Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture

Mark

Introduction

What you just saw was the scene from Macbeth.A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland.

Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself.

He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia.

Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler.

The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.It is the banquet where Banquo’s ghost (Banquo was a rival to the throne), whom he murdered is sitting in his place!

It dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake.

What we are going to talk about this morning is Herod Antipas, John the Baptist and Herod.

Herod is another tyrant that murders to make sure he is in power.

Dealing with tyrants is something the Jewish have a long history of doing, from Pharoah to Hitler, history repeats itself in despots that will kill their own people in order to stay in power.

Webster defines a tyrant as someone who exercises absolute power oppressively or brutally.

A tyrant has no restraints he or she can do whatever they want.

Or they flaunt the constitution that might be in place to have absolute power.

Herod Antipas was no King even though Mark calls him that.

Lets take a few minutes for some historical back ground that will help us understand this text more fully.

Background

The Herod family is not Jewish, they came from Idumea.

Herod the Great’s grandfather Antipater was made a King by the hasmoneans that had conquered that area.

Antipater the second became a close friend of Julius Caeser and was given Roman citizenship and appointed as the administrator of Judea.

His son Herod the Great (King when Jesus was born) was appointed governor of Galilee.

Later Caesar recognized Herod as King of Israel.

He bore 15 sons with 10 different wives.

When Herod the Great killed his 3 oldest sons when they tried to take the throne form him.

When he died his kingdom was divided among his 3 sons, Antipas who we read about today, Philip, Herodias first husband and son of Cleopatra, and Archelaus.

All three were fairly blood thirsty in their rule.

Antipas, actually was the most effective of the three and reigned 43 year and was a great builder like his Father.

However, he was never carried the title of King.

Mark is either trying to make a point or is mistaken.

Luke correctly calls him a tetrarch.

Which means ruler of the fourthpart.

The fact that the Romans would never call him King was an embarrassment to him and his wife Herodias.

Which now brings us to our text.

Exegesis

I went through all that back ground for a reason.

Historically you can see that the Herods were tyrants willing to do anything to stay in power.

Herod the Great is responsible for the slaughter of the innocents amon other atrocities.

Archelaus, no long after taking power killed 3,000 Jews who had demanded tax relief.

Antipas will kill John the Baptist and will play a role in Jesus’ crucifixion.

The Herods were similar to MacBeth.

They obtained their thrones, not by right, but by intrigue and murder.

The scene we have here is a flash back.

We are told in Chapter one that Jesus’ ministry began after the arrest of John.

Mark doesn’t tell us why he is arrested.

But histories of the time do.

Josephus tells us that he was arrested because of the large crowds hi was drawing.

He mentions nothing about what John’s judgement of Herod taking his brothers wife.

Jospehus says he was executed because he was a threat to the throne because of the crowds he was drawing.

You can see that Antipas was worried by Jesus.

He was attracting large crowds and was performing deeds of power and wonder.

Anyone who attracted large crowds Antipas would see as a threat to his throne.

All that history I gave you was to give you a clue to Antipas’s paranoid insecurity.

The reason he had power was because of the Romans not the people he ruled over.

They could easily rise up and over throw him and he couldn’t rest assured that the Romans would come to his rescue.

In fact his brother Archelaus, by this time, had been removed from the throne and banished to Gaul because of his brutality to remain in control.

So we know that history disagrees with what Mark tells us about John’s execution.

Antipas was not a King, and John was not executed because of a promise made by a drunken King as a reward for his daughter’s dance.

There are other sources of this information besides Josephus.

So what do we do with what we have here?

Well first we need to be reminded that Mark is not writing a history, he i writing a gospel.

Mark has a reason for what he writes and how he writes it.

And, besides, there is an outside chance that Mark’s story is somewhat correct and is only mistaken about the title of King, or he has a reason for using King.

It may be satire.

he very well may be hoping his audience will draw a comparison with this “king” to the paranoid and tyrannical Emperor Nero.

We certainly see some imagery of Christ’s trial and crucifixion also.

Antipas is asking, who is this Rabbi Jesus?

Antipas thinks Jesus is John the Baptist raised.

There are instances in Greek mythologies where the gods raised a great human from the dead.

Herod was no Jew, he was pagan.

Herod is convinced that Rabbi who is John.

Then we flashback to the execution.

John had judged Herod and Herodias to be committing adultery and incest.

A jewish man could not marry his brother’s wife unless the brother was deceased.

In Leviticus it say you uncover your brother’s nakedness if you lie with his divorced spouse.

Incest!

John very publically accused the couple of this.

Mark remarks that this especially made Herodias angry.

So we come to the banquet and like Macbeth tragedy will take place.

mark remarks that John was being protected by Antipas.

That he like to listen to him like he was some kind of toy that he could take out of the dungeon, listen to for a time, then return him back.

This is as sick as what happens.

So Antipas has this huge birthday party with all his movers and shakers.

His daughter, which Mark erroneously calls Herodias , we know her name to be Salome from a number of extra biblical sources.

She dances and Antipas, probably drunk, swears he will give everything to her up to half his Kingdom.

Now, he does not have the power to give her any of his so called Kingdom, only the Romans Emperor could do that!

Salome runs to her mother to see what she should ask for and Herodias says the execution of John.

So we know the rest of the story.

Application

So what are we to learn form this? Jesus is not mention much, this is about John the Baptist’s death.

I think you have to examine this passage in the light of the entire gospel and certainly the cultural context.

Mark’s gospel more than the others has Jesus refer to the Kingdom of God.

We have the two kingdoms collide here.

The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the world.

Antipas versus John the Baptist who cried repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Antipas, in his paranoia and guilt saw Jesus as the raising of John and once again he knew that the crowds Jesus was drawing would mean trouble for him.

In the end, of course we know, and Mark’s audience would know, that Jesus death and resurrection means that God’s kingdom is here and it is coming.

The day when all tyranny would end.

Of course, culturally for Mark’s community who was being unmercifully persecuted by the tyrant Nero, that they could cling to the Kingdom message with all hope, because jesus was going to return.

As NT Wright puts it: