This week again, we follow the thread in Mark’s Gospel about Jesus’s identity. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the Gospel keeps on asking who is Jesus and it seems to be digging deeper each time. We have seen that Mark presents Jesus as a teacher and a healer, then shows us that Jesus is actually a savior (the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter, the calming of the storm) and then Mark narrows down the question to find out what kind of savior Jesus is. Last week passage was about demonstrating that Jesus wasn’t a rescuer – as he expects openness and collaboration in his ministry (see last sermon). And today, we are heading even more closer the cross – Jesus is a savior, and not a rescuer, and rather a “suffering servant” as John the Baptist was.
– This long and detailed story about John the Baptist seems to be interrupting the narrative flow about Jesus’s ministry, and yet it gives us important cues to understand what’s coming next. This story does not mention Jesus, or the disciples and yet we see the point. It is, if you will, a little bit like the story of Esther in the Old Testament. Not only because Herod offers to Herodias’ daughter “half of his kingdom” as did the King for Esther – an explicit reference – but also because the Book of Esther never mentions God, although we understand it is all about God. In the same way, we have to understand that if the story never mentions Jesus, it is all about Jesus.
So it looks like a “moralistic” story, and at some level it is, but if we look more deeply, it is also theological story – a story about Jesus.
First of all – what is it with this story as a moralistic story?
Well, I think we can comfortably say that it isn’t moralistic in a traditional sense because in the end, the evil ones aren’t punished. Rather, they win and the holy man loses. Yet, their victory probably does not sound good to any of us. So it’s this kind of story that, instead of telling us directly that something is right or that something is wrong, it’s the kind of story that provides a moral teaching by showing us a situation, handing us a mirror in which we can look at ourselves and question our own lives.
So how can we see ourselves through the lens of this story?
– Well, first of all, Herod is presented as a complex character instead of being just singled out as a “bad guy”. He is first of all conflicted. He likes John actually, he likes his teaching, and maybe there was some kind of religiosity in Herod: He was a Jew, he knew the Torah, he probably had admiration and respect for the prophets. We understand his desire to be good or even to be close to God – certainly because we also have this desire inside of us. Yet we quickly discover that, for Herod as it is for us, doing the right thing is uncomfortable. To really “hear John” instead of just listening to him, Herod would have to separate from his wife – but it was no easy. It’s not sure that he was insanely in love with her, rather it looks like she was a dominating person and he was under his influence.
To me, we can certainly relate to this very human side of Herod. Like him, we may like to hear about justice and righteousness and God’s will, but of course when it comes to put it in action it’s rather uncomfortable, mostly because doing the right thing is likely to displease people we would like to have on our side. And it’s something that is easy to forget when we preach love and the love of neighbor: We have a tendency to think that it means we should make everyone happy. But we see in the story that it is hardly the case, and that, in order to do the right thing, Herod should have taken the risk to displease his wife and his hosts.
More deeply, the story mentions that Herod had John killed “out of regard for his hosts”, but also “out of regard for his oath”, and I think it’s even more interesting. It looks like honoring an oath is the right thing to do, correct? Yet in this case, do you think that Herod should have honored his oath? No, we understand that he should have acknowledged in front of everyone that it was not a good idea to offer Herodias’ daughter whatever she wanted. I find it interesting because we see that, contrarily to what we often assume, leading a moral life is not just about following rules or sticking to some principles. Rules are there to guide us, but they should not be an excuse to do something awful! We have to use our own judgment all the time to do the best thing in any given circumstance.
But then the story asks another question: how do we use our judgment? Certainly there are situations where our judgment is impaired – and this is exactly what happens to Herod here. He is surrounded by the wrong persons, everybody is getting drunk and excited, included himself. It is to be noticed that the story does not seem to condemn the party itself, or even the drinking, or the sexual attraction Herod experiences, but it shows us that this context leads him to make bad decisions. I think this is certainly something we can relate to. If we want to make moral decisions, we have to remove ourselves from situations we know can impair our judgment. It may be different for each one of us. Many situations in themselves aren’t sinful or that sinful, but they can lead to sin because we are weak.
To me, this is really the point the story makes about Herod’s character – he is not a bad guy, but he is weak, makes bad decisions, and since he is the king, his bad decisions have terrible consequences. The story shows us that we need to be aware of our own weaknesses so they don’t take control of our lives. If you think about it, all Herod had to do was to say no…to declare that he promised more than he could afford, that John was off limits. But he doesn’t do that because he does not want to look stupid. How often do we do the same? We do something stupid and to hide the fact that we have done something stupid, we do something even more stupid? Leading a moral life requires humility and the ability to acknowledge that we need to change and to change our minds.
In this we find ourselves at the frontier between morality and theology because we see in action what it is to “repent” – the very thing John was teaching and Jesus taught after him. Change your minds from what you are currently doing to follow God’s righteousness. Herod incarnates the tragedy of not being able to repent, to turn back to God. Herod gets caught in a situation where he ends up having no choice (He was “greatly perplexed” actually means “He didn’t know where to turn). And so in the end John the Baptist loses his life, but Herod loses his soul. This story is a scary story, to say the least.
– Now a few words about the theological aspect of the story.
First, we talked about Jesus’ “mighty deeds” and “powerful words” in Mark’s Gospel and in this sermon series, but our theme is also a “rising opposition”, and the story shows us where the Gospel is heading. John appeared first, opening the way, but he is also the first to leave, and we can guess that’s the way things are going to be for Jesus too. Jesus is a savior, but also a suffering servant. He does not promise victory in this world, he just calls people to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing as did John. John was willing to speak truth to power, just because it was what he had to do, even at the cost of his life. The scene of John’s burial is very powerful to me. There is a poverty and a vulnerability in doing the right thing, not knowing what the consequences will be – it includes John, his disciples, but it will also includes Jesus himself.
Yet – and this will be my conclusion – in all of this there is a promise of a Resurrection, oddly spoken by the mouth of Herod himself, who fears that Jesus is “John raised from the dead”. Jesus is not John reincarnated (that would be impossible since they are the same age), but it is the same spirit of truth working in him. It is scary to Herod because he fears judgment and condemnation for what he has done, yet there would have been for him another chance for repentance – even when all seemed said and done. We know that Herod didn’t take this opportunity to repent and that, a few years later, when faced with Jesus he will also let Jesus be put to death. Herod had sealed his fate. The evil ones win and the holy man loses, but only in this realm. Jesus’s story is not complete if we don’t look all the way towards the Resurrection.