Heads Will Roll
Amy Marie Epp
Seattle Mennonite Church
© February 8, 2020
This is not going to be a sermon about Jesus. Mostly. Mostly this is going to be a sermon about the insane, self-important, opportunistic, insestuous, political intrigue that is dropped into the story about Jesus. The gospel of Mark is known for its immediacy - sometimes literally, since that word, “immediately” is employed left and right, giving the Gospel a momentum. The first part of the reading today is a little like that. Jesus’ disciples get to town and shake off the dust within a matter of verses.
The story of Herod - that’s the crazy, self-important, despotic (but actually pretty small-time) tetrarch I mentioned off the top - is dropped into the Gospel almost out of the blue. It’s an interruption in the flow off Jesus’ growing ministry. Which makes one (that is, me) wonder, wtf. It’s not even happening concurrently. It’s a flashback.
It does start with a ‘meanwhile.’ Meanwhile, people are a-talkin’. This is old-timey media. The speculations about Jesus are flying: Is he Elijah? Is he a prophet - new guy but like the prophets we’ve know? How much should we pay attention to this guy. All leading to Herod’s speculative thought: “This is John, whom I beheaded, come to life!” And we launch into the story of how John came to lose his head.
I used to watch Days of our Lives. That was my soap. It started in college - when I had time to watch TV during the day - and then I picked it up again at seminary, in part because I had a buddy who was also a fan from way back. This story reminds me of a soap opera. Cheating, divorce, a scheming older woman, a beautiful and enchanting young woman, powerful men, lavish setting and high emotion. Somewhat unusual for the Gospels, certainly reMarkable for this gospel: disturbed, distressed, furious, delighted. And of course killing off the characters who are unneeded.
But it’s not really a soap opera. This story is here to remind readers that the Gospels are not just a story about a prophet. It is a story about politics. Jesus and his cousin John don’t preach in a vacuum. Their message is broadcast in a political system - often addressing the oppression or hypocrisy of those with power. Jesus and John both are working not in isolation but with intention. We just can’t get away from politics.
I’m sure many of you have been following the multiple strands of national political drama that have been unfolding over the past weeks. And as I read the story of Herod and Herodias and Salome (unnamed in this Gospel, she’s named elsewhere) I couldn’t help thinking that we may think what we are experiencing is new - and perhaps is it in modern US politics - but “plus ça change, le plus c’est la même chose”. Corrupt use of power as and always will be.
It is also remarkably easy for me to picture a rendering of this banquet in which Herod’s hair is remarkably blond, fluffy and combed over a peachy hued face. And the table is flanked by figures more familiar to Fox News than Galilee 30 BCE. Then there's the lechery of Herod’s offer of anything - even half his realm - to his stepdaughter/niece smacked a lot to me of ‘if she wasn’t my daughter I’d date her.’
This family! Teens, if a parent said to you, “Go ask your stepdad/uncle to cut off my enemy’s head, but first seduce him when he’s drunk,” would you follow through? This might defy the boundaries of manipulative behavior that the highschool class talked about in Sunday school last week. And then - how would it feel if king stepdad did what you asked and put an actual head of a human in your hands? Shudder. But Salome seems pretty matter of fact about it, like, “Here, mom.” It appears that everyone in this terrible family is on the same page about getting rid of those who question the authenticity of their reign.
[sigh - again] Maybe it is a mistake for me to so closely align current leadership with the Biblical story. Perhaps that actually limits our interpretation of the Gospel. But when I see that corrupt leadership in the story, I begin to think Mark included it where he did because of the pervasiveness and persistence of corrupt leadership. In the narrative of Mark it is first foreshadowing. This flashback to political farce and drama flashes forward to the political playing out of Jesus’ own trial and death - in which Herod will again be involved. It’s also possible that Mark was warning his first hearers about their own situation as Jesus followers. Being a disciple of Jesus will always be political. When we truly enact Gospel, call our leaders to account, demand justice and equity in the ways leaders enact governance, they may be threatened. Especially if they want all the power for themselves. That is a dynamic that we see play out again and again through history.
This whole Herod family is all and only about power. When you look at the Herodian familly tree it is interwoven branches of incest because they don’t want to disperse that power. With some exceptions like this Herod’s first wife, who was the daughter of another powerful leader and an opportunity to consolidate power. When the rumors are flying about the identity of Jesus, Herod thinks like the tell-tale heart, “This is John, whom I beheaded, come to life.” He is terrified.
