2 Sam
6:1-5,12b-19; Ps 24; Eph 1: 3-14; MARK 6: 14-29
In the name of God who created
us…now & always. AMEN
…”for Herod feared John, knowing he
was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was
greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.” Then the whole sorry
story unfolds. Here are the homilies usually preached on this scripture, ones
I’m not going to preach — remember that’s caller praeteritio — The
Hebrew Scripture, a fine story, shows David leaping, dancing and making burnt
offerings, but then taking, blessing and giving out food to the people, as was
their custom. Was that foreshadowing Jesus and his actions, without the unseemly
(too bad) leaping and dancing. Or a pious homily on the Ephesians, and that we
have received, and we have, all spiritual blessings.
More likely though would be an
extended homily on the barbaric customs of THEM, beheading to make a context
for crucifying. Weren’t they awful, those long ago Romans? The barbarism of
then or now would preach. This year I could report on General Convention. While
there is reason to rejoice at the approval of Same Sex Blessings in Dioceses
where Bishops permit and the simplicity of that vote, it was high time,
after a generation of doing it. A budget also was approved expeditiously
after agony before Convention. Less good news to me was the non-vote on the
Anglican Covenant. The terms for staying in the Anglican Communion are complex
and difficult, but this formulation seems to me unacceptable. Rather than
turning it down, we voted not to vote—lest we seem unfriendly to the Anglican
Communion. A fine person, Gay Jennings, was elected President of the House of
Deputies, and our own Byron Rushing as Vice President, and that’s fine, and
Yale Grad Student Lisa Anderson, friend of Marisa’s, was elected to Executive
Council along with Frederica Thomsett, but there will be a more cogent report
from Kathryn Piccard I hope but not here or now.
Two other
responses to this Gospel, I’ll also eschew. (More here of what I’m not
going to say, “Two more,” now you say, “I’ll scream; get to it.”
I’m not going to talk about two other topics, one from classic Chinese legends,
when a bellcaster, couldn’t get the metal to pour right, said “If only the gods
would make the bell ring true, the raging Emperor wouldn’t destroy me,” so his
dear daughter flung herself into the molten metal to be a worthy sacrifice to
the gods, and the bell was true, and the craftsman desolate, nor its paired
story of Jephtha. "Whatever/whoever emerges and comes out of the doors of
my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall
surely be God’s, and I shall sacrifice that as a burnt offering."(Judges 11:31) The
victorious Jephthah is met on his return by his daughter, his only child.
Jephthah tears his clothes and cries, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought
me very low!" but is bound by his vow: "I have given my word to God,
and I cannot go back on it.”—sad topic of two sad fathers trapped by their
sticking to their public vows.
Second I
won’t preach about the parallels of the savagery of John’s death previewing the
death of Jesus. Think of the links: Herod, the betrayal, the choice between the
crowd’s choice and Jesus and Herodias or John. Not that either. Why don’t you
scream? I did name two more non-topics, but you didn’t scream; it’d be publicly
embarrassing.
There’s a theme. Herod admired John. He
found him interesting and yet he feared his honesty. Herod had married his
brother’s wife, and John preached against that and discomforted her. He was
much entertained by her daughter Herodias, and promised her whatever she
wanted. He promised her in front of all his guests. The girl, whatever pie
in-the-sky she dreamed of, asked her mom, who said, “The head of John the
Baptist on a plate.” Herod “was deeply grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths
and the guests, he did not want to refuse her.” Would not the reasonable thing
to have done been to say, “Absolutely not, that’s horrible. How about a cask of
gold?” Aside from all the other possibilities of Herod’s wickedness, this
failure on Herod’s part is not on a Superman or heroic scale. Herod acts in an
ordinary way.
I’ve
heard, been told, that one of the strongest motivating factors for adults,
particularly adult males, is to avoid embarrassment in front of peers. You
didn’t scream, even as I extended the diversions. You didn’t and wouldn’t—we’re
Episcopalians; we’re in church; there might be strangers here who wouldn’t
understand, who wouldn’t hear our screams as a humorous honesty. It would be an
embarrassment.
