There is an awful story in the Gospel of Mark which relates the death of John the Baptist. It is a very confronting story. It’s confronting, because of the pictures it
gives us of betrayal, debauchery, revenge, hatred, and death. We have this terrible picture of Herod and
his family, taking their revenge on John, because he dared to speak out against
their moral discrepancy. It’s confronting because Jesus appears to do nothing
to intervene.
This is the story of one of the greatest juxtapositions
in the whole bible: The Herald of the Lord sacrificed for the whims of a
deceitful woman and her spineless husband.
It is a story of the risks we take when we choose to follow Christ.
John, the cousin of Jesus; the one whose voice in the wilderness,
foretold of his coming. Jesus’ ministry starts after John is arrested. While John is in prison, Jesus is about and
about preaching and healing. Let’s press the rewind button a little bit, and go
back to before John’s death.
“Are you the one
who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
John is in prison, no doubt anticipating his own
execution. And he hears what Jesus is
doing, and sends the disciples to ask Jesus this question. “Are you the one who
is to come, or are we to wait for another?". After his own glorious ministry, as the
prophet appointed to proclaim the Christ’s coming, he is plagued by doubts, it
seems. What has happened to the glorious vision of Isaiah, where the eyes of
the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap and the
tongue of the dumb sings for joy? It
must seem to John, that having foretold these things, he wasn’t going to be
around to see it. Instead, he’s captured and held on the whim of a woman with
whom he had gone into battle on many occasions over moral issues. It’s the old story of a good man to whom bad
things happen.
Then we have Herod. Let’s look at him, his family for
a minute. According to most scholars, the Herod that is spoken of in this
reading is a son of Herod the Great, a cruel and hated despot who oversaw the
entire Palestinian region. When Herod
the Great died (in 4 B.C.); Rome split his region into four areas and placed
the Northwest area of Galilee under the rule of his son, Herod Antipas.
If Herod the Great was a maniacal, violent despot, then
Antipas the son, was the cowering survivor who outlived his father. A brief study of his character reveals that
he maintained his position not with strength but by connivance and
manipulation. We know this because of
his hesitation to have John executed immediately when John first insulted his
wife. He’s scheming for the way out of
his predicament so he comes out of it unscathed. The historian, Josephus, tells how he won his
seat by sniveling before Rome and later lost it in like manner. He’s an amoral “yes man”, whose first concern
is always his own position of power and comfort. Scripture tells us that he
stole his half-brother’s wife (she was also his cousin) and appeased her by
sinking to her frivolous whims while also lusting for his stepdaughter (who was
also his niece). He is a sleazy man. He, the manipulator, is also manipulated by
his wife. He is weakness
personified.
This is the man, who so abused his authority against
the daring, devoted John the Baptist by ordering his beheading. This is the picture we have of the strutting
weakling Antipas, who was responsible for Christ’s death too. He scorned and mocked and thought he would
have the last word.
All of this
background is very interesting and helpful, but we might ask, “why was it
included?” Why does the death of John
include all this detail about Herod and his family? Why do the preceding chapters tell us of
John’s question to Jesus from the gloom of his prison cell? Where’s the good news in all this?
There is always the danger in religious circles to
think that if you’re on God’s Team then everything will be great. You’ll be
healthy, wealthy, and wise. God will heal every disease and conquer every foe. Well…not if you’re John the Baptist. If you’re
John you’ll be the victim of a little slip of a girl, her scheming mother, an ineffectual
puppet ruler, and your head will be served on a platter.
The sobering reality is that even the very best of us
can be victim to the very worst, and sometimes even to the very worst in other
people. How many have heard of Clunes Mathison? He was born at Stanley, near Beechworth, in
1883. His parents, had six children, but only Clunes reached the age of 10;
moreover, when he was 12 his father, too, died of illness. The close experience
of sickness and suffering influenced the young Mathison and he went on to be a
brilliant doctor. When the first world
war came, he served as the 5th Battalion’s Doctor on 25th
April 1915 at Gallipoli. He survived the
landing, and went from there to Helles where he set up a medical post in a
creek bed. After the 5th charged towards, Krithia, Mathison
returned on May 9 to the aid post he had established in a creek bed. He was
getting dressed during the afternoon, when a Turkish bullet fired from far away
fell to earth and struck him on the head.
He died 9 days later. He’d survived the hideous Gallipoli landing but
was struck down by a freak bullet. Not
only did Australia loose a good man, but also a brilliant Doctor. He was only 34. But I can’t help but think of
his Mum. She lost all her children,
except this one; she lost her husband
and then her only remaining child
marches off to war and is killed by a stray bullet, way behind the battle
front. Life is not always fair. This
story is confronting because it tears at the fabric of our belief that God will
intervene, fix, heal, save. But he
didn’t save Clunes Mathison, or his mother from the crushing grief of multiple losses.
And he didn’t save John the
Baptist. That’s why it’s such a confronting
story.
But, these fates
aren’t what define us, for even though we suffer and are cut down, we are still
God’s. It’s why we need to keep our
lives aligned with the plumb line of our walk with the risen Christ, because
sometimes, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.
John’s story challenges us to live with hope in the
face of disappointment and the ending of our hopes and dreams. Is our fidelity
to God only valid when everything turns out the way we want it to? How do we understand this story in the light
of all the promises God made about hope and joy and the desert blooming, and
the afflicted being healed? Can we step
outside the boundaries of our own expectations and let God write his own will
and expectations on our hearts? The
truths is, that God’s hope in us, actually becomes stronger, the less hopeful
our circumstances are; he himself
becomes our hope, our strength; we look
beyond the things of this life, to a greater hope in the life to come. And in doing this, we begin to live now, with
hope and integrity, even when we are in our own particular prison, whatever
that might be.
When the imprisoned John the Baptist queried whether
Jesus was the promised Messiah or not - Jesus replied by pointing John to the
transformation which was occurring in people's lives. How God's love for the
world was being revealed through the way Jesus touched people's lives with
healing, compassion, justice and love. So, in a way, John must have realized
that his task was done. He had foretold of
such a One, and his prophesy had been fulfilled. So take heart, because even our suffering,
our acceptance of it and our trust in God through it, is how we discover that
God is present in all our circumstances;
whether they be joyous ones like, say, the birth of a baby, or terrible
ones, like John’s life sentence. God is the God of both situations. The abundance of happy things, is no more a
sign of God’s presence than the desolation;
the constant is God. We tend to
measure God’s presence in any situation by our sense of well-being, and fail to
recognise that God is just as present with us in the dungeon, as he is on the
mountain top.
