Mark—the
author of our tale—was a sly old dog. He
is famous—in pointy-headed biblical studies circles at least—for creating associations
by placing different stories side by
side. He knew that by juxtaposing two episodes
from Jesus’ life, he could create new meaning not present in either. Remember the stories of the hemorrhaging
woman and the synagogue official’s daughter?
They were probably originally separate tales, floating around campfires
and house-churches like narrative baubles, but by embedding one inside the
other, Mark was able to relate them together in a way that pointed up both the
differences and similarities between the unclean woman and the synagogue leader. And using the ancient Semitic literary trick
of putting the most important thing in the middle, he was able to subtly
imply who he thought was more important to God.
The last shall be first and the first last, indeed.
This
week, we’re going to look at this familiar tale of a dancing girl and the King
of the Jews in light of what is placed before
it in his narrative. And this where
Mark is so sly: he structures it like a flashback,
with Herod hearing about what Jesus was doing, and then reminiscing about what he did to John the Baptist. And it’s clear what Mark is up to: he’s
identifying Jesus with John the Baptist, he even has old Herod say so: “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” And so on a meta-level, the level of Mark’s
theology, we’re being asked to compare John and Jesus.
And one of the theological things Mark is trying to do is
delineate the person of John the Baptist
from that of Jesus the Christ. Herod thinks John’s been resurrected and is
now out in the countryside working miracles and doing good things; but at the
end of the story, Mark is careful to say that John’s disciples hear about his
death, take away his body, and lay it in a tomb. Just like they laid Jesus in a tomb, but in Jesus
case, that wasn’t the end of it, he really was resurrected. But here, John’s disciples lay him in a tomb,
and there’s no sign of him getting out on his own. John was no Jesus.
And that is one of things
happening on our meta level, in Mark’s theological agenda, and we’ll get back
to that level in a minute, but first I want to go to the first level, the first
lens in our Gospel reading glasses for a few minutes, and look at what actually
happened with the decapitation of John.
It’s an interesting thought that a Jew like Herod would believe John had
been resurrected. A lot of Jews didn’t
believe in the possibility of it, and in fact the thought of a reanimated
corpse made their skin crawl. That Herod
thought of it so readily is an indication of the state of mind he was in, and
Mark dutifully reports it, because it certainly plays into his agenda of
comparing John to Jesus . . . but it could be that Herod had a guilty
conscious, as well, and I can see it now:
Herod thinks John has been resurrected, and is coming for him, arms
outstretched like in a bad zombie movie, dead eyes boring into his.
And I’ll bet Herod was shaking
in his boots, because what he’d done to John wasn’t very nice, and he knew it.
He knew that John was a righteous and holy man, but that couldn’t have carried a
lot of weight, because he arrested him anyway because he didn’t like what he
was saying. And here’s where I want you to see that it’s the same as it ever
was, as David Byrne might say: speaking truth to power will get you thrown into
the pokey, we see it all the time: it’s most obvious in other countries high on
Amnesty International’s list, where being opposed to those in power will get the
key thrown away, but here in the land of the free it can happen as well . . . remember
the use of the FBI by President after President, of both parties, to harass and
prosecute people of dissenting political opinions? Actresses, Viet-Nam War protesters, Civil
Rights workers—Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prime target in the 60s—all were
harassed and investigated and wire-tapped for speaking against the official
policies of the United States government.
And don’t even get me started about the NSA . . .
The point is that it’s not a
U.S. government thing or a Nicaraguan government thing or even a Russian government
thing, it’s a feature of those in power to suppress those whose opinions they
don’t like. And here John was speaking
truth to power, he was voicing God’s displeasure at what that government was
doing, the sole government of Judea being one Herod, self-styled King of the Jews,
who had him arrested for pointing out the Torah, the Jewish law of the land. “It is not lawful for you to have your
brother’s wife.”
I want you to notice a funny
thing about our text. It begins by
saying “Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in
prison on account of Herodias . . .” and note that it clearly states that
“Herod himself” had sent men who arrested John, and in the Greek it’s even more clear,
Mark puts the “himself” first, so we can hardly miss it . . . this first line
asserts it was Herod, no question who did the arresting, and put John in prison
on account of Herodias.
Then it gives the reason: because
John had been telling Herod “It’s not lawful for you to have your brother’s
wife.” And again, that’s clear enough:
as we’ve said, it’s dangerous to speak truth to power. But look at what comes next: Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted
to kill him. Say what? Hold the phone: all of a sudden, blame has been
shifted away from the ruler, the one with all the power, the one who had John arrested,
for Pete’s sake, to another, a person with no power whatsoever . . . and
wouldn’t you know it. It’s a woman who
gets the blame. Like Sarah and Abraham
with Ishmael, Jezebel and King Ahab with Naboth, and Bathsheba of David—it’s
the powerless who gets the blame, and there weren’t many less powerful in
ancient Palestine than women. The story
starts out being all about the guy in power, Herod, who historically, at least,
was not known for his gentleness with people he didn’t like. And all of sudden, the story shifts the blame
to Herodias. Herod doesn’t want to kill John,
no, that couldn’t be it, because he thought he was a righteous and holy
man, and he protected him. But you
notice he doesn’t turn him loose . . .
