3RD EPIPHANY — 27 January 2013
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls – 9:15 am
[Not preached, due to hazardous weather conditions that cancelled the service. I reserve the right to resurrect this sermon on this Sunday in 2016!]
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10 | Psalm 19 | 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a | Luke 4:14-21
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. [1 Corinthians 12:27]
The human body is a remarkable thing. I think we instinctively know that; most of us, I suspect, have given some explicit thought to it at one time or another. Have you ever meditated upon your own body, or some part of your own body? Even some of the silliest little things are occasions of wonder. Why do we have two hands, and not four? (God knows there are times when four hands would come in handy!) Why don’t we have eyes in the back of our heads? (That might have a certain usefulness too, especially for parents!) Why do children take so long to grow up? I don’t mean, “Why do children take so long to grow up!!??!” but, some little animals like mice grow to maturity in a few weeks. Even big animals like horses and cattle are mature in, what? three or four years. Depending on how you define “grown up,” it takes us twenty years, plus or minus. (A few generations ago it was about sixteen; these days it’s closer to thirty!) Human beings—just as bodily creatures, without getting into all our personal diversity—are astoundingly complex and sophisticated systems. We often discover this precisely when something breaks down: we are very fragile, and malfunctions in some apparently minor part of the body can hamper and even seriously threaten the whole organism. Consider the toothache!
I think we’d probably do well to consider “bodiliness” more deeply than we do. “Bodiliness” is an important way of being. And it doesn’t just have to do with our own individual bodies; it has to do with the way we are in relationship with each other.
The Latin word for “body” is corpus. That may be a boring piece of information; but it’s the root of the English word “corporate.” We talk about our “corporate life”—in the Church, in business, in human society—and what we mean is our life together as a body. In the Epistle this Sunday, St. Paul talks about the Church as the Body of Christ.
In thinking about human society, there are two extreme poles which we need to avoid. One of those poles is “collectivism.” That’s the notion that human society is just like a beehive; it is the group that is important, the individual is not (unless, of course, you are the queen bee!). One person is but a cog in a machine; conformity is all-important. If any of you were television science-fiction fans, you may remember “The Borg” on Star Trek; more recently we might think of “The Observers” on Fringe. More realistically historically, this “collectivism” has been represented in the world by Marxist-Leninist regimes. Part of their internal contradiction is shown in that while Communism claimed to be the party of the “working class,” it had little real care for working men and women as persons; “the people” were simply “the masses.” It’s not surprising that it was primarily the working people themselves who brought about the demise of Marxism, especially in Eastern Europe. But there were also significant collectivist elements in Nazism, which exalted the state and the ethnic and racial identity of the nation above any concern for individual persons; conformity was essential there, too.
The other pole is “individualism.” That’s the notion that every single human being is complete in him- or herself, by him- or herself; that we do not need other people (except in certain instrumental ways), and that dependence upon another is a sign of weakness. Individualism sees human society, and any human relationships, as a matter of practical convenience, no more. Life becomes a matter of competition rather than cooperation; life is a zero-sum game, so that if I am to win, you have to lose; the goal is the self-fulfillment of the individual. Our own society has a very heavy streak of individualism in it, and we are not the better for it. Extreme forms of libertarianism, a la Ayn Rand, would be examples.
As you might suspect, I suggest that the truth is at neither of these poles. It’s not so much a matter of the truth being “somewhere in between,” as if it were a compromise, “half a cup of collectivism and half a coup of individualism, beat briskly for two minutes on ‘high’.” No, human life is really a different kind of thing, not on the scale between those two poles at all. As human persons, we have our own integrity, our own autonomy, our own value, our own importance, and yet we are created to live not by ourselves but in relationship to each other; we are persons in ourselves but we cannot be persons by ourselves. (My seminary professor told us that, and I’ve always remembered it. So should you! We are persons in ourselves but we cannot be persons by ourselves! We are meant to live in “community,” which is a very different sort of thing either than an all-subsuming collective or a mere aggregate of individuals. We are, in short, as human beings, very much like the organs of a body. Our life as human beings is, and is meant to be, corporate. We might note that this is part of what is involved in our being created in the image of God, the Triune God.
And so our life in the Church is corporate; and in fact, the life of the Church, as a corporate community, is meant to be a model for the life of the human world as a whole. It’s a model in which (and this is what Paul is getting at in the Epistle this Sunday) every member has his or her own uniqueness and importance. It’s a model which requires cooperation and participation. It’s a model characterized by mutual responsibility and interdependence (to revive a good expression once common in the Church), in which the common good and the individual good converge. And what makes it work, and what makes the corporate life of the Church a model for the common life of the whole of humankind, is precisely that we are the Body of Christ. It is the grace and power of Jesus Christ’s love which is the life of the Body. For in the end it is only love which makes true human community possible; and it is our calling as Christians to enact and model the true human community in the world.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
6 January 2013 - The Epiphany
THE EPIPHANY — 6 January 2013
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls – 9:15 am
Isaiah 60:1-6 | Psalm 72:1-7,10-14 | Ephesians 3:1-12 | Matthew 2:1-12
“Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
When I was a child, in the Christmas decorations in our house we made a Big Deal of the fact that the Wise Men did not show up at the manger until the Epiphany, the twelfth day after Christmas Day. We still follow that in our home today, at least in some of our crèches. We have a magnetic nativity set on the door of the kitchen refrigerator, and until today the wise men were around the corner on the side panel, still traversing afar. Down at Trinity in Iowa City the other day, the wise men were still over on the window sills along the east aisle, although I assume that as of this morning they’ve gotten to the crèche in front of the altar. I see you all follow the same custom. My mother would have been pleased.
Of course, if we were actually paying attention to the Gospel reading this morning – one which we have heard and read many many times – we know that the Wise Men did not show up at the manger at all. They came to Joseph’s house, where in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus had presumably been born.
And so I hope we have at some time noticed that for hundreds and hundreds of years we have relentlessly ignored the blatantly obvious fact that if we read the accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel and in Luke’s Gospel, we see that there are obviously some major historical problems. The stories don’t match up, and that’s only the start! A lot has been written about this, including some work by very fine and faithful New Testament scholars, and wallowing around in the back of my mind is a paper of my own, which still hasn’t made it through my fingers to the keyboard and into a computer file. One of these years. I’ll let you know. But I’m going to bracket all that and set it aside for right now, because that misses the point of St. Matthew’s story as well as the point of St. Luke’s quite different story. (And clearly neither Matthew nor Luke knew each other’s stories.) Suffice it for now to say that wondering about exactly what kind of astronomical phenomenon the Wise Men observed is a lot like wondering at just what mileage point on the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho the Good Samaritan found the man who had been beaten and robbed by bandits. Not what the story is about!
