Sunday: 6th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Mark 6:14-29
Preacher: Dan Puchalla

I had a really hard time trying to write this sermon this week. And it was some time on Friday that I realized why that, even by the end of the week, I had not been able to write word one about this week's gospel. The reason was, I just didn't care. I didn't care about the story, that is.

Oh, today's gospel is certainly entertaining: political intrigue, sexual depravity, and of course a deliciously grotesque murder. How can you go wrong with a story like that? But there's nothing about this story that speaks to me. There's no good news to proclaim here. There's not even any bad news to proclaim here.
Well, I decided, if I can't preach the gospel with this text, let's try preaching it as an anti-gospel. With this tact, I discovered, not only is today's story anti-gospel, it also contains within it an anti-Christ. And that anti-Christ is not the waffling King Herod, the wicked Herodias, or her flirtatious daughter. I submit that John the Baptist, that voice crying in the wilderness, is the anti-Christ of this story. I trust that has gotten your attention, so let me step back and demonstrate why I don't care about today's gospel by rehearsing a bit of history.

The character called "King Herod" in today's gospel is based on the historical person named Herod Antipas, who was the son of King Herod the Great. Herod the Great is the one we know all too well from Matthew's gospel, in which he is said to have killed all the children in Bethlehem so that he could eliminate Jesus as a threat to his power and dynasty. Herod the Great was a client king of the Roman Empire and ruled all of Israel after the Roman Senate declared him King of the Jews, even though he was neither Jewish nor royalty. In order to make a claim to the Jewish throne, Herod the Great had banished his first wife and their three-year-old son so that he could marry a teenage princess in the Jewish ruling family. Herod, it turns out, was very much in love with this princess, but he also eventually had her executed for plotting to kill him. All told, Herod the Great worked his way through no less ten wives in his lifetime- eat your heart out, Henry VIII.
But unlike Henry VIII, Herod had plenty of sons-nine of them. In fact, he had too many sons from too many different marriages representing too many factions who wanted control of Israel. Herod was constantly shuffling these sons around in the line of succession as they pleased and displeased him. Three of his sons were eventually executed for plotting to kill him. One of his sons, Herod II, remained the first in the line of succession up until a few days before his father's death, when the king completely disowned him. Now, Herod II had married the daughter of one of his executed half-brothers. In case you missed that, that means Herod II married his own niece. The name of this niece was Herodias, the same Herodias who appears in today's gospel story as the wicked mother who wants John the Baptist's head. You see, after Herod the Great disowned Herod II, he willed that his kingdom should be divided up between his three of-age sons whom he hadn't yet killed: Herod Phillip II, who ruled the northeast; Herod Archelaus who ruled Judea in the south; and Herod Antipas, who ruled the southeast and northwest, including the region of Galilee, where John the Baptist and Jesus performed their ministries. Herod Antipas is the King Herod of today's story, even though he was not actually a king. Now, you remember Herod II who married his own niece, Herodias, and was disowned? Well, it seems Herodias wasn't too satisfied with her uncle-husband, so she divorced him and got herself a different uncle for a husband, Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee. And that's how we get the happy couple of today's gospel. So now the reason John the Baptist was ticked off at Herod Antipas was because his so-called marriage to Herodias was in violation of Jewish law. Whereas Herodias had every right to divorce her first husband, Herod II, under Roman law, which was accomplished simply by moving out of his house - she, as a woman, could not instigate divorce under Jewish law. This meant that her second marriage, to Herod Antipas, essentially was an act of adultery. And, if that weren't bad enough, remember that both Herod II and Herod Antipas were her uncles, and so both of her marriages were also incestuous.

... Who cares?!

More to the point, why did John care? If you didn't follow all that history, I'm sure you get the idea that this family was well-known for its corruption, ambition, in-fighting, perversity, and bloody-mindedness. And its alliance with the Jewish people and their religion was entirely superficial and self-serving. So, why on earth did John bother to admonish Herod again and again for violating Jewish law? Did he perhaps see potential for Herod. Was Herod's fear of John evidence that he had the potential to repent and turn to God for forgiveness, and it was for this reason that John pursued him on this issue? I seriously doubt it.

Herod almost certainly feared John as "a righteous and holy man," as Mark puts it, because this meant John held sway over the common people and could start some sort of revolt. How else can we explain why Herod later kept the promise he made to his step-daughter at the expense of preserving the life of this holy man. If he had been protecting John out of genuine fear of God, that fear would have clearly overridden any promise made to the contrary.

No, what's key here is that, as Mark tells us, Herod made his promise in front of his guests, the officials and leaders of Galilee. Saving face in front of his officials was politically more important than not upsetting a sect of commoners. So why did John think this issue was worth sticking his neck out for? I don't know and I don't care because whatever his reason, it was not worth losing his life over. Let me rephrase that: I believe Mark is telling us that whatever John's reason for getting involved with Herod, it was not worth losing his life over.

In short, I think Mark is telling us that John died a pointless and meaningless death. In Mark's gospel, John's death stands in stark contrast to that of Jesus, whose death Mark tells us repeatedly is willed by God so that the Son of Man might rise again on the third day. There is no such purpose in John's death. It is in this sense that John is an anti-Christ and that the story of his death is an anti-gospel. Jesus' death is for the salvation of the world. John's death is merely tragic. There is no good news here.

But Mark does give us good news just before this sad episode. You see, just before the story we read today, Mark describes how Jesus sent out his twelve disciples to spread his movement of repentance and healing.

In commissioning The Twelve for this mission, Jesus gave them these instructions: "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." Jesus is telling his disciples to have nothing to do with those who refuse even to listen to them. If only John had heard these words from Jesus! If only John understood that, even in working for the Kingdom of God, there are battles not worth fighting. God does not call us to waste ourselves on pointless struggles.

You might be wanting examples of pointless struggles for the church. Well, that's not for me to say here. That's for us as a whole to figure out. The message I want to leave you with is that we must figure that out. Our commission is, to use what might sound like a dirty word, economical. Some say that Jesus taught wasteful love. If they mean by wasteful, that Jesus was abundantly generous, that's certainly true. But if by wasteful they mean that Jesus had time or patience for those who had not ears to listen, those who were not ready to believe and follow him, that is patently false.

As Jesus' disciples, we are not commissioned to be wasteful but purposeful: purposeful with our love, our resources, our time, and our efforts. We are not commissioned to do everything - or, realizing we can't do everything, neither are we commissioned to do just anything. To use another of Jesus' teachings, the parable of the sower, our charge is not to turn stones into fertile soil or to continually throw seed on the road and hope that something sprouts. Our charge is, by the wisdom and justice of God, to find the fertile soil and plant only there. Amen.