I’ve been thinking a lot about my hands this week. I have thin hands, with long, slender fingers. “Piano player hands,” my grandmother would say wistfully, holding up her short stubby fingers against my own. Nine futile years of piano lessons proved my grandmother wrong, these are not piano player hands. Long though they may be, my fingers lack the dexterity needed for music making. My grandmother’s hands were quilting hands. Her short fingers were amazingly nimble with a needle and thread. In her ninety-four years she made well over two hundred quilts, all more works of art then functional objects, though we used them for function. I was in college before I knew that you could buy a bedspread, no one in my family ever had. Such was the work of my grandmother’s hands.
Our hands are incredibly complex systems. Two major muscle groups and countless nerves move the twenty-seven bones along four different arches to allow us such diverse mobility. I invite you to take a moment and just move your hands. Notice all of the different ways you can move them, the various motions and contortions they are capable of. No other part of us has the dexterity of our fingers.
Now think of all the things you can do with your hands. Think of all the things you do without thinking. Do you stop to contemplate which finger goes where when you swing a golf club, open a book, hug a friend, or pick up your grandchild? These actions come automatically. So complex, so perfect, is the coordination of our fingers that we give little or no thought to the movements required for these tasks. But our hands know how to do them. Our hands are the holders of memories.
It was officiating Dorcas’s funeral this week that got me thinking about my hands. My right hand still remembers the first casket I ever touched as a pastor. The silky smoothness of the well polished oak; so soft as to feel almost warm. That first casket held the body of a young man killed in a car accident. After a week of feeling totally helpless in the face of unspeakable tragedy, standing alongside a family whose grief was immeasurable, my right hand remembers the feeling of the casket under my palm as my voice proclaimed the powerful words of promise from the commendation prayer, that God will receive this lamb of God’s own flock into arms of mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, into the glorious company of the saints of light. This prayer proclaims that even at the grave our song is Alleluia, because even in death Christ’s victory is assured. I hold that memory in my hands for the power of it is too deep for my mind to understand.
I began my sermon this morning with a reflection on hands because for the next five weeks, we will be immersing ourselves in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. There are rich and powerful teachings in this chapter. In the next five weeks we will hear Jesus declare himself to be the Bread of Life, proclaiming, “whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus will offer us his own body, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” The disciples will marvel at his words, saying, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” But they will also question, asking, “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” We will probably, in the next four weeks find ourselves in the same boat as the disciples, caught between the confusing tension of “Lord to whom shall we go?” and “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But the teachings we will be immersed in for the next five weeks did not come from nowhere. Before all of this teaching, Jesus began with the sign of God’s power that we heard in our Gospel reading for today, that Jesus fed five thousand from his own hands.
After crossing the Sea of Galilee, Jesus went with his disciples up a mountain to sit. A large crowd followed them, for they had seen the signs that Jesus had done for the sick. When Jesus saw the crowd, he said to Philip, “where are we to buy bread for them?” Philip was dumbfounded, “Six months’ wages couldn’t buy bread to feed all these people.” But Jesus took five loaves and two fish in his hands, gave thanks, and from his own hands, distributed them to all the people, so that when he was finished there was enough leftover to collect twelve baskets.
Before Jesus taught them, he fed them. Before they heard about how he would give his body for them, he first used his hands to feed them. From his hands to their hands, Jesus fed five thousand people bread, so that they could hear the words of the promise of salvation that would soon pass from his body to their bodies. The teaching that would follow was rich and powerful but also “difficult; who can accept it?” And so Jesus began that teaching with something they could hold on to, something they could know with their hands when the teaching itself was too much for their minds. Jesus began with bread; that passed from his hands to their hands. Bread so that, in the long days to come, the days of journeying to the cross, the days of watching Christ’s death and thinking it was the end, the days of wondering in the glory of the resurrection, their hands would remember what their minds might not. Their hands would remember that day on a mountain when Jesus gave bread to them. Their hands would remember that moment, so that every time bread was broken and shared in their midst, their hands would again feel bread broken on a hillside, and their hearts the promise that Jesus himself was the Bread of Life, that “whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believe in him will never be thirsty.”
