I just want to name right here that this is Gospel text is a weird one. It’s weird enough the way we heard it this morning, this gruesome story of court intrigue, sex, violence, and power. The timing itself of telling the story is also weird. You may remember from the first Sunday of Lent, when we read Mark chapter one, verse fourteen, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the Good News,” and we talked about how John’s arrest served to remove him from the scene and open space for Jesus’ ministry to begin. John’s job was to proclaim the coming of the Lord and then get out of the way, and his arrest was the tool to make that happen. So now it’s chapter six, which in the rapid-fire pace of Mark’s Gospel is well in the future, when Jesus’ ministry is well established, and only now do we hear what happened way back in chapter one, when Jesus was still in the wilderness waiting to call his first disciples.
So the timing is weird. And then, read in the context of the rest of Mark’s Gospel, it stands out even more. Immediately before this is the reading from last week, where Jesus sent out the disciples two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. So listen to the flow of this. We’ll start with the last two verses from last week, verses twelve and thirteen. “So they—the disciples—went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cure them. King Herod here of it—one would assume the “it” here being what the disciples were doing—for Jesus’ name had become known.” He remembered how he had beheaded John the Baptist, the story we just heard, which ended: “When his—John’s—disciples heard about it—John’s beheading—they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.” And then verse thirty starts: “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all they had done and taught.” Back to the mission of the twelve without missing a beat! The story of the beheading of John the Baptist could literally be lifted completely out of the Gospel of Mark without any break in the story. In fact, one could argue the narrative would have more continuity without it. So why in the world did the writer of Mark include this interruption?
Honestly, I think part of the reason this story is included here is precisely BECAUSE it is an interruption. Hear me out, because especially as we just read this story on its own what I’m about to say is going to come across as pretty callous, but in the whole context of the Gospel of Mark, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” the beheading of John the Baptist barely registers more than a blip in the narrative. This violent story of intrigue and manipulation and grasping for ill-gotten power is nothing more than a breath to give time for the disciples to return to Jesus to share how successful they were in their mission, how many unclean spirits they cast out, how many sick people they cured. What the placement of this story does is it reduces King Herod, the feared tyrant of Galilee, his conniving wife, the courtiers and officers and even the puppet master Rome itself to their rightful size in the story, nothing more than a failed attempt to distract from a movement that cannot be controlled, the spreading of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God throughout the world. For the people of Mark’s time, Herod was front-page news. But twenty years, two-hundred years, two-thousand years later, and we only know about Herod in relation to Jesus. By telling this strange and gruesome story in such an off-handed way, Mark is recasting Herod and all of the seeming power players of the time as little more than a side-show attraction to the main event of the world-shaking good news that is Jesus.
What this story assures us is that the Kingdom of God cannot be stopped. Herod, feared by so many as an all-powerful ruler, kills the messenger, and it doesn’t even register in the story. It warranted a sentence in chapter one, the writer of Mark had to look back on it in order to include it at all. The very worst thing the very worst people can do cannot stop God from completing the work of being in relationship with God’s people, with God’s world.
Horrible things happen in this world. You don’t need me, or Herod, to tell you that, you know. This story of trickery, hypocrisy, and unfolding excuses of distortion and lies to prop up a power structure that only benefits the few at the top, and even those few live in constant fear of its destruction and demise, a system that leaves innocent people crippled, even killed, in its wake, the world Herod lived in, the world Herod created, it’s our world. We have more than enough examples of people in power looking out for only their own well-being, more than enough examples of fear-mongering, more than enough examples of “thoughts and prayers” that never lead to action. “The king was deeply grieved,” but it didn’t stop him from protecting himself, and John the Baptist died as a result, friends we know this, because we see it. And yet, what the on-going story of Mark assures us is the very worst thing the powers of the world can do, the most evil, twisted, self-serving action, still cannot stop the movement of God in the world. Herod did this horrible thing, and the misfit band of the disciples, who couldn’t even cross a lake without getting completely freaked out even though they’re fishermen, still managed to cast out many evil spirits, cure many who are sick, and return to Jesus to tell him about it. The worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen. We know that from this story about John, and we know that because of what will happen to Jesus. Jesus too, like John, will be laid in a tomb by his disciples, killed at the hands of the Roman authorities who thought they’d finally succeeded in snuffing out the mission of God forever, and we all know how that story ended. Three days later, an empty tomb and salvation for the whole world. Friends, weird as this may sound, the story of John the Baptist should give us comfort that there really is absolutely nothing that can happen in this world that can separate us from God. Like Paul wrote in Romans, not “death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can stop the movement of God in the world. Herod tried, the Romans tried, but God cannot, God will not be stopped. Whatever you are facing right now, whatever struggle you are up against, whatever adversity is breaking your soul, whatever holds you captive, whatever suffering you are enduring, this story promises that God is still with you, God is still moving, and there will be life on the other side of whatever it is. Thanks be to God who gives us such a confident victory. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment