Mark 6:14-29; July 18, 2024; Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
“When terror wakes me from my dreams and shakes me through and through… “
– verse 3 of the preceding hymn, O God, Be Gracious.
You know, I just want to be comfortable. To live comfortably. To laugh comfortably. To sleep comfortably. I no longer need a loud evening on the town with a large group of friends to be happy. No, just get me into my pajamas, with a fig and cheese board, and I’m pretty content.
Yes, a simple, comfortable, and predictable rhythm with less thrills and even less surprises sounds nice, doesn’t it? As opposed to these past months, and weeks which have felt like years, that have been so chaotic, complex, and uncomfortable.
Living in historic times sure isn’t as romantic as it sounded in those books and movies.
And so, truth be told, I really wanted to avoid this uncomfortable bit of history, and the scripture that the lectionary suggested for us (remembering that we are presently a Sunday behind); for if I had my way, and my control of world events, we would have just heard from Ephesians and left comfortably at that.
But after the news we’ve all recently been forced to live and suffer through, it felt like that would have been sticking our head in the sand, singing, la, la, la… everything is fine… when, la, la, la… everything is so clearly not fine.
So, unfortunately, here we all are, forced to struggle with this uncomfortable Word where John gets beheaded. A prescient text following a tumultuous week of political violence and upheaval, where terror has woken us from our dreams and has shaken us through and through.
As you’ll recall, here in our text, a woman named Herodias gets so bored of her husband Phillip that she conspires to divorce him so she could sleep with his very own brother, Herod Antipas. And, John the Baptist, hearing of all this, says… uh, that’s not right… and Herodias, upon hearing John’s protest is rendered so uncomfortable that she petitions Herod (yes, their names sound alike and are confusing) to have John killed.
Herod at first tries to wiggle out of her request. And for a moment he’s successful. Until, that is, Herodias’ young daughter, Salome, comes before him and “pleases him” with her dancing. Gross.
Adding to this debasement, Antipas grossly agrees to do whatever the young girl asks of him. To which, she repeats her mother’s request, though this time demanding for John’s head to be served on a platter as the center piece of a banquet table.
In an address dated September 7, 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt writes this: “Unfortunately, in this world, the innocent frequently find themselves obliged to pay the penalty for the misdeeds of the guilty.” And for John the Baptist nothing could have been closer to the truth.
You can probably see why I wanted to avoid this lesson and not read it before our children. The whole thing is super uncomfortable, even for us adults. Or at least it should be.
It should make us uncomfortable. It should make us squirm. For as the audience to such gross behavior and the corruption of absolute power, we should all twitch and flinch in its presence. We shouldn’t be entertained or indifferent to it like we’re watching a show on Netflix (or, have we become desensitized having seen and enjoyed too many like it?), but we should be so bothered by it that we feel like John, called to speak out against it, even at the risk of our own comfort.
And so, the question before us today is, will we? Will we? Or have we all become too comfortable with it being normalized; and too comfortable with our stations in life that we dare not risk being courageous when the world needs brave voices?
…You know, my dad has always been history’s greatest optimist. An unwavering hope in our systems of government, our checks and balances, and in our founding principles. He worked for the IRS, after all. But recently I’ve seen how even he has grown gravely worried about the present state of our country and that, my friends, has got me shivering through and through.
For like my father, I’ve always sort of banked that we as a people would ultimately remember that we make up the United States of America, and thus, would remember that we ought to stand together as a united and good people. But this recent stream of terror, with all of its violent rhetoric and violence in action, has snapped me out of that dream and has got me shaking, especially when hearing charismatic leaders and politicians, and pastors of large congregations, offering their unwavering support for the collapse of our previously agreed upon way of rule and ethic, all to the thunderous applause of thousands if not millions in attendance.
Shakespeare writes, “These violent delights have violent ends…” Shakespeare tells us this (as does the show, Westworld) and as does both Roosevelt and History. These violent delights will have violent ends.
For History shows us that you can’t incite a deadly insurgency, gleefully defend it as just a “tourist visit,” and then wonder how we got here and how we are to recover. For History tells us that shouting “some people deserving killing” does not bring about the peace and the “lowered temperatures” that we now want and need. And, History screams at us that if you only ever send thoughts and prayers after kids are gunned down in school, then you shouldn’t act surprised when even the most powerful in the land find themselves in similar crosshairs. As that wrong as that is! As wrong as this all is!
For History burps and reminds us with the force of all its warnings that the Sword of Damocles isn’t just a work of fiction — but that power ill-wanted, ill-gotten, and ill-used will always have the most gross and uncomfortable ends for those who aspire to sit on a throne, or those who wish to sidle up next to it.
And Scripture, my friends, tells us the same. For you see, Herod Antipas’ father was none other than King Herod the Great. And if you recall that same Herod famously sent wise men to find out where the Christ child was to be born so to have him killed. And after sensing that he missed his chance, he then ordered the death of all male children two years of age (and under) to finish the job.
Yeah, sometimes we like to pretend that this book is built on sugar plums and sunshine, but the truth is, scripture’s hope has almost always emerged from the darkest and most uncomfortable places of terror that once shook God’s people through and through. From Cain killing Abel and Joseph’s siblings selling him into slavery, to a cross upon a hill and a crown of stabbing thorns, violent delights have always been the foretaste of violent ends, which the Kingdom of God has always sought to correct.
We are told by Mark in verse 20 that Herod once liked to listen to John. And that he even used to revere and protect him. This same Herod then, the son named Antipas, had the potential to change the violent rhetoric and formula that his dad first put into motion with the slaughter of the innocents. But instead of having the guts to tell his new wife and daughter just how grotesque their requests were, he submits to their will, after John dares to speak truth to their/his power. An uncomfortable truth at that, about what is right and what is wrong. And in so doing, John feels the full force of a weaponized Justice Department against him, as he is thrown into prison as a political enemy so to shut him up.
And yet, to all of this, my friends, John speaks up anyway. At the threat of his own death, John speaks out anyway. And Jesus, one of John’s closest friends, spends the rest of the gospel risking his own life, by speaking up for what is right and speaking out against what is wrong; preaching equally uncomfortable truths like there will be sheep and there will be goats, and in the end, those who will be saved will be those who have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, healed the sick, and attended those in prison. While those who will be damned will have sought to have done the opposite, laughing at the naked, diminishing the sick, and privatizing all sorts of prisons for their own benefit and profit.
And Jesus condemns all of this openly, because in the end some stances are just worth taking, as some comforts are always worth sacrificing.
“After all, the saddest thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burdens,” Charles Frances Horne writes. “To be bent under too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable; but to carry no load at all–there is nothing in that. No one seems to arrive at any goal really worth reaching in this world who does not come to it heavy laden.”
More familiar perhaps, C.S. Lewis adds in his pinnacle work, Mere Christianity, “If you’re thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you: you’re embarking on something which will take the whole of you.”
My friends…
Terror has awoken most of us and has shaken us through and through, and the Spirit is pounding in our heads today that to truly follow in Christ’s footsteps, which first followed in John’s, God requires of us to risk the whole of our lives by speaking uncomfortable truths, even if it means that it will land us in hot water, and put our heads on the proverbial platter.
So let it be. Amen.