We receive before we know. We receive, even though we may never know, and that receiving leads us to understanding that is deeper than all knowledge. That is the pattern of the life of faith, the pattern of our worship life together. The walk of Christian faith starts at baptism. We baptize infants in our tradition because baptism is not about our being ready for God, but about God who is always ready for us. It is about God ushering us in, broken and confused, wet and cold and probably now with our hair all tousled, into God’s family as children, as heirs, of God’s promise.
And we live this promise out every week when we come to the table and receive God’s own body in the bread and the wine of communion. We celebrate the Eucharist every week, because every week we need the opportunity to know that God meets us here, no matter what the week behind us has brought us. It is not a matter of us being ready for the Eucharist, but of the Eucharist making us ready for what is to come. Martin Luther said that the days that we feel the least ready for the Eucharist are the days in which we need the Eucharist the most.
So come to the table with your hands outstretched. Come open the beautiful, carefully crafted gift of your hands. Bring hands that will hold God using muscles and tendons, bones and nerves woven together in perfect precision to hold grace of expansive, immeasurable, abundance. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is that God’s infinite goodness, too powerful, too wonderful for human comprehension, shrunk itself down into such simple gifts of bread and fish, so that all could be fed from God’s abundance. And that abundance would cascade over into leftovers enough to feed the world. This is God’s abundant feast set for you. This is food to feed a hungry world. This is a foretaste of the feast to come. Come taste and receive God’s goodness. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, July 27, 2015
Built Together: A Sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22
This sermon was preached during a visit to Trinity's mission partner, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Niles, MI.
Good morning! It is good to be here worshiping with you here at Holy Trinity. Those of us who are here bring you greetings from the rest of our congregation who were not able to travel with us, back at Trinity in Battle Creek. It is so good to be worshiping together as mission partners in the body of Christ.
I have been the pastor at Trinity for just a little over a year now, and I remember when I was discerning this call to ministry one of the pieces that really helped me know that I was called to be in ministry in this place was Trinity’s partnership with outside organizations like the Woman’s Co-op and Creating Change. I first experienced my call to ministry in a congregation that partnered with a women’s shelter in Washington, DC, so the church has always felt most alive to me when it was in partnership with others. I was really excited to come and serve alongside these nonprofit partners in mission.
And then I don’t think I’d been in the office a week, when my office manager wandered down the hall with a check stub from some congregation in a Michigan city I had never heard of. “Where is Niles?” I asked. “And why are they sending us money?” They do this once a quarter, I was informed; they are our mission partners. And that was when I knew I had stumbled into something really special. Because not only was I a pastor who had the incredible privilege of serving a congregation committed to being church in the world. But in doing that work, my congregation had partners all across the Michigan synod who are also committed to being church in the world, and who live out that commitment by supporting Trinity so that we can then better support these non-profit partners who are our hands and feet, and through us God’s hands and feet, in a world who so desperately longs to know God’s presence.
There is something so strikingly counter-cultural about us joining together in this partnership. Here we are; two little congregations in two small towns in a state that is still struggling to regain footing after the recession. Members of a religious tradition that all the media wants to say is struggling to retain members and relevance in an increasingly secular world. We have all the reasons, the world might say, to hole up, to protect our scarce resources, to make sure that we have enough to survive. But we have not done that. Instead we have joined together, and joined with other partners in mission, Trinity and the Women’s Co-op and Creating Change, Holy Trinity and the neighbors who tend your community gardens and the congregations with whom you serve community meals, and in these partnerships we have declared that our God is a God not of scarcity but of abundance. That God’s math is not a zero-sum game, but a game of exponential expansion, and when two small things, like two little congregations in two small towns, are brought together, the resulting ministry is exponentially greater than either could accomplish on their own.
It’s counter-cultural now, this partnership of ours, and it was also counter-cultural in Paul’s time. Our epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And the Ephesians were really struggling with this concept of joining with people who were different than them. Paul, remember, was a Jew. And a faithful Jew at that; under the law, blameless. But when he came to know Christ, he came to realize he had put too much faith in his ability to live perfectly under the law. He came to know himself as freed to live under the law, not because of the law, but because of Christ. The Ephesians, on the other hand, were Gentiles. They had never been under the law. And in Christ they too had come to know freedom. So the question then is; how now shall we live? Were the Jews to give up the law completely and live as Gentiles? Were the Gentiles to take up the law and live as Jews? Whose way was the “right” way? Who was to become like the other? Who had to change in order to be part of the Body of Christ?
