A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Amos 7:7-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29]
“Easter People in a Good Friday World.” A colleague recently mentioned this phrase, which immediately struck me like a thunderclap, announcing a summer storm. Attributed to the late Barbara Harris, the first female bishop in the Episcopal Church and in the larger Anglican Communion, Bishop Harris was the Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts until her death in 2020. As I say, her poignant phrase hit me and immediately helped me recognize why lately I feel so anxious and so fretful. By definition, followers of Jesus are those proverbial square pegs in round holes. We are “Easter People in a Good Friday World”. And it occurs to me that in today’s gospel lesson we have two figures that embody the consequences of this truth.
On the one hand, there is the figure of John the Baptist: that untamed God-chronicler, whose entire life entailed seeing Jesus as the Christ of God and pointing to him in the midst of the people. That John is described as a man, dressed in raw clothing and eating locusts and wild honey, indicates his character’s fiber. In contrast, we have Herod Antipas, the son of the Christmas baby-killer, the puppet of the Roman occupiers, and poser “King of the Jews”. It strikes me, however, that in comparison, Herod’s witness is more familiar for just about everyone I know (including me) than is the stalwart witness of the Baptizer. Truth to tell, John’s example is complete. It cost him his life. But then again, so is Jesus’ example of what it means to be “Easter people in a Good Friday World”. So it is that, as embarrassing as it is to admit, most of us hedge our bets when it comes to following Jesus; and in this we have much in common with the figure of King Herod. And I don’t like this. Do you?
St. Mark’s description of Herod indicates that the “King of the Jews” was a curiously “worldly” sort. His life was a recognizable battle between living life as pleasurably as possible, all the while still having that yearning for life that is more substantial than he could muster for himself. Clearly, he lived as a king, functioning as the source of his own standards: A point made clear by the fact that he had violated both social custom and biblical warrant by taking the wife of his brother as his own. It suited the king to do so. By virtue of his position, he had what we might call “immunity” over his actions. I suppose his former sister-in-law saw a more prominent and convenient opportunity for herself by agreeing to make the switch: Two peas in a pod. She, too, would benefit from the king’s “immunity”. So, you know well the outcome of the story, of what happened when John the Baptist spoke truth to this source of self-referential power. As if to refresh our memory with the grizzly details, Mark combs through the tragically revealing specifics; but for what reason? Why this unsettling detail? Surely, this story is not told in Sunday School. More to the point, how does the beheading of the Baptizer nourish and strengthen our wavering souls?
Let me step back for a moment to return to a theme I have mentioned to you in the last month of preaching on Mark’s gospel: namely (and to reiterate a phrase), “the medium is the message”. In terms of this phrase and how Mark’s gospel demonstrates it, it is important to note that in what is ordinarily a very terse and urgently expressed account of Jesus as the Christ, next to stories about Jesus, this day’s gospel contains the longest and most detailed description of any other gospel character in Mark. And one can easily wonder why Mark has taken this rare (for him) route. Among all the sordid specifics and the soap opera-like tone of this passage, one might understandably ask: Where is the “good news” in this story?
My response is this: Mark is implicitly saying that we are Easter People Living in a Good Friday World; that following Jesus – or even making our best efforts to do so -- often finds us taking one step forward and two steps back. Mark’s message (provided by this unusually detailed account) says that following Jesus ain’t a game of beanbag. So, what do we do?
Our gospel lesson starts with an interesting depiction of Herod’s sense of anxiety and guilt over having John beheaded. We do well to pause to pay closer attention to the short opening description, by which we may catch a glimpse of ourselves as “Easter People in a Good Friday World”.