And this story is so rich and wonderful, whatever its relation to what we might in our narrow-mindedness call “historical facts.” (The story is historical, because it gives a true insight into a real historical situation; but to blither on down that road is for another time.) The Christian community quickly built up images and legends that go beyond what is actually recounted in the Gospel story. The wise men – magoi in Greek, in Anglicized Latin magi, by which Matthew presumably meant wizards or astrologers – quickly became kings in Christian tradition, for reasons that should be obvious to us today, starting off as we did with Isaiah 60: “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn …. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.” And then we went on to Psalm 72: “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts. All kings shall bow down before him, and all the nations do him service.” Were these and similar verses from the Hebrew Scriptures in the back of Matthew’s mind as he was writing? Surely so! As was Balaam’s oracle in the book of Numbers [24:17]: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” (Thus any astronomical identification of the star of Bethlehem misses the point.) In the story the wise men come seeking “the King of the Jews”; it’s worth noting and meditating upon that the only other time in the Gospels that Jesus is referred to by the title “the King of the Jews” is by Pilate and the Roman soldiers, mockingly, at his crucifixion. “The King of the Jews” was actually Herod’s title, one that had been given him by the Romans.
So today wise men from the East come to worship the Messiah at his birth. Foreigners, we note; but also we note, not Romans from the West. They were from beyond the Empire. They are the world. The Epiphany is the celebration of the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, as the Prayer Book calls it, obscurely on page 31. But this means that the Epiphany is not just the Adoration of the Magi, as every Renaissance artist worth his salt painted, but the taking of the Good News of Jesus to all the world. Matthew himself makes this clear as he moves from the beginning of his Gospel with the visit of the magi to the conclusion of his story with Jesus’ words: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” [28:19].
It is not enough that we worship, though that is where we start, as we remember especially today, for only from worship can true and faithful mission come. We are called as the Body of Christ not only to adore our Lord, but to follow him, to let it be his life that lives in us, to accept his work as our work. We are called not just to give Jesus presents, but to give him ourselves, that he may form us, change us, renew us, use us for his work of reconciling the world in love to God. We come with the magi to worship him; but unlike the magi, it is not for us just to go home quietly by another road. For us, for us who are called to be the truly wise men and women, it is to go out into the world and to be ourselves the epiphany, the showing-forth of Christ to the world. The Feast of the Epiphany is not the end of the celebration of the Incarnation of God in Christ, but only the beginning.
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls – 9:15 am
Isaiah 60:1-6 | Psalm 72:1-7,10-14 | Ephesians 3:1-12 | Matthew 2:1-12
“Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
When I was a child, in the Christmas decorations in our house we made a Big Deal of the fact that the Wise Men did not show up at the manger until the Epiphany, the twelfth day after Christmas Day. We still follow that in our home today, at least in some of our crèches. We have a magnetic nativity set on the door of the kitchen refrigerator, and until today the wise men were around the corner on the side panel, still traversing afar. Down at Trinity in Iowa City the other day, the wise men were still over on the window sills along the east aisle, although I assume that as of this morning they’ve gotten to the crèche in front of the altar. I see you all follow the same custom. My mother would have been pleased.
Of course, if we were actually paying attention to the Gospel reading this morning – one which we have heard and read many many times – we know that the Wise Men did not show up at the manger at all. They came to Joseph’s house, where in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus had presumably been born.
And so I hope we have at some time noticed that for hundreds and hundreds of years we have relentlessly ignored the blatantly obvious fact that if we read the accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel and in Luke’s Gospel, we see that there are obviously some major historical problems. The stories don’t match up, and that’s only the start! A lot has been written about this, including some work by very fine and faithful New Testament scholars, and wallowing around in the back of my mind is a paper of my own, which still hasn’t made it through my fingers to the keyboard and into a computer file. One of these years. I’ll let you know. But I’m going to bracket all that and set it aside for right now, because that misses the point of St. Matthew’s story as well as the point of St. Luke’s quite different story. (And clearly neither Matthew nor Luke knew each other’s stories.) Suffice it for now to say that wondering about exactly what kind of astronomical phenomenon the Wise Men observed is a lot like wondering at just what mileage point on the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho the Good Samaritan found the man who had been beaten and robbed by bandits. Not what the story is about!
And this story is so rich and wonderful, whatever its relation to what we might in our narrow-mindedness call “historical facts.” (The story is historical, because it gives a true insight into a real historical situation; but to blither on down that road is for another time.) The Christian community quickly built up images and legends that go beyond what is actually recounted in the Gospel story. The wise men – magoi in Greek, in Anglicized Latin magi, by which Matthew presumably meant wizards or astrologers – quickly became kings in Christian tradition, for reasons that should be obvious to us today, starting off as we did with Isaiah 60: “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn …. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.” And then we went on to Psalm 72: “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts. All kings shall bow down before him, and all the nations do him service.” Were these and similar verses from the Hebrew Scriptures in the back of Matthew’s mind as he was writing? Surely so! As was Balaam’s oracle in the book of Numbers [24:17]: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” (Thus any astronomical identification of the star of Bethlehem misses the point.) In the story the wise men come seeking “the King of the Jews”; it’s worth noting and meditating upon that the only other time in the Gospels that Jesus is referred to by the title “the King of the Jews” is by Pilate and the Roman soldiers, mockingly, at his crucifixion. “The King of the Jews” was actually Herod’s title, one that had been given him by the Romans.
So today wise men from the East come to worship the Messiah at his birth. Foreigners, we note; but also we note, not Romans from the West. They were from beyond the Empire. They are the world. The Epiphany is the celebration of the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, as the Prayer Book calls it, obscurely on page 31. But this means that the Epiphany is not just the Adoration of the Magi, as every Renaissance artist worth his salt painted, but the taking of the Good News of Jesus to all the world. Matthew himself makes this clear as he moves from the beginning of his Gospel with the visit of the magi to the conclusion of his story with Jesus’ words: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” [28:19].
