A Lesson for Turning

A sermon on Mark 6: 14-29

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Reid Zura on unsplash.]

So, today’s gospel reading is just awful.

It describes abuses of power, with graphic violence and undertones of inappropriate responses to a younger female relative, and there is no justice in the end.

I don’t want to preach on this story!

And especially not today,

Less than 24 hours after a snipper shot at a former President,

and a bystander and the shooter are now dead.

Not when the political divisiveness in our country has taken such a horrifying and frightening turn, and I don’t know where to look for hope of a just and unified country.

Not when anything I say about a story of violence in the political sphere is as likely to cause harm as to help.

I can wrap my brain around why the gospel writer includes the story in his narrative.

He is telling a true story, for one thing… and reality is ugly and violent sometimes.

AND, He is foreshadowing, building tension toward the three predictions of Jesus’s anticipated crucifixion which serve as the focal point of the whole gospel.

The clear precedent set by John’s execution, including the opposition of political power versus God’s messengers is an important part of the overall story that he is presenting.

But what is less clear to me is why the lectionary compilers would select this text for a Sunday gospel reading (which is the assumed sermon focus).

Because they had a choice! There are plenty of passages of scripture, and of the gospels, that never make it into the proscribed Sunday rotation.

We could have just skipped this scene and moved right on to the miraculous feeding that we hear next week.

Within this same chapter of Mark there is a story I would much rather preach on, but that gets skipped.

And it’s not just the ick factor of this story that’s the problem.

Nor the themes of how violence and political power get twisted together that I do not have the perspective to be able to address in light of recent events.

There’s also the problems that a sermon’s goal is to pull out the lesson in the scripture text that speaks to our lives of faith… that we live in our daily reality…

And even with the parallel themes between this story and recent events… those points of contact do not seems to lead to a lesson for us…

We are not the ones making power plays… and the gory, twisted details of this story do not translate to the kinds of challenges we face in our lives of faith.

However, I have wrested with this story for the last week, and I think there is a relevant lesson here if we can focus our attention on one specific character – Herod Antipas – and try to recognize the through-line of his actions and motivations.

To do this, we need to reverse Mark’s construction of the narrative and put it back into chronological order, starting with John’s arrest.

John is arrested because he is speaking out against Herod’s taboo-violating marriage, but while Herodias wanted him killed, Herod refused to exercise this power.

The text tells us that he “feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man,” but apparently there was something more going on than just a fear of divine consequences on Herod’s part.

Despite the rebuke in John’s message, Herod liked to listen to him.

The narrative immediately moves on from this little detail, but I want us to stop here for a moment… because it’s unexpected.

Who wants to listen to a fanatical zealot-type tell them what they are doing wrong?

I suppose there is the maxim that “all press is good press,” but it doesn’t really apply to Herod Antipas.

As the Roman tetrarch over the region of Galilee, Herod had virtually absolute power in the region, as long as his rule did not incite rebellion.[1] 

So, the only possible consequences of John’s diatribes against him would be negative for Herod, if they generated enough public anger to stir up the people…

And yet, Herod liked to listen to him.

We have to wonder why.

Well, the story continues with an opportunity for Herodius, the maligned wife, to shift the balance of power to get what she wants.

Her daughter performs a dance that elicits a thoughtless promise from her step-father to grant any wish she names, and the girl, at her mother’s prompting, asks for the head of John.

Here again we get a momentary glimpse into Herod’s mind.

He is grieved.

He doesn’t want to kill John, but “out of regard for his oaths and for his guests,” he cannot take back his promise.

In other words, Herod would rather cause himself grief than to lose face.

And so, the grisly request is granted.

But that’s not the end of the story, not if we are telling it chronologically.

The gospel writer’s entry point to the story is actually the final clue we get into Herod’s mindset:

When Jesus’ fame begins to spread, and everyone is debating his identity and the source of his power, Herod is definitive about his answers:

“John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”

It’s a telling pronouncement.

 Herod is not unique in imagining that Jesus might be John, returned from the dead, but notice how Herod describes him:

“John, whom I beheaded.”

Herod does not highlight the powers Jesus displays, as do others who identify Jesus with John the baptizer.

Herod does not focus on Jesus’ prophetic authority, as do those who speculate he might be Elijah or another of the ancient prophets returned.

Instead, Herod focuses on his own actions.

John is the one whom Herod beheaded.

Jesus gets his attention because Herod thinks Jesus is the resurrection of one whom Herod unjustly killed.

Herod’s engagement with the question of who Jesus might be is not about Jesus at all… it is about himself.

And with this lens we can perhaps get insight into his consistent motivation in his interactions with John.

Herod likes to listen to John… not because he wants to learn from John, but because he wants to hear what John has to say about himself.

Herod is willing to sacrifice John, despite this fascination, because he cares what everyone else will say about himself.

Everyone is talking about this new man on the scene who acts with power and speaks with prophetic authority, but all Herod can think about is how this man reflects upon himself.

He acts from a self-obsession that controls everything he does.

And, while Herod’s presentation is a bit of an overdone caricature in Mark’s telling, I think it is still the element of the story that holds the lesson for us.

Because even if we are not people in positions of power who can do incredible harm with our self-obsession, we all have the capacity to turn in on ourselves and let that focus control what we do.

Martin Luther recognized this capacity in his description of the essence of sin.

He defined sin as being curved in on oneself.

At the most fundamental level, sin is self-obsession, it is always putting ourselves first…

Because when our focus is centered in on ourselves, we cannot see or care about the needs of others, cutting us off from genuine love, and thus from God who is love…

We cannot prioritize questions of right and wrong over our own self-interest, cutting us off from righteousness, and God who is righteousness…

We cannot be curious about what we might need to learn from someone else, cutting us off from wisdom, and ultimately from God, who is wisdom and who will always have something to teach us.

And even if we never find ourselves in the kind of scandalous story that highlight’s Herod Antipas’s tendency to turn in on himself, we are all vulnerable to this tendency to some degree.

We all sin… we all turn in on ourselves sometimes.

And, I think, the lesson that today’s gospel offers us is an insight on what that tendency can cost us and those around us.

When we are turned in on ourselves, we can only see the world around us as it centers on us… and when we do that, we lose our mooring in truth, and justice, and, ultimately, we lose the ability to see what God is doing in the world.

But the good news in this story is that Jesus’s actual identity is completely unaffected by who we or anyone else says that it is (just as it is unaffected by the political turmoil of our world).

And we know that Jesus is the one who came to save us from ourselves… to turn us away from sin… to free us from being turned in on ourselves… to instead turn us toward him and his way of wisdom, righteousness, and love.

Thanks be to God

[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-6