Paul told the Ephesians in this letter to remember the radical welcome they had experienced in Christ. Remember that Christ came and proclaimed peace “to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” not so the near would go far off, or so that the far off would come near, but so that both would be brought together into a new humanity in Christ. It is not Gentile or Jew, one or the other, Paul told the Ephesians, it is all of us, together, “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” This seemed like impossible words to a community so divided among cultural lines of Gentile and Jew. To imagine that both could come together, without becoming one or the other, but in fact could just be together in their differences and proclaim the Body of Christ precisely in those differences. That was unheard of! But, Paul said, this isn’t a new thing you have to do. In fact, it isn’t a thing you have to do at all. This unity, this oneness in Christ, this was already done by Jesus. Through the cross, Paul reminded them, Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” He has “created in himself one new humanity in the place of the two, thus making peace, and reconciling both groups to God in one body.” “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Through the cross, Jesus has broken down the dividing wall that separates us, and in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. For the Ephesians, this meant that everyone, Jew and Gentile, was welcome in the worshiping community of believers in Ephesus. But what does this mean for us? How do we, in our time and place, break down the walls that divide us and come together as one body? Is Paul telling us to tear down both Trinity and Holy Trinity and build one dwelling place for the Lord? No, I don’t think that’s what we’re called to do at all. I mean, let’s face it, that’s simply not practical. It’s ninety minutes between Battle Creek and Niles on a good day. I’ve lived through one of your winters; there is no guarantee of making a ninety-minute drive in Michigan in February.
I think that what we are doing here this morning is precisely the sort of thing that Paul is talking about, when he reminded the Ephesians that Christ had joined the whole structure of the church together into one holy temple in the Lord. Just like the Gentile and Jewish believers in Ephesus were no longer strangers and aliens to each other once they had worshiped together, so too are we no longer strangers and aliens to each other. We know each other, we’ve worshiped together, we’ve prayed for each other, and in this partnership we have become a part of growing this one holy temple in the Lord, spread across not just Battle Creek or Niles, but across all of the Michigan synod, all of the ELCA, and indeed all of the world.
This seems like a big statement I’m making here. That somehow our congregations worshiping together this morning is changing the world. You may think I am ambitious or idealistic for making a claim like this, and anyone you share this claim with might think you’re a little bit crazy. But here’s the thing, I don’t think this claim I’m making is ambitious or idealistic, because I don’t think this claim I’m making, that the in-breaking of God is made manifest in our worship together, has anything to do with us. Remember what Paul told the Ephesians, that “Christ Jesus is our peace; and in his flesh, he has broken down the dividing wall and created in himself a new humanity. This oneness we’re talking about, this indwelling of God among us, this has already happened. Through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are already made one in Jesus, we are already united into one holy temple. We don’t have to make peace, Jesus is peace and so peace is already here. All we are doing this morning is bearing witness to the peace of Christ that we have already experienced, bearing witness to the oneness of God that Jesus Christ brought through his death and resurrection. We bear witness to the amazing thing that God has already done in our lives, in our churches, in our communities, and in this world. So thanks be to God. It is good to be in mission with you. It is good to bear witness with you. Amen.
Good morning! It is good to be here worshiping with you here at Holy Trinity. Those of us who are here bring you greetings from the rest of our congregation who were not able to travel with us, back at Trinity in Battle Creek. It is so good to be worshiping together as mission partners in the body of Christ.
I have been the pastor at Trinity for just a little over a year now, and I remember when I was discerning this call to ministry one of the pieces that really helped me know that I was called to be in ministry in this place was Trinity’s partnership with outside organizations like the Woman’s Co-op and Creating Change. I first experienced my call to ministry in a congregation that partnered with a women’s shelter in Washington, DC, so the church has always felt most alive to me when it was in partnership with others. I was really excited to come and serve alongside these nonprofit partners in mission.
And then I don’t think I’d been in the office a week, when my office manager wandered down the hall with a check stub from some congregation in a Michigan city I had never heard of. “Where is Niles?” I asked. “And why are they sending us money?” They do this once a quarter, I was informed; they are our mission partners. And that was when I knew I had stumbled into something really special. Because not only was I a pastor who had the incredible privilege of serving a congregation committed to being church in the world. But in doing that work, my congregation had partners all across the Michigan synod who are also committed to being church in the world, and who live out that commitment by supporting Trinity so that we can then better support these non-profit partners who are our hands and feet, and through us God’s hands and feet, in a world who so desperately longs to know God’s presence.