The lesson opens with a telling note: namely, that Herod had heard of Jesus and his disciples because word about them had been spreading like wildfire. As we have seen in previous installments of Mark’s gospel, questions about Jesus’ identity and purpose were swirling about. In two more Marcan chapters, added testimony to this wonderment surfaces when Jesus himself asks his followers who folks say he is. The Twelve give similar answers to those we hear from Herod’s counselors; and given Herod’s sense of doubt over the propriety of stealing his brother’s wife, the king himself starts to cringe with anxiety, believing that the one he had beheaded had come back to haunt him like some Hebrew version of Shakespeare’s “MacBeth”.
Yet, in the midst of retelling the story that results in John’s beheading, we learn of Herod’s mixed fascination with the rugged prophet. On the one hand, Herod hated being held accountable by John; and John’s indictment of Herod was not for sexual immorality but for selling out to Rome and forgetting God – something a “King of the Jews” is not supposed to do. Yet, on the other hand, as Mark says, Herod was also fascinated (and “perplexed”) by what John said and stood for. Do what extent is this our stance concerning following Jesus? I wonder if many of us also exist in this tidal basin of faith: A kind of “come closer – stay away” precisely because we know that we are “Easter People and we also live and move in a Good Friday World”. The battle between faith and fear is what tormented Herod. And I have some compassion for him in that he is so stuck in this dilemma between the demands of faith and the reality of his life’s fear.
Let me wind this up. I don’t think there are easy answers to this faith/fear issue. And my own counsel to you is that if anyone tries to give you an “answer”, run away. They may have immunity, but you and I don’t! Truly, I believe that the impasse between our faith and our fear can only be resolved if and when we live through what has us stuck and move toward what calls us onward. It is then – and only then – that what seems like a paralyzing contradiction becomes a way forward. The tension still exists, but the way forward, previously unseen and even unimaginable, suddenly and freeingly emerges. Amidst the Good Friday reality, Easter arises.
In this, I am reminded of the book a dozen or so of us are reading together this summer. Brian McLaren’s book, Life After Doom, admittedly is not beach reading; but what has hit me about the book lies in terms of the book’s structure. Its medium is the message. Specifically, the book comes in four sections, each sequential section contributes a response to the book’s title: Life After Doom. McLaren begins by describing what it takes to “Let Go” of the “Doom”. The next section is entitled, “Let Be”; then “Let Come”; and finally “Set Free”. At this point in our group’s zoom discussion, I find myself (like Herod) “perplexed” and tossed by the tidal pool’s movement; but I am also attracted specifically to the “Let Be” section.
I get the “Let Go” part of the book. That phrase is nauseously such a part of our culture lingo that it is hard to take it seriously. It sounds so wimpy. Yet, absorbing what McLaren offers as a next step, “letting be” contains a tremendous element of faithful insight, one that for people like me also acknowledges the fear. It is fearful in that “letting be” requires facing what threatens us; and doing so is a tremendous act of faith because in the “letting be” hope surprisingly can surface.
To “Let be” is much larger than having the courage not to run away – although courage is called for, to be sure. (Think of Judas.). No, for followers of Jesus, “letting be” is what it means to stand at the cross in order that we might be in a position to “Let come” that which is of God, that which is, in fact, stronger than fear and death. “Let go; let be; let come; set free.” New life from the God of life.
I will close with a poem I received (providentially?) last week. As with all good poets, this poet puts in a dozen lines what has taken me over 1500 sweaty words to struggle to say. Here is the poem. I hear the movement of faith and fear in its lines, and the ultimate solution for followers of Jesus and the People of God.
Herod had immunity.
He could behead people;
His friends would let him,
his enemies powerless.
A dictator has immunity.
He will not use it for noble purposes.
We do not have immunity
from the consequences of our choices.
We will pay the price
for our bold, decisive action.
We are not immune to the suffering of the world.
If one suffers, all suffer together with them.
To follow Jesus is to renounce immunity.
Jesus did not say,
“Take up your lawn chair and follow me.”
Our trust is not that we will be treated well,
but that even in our weakness and vulnerability,
even in failure and suffering,
grace will prevail.
For even in all its evil and cruelty,
this world is not immune
to love.1
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
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