Trinity Five

Glynn, Amelia, Oscar and I have been very touched by the warm and generous welcome we have received here at St Mary’s and within the Stafford team. Thank you. We are now into week three of our ministry here and I hope we are beginning to get to know some of you and you something of us too! Please bear with us, as we feel our way!

It seems only a few weeks ago that I was sitting in a lecture at The Queen’s Foundation, talking about sermons! I recall very clearly our tutor Mark Earey warning us that a rouse of many training incumbents is to give their curates the challenge of preaching on Trinity Sunday!  We’ll I escaped that one this year! But confess my heart skipped a beat when I discovered our gospel reading today was the story of the beheading of John the Baptist!

It’s quite a tale! And I invite you over the next few minutes to come with me to take a closer look at our reading from Mark’s gospel this morning. It may even help to have the text in front of you, at hand, as we reflect on it together. To begin with, I found myself asking, why did the gospel writer chose to place this story here, about a third of the way into the gospel of Mark? In the preceding verses we read together last week, (6:6-12), Mark tells us about Jesus sending out the twelve disciples. And in the verses following our reading today we read in Mark 6:30 we read of the disciples returning having been casting out demons, anointing and curing the sick. So why does Mark sandwich John’s martyrdom between the going out and coming back of the disciples? What does he want us his listeners to hear and learn?

The story of John’s beheading is, at a first glance puzzling in itself. It doesn’t seem to speak of Jesus; he is not the centre of the story at all! In fact these verses together with Mark 1 :2-8  are the only two passages in Mark which are not directly about Jesus, both involve John the Baptist, both don’t speak directly of Jesus,  yet both foreshadow Jesus and his mission . So, what does Mark want his listeners to hear about Jesus in this story?

The story of John the Baptist’s beheading is related in all three of the synoptic gospels: Matthew 14:1-2, Mark 6:14-16 and Luke 9:7-9, with a slightly different emphasis in John 1:19f.

Incidentally we also hear an account of this story from Josephus the Jewish historian (in his “Jewish antiquities” which were 20 or so books relating the history of the Jews from creation to the Jewish –Roman war of 66-70 ad)

So to our reading in Mark: the shortest and action packed gospel, with little narrative and rapidly changing scenes. Mark, whose audience was probably: Greek speaking Christians, who were mostly illiterate. Written, to be heard aloud by believers: who were possibly facing, Nero’s persecution of Christians, and the grim prospect of martyrdom. This passage seems to divide into three scenes: scene 1: King Herod pondering who Jesus is, Mark 6:14-16, scene 2: the rather gruesome retelling of John the Baptist’s death 6:17-28 and Scene 3: the response of John’s disciples to his death 6:29.

We start then, in Scene 1 with King Herod, the son of Herod the Great, whose jurisdiction was Galilee. He’d clearly heard of the preaching tour of Jesus and his disciples. Who was Jesus, people wondered?  They’d heard of Jesus doing remarkable things –various explanations were put forward.  Was Jesus  Elijah? Was Jesus  one of the prophets of old? Was Jesus John the Baptist raised from the dead? Three views are put forward: A nationalist view – was Jesus Elijah, the messiah a conquering King? Was Jesus a prophet, after 3 centuries of no prophetic word, like that of  Amos we heard this morning -  was Jesus a prophet, the voice of God? Or was Jesus, John the Baptist raised from the dead?

We learn in verse 16 that Herod clearly thought Jesus was John the Baptist, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” He says.  Was this a guilty conscience- a man haunted by what he’d done by allowing John to be beheaded? Herod who had liked to hear John preach but whose words troubled him. Was this man Jesus, John raised from the dead?

The growing reputation of Jesus and his message was evidence that Herod had failed to silence John the Baptist’s message despite beheading him! One wonders what Herod had heard about Jesus? Vs 14? Was it a call to repent? Or of was it his casting out of demons? Or maybe he heard about the anointing with oil and healing of the sick?

Herod was a king, forced to take note of Jesus and his ministry. V15 of our reading, is clear, none had seen who Jesus really was, the disciples and others, including Herod, were uncertain as to who this Jesus was. In vs 16 Herod seems to go for Jesus being John the Baptist. John the man who performed no miracles but who was known as a truth teller (John 10; 41) Who later we will see, even in death points to Jesus.

Asking questions about Jesus is a good thing. And we might just pause a moment to ask ourselves, how we might encourage each other and others to ask questions about Jesus? And where would we go to seek answers?

