometimes those ingredients can lead to outcomes no one could have seen coming. Outcomes of senseless and unnecessary death. Outcomes of lingering regret.
Herod once enjoyed listening to John – this prophet – this messenger of God. Was he hearing him now? Herod the king heard of these things – these “miraculous powers” as the text says of healing and feeding.
It should be noted by any disciples out there - or any who are considering the life of discipleship - that the word “powers” that are associated with “these things” here comes from the Greek δυνάμεις (dynameis) which is the root for our English word “dynamite.”
The things that Jesus is doing – that Jesus’s disciples are assisting him in doing – whether in the 1st or the 21st century - are not without risk.
Mark says today, “You disciples of Jesus – you must take time to recognize this. You need to stop. Open your eyes and look so that you can see. Open your ears and listen so that you might hear.”
These things that Jesus is doing can dismantle structures of injustice – take apart systems of domination – they turn over the tables at banquets of death.
It is a subversive power. It is a power that empowers the powerless. A power that gathers up broken fragments of rubble and debris that have seemingly no value and recreate with them something new – a banquet of life with an inclusive and ever- expanding table.
John prepared the way by preaching repentance – a turning of ourselves so that we might become focused on and committed to the One who calls us to do these things.
It says, “Herod heard about these things, because the name of Jesus had become well known.” The disciples of Jesus are no longer a back-up band to the rock star personality of John the Baptist. As the hopeful title of one of Alice Walker’s books suggests, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
It is not necessarily going to be easy, and the work will never end. Stay focused. Do not get sucked into a capitalistic, success strategy model that uplifts your name at the expense of others. That may be how the palace is constructed but these are not the building materials through which the reign of God will come into fruition.
In the 1st century and in the times and culture in which we now live, the lure of superiority and domination is strong.
I wonder if John’s public embarrassment of Herodius – his accusation that she was not legitimately the queen - was partially the result of his getting sucked into the vortex of the palace power plays. He talked smack about the “queen” when maybe he should have shaken the dust off of his feet – the advice Jesus gives to his disciples when they are not welcomed – and moved on, staying on message.
This rude interruption of a story may be telling us to stay focused. Hit pause occasionally so that you can recommit to the mission of God through Christ. When Rowan Williams was archbishop of Canterbury he said, “It is not the church of God that has a mission. It’s the God of mission that has a church.”
We are the ones Christ has to work with on this mission of God’s. A ragtag, backup band, B-team bunch to be sure. When John died, even though his beheading at the request of an immature teenage girl, was unexpected and stupid, his disciples showed up. They gave him a proper burial.
When Jesus is publicly executed by Rome as an example to others, he is buried by a stranger, Joseph from Arimathea. Because his disciples are nowhere to be found.
Sometimes, as disciples, we have failed to show up. Sometimes we are afraid. Sometimes we have reason to be. Sometimes we do not feel like we are enough. Sometimes we appear to be just a bunch of ragamuffins.
That is what former Franciscan priest Brennan Manning suggests in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel. If there is any good news in this awful story today, it could be that, in spite of ourselves, God can and does use us. As Manning says, we are the:
“bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt out…the wobbly and weak-kneed…
the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker…
the poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents…
the earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay…
the bent and bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God…
the smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.”
Do we resemble that remark?
Sometimes there is guilt from our previous failures in doing the right thing that haunt us. I wonder about the daughter of Herodias. How she felt as she looked back at that fateful decision. She was young. She was enmeshed in an unhealthy and dangerous triangle of power plays and family dysfunction.
It gets tricky in these stories to keep the names of everyone straight. Mark refers to Herod’s brother as Philip, though the brother was also called Herod. Mark also calls the daughter Herodius – the same name as the mother - which can get really confusing - but Josephus calls the daughter Salome.
Mark’s gospel begins with John the Baptist preaching repentance in the wilderness. It ends with the empty tomb of Jesus. Three women were there at the tomb after the Sabbath was over – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.
Is she the same Salome? If so, she lived with the consequences of her actions. We all do. And yet God continues to call her, and you, and me, and all the unworthy ragamuffins. Good news? You bet!
Good news surrounds this story. It embraces it. It is held together – sandwiched between healing and feeding of those in need.
Good news is seen by Jesus in you – and in the powerful possibilities within all of us. And, fellow disciples and those considering a life of discipleship, there is one thing about this good news when it is focused on and committed to the One who calls us to do these things.
It cannot be contained – or suppressed – or silenced.
You are the good news! Let us live into that and – when we do - then the world will truly say - Thanks be to God!