Proper 10B

Proper 10B • 15 July 2012
Preached at Saint Mark's, Springfield, VT

You know it is going to be an interesting week of sermon preparation when you open a commentary on the Gospel lesson and read this, ‘The story of the beheading of John the Baptist is hardly a text one would spontaneously choose for a sermon.’

No kidding. But it is what we have and I usually like to go with the hard reading because it is a good challenge.

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Just a brief road map for this sermon as it is one that builds one thought on another and the connections might be a bit too intuitive — you will have to forgive me as I am coming off ten days at General Convention. The sermon begins by reflecting the gospel reading, which leads to thinking about the worst of humanity and divine compassion. That leads to musing about our brokenness which then moves to a thought about what it means to be a reconciler alongside being a prophetic voice that challenges the status quo and where we might land on that continuum. So, with road map in mind, here we go.

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Hearing the story of the beheading of John the Baptist a week after hearing Jesus say to his disciples how a prophet is without honour in his own homeland also is a bit sobering. It’s not as though the lectionary is trying to drive home the point; it is just the way the gospel flows.

The story of Herodias’ daughter asking for John the Baptist’s head is chilling. It represents the worst of humanity — that part of the human soul that I cannot understand, the part that has so lost touch with its God-created being to the point that it can knowingly and willingly kill another creature or human being, that part of the human soul that no longer respects the internal checks-and-balances that most of us observe.

But Herod’s behaviour isn’t much better because he caves into the request to save face rather than make a principled stand against such an outrageous demand. The gospel wants us to know that up until that point, Herod has protected John the Baptist (albeit by putting him in prison). What should have been an ordinary night spirals into a nightmare, culminating with an unnecessary death that will haunt Herod, a petty figure in Roman politics, and an even smaller person because of his failings.

How out of such a tawdry story can we find anything positive?

Perhaps it helps to note that the story of the beheading of John the Baptist — the longest account in the gospel of Mark about someone other than Jesus — is nestled in between two accounts of Jesus sending out the disciples for mission. On either side of this sorrowful account Mark’s gospel details the works, healings and teachings of the disciples.

Then, just five verses after we hear about the demise of John, the gospel tells us that Jesus finds himself in the midst of a hungry, lost crowd and looks upon them with compassion.

Knowing of that divine compassion, I think, enables me to confront the worst of humanity. I cannot allow the brokenness of soul and spirit, in some cases, evil, which drive people to destruction, harm and cruelty to be the last word about people. I have to believe that while each person is ultimately responsible for his or her actions and must be accountable to them, that God’s mercy and forgiveness are there… even when the person is unable to open his or her soul to God.

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I admit, however, to utter bafflement as I read the news about the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine. I cannot understand how two peoples can so hate one another that they wish to destroy each other. I don’t much understand, for that matter, the on-going conflict between forces in Syria or Egypt or Sudan or any of those ‘hot spots’ in the world. I don’t understand how humanity has managed for all of its existence, it seems, to engage constantly in war. How have we, as God’s creation, the only ones created in God’s image, the creatures to whom God says we are good, managed to lose sight of the beloved that lies in every other human being?

It’s pretty clear that we are broken creatures. Admitting so to one another could be one of the most prophetic, and healing actions we could engage in. Think about it:
What about when we also fail, we were to show our brokenness to one another? When we have come to terms with wrongs we must right, we could trust in divine forgiveness. Could we trust that we have been loved from before the beginning?

If we were to engage in the prophetic action of reconciliation, we would not end up with our heads on a platter the way John the Baptist did. But that is just half of the story.

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Even as we are reconciliers we must also be truth-tellers. Being both reconcilier and truth-teller may lead us into stormy waters and might seem to some contradictory ways to live one’s discipleship to Jesus. But our expression of faith believes in both/and and not either/or propositions.

It was only on the last day of General Convention that tempers got frayed in the House of Deputies (I can’t speak for the other house). Up until that point, debates had been intense, but not angry... On the last day, however, a block of resolutions from one of the legislative committees, National Concerns, came to the floor and suddenly the house was thrown into debate about things such as fracking, racial profiling, wage equality and fair labour practices. A deputy from Florida stood at a microphone and angrily said that she was going to vote against every single one of these resolutions because they were ‘political.’ A deputy from Texas declared that he did not know what the words, ‘racial profiling’ meant. A deputy from Arizona responded by describing how she had been pulled over four times in the past month because she has dark hair; she now carries her passport with her at all times. The debate continues on a list-serve about where does one draw the line between being ‘political’ and being prophetic, challenging the injustices of the day? Last night I received an email from a former parishioner declaring that General Convention looked like the progressive party at work and that the church should lose its tax-exempt status.

We all land in different places on the spectrum in our attitudes toward proclaiming Christ’s reconciling love to the world and engaging in prophetic action and words that will shake up the status quo. I land more on the end that maintains that challenging the unjust laws and practices that continue in Jesus’ tradition of overturning the tables of the money-changers. I can’t explain totally how I landed there, coming from a traditional Republican family, I just know that by junior high, I was aware that things were not fair or just and I couldn’t let them be. Perhaps a question during my ordination process, ‘How will you use your prophetic voice as a priest?’ also has guided me these many years. I draw strength from exemplars such as Desmond Tutu challenging aparteid, Oscar Romero decrying the massacre of his own people by their military, Rigoberta Menchu speaking out about the massacre of her indigenous people in Guatemala, Aung San Suu Kyi fighting against military oppression of her people of Burma and other prophets.

But, just because I live out my understanding of the prophets this way does not mean it is an either/or proposition. Each person finds his or her way through. An acquaintance writes: ‘I once had a spiritual director who, in response to my grumbling about someone having “rubbed me the wrong way,” used to talk about “Divine Sandpaper”. “How do you expect your authentic grain to shine,” she would ask, “if God didn’t send people to ‘rub you the wrong way’ every now and again?”’ The prophets in our midst are that divine sandpaper. And even with such sandpaper, the act of reconciliation helps us to shine. We maintain that the Holy Spirit gives us gifts and so we need one another as some agitate and others reconcile.

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The good news, then, out of this troubling gospel, is that God loves us despite ourselves in all of our complexities and divisions. God has compassion on us — the hungry, seeking people that we are — just as Jesus did that day long ago. There is a wideness is God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea… and for that, my soul will bless the LORD.