Sex.
I’ll say it again: Sex!
There . . . are you awake? That’s
one way to perk everybody up, get everyone to pay attention, just mention
sex. Sex—of course—sells, we all know
that, it sells deodorant, it sells cars, it sells car insurance, for
Pete’s sake. I recently saw a commercial
with a beautiful woman, shapely legs, improbably short skirt, sliding across
the seat of her car, with a look of adoring gratitude on her face toward the
big strong man who sold her Allstate.
Sex even sells Bible passages . . . I ask you—would we know the
story of David and Bathsheba as well as we do if it wasn’t drenched in
sex? It’s like that with this story as
well . . . it has seeped into the groundwater of our popular culture, and
largely because of its titillation-value . . . who hasn’t heard about Salomé and the Dance of the Seven Veils? The dance that
drove Herod and his guests wild with desire . . . and the story has
darker overtones as well, of incest and greed . . . over the centuries,
painters have painted lurid pictures of a nubile Salomé, holding John’s head on
a platter . . . Oscar Wilde wrote a play that was banned in many cities . . .
Richard Strauss wrote an Opera that in a recent production was labeled for adults only, and a
few years ago, Wilde’s play was resurrected on Broadway, with no less than Al
Pacino as Herod.
Problem is, almost none of this stuff
is in the scripture. There’s no Dance of
the Seven Veils, and the daughter of Herod—or is it the daughter of Herodias,
as Matthew has it?—is not called Salomé in the scripture at all . . .
that’s what the Jewish historian Josephus called her. And is there really lust in the hearts of
Herod and his guests? It says that his
daughter came in to dance and that she pleased Herod and his guest, it
doesn’t say anything about inflamed passions and wanton sexuality . . . Mark
just calls her a girl, and the Greek word he uses is the same he uses to
describe the daughter of the Jairus— a little girl, twelve years
old. And so what this looks like is not
some erotic carousal but a cute, innocent little-girl dance, which amuses,
not arouses, Herod and his guests. But
why would Herod offer her anything if it were just an innocent frolic? Ancient, Near-Eastern hospitality codes would
suggest that the girl be rewarded for her efforts, and Herod—because of his
position as King—would be even more
bound by them, and you can just about see Herod—expansive as only an king can
be—patting her on the head, saying “Go on . . . whatever you want.” Maybe she’d ask for a pony, or some ice
cream.
And so if that’s the case, if there
isn’t any seduction at the core of this story, what’s the point? Why did Mark choose to include this
story? It’s not like it’s about their main character, Jesus . . . or is it? Well, Mark uses his famous technique of
sandwiching one story in the middle of another, and so it behooves us to look
at that here . . . it’s easy to do in bibles like the ones in the pews . . .
just open them up and look at the headings for what comes before and
after. And if you do, you’ll see that
the heading for the section before this one reads “The Mission of the
Twelve,” and the section after says “Feeding the Five Thousand.” Hmmm . . . curiouser and curiouser . . .
looks like it’s sandwiched between two stories about mission—the
sending-out of the disciples and an example of what they are sent out to
do—so does that have something to do with it, perhaps?
But what could the killing of an
itinerant preacher have to do with the mission of the followers of Jesus? True . . . Herod mistakes Jesus for
John raised up, which would be natural, because Jesus was doing some of the
same things John did—notably, performing miracles and collecting disciples—and saying
some of the same things, as in the kingdom of God is at hand. And Herod may have thought, maybe with a
guilty conscience, that like Banquo’s ghost, John had come back to haunt him .
. . I can imagine sleepless nights, jumping at any noise, waiting for a ghostly
figure to drift in the window to point accusingly at him . . . going over and
over in his mind what happened . . . it was at a banquet and it was in his
honor, of course, who else’s? And
everybody who was anybody was there . . . all the minor politicians and
kiss-ups, all the toadies and hangers-on, all the lesser potentates of
forgettable tribes, all carefully arranged by his social secretary in order of
importance, in order of political power . . . the most important next to him on
either side . . . there, on the right, and about half-way down was Bjorn,
personal trainer to the stars, and on the other side, a little closer to the
front, Juliet Roberts, the starlet of the moment, in a dress that threatened to
break even the lax decency standards of the Empire . . . and they hung on his
every word, and even though he knew they were toadies, even
though he knew they were just jockeying for power, he felt a rush of
pride and ego . . . and way down at the other end of the hall, the press were
greedily devouring the worst food and drink in the hall, not that those swine
deserved any better, with what they’d
been saying about
him, the unpatriotic louts . . . didn’t they know we were at war? Didn’t
they know that criticizing the government gave succor to the enemy? He’d had to hang two of ‘em just last week. So when his little step-daughter came
skipping in, Herod’s face softened, he couldn’t help it, because he loved his
daughter, and he held up his hand for quiet and the little girl began to dance,
all eyes in the room were glued to her, and even though he knew they were just
trying to butter him up, his heart swelled with pride and a smile creased his
face . . . and when she was done, and had taken a cute little bow, and everyone
had done applauding, he looked down the table to make sure the press was
watching—he’d already checked to see that it was
before the print deadline—and he solemnly, but with great flourish, swore to
his step-daughter “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my
kingdom.” And a sigh of . . . awe . . .
swept around the tables, and a little burst of spontaneous applause, and he
said to himself All right! Am I
a King or what?