There is something so strikingly counter-cultural about us joining together in this partnership. Here we are; two little congregations in two small towns in a state that is still struggling to regain footing after the recession. Members of a religious tradition that all the media wants to say is struggling to retain members and relevance in an increasingly secular world. We have all the reasons, the world might say, to hole up, to protect our scarce resources, to make sure that we have enough to survive. But we have not done that. Instead we have joined together, and joined with other partners in mission, Trinity and the Women’s Co-op and Creating Change, Holy Trinity and the neighbors who tend your community gardens and the congregations with whom you serve community meals, and in these partnerships we have declared that our God is a God not of scarcity but of abundance. That God’s math is not a zero-sum game, but a game of exponential expansion, and when two small things, like two little congregations in two small towns, are brought together, the resulting ministry is exponentially greater than either could accomplish on their own.
It’s counter-cultural now, this partnership of ours, and it was also counter-cultural in Paul’s time. Our epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And the Ephesians were really struggling with this concept of joining with people who were different than them. Paul, remember, was a Jew. And a faithful Jew at that; under the law, blameless. But when he came to know Christ, he came to realize he had put too much faith in his ability to live perfectly under the law. He came to know himself as freed to live under the law, not because of the law, but because of Christ. The Ephesians, on the other hand, were Gentiles. They had never been under the law. And in Christ they too had come to know freedom. So the question then is; how now shall we live? Were the Jews to give up the law completely and live as Gentiles? Were the Gentiles to take up the law and live as Jews? Whose way was the “right” way? Who was to become like the other? Who had to change in order to be part of the Body of Christ?
Paul told the Ephesians in this letter to remember the radical welcome they had experienced in Christ. Remember that Christ came and proclaimed peace “to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” not so the near would go far off, or so that the far off would come near, but so that both would be brought together into a new humanity in Christ. It is not Gentile or Jew, one or the other, Paul told the Ephesians, it is all of us, together, “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” This seemed like impossible words to a community so divided among cultural lines of Gentile and Jew. To imagine that both could come together, without becoming one or the other, but in fact could just be together in their differences and proclaim the Body of Christ precisely in those differences. That was unheard of! But, Paul said, this isn’t a new thing you have to do. In fact, it isn’t a thing you have to do at all. This unity, this oneness in Christ, this was already done by Jesus. Through the cross, Paul reminded them, Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” He has “created in himself one new humanity in the place of the two, thus making peace, and reconciling both groups to God in one body.” “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Through the cross, Jesus has broken down the dividing wall that separates us, and in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. For the Ephesians, this meant that everyone, Jew and Gentile, was welcome in the worshiping community of believers in Ephesus. But what does this mean for us? How do we, in our time and place, break down the walls that divide us and come together as one body? Is Paul telling us to tear down both Trinity and Holy Trinity and build one dwelling place for the Lord? No, I don’t think that’s what we’re called to do at all. I mean, let’s face it, that’s simply not practical. It’s ninety minutes between Battle Creek and Niles on a good day. I’ve lived through one of your winters; there is no guarantee of making a ninety-minute drive in Michigan in February.
I think that what we are doing here this morning is precisely the sort of thing that Paul is talking about, when he reminded the Ephesians that Christ had joined the whole structure of the church together into one holy temple in the Lord. Just like the Gentile and Jewish believers in Ephesus were no longer strangers and aliens to each other once they had worshiped together, so too are we no longer strangers and aliens to each other. We know each other, we’ve worshiped together, we’ve prayed for each other, and in this partnership we have become a part of growing this one holy temple in the Lord, spread across not just Battle Creek or Niles, but across all of the Michigan synod, all of the ELCA, and indeed all of the world.
