14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 6:14-29
July 12, 2009The Man Who Would Be King
If ever there was a politician with an eye to the main chance, it was Herod Antipas. One of the sons of Herod the Great, he liked to be called "King Herod," but he wasn’t, properly speaking, a king at all. He was a "tetrarch," which means "ruler of a fourth." When his daddy died the Romans divvied up the kingdom of Herod the Great into four parts and gave Antipas one of those parts. That made him Herod the Less, and he never got over it.
He also didn’t much care for his capital, Sepphoris, which wasn’t far from Nazareth. He preferred to be right on the Sea of Galilee. The fact that the site of his new capital, which he called "Tiberius" in honor of the Roman Emperor, was already occupied by an ancient Jewish cemetery, didn’t much bother Herod Antipas. He built Tiberius right over the graves, which officially made the whole city unclean. In Jesus’ day, observant Jews wouldn’t set foot in the place.
Things went downhill from there. Being a Hellenized Jew, Herod had no problem mixing his religion with the trendy pagan cults of the day. A little Asclepius here, a little Dionysus of Thebes there – what’s the harm in that? Today we call this approach "tolerance of diversity," and think of it as a good thing. The prophets of old called it "idolatry," a very bad thing.
Herod also married his brother’s former wife, following what we might call two quickie divorces. This made him, in the eyes of many upright Jews, an adulterer. True believers in the God of Israel wouldn’t do that kind of thing.
The fact is, Herod Antipas didn’t seem to believe in anyone or anything so much as he believed in Herod Antipas. He was a man of his times, but in this particular aspect he has much in common with people whose names are in the headlines today.
Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina comes to mind. A family man and longtime champion of "family values," Mark Sanford castigated President Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky and called for his impeachment and resignation. Both as a member of the House of Representatives and as Governor he has consistently opposed gay marriage, civil unions, and the rights of gay couples to adopt children.
But there he was on TV two weeks ago, explaining that he hadn’t really been walking the Appalachian Trail in lonely splendor, as he had told state officials. In fact he’d been in Argentina with a woman who, unlike numerous other recent mistresses, was his true "soul mate."
Back in 1999, then Representative Sanford told CNN, "The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of democratic government, representative government, because it undermines trust. And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything." (CNN)
That sounds to me like something John the Baptist might say. We don’t know if John had a soul mate. We do know his lost his head. So has Governor Sanford.
The big difference between Mark Sanford and Herod Antipas is that Herod made no effort to sound like John the Baptist. He didn’t like John the Baptist. John had an annoying propensity to tell the truth, no matter how much trouble it got him into. Herod warned John to stop using him as an illustration in John’s sermons against adultery. It didn’t show the proper respect for the "King" and it infuriated Mrs. Herod, a woman named Herodias who, I forgot to mention, was also her own husband’s niece.
John ignored the warning. He was not the type to separate preaching from meddling. Herod put John in prison. He might have kept him there for a while to teach him a lesson, and then let him go, if it hadn’t been for Herodias, his wife. Hell hath no furry like a woman scorned by a preacher who doesn’t know his place.
Herodias had a daughter named Salome (Mark gets her name wrong). Salome had taken tap, ballet, and modern dance lessons from the time she could walk. Apparently, she was very, very good. How good and in what way I will leave to your imagination. Salome danced at Herod’s birthday bash and made such an impression on Herod and his dinner guests that he said, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half my kingdom." (I have a feeling that last part was the wine talking, but once he’d said it in front of all those high-powered dignitaries, he could hardly take it back.)
Salome ran off to consult her mother. She came back with a request that must have shocked even the old fox himself. "I want you to give me the head of John the Baptist on a platter, his stepdaughter said."
Herod couldn’t say "No." He couldn’t lose face. That would be like going on national television and letting everyone know what a liar and a fake you are. So he sent a soldier of the guard down to the cells. He returned with the grizzly results on a platter, as instructed. The soldier handed the platter to Salome, who then took it to her mother. Nowadays we bring in a cake with candles, which is a much better way to hold a birthday party.
I’ve told you this story more or less as Mark tells it in his Gospel, and the question you’re bound to be asking yourself by now is, "Why?" What in the world has this gruesome, violent story doing in a book called "The Good News of Jesus Christ?" Why did Mark include it, and why is this preacher giving it so much airtime?
To tell you the truth, I don’t like this story any more than you do. Artists through the centuries have loved it, however, among them painters Titian, Caravaggio, and Gustave Moreau. Oscar Wilde wrote a famous play about it entitled Salome, and Richard Straus used it as the basis for his very successful opera, which has a scene in it called "The Dance of the Seven Veils." (Strictly as preparation for this sermon, I watched the U Tube version of soprano Maria Ewing performing "The Dance of the Seven Veils." That was a big mistake. It melted my computer.)
Artists love this story because it’s got everything – sexual lust, political ambition, scandal, and murder. It has enough detail to keep the story rooted in reality but not enough to stifle the artistic imagination.
All this is true, but I don’t think Mark went to the trouble of telling us this story for the sake of the salacious details. I think he wanted to make sure that followers of Jesus would never forget that their Lord and Savior came into the real world, a world fraught with real danger and genuine threat. It’s a world replete with public figures who crave power, a world where none of us wants private failings made public.
In such a world some leaders like to maintain an air of sanctity while others don’t care, but none wants to be made out to be a fool or welcomes criticism from those who actually practice what they preach.
John preached the coming of God’s kingdom into just such a world, and when he baptized Jesus, he made it very clear that Jesus himself was bringing in that kingdom. That put Jesus in harm’s way, and the same goes for those who point to him.
Say what you like about John the Baptist, he knew what was at stake when he said "Repent and believe the good news." He was brash and unsophisticated, completely without tact and a terrible prospect for pastor in any congregation I know, but he spoke the truth to power. John died at the hands of a puppet king who had fallen prey to his own pride and the manipulation of a woman who was clearly a lot smarter than he was.
Reading between the lines, I get the feeling that Herod didn’t really want to execute John. In that sense he had a lot in common with Pontius Pilate, who didn’t really want to execute Jesus. However, when truth meets power that has no character to back it up, it’s usually the truth-teller who ends up on the gallows.
Mark’s version of this story has a peculiar twist. I wonder if you caught it. After John is beheaded, Jesus appears on the scene, and Herod doesn’t know what to make of him. Some say he’s a prophet like Elijah. Some say he’s Elijah himself. But Herod Antipas has is own theory, which sounds a lot like his worst nightmare: "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised."
What a strange thing for Herod Antipas to say. Perhaps, his Hellenizing tendencies notwithstanding, he does remember the Holy One of Israel. He does remember that God expects rulers and subjects alike to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God."
"John, whom I beheaded, has been raised." I didn’t put an end to his meddling after all. God is in this, and I can’t stop it. This Jesus is John the Baptist all over again, and he can’t be stopped."
In a way, of course, Herod was wrong about Jesus. And in a way, he was more right than he could have imagined.
Herod Antipas eventually asked Emperor Caligula officially to grant him the title of "King." Caligula, who was an old pal of Antipas’ nephew Agrippa, gave him the boot instead. Both Antipas and Herodias died in exile, somewhere in Gaul. I wonder if, as his own death approached, Herod Antipas lay awake at night thinking, "I killed him. I know I killed him. How is it that he lives?"
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