It is not enough that we worship, though that is where we start, as we remember especially today, for only from worship can true and faithful mission come. We are called as the Body of Christ not only to adore our Lord, but to follow him, to let it be his life that lives in us, to accept his work as our work. We are called not just to give Jesus presents, but to give him ourselves, that he may form us, change us, renew us, use us for his work of reconciling the world in love to God. We come with the magi to worship him; but unlike the magi, it is not for us just to go home quietly by another road. For us, for us who are called to be the truly wise men and women, it is to go out into the world and to be ourselves the epiphany, the showing-forth of Christ to the world. The Feast of the Epiphany is not the end of the celebration of the Incarnation of God in Christ, but only the beginning.
Friday, December 28, 2012
28 December 2012 -- Holy Innocents' Day
THE HOLY INNOCENTS — 28 December 2012
Trinity – 12:15 pm
Jeremiah 31:15-17 | Psalm 124 | Revelation 21:1-7 | Matthew 2:13-18
"A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." [Matt. 2:18; cf. Jer. 31.15]
Some of us Old Guys remember when it was the custom to use purple as the liturgical color on Holy Innocents' Day, the color of repentance, mourning, and solemn reflection. This was something of a downer just three days after Christmas, when we had finally gotten past four weeks of Advent purple (as we generally used in those days), and now it was back again, a sour moment in the midst of the festivity of Christmastide. Then the Church decided to change to liturgical red for today, the color of martyrs, the color of blood, the color of the Spirit. And at the time many of us said, Oh, Good Idea. The thought apparently was that the infants of Bethlehem were indeed martyrs for Christ, albeit unwittingly.
But in retrospect I’m not so sure it has been such a Good Idea after all. Particularly not after the past two weeks.
First of all, I’m going to bracket and set aside for the moment the question of the historicity of the story of the massacre of the little boys in Bethlehem. There is no evidence for this outside St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Jewish historian Josephus, who had absolutely no love for Herod the Great and who does not hesitate to recount Herod’s many atrocities, doesn’t mention it, and he probably would have if he had known about it, and he probably would have known about it. Obviously this massacre in defense of his own royal power would certainly not have been out of character for Herod – he was a serial murderer, including of some of his own children – but the fact that an atrocity like this would have been in character doesn’t mean that he actually did this one. But the whole matter of the historicity of the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke is another question for another time. I keep meaning to write a paper about it and so far haven’t followed through, and anyway it’s beside the point. So. Bracketed and set aside.
My present concern is that it may be wrong-headed of us to describe the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem as “martyrs.” Martyrs are those who witness to the Kingdom of God at the cost of their own lives, as, for instance, St. Stephen two days ago. The massacre at Bethlehem did not witness to the Kingdom of God. The only kingdom it bore witness to was Herod’s. The children were not martyrs, they were victims. And I wonder whether celebrating them as “martyrs” isn’t just putting a pious religious gloss on what was in fact a horrendous atrocity. To call this “martyrdom” is a form of denial. Celebrating today as a Major Feast can be a way we deny the awful reality of the ongoing victimization of people, and especially including children, in countless ways to this very day, and thus deny our need to do something about it. Yes, by all means we must observe Holy Innocents’ Day. And use it by remembering also Sandy Hook Elementary School and Columbine, and Virginia Tech and the University of Iowa (All Saints' Day, 1991). And the Holocaust (the Shoah). And 9/11. And the genocide in Rwanda, and in Sudan, and elsewhere in Central Africa. And Wounded Knee and Sand Creek. And the Crusades. It just goes on and on. And it keeps going on and on. In terms of numbers of victims, the Innocents of Bethlehem would have been a relatively minor incident – Bethlehem wasn’t a very big town at the time.
Ben noted the other night that T. S. Eliot, speaking as St. Thomas Becket, reminds us of the close relationship of birth and death, that the joyous celebration of the birth of Jesus is immediately followed by the observances of the death of his first martyr, of the long life of persecution and exile of one of his chief apostles, and of the “collateral damage” (as we so daintily term it) that followed Jesus’ birth. We both rejoice and mourn. Yes, we do and must celebrate the Incarnation of God the Word, but we do and must also remember the need and the cost of that Incarnation, not only then but now in our own world today. Christmas is not cheap grace.
Trinity – 12:15 pm
Jeremiah 31:15-17 | Psalm 124 | Revelation 21:1-7 | Matthew 2:13-18
"A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." [Matt. 2:18; cf. Jer. 31.15]
Some of us Old Guys remember when it was the custom to use purple as the liturgical color on Holy Innocents' Day, the color of repentance, mourning, and solemn reflection. This was something of a downer just three days after Christmas, when we had finally gotten past four weeks of Advent purple (as we generally used in those days), and now it was back again, a sour moment in the midst of the festivity of Christmastide. Then the Church decided to change to liturgical red for today, the color of martyrs, the color of blood, the color of the Spirit. And at the time many of us said, Oh, Good Idea. The thought apparently was that the infants of Bethlehem were indeed martyrs for Christ, albeit unwittingly.
But in retrospect I’m not so sure it has been such a Good Idea after all. Particularly not after the past two weeks.
First of all, I’m going to bracket and set aside for the moment the question of the historicity of the story of the massacre of the little boys in Bethlehem. There is no evidence for this outside St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Jewish historian Josephus, who had absolutely no love for Herod the Great and who does not hesitate to recount Herod’s many atrocities, doesn’t mention it, and he probably would have if he had known about it, and he probably would have known about it. Obviously this massacre in defense of his own royal power would certainly not have been out of character for Herod – he was a serial murderer, including of some of his own children – but the fact that an atrocity like this would have been in character doesn’t mean that he actually did this one. But the whole matter of the historicity of the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke is another question for another time. I keep meaning to write a paper about it and so far haven’t followed through, and anyway it’s beside the point. So. Bracketed and set aside.
