“When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” (vss. 23-24)
It is our privilege today to deal with one of the grizzliest passages in the entire New Testament – the tale of the death of John the Baptist – and I trust that it is no more than coincidence that I was allotted this passage only days before my scheduled return to Syria – the current world epicenter of grizzleliness.
As if there weren’t enough blood and gore in the world, and as if blood and suffering isn’t sufficiently at the forefront of my mind, here we come to church for a bit of respite and peace and we are greeted with this – a scene that graphically combines that classic trilogy of communal ills: sex, violence and alcohol!
The king gets drunk. The king gets seduced. The king cuts off the head of a righteous and innocent man. It all sounds very contemporary.
Mind you, we must admit that one thing ISIS has taught the world is that it is possible to have all the sex and violence without the alcohol. To my mind that actually makes it even less excusable, though there’s probably no need to split hairs in an area where so many hairs have already being split.
I return to Syria this week and at the forefront of my mind will be the faces I said goodbye to last time in Yarmouk, in the ancient Christian towns of Maaloula and Saydnaya, and in Damascus. My hope is that those faces are still there and that none of them have gone the way of John the Baptist, but I know that over the last few months many have!
One of the most horrible things, of course, about the crimes of ISIS is that they don’t simply carry out these atrocious acts of violence in the dark. They do their best to publish graphic images and videos of their crimes for mass consumption. This, to my mind, testifies to the barbaric nature of their enterprise, though I must confess that the Gospel story we have before us this morning likewise goes into far more detail that I would have liked, and is indeed uncharacteristic in the New Testament in terms of the detail provided!
Compare, for example, the Biblical account of Herod’s later murder of James (the brother of John) that we’re given in the book of Acts: “About that time, Herod arrested some people who belonged to the church and mistreated them. He even had James the brother of John killed with a sword.” (Acts 12:1-2) That’s it! The end! It’s tragic but it’s short and succinct and we get over it and move on!
But that’s not how today’s narrative works! First we get the surly details of Herod’s personal life that give rise to the criticism he gets from John. Then we get the imprisonment, the party, the dance of the young girl, and ultimately the details of how John’s head was served to the girl’s mother on a dinner-plate!
It’s quite a scene. It must have been quite a dance, and I did consider trying to recreate the atmosphere this morning by attempting a dance myself , but decided that, even though I do look good in a dress, my rendition of the dance of the seven army surplice blankets could never do it justice.
At any rate, the real question is ‘What is this story doing here?’ And I don’t just mean ‘why this week?’ but ‘what is this passage doing in the Bible at all?’ Isn’t there enough sex and violence in this world? It’s almost as if at some very early meeting of the Bible Society someone said, “We’re not moving enough copies of this book! We need more sex and violence in here”, and so Mark piped up and said, “how about I include an extended account of the death of John the Baptist?”
I’m sure that wasn’t really it. Indeed, the more obvious reason why this story is so drawn out is for the sake of the followers of the Baptist. John was a very popular guy and his disciples no doubt wanted to know the details. Even so, there’s not much that’s encouraging in this story for the followers of the Baptist. It’s not as if any of John’s last remaining words were recorded in this story. Indeed, we hear nothing from John in this story, as by the time he makes his personal appearance he’s s head on a plate! That is disappointing as I think it would have been fascinating and helpful to know what John’s last words and last thoughts were.
We like to assume, of course, that when it comes to the death of a great man like the Baptist, that they go out full of courage and faith like Maximillian Kolbe.
Kolbe, you might remember, was the Catholic priest murdered by the Nazis who departed this earthly stage singing hymns from his starvation bunker until the guards got so sick of it that they finally finished him off with a lethal injection.
But not all martyrs die quite so gloriously. If you read the last recorded words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, who was also murdered by the Nazis, you’ll find someone with far more self-doubt and questioning. I suspect that the Baptist was closer to Bonhoeffer in this regard than Kolbe, for the only words we hear from the Baptist while he was in prison are words of doubt! John messages Jesus from prison, you may remember, asking Him, “Are you the one we were waiting for or should we wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3)
John had been so confident early on – both about Jesus and about his own work, proclaiming Jesus as the ’lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’ (John 1:29) while railing as openly about Herod’s personal indiscretions as he did about everything else that ticked him off. Perhaps he thought himself untouchable, or perhaps he didn’t care what happened to him at that stage? But things began to look different from the inside of his prison cell, and John had doubts.