When we hear about beheadings now - and it was no different at the time - they are acts of terror. Meant to strike fear - when done by despotic and tyrannical leadership - keep the little people from fighting back, from rising up. They may also be - as John’s was - a punishment for challenging power.
Herod may have couched this act in the oath he made Salome (and Herodias) - not wanting to lose face in front of his cronies at the table, but he was the boss. He could have backed out of it. No, this is an opportunity for him. He may have been curious about John’s spiritual influence but he did not appreciate the waves he was making among his followers, inciting them against him as ruler. He was threatened and also very angry. John was doing what prophets do - like Nathan did to David re. Bathsheba - calling Herod out on his immoral and unethical behavior - marrying his brother’s wife.
The Herod clan’s claim on Jewish identity and affiliation was tenuous already and behavior, they were so thoroughly Hellenized/Romanized. The divorce and marriage and John’s attention to it could make people lose faith in this monarchy and/or rebel/rise up etc. In other words Herod was threatened. The dramatic death of John was intended to send a message to others like him.
But it clearly doesn’t keep Herod from feeling fearful, because what he thinks, when others are thinking, “This Jesus guy is a prophet,” is, “It’s John! He’s back!” He thinks it’s resurrection. It’s not resurrection - this time - but it is a kind of new life. Jesus is still on the come-up but he is gaining momentum. His ministry does what John had predicted: it’s about to blow up. He hasn’t made many waves in his home territory of Galilee but he’s about to. He is about to feed over 5000 people and word is spreading fast.
Even though this is a story about terror and fear, I think in the larger context it’s meant to encourage. So long as there is corruption, there is a movement to oppose it. The early church needed the encouragement to step into the way of Jesus and keep walking in that way in the face of challenge and resistance. At the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors, one of its founders, wrote, “[Black Lives Matter] Provide[s] hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation. Rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams.”
Rooted in grief and rage. There can be new life in acts of resistance. There can be hope in doing the work together. Commenting on this, in a piece about hope, Rebecca Solnit wrote in The Guardian, “The vision of a better future doesn’t have to deny the crimes and sufferings of the present; it matters because of that horror.” She also talks in that article about the lasting impacts of movements that seemed like failures at the time, or that we’ve forgotten about.
A recent example she cites is Standing Rock. The pipeline wasn’t stopped, but, it educated and inspired many to divest, made fossil fuels seem like a riskier and less profitable, and in the delay of the pipeline cost investor a fortune. She also says this:
At its height it was almost certainly the biggest political gathering of Native North Americans ever seen, said to be the first time all seven bands of the Lakota had come together since they defeated Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876, one that made an often-invisible tribe visible around the world. What unfolded there seemed as though it might not undo one pipeline but write a radical new chapter to a history of more than 500 years of colonial brutality, centuries of loss, dehumanization and dispossession...Standing Rock has been a catalyst for a sense of power, pride, destiny. It is an affirmation of solidarity and interconnection, an education for people who didn’t know much about native rights and wrongs, an affirmation for Native people who often remember history in passionate detail. It is a confirmation of the deep ties between the climate movement and indigenous rights that has played a huge role in stopping pipelines in and from Canada. It has inspired and informed young people who may have half a century or more of good work yet to do. It has been a beacon whose meaning stretches beyond that time and place.
That movement is still inspiring movements like it.
Immediately after the death of John, his friends and followers gather what is left of his body and memorialize him. As the gospel continues the ministry of John is amplified and continued by Jesus, his followers gathering and continuing his ministry after his death. And here we are, in a time of political drama and - some would say - fear, carrying on the work and ministry of Jesus.
Honestly, that we are all here already gives me hope. Many of you already, whether in your professional lives or as citizens, prophecy and advocate and speak to power. Some of you bring those opportunities to this community and invite solidarity. It is one of the reasons that being the church together is powerful and meaningful in itself.
I pray that we continue to find hope in Jesus, in community and in joining together to be prophets to the powerful. That we recognize when we are the powerful being prophesied to and seek not to roll heads but to roll aside and make way for change. I pray that we will be guided by the spirit of John and Jesus and the ones for whom they spoke. Amen.