My present concern is that it may be wrong-headed of us to describe the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem as “martyrs.” Martyrs are those who witness to the Kingdom of God at the cost of their own lives, as, for instance, St. Stephen two days ago. The massacre at Bethlehem did not witness to the Kingdom of God. The only kingdom it bore witness to was Herod’s. The children were not martyrs, they were victims. And I wonder whether celebrating them as “martyrs” isn’t just putting a pious religious gloss on what was in fact a horrendous atrocity. To call this “martyrdom” is a form of denial. Celebrating today as a Major Feast can be a way we deny the awful reality of the ongoing victimization of people, and especially including children, in countless ways to this very day, and thus deny our need to do something about it. Yes, by all means we must observe Holy Innocents’ Day. And use it by remembering also Sandy Hook Elementary School and Columbine, and Virginia Tech and the University of Iowa (All Saints' Day, 1991). And the Holocaust (the Shoah). And 9/11. And the genocide in Rwanda, and in Sudan, and elsewhere in Central Africa. And Wounded Knee and Sand Creek. And the Crusades. It just goes on and on. And it keeps going on and on. In terms of numbers of victims, the Innocents of Bethlehem would have been a relatively minor incident – Bethlehem wasn’t a very big town at the time.
Ben noted the other night that T. S. Eliot, speaking as St. Thomas Becket, reminds us of the close relationship of birth and death, that the joyous celebration of the birth of Jesus is immediately followed by the observances of the death of his first martyr, of the long life of persecution and exile of one of his chief apostles, and of the “collateral damage” (as we so daintily term it) that followed Jesus’ birth. We both rejoice and mourn. Yes, we do and must celebrate the Incarnation of God the Word, but we do and must also remember the need and the cost of that Incarnation, not only then but now in our own world today. Christmas is not cheap grace.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
18 November 2012 - Proper 28 / Pentecost 25
PROPER 28 / PENTECOST 25 — 18 November 2012
St. Paul’s, Durant – 9:00 am
[Track Two] Daniel 12:1-3 | Psalm 16 | Hebrews 10:11-25 | Mark 13:1-8
"Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
In the Collect for the Day for this Sunday, we prayed: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.” This is a familiar prayer to us, I think; it was composed for the first English Prayer Book in 1549 as a Sunday collect, and it is also sometimes used as an opening prayer at Bible study groups.
The prayer reminds us that we need not only hear and read the Scriptures, but also mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. One of the ways we do this is by reading them over and over and over again.
I’m not suggesting that you need to read the whole Bible over and over, going back to Genesis 1 when you finish Revelation 22. (Some people do that, and I won’t gainsay them, but although all of the Bible is worth reading, some parts of it are worth reading more than others, so it’s okay to be a little selective. God can and does speak to us in Second Chronicles, but I think God usually says a lot more to us in the Gospels! Remember that this Church is committed to the belief that all things necessary to salvation are contained in Holy Scripture, but that does not mean that all things contained in Holy Scripture are necessary to salvation, and in fact some of them are simply wrong. And it’s by reading them over and over again that we are given the grace to discern which is which!)
Anyway, I was reading the Bible again, and specifically St. Mark’s Gospel, since that’s what we have been reading on Sundays this year. And I discovered, again, that sometimes on the umpty-umpth reading, a perfectly familiar passage suddenly speaks a Word that I have never heard before. I expect some of you have had the same experience. I am now speaking of the Gospel readings for last Sunday and this Sunday.
So I think we need to start by going back to last Sunday’s Gospel reading, because it’s really continuous with today’s. (Remember that the chapter divisions weren’t added to the Bible until the Middle Ages, and the verse divisions not until the Renaissance/Reformation.) Last week we heard, as I trust you recall!:
And so now we come to today’s Gospel. The disciples are staring with their mouths hanging open, like a bunch of Galilean hicks in the big city. And we should not underestimate how impressive the Jerusalem Temple was, even by the standards of the Roman Empire. Here’s what the Jewish historian Josephus, who was by no means a Galilean hick, says: “Now the outward face of the temple … was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who faced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays. But this temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow; for, as to those parts of it that were not gilt, they were exceeding white.” [Jewish Wars 5.5.6]
So what we have heard is Jesus first of all (and once again!) sitting in the Temple and harshly condemning the hypocrisy of the religious establishment that exploits and oppresses the people, and then we hear Jesus stepping out, looking back, and predicting the utter destruction of one of the greatest, perhaps even the very greatest, religious edifices in the ancient world. It would be like proclaiming a solemn curse against the National Cathedral, or St. Peter’s Basilica, or the Kaaba in Mecca. I’m not sure we fully realize how very subversive Jesus of Nazareth was. And is.
And of course that’s how it played out. A few years after St. Mark composed his Gospel (I think it was after, though that’s not completely certain) the Temple was burned to the ground by the Roman Legions under the general Titus, who was the son of the Emperor Vespasian, and who himself became Emperor nine years later.
Well, we started out with today’s Collect: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” I suspect that as we continue to read and study the Bible over and over – and never allow ourselves to say “Oh, yes, well, I’ve already read that! I understand that! I already know what that means!” – we will find that God uses the Word to open our minds and hearts to new, enriching, and often startling and challenging new insights into the meaning and demands of God’s Kingdom.
St. Paul’s, Durant – 9:00 am
[Track Two] Daniel 12:1-3 | Psalm 16 | Hebrews 10:11-25 | Mark 13:1-8
"Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
In the Collect for the Day for this Sunday, we prayed: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.” This is a familiar prayer to us, I think; it was composed for the first English Prayer Book in 1549 as a Sunday collect, and it is also sometimes used as an opening prayer at Bible study groups.
The prayer reminds us that we need not only hear and read the Scriptures, but also mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. One of the ways we do this is by reading them over and over and over again.
I’m not suggesting that you need to read the whole Bible over and over, going back to Genesis 1 when you finish Revelation 22. (Some people do that, and I won’t gainsay them, but although all of the Bible is worth reading, some parts of it are worth reading more than others, so it’s okay to be a little selective. God can and does speak to us in Second Chronicles, but I think God usually says a lot more to us in the Gospels! Remember that this Church is committed to the belief that all things necessary to salvation are contained in Holy Scripture, but that does not mean that all things contained in Holy Scripture are necessary to salvation, and in fact some of them are simply wrong. And it’s by reading them over and over again that we are given the grace to discern which is which!)
Anyway, I was reading the Bible again, and specifically St. Mark’s Gospel, since that’s what we have been reading on Sundays this year. And I discovered, again, that sometimes on the umpty-umpth reading, a perfectly familiar passage suddenly speaks a Word that I have never heard before. I expect some of you have had the same experience. I am now speaking of the Gospel readings for last Sunday and this Sunday.
