Sermon: Why It’s Important to Hear Difficult Truths

Proper 10, Year B. July 11^th, 2021. Mark 6:14-29. Herod Beheads John the Baptist

Synopsis: Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, arrested John the Baptist for preaching that his marriage to his brother’s former wife was not right in God’s eyes. This caused Herod’s new wife, Herodias, to desire John’s death. At Herod’s birthday, when he was drunk, she finally had her chance, and John’s head wound up on a platter at the dinner table.

Well… that Gospel reading isn’t a bedtime story you want to read your children. I asked my wife, “How am I supposed to preach a sermon about a King who steals his brother’s wife, an ‘erotic dancer,’ and a grasshopper-eating prophet?” She said, “Well, don’t lead with that.” She’s probably right, so I took her advice. 

This one is not easy to preach or easy to hear. I like sermons that give me something to think about or sermons that make me say, “I needed that today.” This reading about John’s death doesn’t provide those warm fuzzies. 

It’s not easy to find the spiritual application of the story; it’s a challenge even to know where to look to find the moral of the story? 

The moral of the story certainly is not justice. John lived a good life before God and preached the truth, but In the end, it cost him his head.

So what is the reading trying to show us that we can apply to our lives in a post-pandemic world?

Background

Hold that question in your mind; we will come back to it.

This almost seems like this is a Star Wars movie. It’s as if we’ve been thrown into episode IV, but we need to return to Episode I to get the backstory. 

We might benefit from a little bit of the back story to Herod Antipas and his relationship with John the Baptist.  

Herod was the ruler of the region where John and Jesus lived. While vacationing in Rome, his brother’s wife caught his eye. One thing led to another, and it turned into a captivating soap opera. They apparently fell in love and ran off together. 

One person’s treasure is another…. Well, let’s just say Phillip was apparently elated to see her go. 

When Herod returned, John the Baptizer had a fire and brimstone Baptist sermon ready for him. John said it was wrong for him to steal his brother’s wife and marry her.

Then the predicament began; Herod liked John before his new marriage. The Gospels even say he listened to John with curiosity. But His new illegal wife, Herodias, loathed the prophet and patiently waited for an excuse to kill him.

That opportunity came when Herod hosted a birthday party for himself.

His stepdaughter, Salome, provided some entertainment and danced for Herod and the drunk generals, CEOs, and celebrities in attendance. I’m sure this dance was the box step. 

The dance was so modest that it caused Herod to promise to give her anything she wanted… up to half his kingdom. 

That sounds like the Flo Rida song from a few years ago, “I fell in love with a dancer.”

So Salome ran to her mother to ask, “what should I request?” That was finally her mother’s moment. She tried to get Herod to kill John, but he wouldn’t, but now Herod overextended himself. “The head of John the Baptist,” she said.

We know there was a conflict in Herod. He didn’t want to kill John. The reading said, “He feared John knowing he was a righteous man, and he wanted to protect him. For he liked to listen to John, even when it left him perplexed.”

But the text says that he went through with the execution anyway. Maybe it was to save face in front of his guests. It could have been a dedication to his word. Maybe he didn’t want to deal with his wife. Perhaps he knew his reputation would take a hit if he didn’t kill John. 

We can see the conflict in the King.

Two Types of Truth Tellers

Allow me a parenthetical insert into this story. There are two types of people we usually can’t stand; the ones who lie to us… and the ones who have a gift of always telling us the truth. 

I’ll never forget the first time I got in trouble for telling the truth. 

It was thanksgiving lunch at my aunt’s house. I was about eight years old—old enough to hear plenty of Sunday school lessons on the importance of telling the truth. 

My mother wanted to engage in the proper social etiquette and compliment the hostess on the food. “How’s lunch?” my mother asked me, anticipating that I would be her pawn in the etiquette game. I spoke my truth, “This turkey is dry as a bone.” I said.  

That’s when non-verbal communication ensued between eight-year-old Rian and his mother. Later I received instructions to lie if necessary to save face. 

Well, John didn’t like the turkey, told the truth about it, and he paid for it with his life. 

Is there a moral to the story?

So, back to my original question, what should we do with a story about a King who stole his brother’s wife, threw a party for himself, promised a stripper half of his kingdom in front of a room full of drunk politicians, then had a conservative prophet killed to save face?

It’s tempting to just dismiss it as the tragic tale of John the Baptist’s death and admit there isn’t much we can glean from it.

One scholar I read last week said we just discard it as something that happened before the enlightenment—before we were developed enough to know better than to perpetuate such barbarism.  

However, Let’s not write it off too quickly because some things never change, even 2,000 years later. At present, perhaps more than ever, we live in an age of corruption much like John. 

People are still quick to treat marriages and relationships like disposable contracts and leave their significant other’s whenever it feels good. 

So to say we have intellectually progressed past “such barbarisms” is naïve at best.  

Who am I in the passage?

What if the story’s point is not as much about John’s death as it is about Herod’s missed opportunity?

The story almost reminds me of King Lear… Perhaps Shakespeare would call this “The Tragedy of Herod Antipas.”

See if you resonate: I have a tendency, you probably do too if you’re at the thanksgiving table of honesty, to place myself in the role of the hero. I like to see myself as John… the great prophet who speaks truth to power, who stands at the gates of the capital telling Herod of his sin. 

The truth is I’m probably guilty of distancing myself from people who speak hard reality in my life. I’ve been guilty of trying to impress the important people in front of me to the detriment of those who really mattered.

I’ve even gripped about the preacher while others were too, even though secretly I liked him and listened to him. 

The true tragedy of Herod is that when he faced difficult decision points, he took the easy path because it took less spirituality and less integrity. After the death of Jesus, his wife’s brother defeated him in a power struggle with the Roman emperor and convinced the emperor that Herod would lead a revolt against Rome. 

Emperor Caligula banished him to Spain, where, Like King Lear, he slowly went insane before the emperor sent an assassin to kill him and his wife, Herodias. 

Where is Jesus in the passage?

This is the only story in his Gospel that does not revolve around Jesus. No wonder it feels hopeless; Christ isn’t in it. I think Mark wanted us to realize that when Jesus isn’t the center of the story, the results are tragic and hopeless. 

Where is that grain of truth? It’s that we’re all a little bit like Herod. 

We’re complex, and we have various people and places and ideas tugging at our souls from a myriad of directions. We all write our stories. We all have twists and turns we did not expect that test our character. It’s who we are, and it’s the decisions we make in the times of tension that ultimately pen our history. 

But we have the opportunity to write Jesus at the center of the story. 

Amen.