This seems like a big statement I’m making here. That somehow our congregations worshiping together this morning is changing the world. You may think I am ambitious or idealistic for making a claim like this, and anyone you share this claim with might think you’re a little bit crazy. But here’s the thing, I don’t think this claim I’m making is ambitious or idealistic, because I don’t think this claim I’m making, that the in-breaking of God is made manifest in our worship together, has anything to do with us. Remember what Paul told the Ephesians, that “Christ Jesus is our peace; and in his flesh, he has broken down the dividing wall and created in himself a new humanity. This oneness we’re talking about, this indwelling of God among us, this has already happened. Through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are already made one in Jesus, we are already united into one holy temple. We don’t have to make peace, Jesus is peace and so peace is already here. All we are doing this morning is bearing witness to the peace of Christ that we have already experienced, bearing witness to the oneness of God that Jesus Christ brought through his death and resurrection. We bear witness to the amazing thing that God has already done in our lives, in our churches, in our communities, and in this world. So thanks be to God. It is good to be in mission with you. It is good to bear witness with you. Amen.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Power: A Sermon on Mark 6:14-29
I have a theory that the most dangerous thing a person can feel is that they are powerless. Especially when they are not. I think that most of the evil in the world has been perpetuated not by evil people or even bad people, but by decent people who felt they were powerless to do anything in response to the evil. Our Gospel reading for this morning is all about what can happen when powerful people feel powerless.
Our reading for this morning is a story not about Jesus but about Herod and John the Baptist. It is interesting that Mark referred to Herod as King, because this was not Herod the Great, the powerful and terrible ruler who was granted the title “King of Judea” by the Roman Senate. This was his son, Herod Antipas.
Antipas, as he is often called, to distinguish him from his brothers Herod Archelaus and Herod Philip, was not even his father’s first choice as a successor. That honor went to his older half-brothers, Aristobulus and Alexander. But only when they were executed and next oldest brother Antipater was convicted of treason, did the mantle fall to Antipas, briefly. In the final moments of his father’s life, Herod the Great again had a change of heart, dividing the kingdom between Archelaus, Philip, Antipas, and sister Salome. Antipas made a bid to the Emperor that the earlier will should be honored, with him ruling as king. But the Emperor, wanting stronger control over Judea, rejected the move and Antipas had to be content with the lesser title of tetrarch. From the (briefly) favored son of a King, to puppet ruler of a fraction of a kingdom, and Herod Antipas’s power begins to unravel.
At the time of the Gospel reading, Antipas was married to a woman named Herodias. It was a second marriage for each of them. Antipas had originally been married to a woman named Phasaelis and Herodias to Antipas’s brother Herod Philip. But when Antipas and Herodias met it was love, or something, at first sight, and they quickly married. It is worth noting that Herod Philip, Herodias’s first husband is not the same Philip who became Tetrarch of the territories east of Jordan. No, Herod Philip was originally in line to be King of Judea, in fact he was second in succession above half-brother Antipas. But the same family scuffle that moved Antipas to the top of the succession chain knocked Herod Philip out of it. A woman’s value in first century Palestine, especially among the ruling class, was entirely connected to the value of her spouse. So by divorcing Herod Philip and marrying Antipas, Herodias made a shrew political jump from scorned political liability to ruler over all of Galilee.
So we have Herod Antipas, younger son turned favored son turned pawn of the Empire, and we have Herodias, seeking to make a life for herself and her daughter by marrying up the family chain. Into this complex political scene entered John the Baptist. Not one to worry much about political correctness, John had a lot to say about this marriage of affiliation, and none of it was positive. Herodias, seeing the already tenuous grasp her husband had on his title, silenced the noisey prophet by ordering Antipas to imprison him. But Antipas saw John as a holy man and let him live on in prison.
That is, until the day that Antipas threw a party and invited Herodias’s daughter to dance for his guests. Pleased by the dancing, he offered to give the girl anything she asked for. The girl asked her mother and Herodias, seeing her opportunity to rid her family of the mutterings of a prophet, ordered John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Antipas was afraid to kill the prophet, but he was more afraid of his wife and of breaking his vow in front of his friends. So he ordered the death, delivered the head, and John the Baptist died an innocent man, the victim of the power plays of a weak and fearful court.
This story is an extreme case surely, seeming to have more in common with a Game of Thrones episode than of life as we experience it today. But thinking of the themes, I wonder how different it really is. Antipas killed John the Baptist because he felt stuck. Because even though he was the most powerful person in Galilee, second only to the Emperor, he so feared the loss of that power that even though he respected John, he saw no way to preserve his own authority than by killing John. He felt stuck.
