Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2024

2 Samuel 6:1-5,12b-19+Psalm 24+Ephesians 1:3-14+Mark 6:14-29

Mark's gospel uses a narrative technique so often, at least six times and maybe as many as nine in its sixteen chapters, that it has a name: a Markan Sandwich. Mark begins a story and then interrupts it to tell another story before returning to the first one to finish telling it. In chapter five, which Father Allport preached about on the final Sunday of my absence in June, you might recall that a religious leader named Jairus begs Jesus to come heal his daughter. That's part one. When Jesus is on his way to Jairus's house, we have the interruption of the woman who had endured bleeding for a dozen years. At the conclusion of that scene, Jesus is on his way and raises Jairus's daughter from the dead.

This sandwich of a story within a story can serve to emphasize, contrast, or highlight certain parts of a story. A woman who has no status who has suffered for twelve years; a twelve-year-old girl who is a daughter of privilege. Both of them receive healing from Jesus, directly in the case of Jairus's daughter or indirectly in the case of the woman who only reaches out to touch the hem of his garment.

It is not so obvious that we are in the peanut butter and jelly part of the Markan Sandwich because the gospel I just read did not include the bread slices, unlike the story of Jairus's daughter and the hemorrhaging woman which was the whole sandwich.

Last week, Jesus gathered the Twelve around him and sent them out two by two, giving them specific instructions to travel lightly and not to waste their time where they are not welcome. Next Sunday, we will read about their return, all excited by the deeds they had done. This week, Mark inserts this account of the beheading of John, an event that is part of all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and it always follows some version of the news that Jesus fame was spreading and the crowds following him around were growing. Apparently, some people - including Herod - thought John had come back to life, and that is when we get the flashback to Herod's despicable deed.

What was it about John that felt like such a threat, and why did Herod equate what was happening around Jesus with John? I mean, Jesus wasn't accusing Herod of adultery. Jesus wasn't really having anything to do with Herod at all, at least not directly. What was it, then?

John was unmistakably a revolutionary. We first encounter him shouting at people in the wilderness to repent, straighten up and fly right, because God's kingdom was at hand. He confronted Herod about marrying his brother's wife, consequences be damned. His was a call to righteousness. And the crowds flocked to him. Once John was in prison and up until his execution, Jesus assumed leadership of this movement, and the crowds followed him. The Jewish historian Josephus adds a little detail to why Herod felt so threatened by John the Baptist. He was already destabilized by setting aside his first wife, the daughter of another ruler, and he believed the John's accusations and the crowds who followed him meant that a revolt was a very real possibility. And if he equates Jesus as a resurrected John, then Jesus gets painted with the same brush.

And Herod is wondering what happened. I got rid of John, who is this that is undermining everything and has all these people traipsing around after him?

I think we can learn a lot by understanding the placement of this episode in the sandwich of Jesus sending out the Twelve. There are at least six people named Herod in the New Testament, and they were all awful. The Herod who beheaded John the Baptist in today's reading is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great who we remember from the Christmas Story and the Massacre of the Innocents. Herod Antipas was the ruler of Galilee and the region to the east of the Jordan River and by reputation was as despotic as his father.

Contrast that with the kind of realm Jesus talks of, one where people are healed and fed and uplifted. It's a new world order, and one that threatens the kind of earthly monarchy Herod represents. We could even contrast King David with Herod - David who stripped down to his skivvies to dance before the ark of the Lord, making himself surely a fool for God. None of the Herods would have done such a thing.

The occasion of the banquet and the dance seem to be a vehicle for creating a story that it was not really Herod's intention to behead John. Oh, no, it was the girl's fault. It was her mother's fault. This is just another example of Herod's cruelty. If the girl did actually perform some kind of salacious dance, she had no choice but to do it, and it was an action so far beneath her status and sexualized beyond her age that it was absolutely abusive. The description of her as a twelve-year-old girl uses the exact same Greek word for Jairus's daughter in the previous chapter. This child was being manipulated by her mother and her stepfather. Where Jesus brings life, Herod  - and those surrounding him - uses and abuses, discards and murders.

That's not Jesus's way. That is not what the Reign of God looks like. We can look around us see all kinds of examples of Herod-like behavior in the criminalization of homelessness, relentless bombings of hospitals and killing of innocents in Gaza and Ukraine, and the demonization of those along the US-Mexico border. Over the next few months, the intensity of the political debates will swirl around us, and all these issues will continue to be debated and exaggerated and justified in all manner of rhetoric. And sometimes that intensity will lead to the kind of violence we witnessed yesterday.

Our job is to proclaim a different way, one that says the poor are blessed, the meek will inherit the earth, and the first will be last. We stand in opposition to the Herods of the present age, whatever that looks like in our day-to-day life. As the writer of the letter to the Ephesians puts it

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory. (1:11-14)

The wickedness of Herod is sandwiched between a story of a Jesus who equips disciples to go into the world with healing and care. That is our ministry, too. And this world needs that as much as it ever has. Especially now. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often quotes the spiritual "walk together children, don't you get weary." Don't get weary, friends. The world needs what we, in the name of Christ, have to offer.