July 16, 2006 - Mark 6: 14-29 2006 - Mother Stephanie E. Parker

In a commentary on this week's gospel, David von Schlichten offers the following reflection on these sad and sorry events we hear in Mark's gospel today:

What dark times. The Romans rule the world. The foolish and corrupt Herod is Rome's puppet-king over the oppressed Jews. John the Baptist, a righteous man of God, is down below, fettered in a damp, dark prison among the rats and mildew. Up above parties the hedonistic and impulsive Herod. He drinks and swaggers with his crowd of buddies.

He has this young girl dance for the drunk, leering men. The girl undulates before them. The men yell and whistle. Herod's feeling like a big shot. He calls the girl over and says, "Baby, that was hot. For dancing like that, you can have anything." After talking with her mother, the girl says, "The head of John the Baptist on a platter." Herod turns pale, feels nauseated, but a promise is a promise. Minutes later, it is finished.

Can you picture the scene, von Schlichten asks us, an intoxicated, spineless man reclines on his cushions, his mouth somewhere between a smile and a grimace. He stares at this young girl holding a platter, which has a human head on it; the head of the holy man John the Baptist. Then von Schlichten poses the question, "What's the world coming to?"

That is a question we often hear, isn't it? What is the world coming to? Anxiety seems to be the order of the day. Amid the worlds woes we see teenagers engaging in increasingly risky behaviors of drugs and promiscuity. People blow themselves up in the name of God. The gulf coast is still a mess from hurricane Katrina and thousands of people are still desperate for help while government officials argue over budgets and blame. The Middle East grows more war torn everyday and it just seems as if the whole world has lost its mind!

It is tempting to give in to despair. It is tempting for us to shake our heads and proclaim that the world is simply lost and God forsaken. Things fall apart. People have become so selfish, so corrupt, and so cynical. There is just too much pain and sorrow and sometimes it just feels easier to collude with the corruption than to attempt to shine any light into its darkness. The Herods of the world seem to have it all their way-no matter that they lack integrity, bow to hatred, and behead the godly.

It is tempting to think that way, and there is some truth in it. The world is indeed clogged with evil and woe, but that is not the entire story. If we only see the world as broken and irredeemable, then we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Sad, unspeakable, and lamentable things are a part of the brokenness of our world to be sure, but in Christ they never have the last word.

Such was certainly the case back in the time of John's beheading. Yes, Herod was a dangerous and unscrupulous ruler. Yes, John the Baptist's grisly death was horrible and unjust--- but that was not the end of the story. Even as John's head was brought forth on the platter, Jesus was traveling through Galilee preaching hope to the needy, giving sight to the blind, driving out demons, and raising the dead---so much so that word of his increasing popularity has inspired this gruesome flashback of Herod's as he fears that Jesus is John come back to haunt him somehow.

Yes, John is dead, but Jesus is alive. The Psalmist tells us, "Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky." We are reminded with these words that even in the midst of the Herod's of the world grabbing all the headlines; God's mercy and light will find its way.

Case in point: On May 22, 1992, at 4 p.m., a bakery in Sarajevo was distributing bread to the starving people of the war-shattered city. With no warning a shell fell directly in the middle of the line, killing 22 people and wounding many others. Not far away lived Vedran Smailovic. Before the war, Smailovic had been the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera.

When he saw the carnage around him, he decided to take action and resolved to do the thing that he could do best. Every day thereafter, at 4 p.m. precisely, Smailovic put on his full formal concert attire, took up his cello, placed a little camp stool in the middle of the crater the shell made, and played a concert. Even after his cello was smashed, he continued to play on borrowed instruments.

Smailovic is a good example of not being conformed, shaped, or wearied by the evil things of this world. Whenever we want inspiration in the midst of cynicism attempting to take hold of us, I want us to remember Smailovic. Think of him in the bombed out city, fully dressed and coifed, playing beautiful music, anyway. He could have done what many of us might have done in the face of such waste: he could have lost hope in beautiful things like music.

Instead of giving into despair he conformed himself to beauty. He did not allow the ugliness around him to swallow him up. He offered no head on a plate to those in power who would seek to poison the world.1[1]

The pages of history are in fact littered with the killing of those who would defy worldly power and darkness to speak God's words of mercy and justice to a world in pain. But Mark's recital of today's grim story is in fact a reminder that though the prophet can be killed, God's word of love can never be silenced. We remember that he began this story by telling us that Herod was afraid of Jesus, believing that Jesus was John the Baptist returned from the dead.

Herod is afraid because he knows that you cannot kill the truth. Once the strong Word of God's truth, justice and love have been spoken, and have been given life by the voice of a prophet, it will not die. It echoes and rings and continues to vibrate throughout the world.

I am reminded that today, several years after his murder, Martin Luther King Jrs' words, far from being silenced by an assassin's bullet, ring with greater truth and conviction than ever.2[2]

Long after Dietrich Bonhoffer's life ended on a gallows in Nazi Germany, his words of True Discipleship still call thousands to a new understanding of faithfulness and inspires the courage to oppose evil and corrupt systems.

As Christian disciples we too are called to be prophets. A tall and imposing thought for most of us hear today, but I am reminded of the words of another prophet, so recently slain for his opposition to injustice in El Salvador...from Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was killed as he was celebrating mass in 1980:

"This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide the
yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do
everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This
enables us to do something and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers not messiahs. We are
prophets of a future that is not our own"



Romero's words call us to a place of conviction and courage, they call us to a place of faith and trust in God's promises. We are reminded that no matter how dark, corrupt and foolish the times may seem, God's word of love calls us to new life and transformation. In the midst of the world's call to conform to cynicism and sorrow, God's word, through our prophets, calls us to surrender to beauty and truth...to justice and mercy.

For wherever that Word of God's justice, truth, beauty and love is spoken, that Word continues to live, bring hope, give life, and transform the world. Amen.