Now, most of us, in fact I’d say all of us, do not face choices quite this dramatic. But we face other choices. When someone speaks hurtful or hateful words, we can feel stuck in remaining silent to keep a relation. When injustices are perpetrated on our neighbors, we can feel stuck into thinking the world is a zero-sum game and if there is enough for someone else, there is not enough for me. Stuckness can lead us to plunder the world’s resources, take more than we need, ignore the cries of the poor, the persecuted, the lost, or the lonely, or throw up our hands in defeat and assume the world is to big and hard and broken, and there is nothing we can do. I don’t know about you, but recently every time I turn on the news I feel a wave of stuckness wash over me, and it is enough to tempt me to bury my head in the sand.
But notice this. Jesus is not in our Gospel reading this morning, John the Baptist is. And any time John the Baptist is the central character in a story, we have to remember John’s sole purpose in the Gospels: to point the way to Jesus. John is not the only innocent man whose death Herod Antipas had a hand in. As a citizen of Galilee, Jesus’ trial and subsequent sentence of crucifixion was also under Antipas’ jurisdiction. John the Baptist’s death at the hands of the Roman authorities prefigured Jesus’ death at those same hands, the death of one innocent man leading to the death of another.
Mark tells us the story of John the Baptist’s death to remind us that Jesus also died a violent death and was buried. Jesus also died a powerless death at the hands of powerful people so caught up in fear that they forgot their own power and fell into a strange lockstep that ended with an innocent man dead on a cross. But Jesus was not just another victim. Jesus’ seemingly powerless death was in fact the most powerful act the world has ever seen. By dying, by embracing death, Jesus Christ destroyed death so that even death could have no power. Through the seemingly powerless act of his death, Jesus Christ redefined what it means to be powerful. And by rising again, Jesus declared that death itself would not have the last word, but that life always follows death, victory always comes from defeat, and that the lost, the least, the last, and the lowely would always have a place at the table in the kingdom of God.
It is fitting that we read the story of Herod and John the Baptist on this Sunday that we are celebrating Chase’s baptism. Because it is in these waters of baptism that the promise of the power of God is most visible and most tangible. We baptize with water. Just simple, plain, water. Nothing fancy, nothing showy, nothing glamorous or flashy or bold. Just a simple bowl of water. But in this water, we meet God. In this water God promises that we die to sin, die to death, die to the powerlessness that the world would define us by, and we rise children of God and heirs of the promise of God’s kingdom. A kingdom of power redefined. A kingdom where power is found not in taking what we can, but in sharing all we have. A kingdom ruled not by the fear of scarcity but by the wonderful abundance of enough. A kingdom where no one is powerless and everyone has enough and all are welcome. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Our reading for this morning is a story not about Jesus but about Herod and John the Baptist. It is interesting that Mark referred to Herod as King, because this was not Herod the Great, the powerful and terrible ruler who was granted the title “King of Judea” by the Roman Senate. This was his son, Herod Antipas.
Antipas, as he is often called, to distinguish him from his brothers Herod Archelaus and Herod Philip, was not even his father’s first choice as a successor. That honor went to his older half-brothers, Aristobulus and Alexander. But only when they were executed and next oldest brother Antipater was convicted of treason, did the mantle fall to Antipas, briefly. In the final moments of his father’s life, Herod the Great again had a change of heart, dividing the kingdom between Archelaus, Philip, Antipas, and sister Salome. Antipas made a bid to the Emperor that the earlier will should be honored, with him ruling as king. But the Emperor, wanting stronger control over Judea, rejected the move and Antipas had to be content with the lesser title of tetrarch. From the (briefly) favored son of a King, to puppet ruler of a fraction of a kingdom, and Herod Antipas’s power begins to unravel.
At the time of the Gospel reading, Antipas was married to a woman named Herodias. It was a second marriage for each of them. Antipas had originally been married to a woman named Phasaelis and Herodias to Antipas’s brother Herod Philip. But when Antipas and Herodias met it was love, or something, at first sight, and they quickly married. It is worth noting that Herod Philip, Herodias’s first husband is not the same Philip who became Tetrarch of the territories east of Jordan. No, Herod Philip was originally in line to be King of Judea, in fact he was second in succession above half-brother Antipas. But the same family scuffle that moved Antipas to the top of the succession chain knocked Herod Philip out of it. A woman’s value in first century Palestine, especially among the ruling class, was entirely connected to the value of her spouse. So by divorcing Herod Philip and marrying Antipas, Herodias made a shrew political jump from scorned political liability to ruler over all of Galilee.