So I think we need to start by going back to last Sunday’s Gospel reading, because it’s really continuous with today’s. (Remember that the chapter divisions weren’t added to the Bible until the Middle Ages, and the verse divisions not until the Renaissance/Reformation.) Last week we heard, as I trust you recall!:
Teaching in the temple, Jesus said, "Beware of the scribes…They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." [Mark 12:38,40]And then there follows the episode of the poor widow who put her last two copper coins into the Temple treasury. We typically read the story of the widow’s mite as an “Awww…” story that fills us with admiration for her devotion and encourages us to greater generosity, especially along about Church stewardship season! But I have a suspicion that we may have missed the point that St. Mark is trying to make. Remember that in ancient Jewish society – and most other ancient societies, for that matter – widows were really at the bottom of the economic ladder, at least if they didn’t have a son or a brother who could take care of them. (Thus the repeated emphasis in both the Old and New Testaments on the need to care for the widows and orphans, who were utterly powerless in a patriarchal society.) And maybe what Jesus wants us to see in looking at the poor widow putting her last two cents into the collection is not how devoted she is (though she obviously is that), but how the religious establishment – the scribes and the priests and all that gang – lay a piety trip on everyone, including poor widows whom they exploit rather than support. In other words, Jesus points to the poor widow as an example of the moral corruption of the religious system that “devours widows’ houses.” He cares about her, and respects the tragedy of her devotion, but that’s not his point.
And so now we come to today’s Gospel. The disciples are staring with their mouths hanging open, like a bunch of Galilean hicks in the big city. And we should not underestimate how impressive the Jerusalem Temple was, even by the standards of the Roman Empire. Here’s what the Jewish historian Josephus, who was by no means a Galilean hick, says: “Now the outward face of the temple … was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who faced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays. But this temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow; for, as to those parts of it that were not gilt, they were exceeding white.” [Jewish Wars 5.5.6]
So what we have heard is Jesus first of all (and once again!) sitting in the Temple and harshly condemning the hypocrisy of the religious establishment that exploits and oppresses the people, and then we hear Jesus stepping out, looking back, and predicting the utter destruction of one of the greatest, perhaps even the very greatest, religious edifices in the ancient world. It would be like proclaiming a solemn curse against the National Cathedral, or St. Peter’s Basilica, or the Kaaba in Mecca. I’m not sure we fully realize how very subversive Jesus of Nazareth was. And is.
And of course that’s how it played out. A few years after St. Mark composed his Gospel (I think it was after, though that’s not completely certain) the Temple was burned to the ground by the Roman Legions under the general Titus, who was the son of the Emperor Vespasian, and who himself became Emperor nine years later.
Well, we started out with today’s Collect: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” I suspect that as we continue to read and study the Bible over and over – and never allow ourselves to say “Oh, yes, well, I’ve already read that! I understand that! I already know what that means!” – we will find that God uses the Word to open our minds and hearts to new, enriching, and often startling and challenging new insights into the meaning and demands of God’s Kingdom.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
28 October 2012 -- Proper 25 / Pentecost 22
PROPER 25 / 22 Pentecost—28 October 2012
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00
[Track Two] Jeremiah 31:7-9 | Psalm 126 | Hebrews 7:23-28 | Mark 10:46-52
From the Collect of the Day for this Sunday, Proper 25 – it’s on page 235 of the Prayer Book, if you haven’t already looked it up:
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command.
“Make us love what you command.” That’s kind of an odd phrase, isn’t it? We don’t normally associate “love” as a response to a “command.” “Commands” are to be obeyed, not to be loved! But then, “odd” phrases are fairly common when we’re talking about God—God often does not fit very neatly into our categories!
We are familiar with the idea that God commands certain things of us. The words of our liturgy, the words of Holy Scripture itself, speak often of what God commands. Perhaps the most obvious example is the “Ten Commandments.” Often, though, don’t we too easily translate the concept of God’s commandments into the equivalent of commands in our own human world (a fallen human world)? If a military officer gives a command, he or she expects it to be obeyed; if it is not obeyed, there are various sanctions that can be brought to bear upon the disobedient. A commanding officer has the power of command, the ability to enforce commands, to coerce obedience or at least to punish disobedience. Now, power in itself is morally neutral; many officers are good commanders who use their power wisely for the common good. But it’s also true that in our fallen human world, power does tend to corrupt, and some human commanders use their power for their own self-aggrandizement, to gratify their own need to coerce the obedience of others. And, against the background of that common experience within our fallen world of the connection (sometimes corrupt) between command, power, and obedience, we look at the commandments of God.
Many, hearing about God’s “commands,” judge that God must be a tyrant—possibly because the only human commanders or authority figures they’ve ever known have been tyrannical—and so they reject God. I think there are many who have fallen away from faith for just that reason. Even worse, I think there are many who worship God on exactly that basis; there’s a kind of twisted spirituality that revels in groveling before a tyrannical God—and then in turning to the world in the tyrannical image and likeness of that god. You may have noticed that some of the folks who talk the most about “God’s commandments” are the most eager to impose their own commandments on other people.
Obviously, I don’t think that’s at all a picture of what God is like, or what God’s commandments are about! God is not just the biggest toughest kid on the block!
Notice that in today’s Collect we ask God to make us love what God commands in order that we may obtain what God promises. There’s a key, I think—God’s promises. Not just that God’s promises are a reward for our obedience, though there are some folks who seem to think that. But that wouldn’t really be a promise—that would be payment of a wage earned, on the basis of a contractual condition fulfilled — a point that St. Paul makes in the letter to the Romans. [4:4] God’s promises are unconditional—they are the promises of a loving Father. Or rather, there is just this condition—not that there is anything we have to earn, or prove ourselves worthy of, but simply that we do have to put ourselves in a position where we can accept and receive God’s promises. God’s promises are always there for us—the gift is always offered. But if we ignore it, if we turn away from it (and we often do!) then the gift cannot be given. A gift is free—freely given, freely received. If I have to earn it, it’s no longer a gift. If it is forced upon me, it is no longer a gift either. I don’t have to deserve it, but I do have to choose to accept it.