And he was so taken with his own
image of himself—and perhaps some of the fine Corinthian wine he’d inhaled—that
he didn’t even notice Herodius standing in the shadows, or that when their
daughter whispered in her ear, a cold smile appeared on her face . . . but it
sobered him right up when the girl said “Give me the head of John the Baptist
on a dinner-plate.” And his mind worked
furiously, trying to figure a way out, trying to weigh the odds . . . he liked
John, he liked listening to him, especially when he was safely locked away, not
inciting anybody to riot or questioning his morals, but if he didn’t kill him,
he’d lose face, and that was only the least of his problems. These . . .
hyenas around the table would smell blood the minute he wavered,
the second he even looked like he was welshing on a kingly promise. And what about his Roman masters? What would they think? He knew the answer to that . . . they’d see it as a sign of weakness, that he’d give a fig
about that seditious riffraff, that smelly, pit-scratching rabble-rouser, and
the Romans didn’t get to be the proprietors of an empire by keeping weak
underlings around, and it would likely cost him his head, and all his
family’s as well . . . and then it became a no-brainer, cause
he liked his own head a lot better
than John’s, and immediately he sent and had it lopped off.
And right here that we need to pause
and think about what's going on . . . Herod didn't want to kill John, he
enjoyed talking with him, listening to him, even though he'd had him
jailed for saying things he didn't like . . . maybe that was part of
John's attraction. Maybe Herod got tired
of all the yes-men, all the sycophants buzzing around them like flies, maybe he
respected somebody like John, at least as long as they're safely locked up so
they can't foment revolution or anything . . . whatever the reason, Herod
didn't want to kill him, but he was backed into a corner, he had to bow to the
will of the crowds—I mean guests—and
does this remind you of something? Does
it remind you of another ruler who doesn't want to execute someone, but
gets backed into a corner? And here's
the key to what Mark's trying to do here, the comparison he's trying to make .
. . of course, Pilate is pressured in exactly the same way. He doesn't want to convict Jesus, he doesn't
want to execute him, but he's backed into a corner by the crowd, which has
settled on a victim, that demands he execute the Christ.
And now we understand that bit back
at the beginning, about how Herod mistakes Jesus for John. It’s a big fat clue: we are to see the
likeness ourselves . . . John preaches the kingdom, Jesus preaches the kingdom
. . . John performs healings and exorcisms, Jesus performs healings and
exorcisms . . . John is killed for his activities, and so is Jesus. And Mark wraps the whole story up in mission—first
the commissioning of the twelve disciples, to go two-by-two out into the
countryside, and then the feeding of the five-thousand, with its echoes of the last supper . . . Following
Christ is dangerous, Mark is saying . . . following Jesus—healing like
him, feeding the poor like him, preaching the good news like him—might just mean
dying like him, as it did for John.
And of course, through the ages, this
has been true . . . Paul, beheaded in Rome . . . Peter crucified upside down in the same
place. Thecla—martyred. Justin—martyred. John Wycliffe, Joan of Arc, William Tyndale .
. . all killed because they are
Christians. And it’s still going on today . . . all over the world,
Christians are being killed or persecuted for their faith . . . in countries
like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam . . . wherever Christians stand up and
speak out against the governments of their countries, wherever they are
perceived to be a menace to the status quo, they are silenced.
We often think of the death of Jesus
as a solitary event in history, and in some ways it was . . . after all, it was
the Son of God up there, spiked to a tree . . . but this comparison to
John shows us that in other ways, it was far from unique . . . like John, he
was condemned to death for what he said, what he preached, and—again
like John—he was killed not by one man, but by the system in which he
lived . . . in a real sense, it wasn’t Herod and Pilate that killed them, but
the whole society, the whole milieu in
which they lived. Herod was a tool, a
factotum in the great Roman machine . . . if he refused to do what the machine
required, he would be replaced, like a broken wheel or a worn-out gear . . .
Pilate was in the same boat . . . when the crowd blood-thirstily called out “Crucify
him, crucify him!” he bowed to the inevitable, and gave Jesus over to be
killed. Either man could have shown
personal courage, either one could have refused, but then somebody else would’ve
been found, and the job would’ve been done anyway . . . Mark is very careful to
show this . . . both men—both John and Jesus—are victims of forces greater
than just a single man or woman. They
are killed by an entire culture, an entire society, because they are
threats to the status quo, menaces to the powers that be.
It is an article of faith for us that
God so loved the world, that he sent God’s only-begotten son, that in fact God
came to earth, shed of God-hood—emptied of it, to quote Paul—to suffer
as humans suffer, to identify with us . . . and in this story, in the
story of John and Herod and his dancing daughter, we see who he identified with
. . . he identified with the oppressed of the world, with those condemned to
die for being on the outside looking in, or for being a thorn in the side of
the powers and principalities of this world.
He came to stand in solidarity with—and to die in solidarity with—John
the Baptist, Paul of Tarsus and every poverty-stricken campesino laboring for
absentee landlords in Central America.
He said it in his mission statement, in his first sermon over in Luke:
he came to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and
to let the oppressed go free.
Mark wrapped this story in mission
for a reason, and it’s
more than just a
warning, more than just a heads-up to what Christians can expect . . .
following Christ, doing his mission, means standing with him against the
oppressive powers, along-side of those who are under their thumbs . . . and as
Christians, we need to ask ourselves who those people are in our
society, who would Jesus stand with? Is
it the single parent with three children, working for a non-living-wage job,
barely able to buy food? Is it the
homeless Vietnam vet, head filled with demons, wandering lost down the
highway? Who would Jesus stand
with today, who are the oppressed, the poor and the captives? As Christians, it is our job to stand with
them too . . . but not alone. Because if
we stand with the oppressed, if we stand with the hungry, if we stand with the
sick and the blind and the lame, one thing we can be sure of is that we won’t be
alone. Because that’s where Jesus will
be as well. Amen.
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