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Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 14, 2024
Amos 7:7-15, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:14-29
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Whenever this gospel reading comes around every three years, I have a hard time saying, “The Gospel of the Lord” at the end of it. “Gospel” means “good news,” and it is hard to see any good news in this sordid story. Instead, it is filled with adultery and manipulation and shocking violence. It sounds more like the evening news than the Good News.
But that is part of the point. As scripture often does, St. Mark is holding a mirror up to the kingdoms of this world. He is holding a mirror up to society, including ours. He is holding a mirror up to the realities of sin that continue to this day.
Herod Antipas was the son of the other King Herod we hear about in the New Testament – the one who killed all the baby boys in Bethlehem after Jesus was born. Herod Junior, otherwise known as Herod Antipas, was following in his father’s footsteps. He had grown up to be a Jewish puppet king for the Roman Empire, just like his dad. His Jewishness gave the appearance of piety and respect for God’s people, but he was just a mask, behind which lurked imperial, pagan Rome.
But the mask slipped when Herod Antipas’ scandalous behavior became public knowledge. On a visit to his brother Philip in Rome, he engaged in an affair with his brother’s wife, Herodias. They both ended up divorcing their spouses and marrying each other. Many in the Jewish community were upset and angry. They didn’t like the idea of a Jewish king violating God’s commandments, especially to marry his sister-in-law. John the Baptist was brave enough to call him on it. John called Herod and Herodias to repent.
Herod, scripture tells us, found John the Baptist to be an interesting person. He actually liked listening to him. He acknowledged that he was a righteous and holy man. He even feared him to a degree. Perhaps there was some respect for God’s law that remained in a corner of his heart. Perhaps his conscience was being pricked by John’s preaching.
His wife Herodias, on the other hand, despised John. She hated John for daring to publicly call them out on their adultery. She was so mad about it that she wanted him dead. At first Herod wouldn’t go that far, but at his wife’s insistence he did go ahead and arrest John and put him in prison. (Marriage is all about compromise, right?)
But then came Herod’s birthday party. Herod invited lots of powerful people for a birthday banquet. Herodias’s daughter, who was now not only Herod’s niece but his stepdaughter too, performed a dance at the party. This dance got everyone’s attention. Given what we know about this family and about the culture of the time and about human nature in general, this was almost certainly not a ballet dance. This was not an innocent tap dance. This was very likely a young woman dancing in ways that kept the men in rapt attention. At the end of the dance, Herod made a big show in front of his powerful friends, promising to give his niece/step-daughter anything she wanted. He even offered to give her up to half of his kingdom.
Herodias saw her chance. She coached her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist. Herod was “deeply grieved,” the scriptures tell us, but he was trapped. He was trapped by his own sin, by his own foolish bravado. Feeling bound by the oaths he had made in front of his important guests, Herod gave the gruesome order. John was beheaded, and the proof was brought into the banquet on a platter.
In our first reading we hear about Amos’ vision of the Lord holding a plumb line next to a wall. A plumb line was a simple tool consisting of a string with a weight tied to the bottom. It was a common tool used for construction in the ancient world. Gravity held that string taught and true, and so it showed whether a wall was vertically straight or not. It revealed where it was out of alignment. The Lord held this metaphorical plumb line up to the wall that was Israel under King Jeroboam, showing that they were horribly out of alignment with God’s will.
Similarly, in his preaching John the Baptist was holding a plumb line up to Herod Antipas and Herodias. He showed them how they were out of alignment with God’s commandments. First they violated the first commandment to have no other gods, which led to violating the tenth commandment against coveting another’s spouse, which led to violating the sixth commandment against adultery, which led to violating the fifth commandment against murder. Before John was done in by their violation of the fifth commandment, he called them to repent, to be realigned.
And now this Jesus whom Herod had heard so much about was sending out preachers. They, too, were preaching repentance! Herod thought that John, whom he killed, had come back to life! He was haunted by John. He was convicted by the plumb line of his preaching.
This is how God’s Word works. It is like a mirror, or a plumb line, for all who hear it. As we hear this sordid story today we can certainly make some connections to things happening in our own time. The Bible isn’t shy about showing us our world as it really is in all its wickedness and debauchery and violence.
But God’s Word holds a mirror, or a plumb line, up to us too. It shows us where we fail to live in alignment with God’s will. This story reminds us how certain sins are often handed down generationally. It shows us how insidious sin is – not just in the halls of power, but in our daily lives. It shows us how for us, too, the commandments are like dominoes in that once one falls, others soon follow. It shows us how desperate we are to be in control of our little kingdoms, how desperate we are to save face in public, how desperate we are to silence those voices which call our actions into question. It shows us how we often end up feeling trapped by sin with no way out. Did we not just confess that we are in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves?
On the surface this story sounds like an unwelcome and R-rated anomaly in the lectionary. It sounds like an episode of Game of Thrones, or perhaps Desperate Housewives of Ancient Israel. But there is good news in it. There is good news in the fact that it is precisely into this reality in which we all live that Christ has come. It is this world that God so dearly loves, quite in spite of itself. It is this world and its fallen human race that Christ came to save – not ultimately with a mirror or a plumb line, but with a cross.
You see, this story, as strange and out of place as it might seem, is not only showing us how out of alignment the world is; it is already anticipating how God would go about setting it right. Mark includes this story in his gospel to begin to point us to the cross. He tells this story because it so powerfully foreshadows what Jesus would endure in order to bring salvation to a broken world. Jesus, like John, made many people mad for calling them out on their sin. Jesus, like John, would be arrested. Jesus, like John, would be brutally executed by a reluctant official who was bowing to the pressures of a crowd. Jesus, like John, would be laid in a tomb.
Before all this, when Jesus sent out his disciples to preach repentance, Herod thought that Jesus was John, raised from the dead. Herod was wrong on the details, of course, but he was saying more than he knew. His mistake was actually a clue of sorts, a clue foreshadowing what would come. Because after Jesus’ own brutal execution, he did rise from the dead! The grave could not hold him. The ugliness of this world could not keep him away. Jesus was raised from the dead in order to bring us back into alignment with God through the forgiveness, life, and salvation he has won for us through his death and resurrection.
There is good news here in this story. It is lurking in the background, but it is there – and it is for you. The good news for you is this: no matter how depressingly sordid the TV news gets, there is nothing new under the sun – and it is precisely this broken, sinful world that our Lord loves and came to save. This should help us all to live in hope in spite of all the depressing headlines.
Furthermore, no matter how sordid or sinful or messy or painful or soap-opera-y your own story might be, it isn’t too much for Jesus. No matter how out of alignment your life has been or might be today, Jesus has come to bring you back into right relationship with God through his forgiveness, which he continues to pour out for you abundantly. As St. Paul tells us in Ephesians, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”
Christ has come to redeem you from the sordid parts of your story. By his death and resurrection he has conquered sin and death in order to give you his kingdom, which comes with a new life and a new hope and a new future.
This is the gospel of our Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church