Homily: Yr B P15, July 12 2015, St. Albans
Readings: 2 Sam 6.1-5, 12b-19; Ps 24, Eph 1.3-14; Mk
6.14-29
“King Herod heard of it.”
What? What did he hear of?
Why, the mission of course.
What we read about in our gospel last week. Jesus sent his disciples out to towns and
villages all over Galilee, to heal the sick and to proclaim the Kingdom of God.
Of course King Herod heard of it. He’s got his sources, the internal police,
his spies on the ground. Of course he
heard of it. And if King Herod heard of
it, that’s not good, not good at all.
Because you remember what happened to John the Baptist, don’t you?
When I was walking the Camino in Spain last month, one of my
walking companions in our group of seven that formed was a Hungarian
woman. One Saturday evening we went to
mass in the village church. But mid-way
through the mass, I noticed that the Hungarian woman was gone. I asked her afterwards what happened. She told me that she’d left after the prayers
because the priest had included prayers for the Spanish election which was just
about to take place. And it made her
angry, because, she said, the church has no business in politics. Church and state, religion and politics,
these should be kept totally separate.
We hear that often don’t we, that there should be a
separation between church and state.
Some of that comes out of European history, where so-called religious
wars were a scourge on society for hundreds of years from the 16th
century on. Some of the drive for
keeping religion out of politics is more recent, a secularizing tendency to
restrict religion to the individual and private domain, keeping it out of the
public domain.
Whatever the merit, or perhaps the foolishness, of these
attempts to keep religion out of politics, it appears that Jesus didn’t get the
memo. Because Jesus chooses as his main
message a phrase that is at once intentionally political and a deliberate
challenge to those with political and military power:
“The time has come.
The Kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent.”
Just think how that would have sounded to King Herod. Some upstart from Nazareth calling for
fundamental change and proclaiming a new kingdom right under King Herod’s nose.
And Jesus was popular. Massive crowds gathered around him. And now he was expanding his mission,
recruiting followers, sending them out to more and more villages.
Who is this Jesus?
Some were saying John the Baptist raised from the dead. Some said Elijah. Still others claimed “He is a prophet.”
And tell me, what happens when prophets tell powerful men
like King Herod the things they don’t want to hear? What happens when God’s truth is spoken to
power?
Well you know what happened to John the Baptist.
More than just an execution, the story of John’s death is a
sick and twisted story. To get an image
of how sick and twisted, picture just for a moment the severed head of John the
Baptist being placed in the hands of a young girl at the request of her own
mother. You’ve heard the old adage that
absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well
there’s its image, right there, a severed head being presented on a platter to
a twelve year old girl. That’s what
power can do.
One of the ironies in the way that Mark tells the story is
that Herod is actually presented as a sympathetic figure. He feared John and protected him, knowing him
to be a righteous and holy man. He liked
to listen to him. He is distressed at
the thought of John’s death. When John
speaks truth to power, Herod actually recognizes the truth. And that’s not enough, because still he is
unable to give up the way of power, and power demands the head of John and gets
it.
Last week when we considered the disciples heading out on
their mission with nothing for the journey, no bread, no bag, no money, no spare
clothes, we remarked on their vulnerability, how they would have to depend on
the hospitality of those they met along the way to provide them with the basic
necessities of life. Today’s text takes
their vulnerability to a whole new level.
The disciples have just joined the mission, they too are out proclaiming
the Kingdom of God, and Herod has heard of it.
Keep this up and you will suffer the same fate as John the Baptist. That’s the way of power.
I suppose that the disciples, as minor players in the drama,
might have the option of scattering when things get bad. Jesus won’t get the same opportunity. He is already a marked man. He has challenged the powers and authorities,
and power will do its thing. But Jesus
is not deterred. He will speak truth to
power, in fact when asked why he came, he will reply that he came to bear
witness to the truth. And what truth is
that? The truth that Jesus bears witness
to is that God’s way is not the way of power, but rather the way of the cross.
So on this question of the separation of religion and
politics, who’s right? Is it Jesus who
intentionally begins his mission with a deliberately political declaration
which he will take right to the capital city, the seat of power? Or is it my Hungarian friend, who having
surveyed the carnage of European history declares that the followers of Jesus
have no business getting involved in politics?
Actually, I think that both are right. Jesus is right because he knows what the
psalmist declared in our psalm reading this morning. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in
it, the world and all who dwell therein.”
When the psalmist makes this declaration, he’s not just talking about
the birds and the bees. He’s talking
about every sphere of human activity, including economics, politics and
military engagement. The earth is the
Lord’s and all that is in it. No sphere
of human activity can be separated from the sovereignty of God. Jesus’ mission is inherently political, and
his followers are invited to join him in the realization of God’s kingdom on
earth.
But my Hungarian friend is also right. Because Jesus’ way is not the way of power,
it is the way of the cross. And so when
we as followers of Jesus engage in the public sphere, we’re called to do so not
from positions of power, but from a position of vulnerability. And when we do so, our sole allegiance is to
God, not to our country, not to our cultural or ethnic group, not to any
political party. And that’s where the
church has gone wrong in times past, those are the tragic mistakes that so
enraged my Hungarian friend. Often, when
the church has engaged in politics it has been, first of all, from a position
of power and secondly, in allegiance with nation-states or political parties.
That’s not the way of the cross. That’s not the way of Jesus.
As people of faith, we bring our faith into all domains of
life. Our faith is not something we
limit to our homes, or to Sunday mornings.
We’ve been invited to proclaim the kingdom of God in our time and
place. We’ve been told to love our
neighbours as ourselves. We’ve been
called to feed the hungry and care for the needy and to release those who are
oppressed. We’ve been taught to love our
enemies.
None of these things can be done from the privacy of our own
homes or from the confines of this building on a Sunday morning. All are inherently public and political acts. So we must enter the public domain. But when we do enter the public domain we are
called to do so as followers of Jesus.
Take nothing for the journey – no bread, no bag, no money in your
belts. And yes, Herod will hear of
it. But go anyways. We follow not the way of power, but the way
of the cross.
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