Look at blind Bar-Timaeus in the Gospel today. When he hears that Jesus is coming by, he doesn’t just sit there wishfully thinking, “Golly, wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus helped me.” He starts to yell at the top of his lungs: “Have mercy on me, Son of David, I can’t see you, are you there? Yo, Jesus, do you hear me? have mercy on me!” When Jesus calls him, he springs right up, throws off his cloak, and scrambles, claws, gropes, pushes his way to him. And when Jesus asks him, “What do you want?” Bar-Timaeus doesn’t just stand there and shuffle his feet and mumble, “Well, gee, you know, aw shucks.” He’s got the chutzpah to come right out with it: “Duh! I want to see again!” Bar-Timaeus has reached out his hands to accept the gift of healing. He knew he had to choose to do something—not to sit still, but to move where he could receive the gift of healing. And he made the choice. And that’s what Jesus is replying to when he says, “Your faith has made you well.” Your trust has made it possible for you to be healed.
You may remember that in the Gospel two weeks ago Jesus told the rich young man to give away everything and to follow him; but the rich young man couldn’t do it. Last week when Jesus asked James and John what they wanted, they asked for places of honor and power in the Kingdom. But Bar-Timaeus throws away his cloak -- the only possession this poor blind beggar had, and the only means of his paltry income (because he spread his cloak in front of him to collect alms from the passers-by). And when Jesus asks Bar-Timaeus what he wants, Bar-Timaeus doesn’t ask for honor or power, he asks for vision.
To love what God commands. Not just to feel warm and cozy about the Ten Commandments. Not even just to obey them out of some kind of sense of duty (though I suppose that beats disobeying them out of rebellious self-centeredness!). God, after all, is not a petty tyrant who gets a kick out of being able to boss people around. God’s commands are not arbitrary and ultimately unintelligible rules to which we must conform. For what is it that God commands? Is not God’s command, finally, “Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live”? [Deuteronomy 30:19] —live fully, live authentically, live in love, live with God in God’s kingdom? Is it not that God’s commands are the guideposts, the roadmap, the key to the door, of Life, life to the full, now and forever? To love what God commands—to care deeply enough and passionately enough that we will choose to do what we have to do in order to be where we are able to accept and receive God’s promise of fullness of life.
And yet even the choosing to accept is not a matter of our own accomplishment alone. And so we start by asking God to “increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity.” For the bottom line—once again—is that it is all Gift. It is always all Gift. To be received.
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command.
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00
[Track Two] Jeremiah 31:7-9 | Psalm 126 | Hebrews 7:23-28 | Mark 10:46-52
From the Collect of the Day for this Sunday, Proper 25 – it’s on page 235 of the Prayer Book, if you haven’t already looked it up:
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command.
“Make us love what you command.” That’s kind of an odd phrase, isn’t it? We don’t normally associate “love” as a response to a “command.” “Commands” are to be obeyed, not to be loved! But then, “odd” phrases are fairly common when we’re talking about God—God often does not fit very neatly into our categories!
We are familiar with the idea that God commands certain things of us. The words of our liturgy, the words of Holy Scripture itself, speak often of what God commands. Perhaps the most obvious example is the “Ten Commandments.” Often, though, don’t we too easily translate the concept of God’s commandments into the equivalent of commands in our own human world (a fallen human world)? If a military officer gives a command, he or she expects it to be obeyed; if it is not obeyed, there are various sanctions that can be brought to bear upon the disobedient. A commanding officer has the power of command, the ability to enforce commands, to coerce obedience or at least to punish disobedience. Now, power in itself is morally neutral; many officers are good commanders who use their power wisely for the common good. But it’s also true that in our fallen human world, power does tend to corrupt, and some human commanders use their power for their own self-aggrandizement, to gratify their own need to coerce the obedience of others. And, against the background of that common experience within our fallen world of the connection (sometimes corrupt) between command, power, and obedience, we look at the commandments of God.
Many, hearing about God’s “commands,” judge that God must be a tyrant—possibly because the only human commanders or authority figures they’ve ever known have been tyrannical—and so they reject God. I think there are many who have fallen away from faith for just that reason. Even worse, I think there are many who worship God on exactly that basis; there’s a kind of twisted spirituality that revels in groveling before a tyrannical God—and then in turning to the world in the tyrannical image and likeness of that god. You may have noticed that some of the folks who talk the most about “God’s commandments” are the most eager to impose their own commandments on other people.
Obviously, I don’t think that’s at all a picture of what God is like, or what God’s commandments are about! God is not just the biggest toughest kid on the block!
Notice that in today’s Collect we ask God to make us love what God commands in order that we may obtain what God promises. There’s a key, I think—God’s promises. Not just that God’s promises are a reward for our obedience, though there are some folks who seem to think that. But that wouldn’t really be a promise—that would be payment of a wage earned, on the basis of a contractual condition fulfilled — a point that St. Paul makes in the letter to the Romans. [4:4] God’s promises are unconditional—they are the promises of a loving Father. Or rather, there is just this condition—not that there is anything we have to earn, or prove ourselves worthy of, but simply that we do have to put ourselves in a position where we can accept and receive God’s promises. God’s promises are always there for us—the gift is always offered. But if we ignore it, if we turn away from it (and we often do!) then the gift cannot be given. A gift is free—freely given, freely received. If I have to earn it, it’s no longer a gift. If it is forced upon me, it is no longer a gift either. I don’t have to deserve it, but I do have to choose to accept it.
Look at blind Bar-Timaeus in the Gospel today. When he hears that Jesus is coming by, he doesn’t just sit there wishfully thinking, “Golly, wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus helped me.” He starts to yell at the top of his lungs: “Have mercy on me, Son of David, I can’t see you, are you there? Yo, Jesus, do you hear me? have mercy on me!” When Jesus calls him, he springs right up, throws off his cloak, and scrambles, claws, gropes, pushes his way to him. And when Jesus asks him, “What do you want?” Bar-Timaeus doesn’t just stand there and shuffle his feet and mumble, “Well, gee, you know, aw shucks.” He’s got the chutzpah to come right out with it: “Duh! I want to see again!” Bar-Timaeus has reached out his hands to accept the gift of healing. He knew he had to choose to do something—not to sit still, but to move where he could receive the gift of healing. And he made the choice. And that’s what Jesus is replying to when he says, “Your faith has made you well.” Your trust has made it possible for you to be healed.
You may remember that in the Gospel two weeks ago Jesus told the rich young man to give away everything and to follow him; but the rich young man couldn’t do it. Last week when Jesus asked James and John what they wanted, they asked for places of honor and power in the Kingdom. But Bar-Timaeus throws away his cloak -- the only possession this poor blind beggar had, and the only means of his paltry income (because he spread his cloak in front of him to collect alms from the passers-by). And when Jesus asks Bar-Timaeus what he wants, Bar-Timaeus doesn’t ask for honor or power, he asks for vision.