So we have Herod Antipas, younger son turned favored son turned pawn of the Empire, and we have Herodias, seeking to make a life for herself and her daughter by marrying up the family chain. Into this complex political scene entered John the Baptist. Not one to worry much about political correctness, John had a lot to say about this marriage of affiliation, and none of it was positive. Herodias, seeing the already tenuous grasp her husband had on his title, silenced the noisey prophet by ordering Antipas to imprison him. But Antipas saw John as a holy man and let him live on in prison.
That is, until the day that Antipas threw a party and invited Herodias’s daughter to dance for his guests. Pleased by the dancing, he offered to give the girl anything she asked for. The girl asked her mother and Herodias, seeing her opportunity to rid her family of the mutterings of a prophet, ordered John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Antipas was afraid to kill the prophet, but he was more afraid of his wife and of breaking his vow in front of his friends. So he ordered the death, delivered the head, and John the Baptist died an innocent man, the victim of the power plays of a weak and fearful court.
This story is an extreme case surely, seeming to have more in common with a Game of Thrones episode than of life as we experience it today. But thinking of the themes, I wonder how different it really is. Antipas killed John the Baptist because he felt stuck. Because even though he was the most powerful person in Galilee, second only to the Emperor, he so feared the loss of that power that even though he respected John, he saw no way to preserve his own authority than by killing John. He felt stuck.
Now, most of us, in fact I’d say all of us, do not face choices quite this dramatic. But we face other choices. When someone speaks hurtful or hateful words, we can feel stuck in remaining silent to keep a relation. When injustices are perpetrated on our neighbors, we can feel stuck into thinking the world is a zero-sum game and if there is enough for someone else, there is not enough for me. Stuckness can lead us to plunder the world’s resources, take more than we need, ignore the cries of the poor, the persecuted, the lost, or the lonely, or throw up our hands in defeat and assume the world is to big and hard and broken, and there is nothing we can do. I don’t know about you, but recently every time I turn on the news I feel a wave of stuckness wash over me, and it is enough to tempt me to bury my head in the sand.
But notice this. Jesus is not in our Gospel reading this morning, John the Baptist is. And any time John the Baptist is the central character in a story, we have to remember John’s sole purpose in the Gospels: to point the way to Jesus. John is not the only innocent man whose death Herod Antipas had a hand in. As a citizen of Galilee, Jesus’ trial and subsequent sentence of crucifixion was also under Antipas’ jurisdiction. John the Baptist’s death at the hands of the Roman authorities prefigured Jesus’ death at those same hands, the death of one innocent man leading to the death of another.
Mark tells us the story of John the Baptist’s death to remind us that Jesus also died a violent death and was buried. Jesus also died a powerless death at the hands of powerful people so caught up in fear that they forgot their own power and fell into a strange lockstep that ended with an innocent man dead on a cross. But Jesus was not just another victim. Jesus’ seemingly powerless death was in fact the most powerful act the world has ever seen. By dying, by embracing death, Jesus Christ destroyed death so that even death could have no power. Through the seemingly powerless act of his death, Jesus Christ redefined what it means to be powerful. And by rising again, Jesus declared that death itself would not have the last word, but that life always follows death, victory always comes from defeat, and that the lost, the least, the last, and the lowely would always have a place at the table in the kingdom of God.
It is fitting that we read the story of Herod and John the Baptist on this Sunday that we are celebrating Chase’s baptism. Because it is in these waters of baptism that the promise of the power of God is most visible and most tangible. We baptize with water. Just simple, plain, water. Nothing fancy, nothing showy, nothing glamorous or flashy or bold. Just a simple bowl of water. But in this water, we meet God. In this water God promises that we die to sin, die to death, die to the powerlessness that the world would define us by, and we rise children of God and heirs of the promise of God’s kingdom. A kingdom of power redefined. A kingdom where power is found not in taking what we can, but in sharing all we have. A kingdom ruled not by the fear of scarcity but by the wonderful abundance of enough. A kingdom where no one is powerless and everyone has enough and all are welcome. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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