On Sunday afternoons, Father Graham meets with a group preparing for confirmation; people who are asking questions and seeking answers about Jesus. This week, on Friday, a group of school children came to St Mary’s. As the children explored the church, it was quite wonderful to hear the questions they asked about the Christian faith and Jesus. This week also, it was good to be able to stand with others from various faiths in the market square, as we commemorated the London bombing; being available to listen to questions about Jesus and to help others seek and meet Him.  Perhaps we could reflect this week on the questions we have about Jesus, or be ready and available to help others as they share theirs.

However, like Herod and other s however, just wondering who Jesus is, isn’t enough. As we draw closer to Jesus, we are invited to respond to God and to his grace which we heard of in our New Testament reading this morning, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of trespasses according to the richness of his grace.” (Ephesians 1:7) and which in a moment we will celebrate together in the Eucharist.

So to scene 2; the beheading of John the Baptist? (Vs17-28). V 17 concludes the story started in Mark 1:7 where John is arrested; Jesus triggers the flashback to John’s execution. This brief interlude reminds Mark’s listeners of how Jesus’ cousin, the great forerunner of Christ, is murdered. The scene is castle Machaerus, a palace which derives its Greek name from machairia = sword. It stood on a lonely ridge, surrounded by ravines, overlooking the east side of the dead sea- a bleak and desolate fortress. The characters in the scene are Herod, John the Baptist , Herodias and Salome.

Unlike many other women in Mark’s gospel, Herodias is named. A woman from upper class aristocracy, Herod the Great’s great grand-daughter, intent on  murdering John because he had spoken out against her relationship with Herod. By marrying Herodias Herod had broken Jewish law (Lev 18:16, 20:21) and outraged the laws of decency and morality. John’s very public rebuke of Herodias and Herod led to his imprisonment and to Herodias plotting to kill him. The sordid, shabby and shameful story unfolds. A story with all too familiar themes today: power, sex and politics.  There was, it seems, scandalous goings on at Herods’ birthday bash; Herod’s step-daughter, Salome dances an erotic dance in front of a likely inebriated group of men, which in turn leads to a very rash promise by Herod and concluding in his command to execute John the Baptist; being more afraid of what people might say, if he backed out.

The scene, revolves around these two men, Herod and John the Baptist and the two women, Salome and Herodias. John is presented as a man of courage, preferring death to falsehood. We are reminded that the Gospel is not always received with a warmly, and neither are we who come to bring the good news of Jesus. We learn from John that discipleship is not just about hearing Jesus’ teaching, observing his miracles or being in a crowd– it means following all the way to the cross and beyond. True faith is for the dark days as well as the good days.

Today as then, it is easy to focus on the triumphal miracles, exciting – but not enough or adequate for us to cope with life’s wide spectrum of experiences: inoperable disease, long term pain, disappointment, racism, sexism, violence, redundancy, war and terrorism – the whole spectrum of the human experience.

John the Baptists’ discipleship was not like this, neither was Jesus’ ministry – it was one of obedience and sacrifice where reward is not success or triumphalist patterns but the knowledge that one is faithfully serving God’s purposes in the world. It is of quiet obedience to our loving father. It would be quite stark if Mark had left this story here, but the writer doesn’t! The final verse Mark 6: 29 makes Scene 3 a message of great hope.  We are told “when John’s disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb” And here Mark, underlines in bold the reason for sandwiching this sorry tale between the disciples going out and coming in.  We are meant I think to hear the echo of Jesus’ death, in John the Baptist’s. Jesus, who Mark tells us in chapter 15 was crucified, and whose body was taken down from the cross by Joseph, who wrapped his body in a linen cloth and laid it in a tomb. 

So John’s death reverberates loudly of what’s to come. It reveals the way of true discipleship of Jesus, preparing us for Jesus’ trial, his condemnation and his death on the cross. Mark’s account, sandwiches; mission and martyrdom, discipleship and death in an inseparable relationship – taught by Jesus himself in Mark 8:34 “if any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”. John had launched a very different Kingdom from Herods’. John’s was one of baptism offering forgiveness of sin, with promise of the coming one, the messiah.  

Just recently a dear friend of mine sent me a card: in it were best wishes for my ordination. Inside also, my friend reminded me of John the Baptist :whose job was to sign post us to Jesus. He wrote “our job, like John the Baptist is to pull the curtains aside and let people see God”.

So the Gospel reading today doesn’t end with John’s martyrdom, tragic though that was. John’s passion is an anticipation of Jesus’ death. Mark it seems, tells us of John’s death to draw a line, signifying a new beginning: Of Jesus’ ministry and of the hope Jesus brings to each of us who come to Him in faith, however small, to love him, to receive Him and to know His love ourselves.  Amen.