It seemed
to me that this human characteristic—avoiding embarrassment—is at the core of
one way to approach this narrative. To choose wrong over right on this deadly
scale, or on any other scale, is as good an example of sin as is demonstrated
in the Gospels. When Jesus was crucified there a far more complex trail of
culpable people than Herod or Pilate, but here the responsibility is clear.
What
could Herod have done different? How could he have not gotten to this savage
action? The big bold “anything you want” offer is always a risk. (I learned
that raising kids. I almost invariably, (though I probably blew it on
occasion,) would offer as a treat at the grocery store, or wherever, “You can
have anything you want, within reason.” I knew from dealing with even the
smallest child, that any blanket offer would be leapt on, and I’d be stuck.
Whenever we left a museum or store, I’d say the “within reason,” not only as a
check on the kids who were being offered the treat, but also on me, to make
sure I thought about whatever the request was. I didn’t want to get painted
into a corner, let alone one in public. I learned to give a time limit to my
offers, and sometimes to name a maximum dollar amount to define what “reason”
in that case was. I believe such self-cautions are self-protections from
getting too far out on risky limbs. Repeating that pattern taught some
self-discipline to my kids and to me.
The risk
to each of us is getting so far out on a limb that we feel we can’t crawl back.
Why couldn’t Herod? Here are three possible reasons. He was in public and he
didn’t want to lose face. There’s a kind of inner security that could have told
assured him, he was such a good and trust-worthy person, that going back on his
promise, to do the right thing wouldn’t have caused him to lose face, but would
have shown what a good person he was, but he wasn’t and couldn’t.
Second,
he’d made oaths, again in public. By saying he’d sworn oaths, and so he
couldn’t go back on his word to whoever he’d sworn by, switched the blame to
that “whoever.” If he’d sworn to the Holy One to give the girl whatever she asked
for, and then didn’t, the Holy One would be angry with him. He’d have violated
his relationship with the Holy One. Here he was in effect shifting the
responsibility, or actually blame, for the fulfilling of the oath onto the Holy
One, so it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t responsible for the savagery
against John the Baptist; the Holy one expected it. Nonsense. Again, not only
was he speaking for the Holy One, but also he was dishonoring the Holy One, to
whom he’d pledged his oath, by not recognizing that if the oath receiver was
worthy, the request should be turned down in the name of the Holy One,
not fulfilled. (Remember old fashioned curfews or named times when college
students were expected back in their dorms on weekend and other nights? Kids
would race home, sometimes getting in accidents to meet those deadlines.
Whenever something awful did happen, blame would go on the time policy,
not the drunk driving, leaving too late, or bad judgment. Colleges finally
refused to have that blame thrown at them, and stopped the policies.) It wasn’t
the gods’ fault the bellmaker’s daughter sacrificed herself, nor Jephtha’s
hearers, nor was John’s death the fault of to whom Herod had sworn. The oaths
were arrogant and unworthy.
Third,
and at the core of Herod’s behavior, was sin. Herod’s pride overcame judgment,
and he acted wrongly in the name of those to whom he appeared as leader and to
those to whom he’d sworn oaths. His arrogance overrode his self-knowledge,
judgment, and true sense of his place in the world, the situation, and a
balance of right and wrong. Whether Herod was evil, flawed, or insecure, isn’t
the point. For us, we can see where and how we yield to sin, when we do
something we don’t want to do, and/or know is wrong.
It’s an
odd Gospel because Jesus really isn’t in it, other than perhaps this way: sin
is present as is the need to beat it back. Jesus demonstrated a life led
without sin, and offered it for us as example and enough to
expiate our sins. His life, lived without sin, was enough to be salvation for
all. Herod’s story here reminds us we need and long
for a Savior. Herod shows us of how easy it is to fall into irreversible sin.
Jesus lived without sin and through his love saves us now and always, welcoming
us to him in Paradise: Good News. AMEN.
©
Katharine C. Black 15 July 2012, St. John’s
Boston