Did John die still full of doubts, or did the response he received from Jesus satisfy him, such that he died in peace? We do not know. We know nothing of the inner life of John at the end but only of the horrible details of his martyrdom – of the way John ticked off Herodian, Herod’s wife, of Herod’s wild party, of the seductive dance that lured the drunken king to promise up to half his kingdom to the young seductress, and of the girl’s ghastly request.
This could not have been the end that either John or his disciples expected. Of course we don’t know exactly what John’s followers were expecting but we do know that John was regularly compared to Elijah, and I expect the disciples of the Baptist expected John’s career to follow a similar course
Elijah, if you remember, had been the mouthpiece of God to the political leaders of his day. He challenged King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and had multiple death threats made against him. Nonetheless, God kept Elijah safe, and eventually he saw the tables turned on those who tried to imprison him and kill him.
I expect the disciples of the Baptist expected his career to follow a similar course. And then they got the news that John’s head had been served on a platter to the queen! It must have been hard to make sense of it all. And in truth, it really is a difficult story to make sense of, even at this distance.
You know how in our conventional Christian wisdom we say, “well, this tragedy might not make a lot of sense right now, but once we see the bigger picture, we’ll see how everything fits together.” Well … it’s 2000 years on from the death of John the Baptist and I still can‘t see why John had to die in the way he did!
When I was last in Syria I joined in a worship service in the ancient Christian town of Saydnaya and when sat down near the front of the church I noticed a table with about forty colourful boxes on them, evidently gifts of some sort that were going to be distributed. I was hoping that none of these were intended for us as foreign visitors were always receiving far too many unwarranted gifts.
Indeed the gifts were not for us but were presented during the service to the parents of children who had recently been killed in the fighting! Each box contained a classical Christian icon. Names were called and aging couples came to the front of the church to receive their icon from the Bishop or one of the other clergy (including the local Islamic Sheikh). The congregation clapped but the recipients of the gifts were not smiling. These were parents whose sons and daughter had just been killed, and in a town of only a few thousand people there were an awful lot of these icons being distributed!
What was the point? Why did these children have to die? Would it really have harmed the plan of God in some way if these young men and women had gone on to lead full and fruitful lives? Would it really have damaged God’s plans had the Baptist one day died quietly in his sleep? Maybe sometimes we just have to accept that tragedies happen and that they are not always miracles in disguise!
Even so, I think the Gospel writer does intend for us to see this story of the death of John the Baptist as part of a greater, grander, story of hope, and the key to that, I think, is actually the way in which this story is introduced.
For our Gospel reading doesn’t actually start off as being a story about John the Baptist or Herod, let alone about Herodian or Salome. It starts rather with people asking questions about Jesus – ‘who is this guy?’ Some said Jesus was Elijah or one of the other prophets, but it’s Herod who identifies Jesus as John the Baptist having come back to haunt him, saying, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised!” (Mark 6:16)
And Herod is completely wrong of course, but in another sense he’s entirely right. Jesus is Jesus and not John – we need have no doubt about that – but what Herod does get right is that killing off John did not put an end to John’s work, as John’s work was just part of a larger project that Jesus was continuing!
And of course it’s not really so much the ministry of John that goes on, but rather the work of the Kingdom of God that goes on! John is dead, but the battle for the Kingdom continues. Others before John and others after him have fallen in this battle but still the work of God continues! Jesus Himself will fall in this battle but the work of God continues. Indeed, not just despite His death, but through His death, the work of God continues!
For in the end, the work of God isn’t so much a boxing match where, when the fighter goes down the show is over and everybody goes home. No. It’s more like a tag-team wrestling match (for those who remember such things) where, as one fighter finds she is unable to continue, she tags her friend, and she jumps in and continues the fight where her partner left off! This is the battle for the Kingdom of God – a battle that is still raging and in which we are all still involved!
It’s what my father taught me – that the work of God is like a flowing stream, and that when someone puts a rock in the stream, the water flows around the rock. This is what the disciples of John had to discover – that despite the death of their master, his work would continue! This is what the first century disciples of Jesus had to discover, and this is the discovery that we continue to make today and that I take with me into Syria again – that despite the setbacks, hardships, and the deaths of those dear souls we lose along the way, the work of God continues, or, in the words of the great Martin Luther, “The City of God remaineth”.
Many have gone before us in this fight and others will follow, and none of us is invulnerable. All of us, sooner or later, will fall, as I will fall, but the work of God will continue. At some point all will fall, but the city of God remaineth!
And sometimes all we can do is just pick up the remains of those who have fallen and give them a decent burial. But we do so in the confidence that whatever happens, God will be God, God’s work will continue, His love will triumph, His Kingdom comes. Amen!
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 12th of July, 2015.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four. www.FatherDave.org
