Dangerous Words
Scripture Readings
Those who dare to call the powerful out on their immorality and selfishness tend to find their heads on a platter.
The real theme of this pericope, however, is not the drama of life and death, love and hate, that so easily captivates our imaginations; it is the confrontation of political power and prophetic faith.
What makes the encounter of the prophet and the king so poignant is that they understand each other well enough. The puppet king knows enough about truth to recognize his own falseness; and the prophet is sufficiently acquainted with temptation to desire his monarch’s liberation from it. Their meeting could have been redemptive, but one great flaw prevented it: Herod’s insatiable quest for preeminence—having it, keeping it, flaunting it. Not sexual lust but lust for power is the problem this text illuminates.
It is John who pays the ultimate price when Herod chooses to make the king’s public image more important than regard for another man’s life. The consequences of bad-faith actions are generally devastating for those most vulnerable to the vagaries of political decision making.
Consider the personal and social dilemmas in which Herod finds himself in this passage. He is trying to negotiate myriad complicated relationships within his household and society and discovering that it is quite difficult to please everyone around him and still uphold his own personal standards.
It is John who pays the ultimate price when Herod chooses to make the king’s public image more important than regard for another man’s life.
He Chose. . . Poorly.
We aren’t told what John said as the executioner came for him. This isn’t a story, like many other Jewish stories of righteous men brutally killed, of a martyr who took the opportunity for a speech affirming his message and warning of God’s vengeance. But Mark leaves his readers in no doubt. John was a righteous and holy man, and the kingdom of which he had spoken, and the forgiveness he had offered, were the reality that would win the day. Even in so solemn and ugly a story there can be found real encouragement to faithful witness and constant hope.
Power resists truth
Evil is found not only in the demonic but also in the centers of power, both political and religious. The strong, driven by the forces of sex, money, and power, “Lord over” those who are weak. In this passage we are forced to face a world that is in opposition to the innocent, a world where injustice and brutal power prevail. The text opens with speculation regarding the source of the power of Jesus and his disciples and ends with John’s disciples’ claiming his beheaded body and burying it. The story begins with power and ends with powerlessness.
Daily life also presents a series of Herod-like personal and spiritual dilemmas for persons to negotiate. For a harried mother of a toddler, there is the question of how best to love and parent a child in the face of a defiant “No!” and a full-fledged temper tantrum in aisle 6 of the grocery store at the end of a long day. For a father of three, it is the struggle to explain the importance of rearranging travel plans for a work trip so he can attend a Little League playoff game. A corporate executive wonders how her announcement of a long-awaited pregnancy will affect her employees’ perceptions of her as an effective boss. A stay-at-home dad wrestles with the whispers of former colleagues that he just couldn’t handle the pressures of work. Teenagers experience the angst of competing for acceptance in desirable social cliques, of serial broken hearts in the complex world of adolescent dating, of familial tensions over privileges and responsibilities. Younger children long for popular toys advertised on television, worry about parental fights and the potential (or actual) breakup of their families, and wonder if the trouble they have learning multiplication tables or basic grammar means they are stupid. Across the lifespan, persons question who they are and how they should act as life pushes and pulls them in conflicting directions. And as in the story of Herod’s struggle, there are lives at stake as they decide which actions they will take.
“Bad faith” decision making is easier to identify in the story of King Herod because we read this story in the context of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and know that Herod is making a mistake. The challenge of the twenty-first century is for the body of Christ to read our own decisions in light of that same story and ask ourselves whether the choices we are making are self-protective, or part of God’s transformation of the world.
Choose grace.
The kingdoms of the world are indeed to become the kingdom of God, but those who speak of this in advance are likely to suffer the anger of those who feel their power slipping away from them. The casual, accidental nature of the event gives an extra dimension to the tragedy, a belittling of the noble and lonely prophet.
We look for second chances and hope that we are ready to risk more of ourselves this time around. If not, we may find ourselves, like Herod, deeply grieved.
There is a moment in every story in which the presence of grace can be felt as it waits to be accepted or rejected even though the reader may not recognize this moment.
—Flannery O’Connor1
Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1961), 118.
When this grace, this groaning and pathos-embracing power, is accepted, the fragrance of life fills the sanctuary, and worship fills the hearts of the faithful. This worship is not naive in regard to suffering. It is not escapist. It is worship that is eschatological in its knowledge that all things will be made new.