To love what God commands. Not just to feel warm and cozy about the Ten Commandments. Not even just to obey them out of some kind of sense of duty (though I suppose that beats disobeying them out of rebellious self-centeredness!). God, after all, is not a petty tyrant who gets a kick out of being able to boss people around. God’s commands are not arbitrary and ultimately unintelligible rules to which we must conform. For what is it that God commands? Is not God’s command, finally, “Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live”? [Deuteronomy 30:19] —live fully, live authentically, live in love, live with God in God’s kingdom? Is it not that God’s commands are the guideposts, the roadmap, the key to the door, of Life, life to the full, now and forever? To love what God commands—to care deeply enough and passionately enough that we will choose to do what we have to do in order to be where we are able to accept and receive God’s promise of fullness of life.
And yet even the choosing to accept is not a matter of our own accomplishment alone. And so we start by asking God to “increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity.” For the bottom line—once again—is that it is all Gift. It is always all Gift. To be received.
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
22 July 2012 -- Proper 11 / 8 Pentecost
PROPER 11 / 8 Pentecost — 22 July 2012
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 am
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 am
[Track Two] Jeremiah 23:1-6 | Psalm 23 | Ephesians 2:11-22 | Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
I’ve told this story before, but I don’t remember whether I’ve told it to you, but even if I have, it’s okay, I guess, because the rest of the sermon is mostly new!
In Scotland, at least some years ago, there was a lot of what we in the American West called “open range”—unfenced moors where unattended livestock wandered about as they would. In the American West it was normally herds of beef cattle. In Scotland it was unshepherded flocks of sheep. For some reason known only to the sheep themselves, it often pleased them to stand in the middle of the road, just on the other side of the crest of a hill. My college roommate and I were touring Britain on motorbikes one summer, typically running some hundreds of yards apart, and whoever was leading would come over the crest of the hill only to find the road full of sheep, screech to a sideways stop, engage the sheep in vigorous and contentious conversation (generally without much success), and finally persuade them to move over to the shoulder of the road, to permit passage. After which the sheep would saunter back into the middle of the road to stare with minimal curiosity at the departing form of this rude Yankee who was so insensitive to local Scottish ovine custom. At which point the other one of us would come over the crest of the hill and screech to a sideways stop.
“He saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
This is kind of an interesting Gospel reading selection for today. I’ve indicated in the past that I’m never always quite sure what the Revised Common Lectionary Gnomes have in mind… Anyway, you will perhaps note, from the bulletin or from your Bibles if you were following along or if you looked this reading up in advance, that there is a big break in the middle of the reading, eighteen verses. What’s that all about? Those of you who have your finger in your Bible may have already noticed that what’s been left out is the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and also the story of Jesus Walking on the Water. ???!!! Well, fear not, little flock. As it turns out, next Sunday the Gospel reading is the Feeding and Walking stories, only from St. John’s Gospel instead of St. Mark, and the Gospel readings continue to be taken from the sixth chapter of St. John through August, returning to St. Mark in September.
But that leaves us with today’s reading, in which it’s not quite sure what’s happening. And in fact it’s true that in St. Mark the two sections are both transitional passages, except the stories that they are transitions into and out of are left out!
Still, you may recall that I said last month that Mark’s Gospel is a very sophisticated literary composition and is not just a simple stringing together of Jesus stories. So he’s up to something even in these transitional passages, and there is a Word of God to be heard in them. (And God says, “You got that right.”)
You remember that two weeks ago, before last week’s story about John the Baptist being executed by Herod Antipas (which may have seemed like a digression but it really wasn’t), Jesus had sent the twelve out in pairs on a preaching-and-healing mission. Well, now they have come back, and Jesus says, “Let’s go on retreat and debrief a bit.” Alas, the crowd doesn’t let them get away.
Last month I noted that the word Mark uses that we translate “the crowd” does not mean just “a lot of people,” it’s “the poor folks,” “the peasants,” “the nobodies.” But Mark’s point is not that these folks are just a bunch of dumb sheep as on a Scottish moor. Mark is making a very clear allusion to the tradition of the prophets of the Old Testament. And we heard that this morning in the First Reading from Jeremiah:
This theme of the scattering of the Lord’s sheep (Israel) by wicked shepherds (faithless and corrupt kings and priests, the religious establishment) runs throughout the Hebrew prophets. For example, Ezekiel [34:2b,4-6]:
“Thus says the Lord God: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?…You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.”
So when Jesus sees the crowd like sheep without a shepherd, this is really a loaded image. It’s not just a bunch of dumb folks. They are God’s People, suffering under the oppression of the domination of corrupt powers, locally the temple establishment and other dimensions of the religious establishment such as the Pharisees, and the political establishment of Herod Antipas in Galilee, and overarching them and especially in Judaea, the Roman Empire. Establishment powers which are not shepherds of God’s people.
Jesus is, as St. John’s Gospel says explicitly, the Good Shepherd. But in the context of the Hebrew prophetic tradition, and in the specific context of first-century Roman Palestine, this really doesn’t have anything to do with the kind of sentimental pictures of the wimpy Victorian shepherd and his cute little lambs (like the stained-glass window over the altar over at Trinity, Iowa City – but let’s not go there right now!). Jesus is the Liberator, the Savior, the King.
Yes, Jesus is political. Yes, St. Mark’s Gospel is political (as are all the Gospels, as are the Letters of St. Paul, as is the whole Bible). Yes, the Kingdom of God is political. But that doesn’t mean competing with the powers and dominations of this world, or trying to overthrow them forcibly. (I said all this last Sunday, but you weren’t there!) “Politics” is about the ordering of the common life of the polis, the city, the state, the community. It’s about how we live together as human beings in justice and peace. But the more “politics” becomes about power and domination, the more it has become corrupt.
The politics of the Kingdom of God is about how we love the Lord our God, and our neighbor as ourselves. The Kingdom of God is not about life in the sweet by and by, at least not initially. Yes, of course the Kingdom has a transcendent, eternal dimension, but Jesus doesn’t really say very much about that. (Most of our images about what “heaven” is like don’t come from the Bible, they come from New Yorker cartoons.) Jesus talks about how we are to live with each other now, in this world, in justice and peace and love, and thus subverting the kingdoms of this world.
