See?! there is a reason why we don’t just open the Bible and let an 8-year-old child read it willy-nilly. This Gospel passage is one of the more gruesome passages in the Bible. Daughter Herodias could have had half the kingdom, or a pony, but no… “I’ll have his head on a platter” is her choice; the Bible is not really for the faint of heart. Speaking truth to power is not always all it is cracked up to be. We will circle around to this Gospel passage, but for now, let us leave this, because it is hard to start there. But yet, you have to acknowledge that Gospel. It’s just sitting there. . . right before the sermon.
A few moments ago, we prayed to God “mercifully [to] receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.” So, from this prayer, we ask God to listen to our prayers, our calls to God; we ask to understand what God wants us to do and we ask to equip us through God’s grace and power, to do what God wants. . .
Our Old Testament reading is from the minor prophet Amos. As Amos states it, he is not from a family of prophets. He is called by God to speak. He has no other choice. The passage from the NRSV mentions a “plumbline,” which actually is a problematic word in this passage. First, this word is what is called a hapax legomenon, meaning we only see this word once in the Bible, and so there is less understanding of what the word means. Second, a plumbline may be an anachronistic phrase. If you know anything about plumbing, (like putting up gutters and downspouts), this English term, “plumbline” is using gravity to make straight lines (how a weight on a cord will hang straight). Still, we don’t really know what this word is in Hebrew, but from the context the word has something to do with doing what we should be doing, and specifically what God has already told us.
In terms of fulfilling God’s desires. I can’t speak for everyone, nor should I, but the psalm paint a familiar scenario for many of us. We stay engaged with God, we follow God because we have seen and experienced God’s grace before. This relationship is part of a larger scheme. Today’s psalm is what is considered a psalm of lament. The portion we have really is not filled with lament, what it is filled with instead is the familiarity of walking this path before. When we have seen God’s grace, we know how to recognize it again. Again, the psalmist and we can lament and rely on God’s grace to stay connected because we have seen this before, we have seen God act, we have seen God’s grace.
The epistle to the Ephesians expounds on the hope we have been given; and it shows what, or better who, gives us that hope. We are children of God through Jesus Christ, all wrapped up in a mystery, a plan, wisdom, and insight. We are gathered up with all things in the redemption of the world, all in heaven and on earth; it is for this or in this that we set our hope. Our best selves are part of the redemption.
Back to the beginning of the sermon, what were the people who structure the lectionary thinking juxtaposing our hope next to the beheading of John the Baptist? Let me first say that there are times that life is just hideous—our lives, the lives in the Gospel, all the lives. There is no window dressing up this Gospel passage. Still, I think there is something to the passage, despite its gruesomeness. I would like to point out that even King Herod knows that Jesus was something different. It is not that King Herod was necessarily racked with guilt about doing what was politically expedient in executing John the Baptist, but he recognized that Jesus was something. And isn’t it curious that the first reference to Jesus being raised, is that Herod thinks Jesus might be John, whom Herod beheaded, raised to life again?
And this is where the conflation of themes is both tricky and mystical. It’s absolutely in the dark messy parts of life and death, where I think being a true Christian really matters. We strive to do what we think God wants of us, as directed by prophets of old, like Amos; we have experience of God as accompanying us as we hear in the psalm. We know about the Christian hope that is in us from our assent to follow Christ Jesus. However, there is an inherent holy instability, in the Gospel, that things are always different than what we think. We see this more easily and in a less jarring way in Jesus’ parables, but we see it in hearing of this Gospel too. Jesus leans into ministry in Mark after the execution of John. Jesus knows what is at stake. I would even guess that Jesus felt lament and grief with the news of John’s execution. And still, this is why we too hear that we are to pick up our cross. Wherever you are looking for God, there is always more. In the lived uncertainty, in the grief, laments, illnesses, injuries and death, God is at work. What I am not saying is that bad things happen for a reason; I’m quite sure I am not qualified to figure that out. What I hope you understand from me is that God is at work, even in the lived uncertainty, even in the most messy, gruesome parts of life.
And so, we have hope. It is in this hope, with our laments that we can ask God to listen to our prayers, our calls to God; we ask to understand what God wants us to do and we ask to equip us through God’s grace and power, to do what God wants. . . And we cannot hope for real unless we name our laments for real. And it is when life gets real that our hope matters most. Our lives, our hope, all folded into the larger life of God.
Amos 7:7-15 Psalm 85:8-13 Ephesians 1:3-14 Mark 6:14-29