A time for action: July 14, 2024

 Year B, Pentecost 8                                                                       Mark 6:14-29                                                 During Advent, we hear the story of John’s the Baptist’s miraculous conception and birth…usually a few weeks before the story of Jesus’ miraculous conception and birth.  The miracle of John’s conception is that his parents were older and had long since given up on the idea of having a child. The circumstances were different for Jesus’ conception, but the parallels are hard to miss.  The Gospel of Mark doesn’t include the story of either John or Jesus’ miraculous conception and birth. Mark just left those out.  For Mark, the way to know Jesus, and maybe John as well, was through his death and sacrifice.  While Mark is the shortest Gospel, the story of John’s death is fairly extensive. It’s also unusual because it’s one of only three scenes in the entire Gospel of Mark, where Jesus isn’t present.  So why---why would Mark feel the need to include this rather gory story? Does it teach a lesson? Does it help us understand Jesus better? I don’t think so.

          One of the mistakes we can easily make when reading the Bible is assuming that the stories are morality tales---that every story can help us differentiate between right and wrong, just and unjust.  Yet in this story, the good guy gets killed and there are no consequences for the gruesome killing.  There is a reason that it doesn’t appear in many children’s bibles—at least not the ones I have seen.  There is also a reason we hear a lot of sermons about John’s birth and very few about his death.  It’s an odd and disturbing story. However, for Mark, the death and the sacrifice of Jesus and John are incredibly important to our faith and it’s helpful to look at the parallels between the two.

John was killed by Herod Antipas. There were a number of Herods in that time and it would be easy to confuse Herod Antipas with the Herod who ruled when Jesus was born.  That was Herod the Great. The Herod in our reading today is his son.  He had less power than his father because he was only in charge of a quarter of his father’s kingdom.  Despite the fact that Mark called him King Herod, that was not his title. He was not a king.  He wanted to be a king and even petitioned the Roman Emperor for that title, but he never got it. 

We can see from our reading that he wasn’t a strong leader.  He clearly had some respect for John and even liked listening to him, despite the fact that John openly condemned him for his marriage to his current wife who he stole from his step brother.  The basis of John’s critique was that marrying your brother’s wife would have been against Jewish law.  Even to non-Jews, this marriage was considered immoral because Herod divorced his wife so he could marry his brother’s wife. 

Yet despite the fact that Herod liked John and considered him a holy man, he was easily trapped by not only his wife’s manipulations, but his own need to please and his fear of looking bad in front of his guests.  The text says, “The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for his guests, he did not want to refuse her.” That means that he didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his friends and the important people of the community.  He lacked fortitude. An historian named Josephus who wrote in the first century, wrote about John the Baptist’s death.  According to Josephus, Herod was worried that John was too powerful and was a threat to his own power.  Herod was an insecure man and a weak leader.

Jesus’ death was a little more complicated…perhaps just because we have a lot more information.  There were numerous groups of people conspiring to kill him.  Yet in the end, the person who made the decision was another Roman appointee---Pilate.  Pilate is depicted as man who was also swayed by the crowds. The Gospels portray him as not wanting to crucify Jesus, but being convinced by the Jewish authorities and the crowd.  Some Gospels seem to indicate that he was trapped and controlled by the Jewish leadership. The reality is that Pilate could have done whatever he wanted. He didn’t have to listen to the Jewish leadership. He simply didn’t have the backbone to stand up to the mob. He too was insecure and anxious about the threat to his authority.

          The bad news is that there is no shortage of examples of weak, insecure and immoral leaders today.  It would be tempting to read this story of the death of John and say, “Well political leadership has always been corrupt, what can we mere mortals do about it?” It’s true John was killed. Nobody could have stopped that from happening.  But let’s not forget the last line in our reading for today.  “When (John’s) disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.” 

Imagine the kind of courage that must have required.  John was killed because he challenged the authority of a powerful and volatile leader.  His disciples must have known that in claiming his body, they were claiming their devotion to him. It was a risky move.  While we hear little of John’s followers in the rest of the Gospel, we know from other sources that they didn’t go away.  Their commitment didn’t wane and that must have been extremely dangerous.  This was an act of defiance and faith.  Where Herod showed weakness and fear.  John’s disciples showed courage and love.  In the face of corruption they refused to be corrupted.

          Mark doesn’t tell us Jesus’ reaction to the news of John’s death.  Right after this story Jesus takes his disciples to a deserted place.  Some think they went to this deserted place to rest, but my guess is they were also grieving.  And they might have been seeking a safe place.  Jesus knew his death was inevitable, but he also knew he had more to do and this was not the time for him to die. He understood that the death of the prophet who described himself as Jesus’ forerunner meant that his situation just got more perilous.  Yet it was hard for Jesus to get away from the crowds. They found him and instead of dismissing them as the disciples suggested, he fed 5000.  That was Jesus response to the violence and instability around him.  He served his people. 

          We don’t always have control over what is happening around us.  Even the most powerful in our world don’t---we saw that in the shooting yesterday. Yet we do have control over how we respond to injustice and violence.  There are times when we are meant to speak out like John the Baptist, even when the truth is dangerous.  There are times when we need to show solidarity with those who have been brutalized, murdered and unfairly treated like John’s disciples did when they claimed his butchered body. There are times when we need to show people boundless compassion like Jesus showed to the crowds that followed him. 

This story of John’s beheading is gruesome and horrible. There is no neat and tidy message in this story.  Much like there in no neat and tidy message in our political climate today. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something here.  No matter what horrible things are happening, we are never powerless.  There are always ways to react and they are not the same ways for the same people.   What we cannot do it NOT act.  We must respond with hard truth, with love, and with compassion.