And these are, I think, among the “many things” that Jesus taught the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd.
Monday, July 16, 2012
15 July 2012 -- Proper 10 / 7th Pentecost
PROPER 10 – 7TH PENTECOST — 15 July 2012
Trinity, Iowa City – 7:45, 8:45, & 11:00
Trinity, Iowa City – 7:45, 8:45, & 11:00
[Track One] 2 Samuel 6:1-5,12b-19 | Psalm 24 | Ephesians 1:3-14 | Mark 6:14-29
One of the nice things about being retired is that when I want to I can just sit and watch stuff on television. (I do have to find a way to tune out the little voice in the back of my head that is saying “Vacuum cleaner?” “Supper?”) One of the things that I have been watching lately is a mini-series that was originally on Showtime (we don’t subscribe to Showtime, I got this through another online source). The series is called “The Tudors,” which is a dramatization of the life and reign of King Henry VIII of England. It is sometimes historically accurate. And sometimes not. But it’s all good fun – lots of sex and violence and corruption (that much is accurate!), and as Anglicans it is good for our humility to be reminded of our tawdry origins. So far I’m up to the episodes in which Henry renounces papal authority, sends Katherine of Aragon off to the countryside, and marries Anne Boleyn. Thomas Cranmer has now shown up. He’s depicted as kind of a wimp. (That part’s not historically accurate, I suspect!) Thomas Tallis has also shown up in Henry’s court, probably a year or two early. A musical genius, but we already knew that. It’s not entirely clear in the series how any of these people had time to run a kingdom; but never mind.
So, speaking of sex and violence and corruption in the courts of power, in the Gospel today we hear the story of the execution of John the Baptist.
It’s not entirely clear why St. Mark tells this story (which Matthew copies and abridges). The beginning of Mark’s Gospel itself, with the appearance of John the Baptist in the wilderness, is really a lead up to the beginning of the ministry of Jesus of whom Mark sees John as the forerunner. Today’s story, after the opening transition, is apparently simply about John, not directly about Jesus, the only story in Mark that isn’t.
We start with Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee (you recall he was a son of King Herod the Great of Judaea), hearing about what Jesus and his followers were doing, and wondering if John the Baptist had come back to life. It’s not clear how we should take that. Herod Antipas wasn’t very religious except when it was politically expedient, and it’s questionable that he would have seriously believed that anyone could come back from the dead. (Of course, Pharisaic Judaism believed in the resurrection, but only at the end of the age, not before then – that’s why the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus upset the Pharisees so badly.) But on the other hand, Herod Antipas may well have been very superstitious, as not-very-religious folks often are, and therefore might believe almost anything. But perhaps Antipas just meant, “Rats! Is this Jesus fellow going to turn out to be yet another John the Baptist? Am I going to have to kill him too?” So that may be the subtext here.
Anyway, Mark then tells the story of John’s execution at Antipas’ orders. We also have a version of this story from an outside source: the first-century Jewish historian Josephus tells us that Antipas was afraid that John’s vigorous preaching and strong following among the people might lead to a popular uprising, and so he arrested John and put him to death, for political reasons. [Antiquities 18.5.2] Josephus doesn’t mention the daughter of Herodias dancing for her stepfather/slash/uncle at his birthday party. The girl’s name, of course, was Salome, but we know that from Josephus, not from the gospels. And I don’t think anyone says anything about the seven veils until the play Salome by Oscar Wilde (who else?!), which then was the basis for the opera by Richard Strauss, which is not an opera to which you would want to take the kids, and not just because of the seven veils part.
But this story is not just about people being naughty, and persecuting God’s prophet. It’s a political story, and I think that’s why Mark tells it as part of his very political Gospel (in case you hadn’t noticed). Here’s the back-story, which Mark and his community knew very well; after all, they had lived through it: Herod Antipas had married the princess Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabataea. Nabataea was a very powerful kingdom to the east and southeast of Judaea. (Its capital city was Petra, which is now a major archaeological tourist site in Jordan.) So the marriage of Antipas and Phasaelis was a political alliance, and there was probably nothing romantic about it! Well, Antipas got tired of his Nabataean princess and dumped her so he could marry Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Herod Philip. Upper-class Romans did this kind of wife swapping thing all the time, but the Jews didn’t, and so they, evidently including John the Baptist, added this to their long list of grievances against Antipas. And when the rejected princess Phasaelis came running home, her father King Aretas got very very mad and declared war against Antipas. (Which Aretas won, inflicting major casualties on Antipas’ army.) Josephus tells us that many Jews thought that the military defeat of Antipas’ army by Aretas was God’s punishment for the execution of John the Baptist.
Hmm. Divorcing your first princess bride in order to marry your girlfriend. Where have we heard that before? No wonder I started out by talking about the TV series “The Tudors”! Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same. Except in Henry’s case, it was the first bride who had been his brother’s wife.
Did you note that at Herod Antipas’ birthday party, the guests were “his courtiers and officers and … the leaders of Galilee”? That is, the political establishment. Ched Myers notes, “Mark accurately describes the inner circle of power as an incestuous relationship involving governmental, military, and commercial interests.” [Binding the Strong Man, page 216]
Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose. Oops.
I said this was a political story, told in the context of a political Gospel. That idea may ruffle our feathers, accustomed as we are to the notion of never mixing politics and religion. Which just demonstrates that we don’t really understand either politics or religion. We usually think of “politics” in a very narrow, partisan sense. We’re spoiled because in our democratic republic, our political life is actually fairly civilized. Even this year, believe it or not! At least compared to politics elsewhere in the world and in world history. But “politics” is about the ordering of the common life of the polis, the city, the state, the community. It’s about how we live together as human beings in justice and peace. But the more “politics” becomes about power and domination, the more it has become corrupt.
And so, yes, the Gospel, the Good News, of the Kingdom of God is about politics. It’s about how we love the Lord our God, and our neighbor as ourselves. The Kingdom of God is not about life in the sweet by and by, at least not initially, and Jesus practically never talks about that kind of stuff. Jesus talks about how we are to live with each other now, in this world, in justice and peace and love. This entails confronting the kingdoms of this world, for which the bottom line is power. But the Kingdom of God does not come through forcibly overthrowing the kingdoms of this world, but by subverting them with love and justice. But this is a hard road. It led John the Baptist to Herod’s dungeon. It led Jesus to a Roman cross. Where should it be leading us?
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