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.
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