This isn’t the only time in
the scriptures where the powerful slip into the background, and just kind of
fade away . . . Ahab demands that Naboth sell him his vineyard, and goes into a
pout when he won’t, and Jezebel devises a plan to get it for him, and we know
what happened to her . . . the name of Jezebel became synonymous with a
wicked woman. But it’s Ahaz who gets his
way … And in the story of Sarah and Haggar, Abraham fades into the background,
strangely passive, while Sarah in her jealousy drives his son—who he’d had with
a woman Sarah herself pressed upon him—to seemingly certain death.
All of these stories, perhaps
especially this one of Herod, should remind us of the final days of
Jesus, where the brutal Roman ruler Pontius Pilate, who ate Passover
rabble-rousers for breakfast, declares he can find no fault in Jesus, and
throws the blame upon the crowd. It
should remind us of the ultimate scapegoat, Jesus Christ, who was
executed to keep the peace at Passover—as Caiaphas himself said—so the
Romans wouldn’t destroy them all.
And in these stories where blame is affixed,
the powerful are never the ones at fault, are they? They always kind of fade into the background,
they always take a back seat when the dirty-work is done, and in today’s story
this was intensified by later interpreters.
Herodias’ daughter—also called Herodias, according to Mark—was
identified as Salome by the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, and she supposedly
danced the dance of the Seven Veils, and, uh, inflamed Herod and he promised her anything, anything, and we have
visions of a sweaty ruler, with a hint of incest to spice things up, promising
her anything for her favors, and it’s been elaborated by Oscar Wilde and
Hollywood, and none of that is in scripture.
Mark says simply that she danced, and when he refers to her, he uses a
Greek word that implies “little girl,” and the picture is not some wanton
woman, seducing the king, but of a little girl, doing an innocent dance which
pleases the king, and he makes this oath before all his courtiers, maybe
jokingly, as one would promise the moon to a cute little girl, only his
wife gets her to do the dirty deed. And
once again, the story lets Herod off the hook: He was deeply grieved, he was
greatly saddened, but what else could he do?
An oath was an oath, especially one made in front of all those guests. And so, he’s let off the hook: honor—and
remember this is an honor/shame society—honor demands that he cut off the head
of John the Baptist. Too bad, so sad.
And so strong is the myth-making machinery that it’s been
intensified over the years, and sex, the favorite diversionary tactic of
monarchs and politicians the world over, gets totally inside our passage to
divert us away from the real lessons
of this passage, namely that (1) speaking truth to power can be dangerous and
(2) the powers that be get off the hook and powerless scapegoats—here, as
often, women and children—get the blame instead.
Scapegoating is a favorite spectator sport in human
societies, and it’s always the least powerful that get blamed. The Jews in Nazi Germany, the Native
Americans in the early days of this country.
At present, so-called “illegal aliens” are being scapegoated for our
economic woes. But the cool thing about
our Gospels is that it lays all of this bare.
Mark’s version of the story of John and Herod, which we read today,
still scapegoats Herodias, but it is clear if you read it closely that it’s the
one in powers’ fault, it’s really all Herod, all the time. The Gospels are subversive that way, they
tell the “sub-version” as Walter Brueggemann likes to say. They dutifully recount the official
tale—Herod not at fault, evil woman Herodias to blame—but make it clear how it
really went down.
At the heart of the Gospels is just such a story, just
such a “sub-version”—the powerful San Hedron, the Roman rulers treated Jesus
just like another scapegoat, just like another guy they can shift the blame
onto, to keep the Jerusalem crowds in line, to give ‘em a place to focus their anger
other than themselves. And so they killed him, and he would’ve been
just another in a long line of innocent victims, of blameless scapegoats,
except for one thing: he didn’t stay in
the ground, did he? He didn’t stay in
the tomb where—like John—he was laid . . . unlike
John, he rose again, a sign and symbol of God’s victory over the scapegoating
powers that be.
And that is our hope as well. That through Jesus Christ, we are freed from
bondage to structures and mechanisms of sin, we are liberated from being
scapegoats to the powers that be. Our
hope is that through Christ’s resurrection, we will be as well, and that God’s kingdom,
where there is no more scapegoating, no more oppression, no more war, is coming
and yet—in the person of Jesus Christ who, remember is in our hearts—is already here. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God did
something new, God showed that the
innocent scapegoats, the blameless lambs, will inherit the Kingdom of God. And Hallelujah for that. Amen.
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