Tell-Tale Pressure

The Tell-Tale Heart

I recall seeing an acting troupe come through my hometown as I was growing up that played out three dark tales. Among them, was Edgar Allen Poe’s famous and rather chilling tale called the “Tell-Tale Heart.” In the story, we see the inner workings of an unknown narrator’s mind, as he wrestles with guilt, self-loathing, fear, and growing paranoia.

From the beginning of the tale, the narrator feels mentally and emotionally tortured by encounters with an elderly gentleman, who he believes is watching him, and judging him. He is literally spooked by the old man, and as his paranoia grows, so does his fear of what he calls the man’s “all-seeing eye,” which seems to discern the narrator’s very spirit. Vexed by this sensed reveal of his innermost soul, black as it feels, the narrator kills the man with the all-seeing eye and buries him under the floorboards of his home.

Soon, called to the case by a neighbor who heard a scream, the local police come by to question our narrator. At first, the narrator feels he has been clever enough to fool the police, saying it was he who screamed. But as the police stand there talking, the man’s conscience begins to get the better of him.

Guilt, fear, and paranoia begin to grow until he begins to believe, he can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart coming from beneath the floorboards. In the play those years ago, I remember they even created a special effect to make a section of floor boards shake and pulsate with light at the steady sound of his victim’s heartbeat.

Certain that the police can hear it but are torturing him in his lie, he begins to sweat and fret. The sound increases until at last, he bursts out saying, “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here! Here!”

In the end, he realizes it was his own nervous and guilty heart beating loudly in his own chest that drove him to his confession. He could not hide from the all-seeing eye of God but was forced to reveal his deed by his own guilty conscience and anxiety.

Ghosts

Ghosts are real.

I’m not talking about the kind you encounter in Hollywood movies or at Halloween or in tales you tell in the dark. Real ghosts are much more frightening, the ghosts that live in our hearts –the ghosts of deeds past. Our guilt, our shame, our fear, our self-loathing, our insecurities, our pain. Within our hearts, these negative thoughts and emotions take on lives of their own, causing us anxiety, worry, fear, and distress.

Herod Antipater

In today’s scripture, we read about one of the most notorious and heinous crimes in the New Testament: the beheading of John the Baptizer by the tetrarch Herod Antipater, 1st century ruler of Galilee and Perea… not to be confused with his Father, King Herod the Great who we think of at Christmas time.

While what has stuck in my mind over the years about this passage is the murder itself… the killing is not what is highlighted in this passage.

There is an unspoken question being answered here… a question that Jesus himself has asked of his disciples… “Who do people say that I am?”

Perhaps you recall Jesus’ answer: Some say Elijah, others a Prophet, still others John the Baptist.

Well, the Gospel of Mark tells us who Herod thinks Jesus is.

As we read about Herod’s first knowledge of Jesus, he believes is a ghost. The ghost of a man he had executed. Guilt, fear, paranoia. Oh yes.

This is the story of a haunting.

Herod was a fan of John the Baptist. He had admired him and frequently had asked for his advice on personal and religious matters.

But when Herod sinned by divorcing his wife and taking Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, for his own, he didn’t like John’s advice. He didn’t like it at all.

John counseled Herod that he had done wrong, that he had sinned against God and his brother. Plagued by guilt yet driven by his lust, greed, and a good dose of peer pressure, Herod avoided John, finally having him imprisoned, so that his condemnations of sin would no longer be made so public by this John the Baptist.

Herod feared John. He knew, he was a man of God. Like the narrator’s fear of the “all-seeing eye” in the Tell-Tale Heart, John represents for Herod God’s all-seeing eye into his guilty spirit, and God’s judgment upon his sin. By locking John away, Herod can control John’s (and in his mind, God’s) disapproval.

Herod was Jewish. But he was also a statesman and valued the prestige, honor, money, and power his position awarded him. He didn’t want to look like a wuss in front of his guests, or his wife and stepdaughter. He felt intense pressure to conform and perform according to his pagan counterparts. Herod was proud. And yet, Herod was Jewish. He knew what he had done was wrong. He knew John was right. He also valued John and his counsel. His conscience plagued him.

Knowing Herod’s conflict, Herodias is incensed and vows to have John killed. When Herod offers her daughter Salome a reward, anything she desires, to dance at his banquet, Herodias has the girl demand the head of John the Baptist to be brought to her on a platter tray.

Unable to refuse or lose face in front of his entire kingdom of officers, Herod complies. Yet Herod is so plagued by guilt and fear after the execution of John that when Jesus begins his ministry in John’s footsteps, Herod is sure that he is the ghost of John incarnated to haunt him.

Is it John who is haunting Herod? Or Herod’s own guilt and fear plaguing him and causing his paranoia to escalate to the point of insanity? You be the judge.

Peer Pressure

Peer pressure, posturing, skewed priorities. Herod is wrestling with his loyalties, the oaths he took both as a statesman and as a Jewish citizen, a follower of YHWH. He made an oath to Herodias’ daughter.

Scripture tells us that “in regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.” And yet to uphold this oath, to appease his wife, his guests, and the life he had stolen from his brother, he had to betray his oath to God. Should he put his tail between his legs in front of his guests or shall he kill this John the Baptist who he believed to be a prophet and thus save face?

Herod faced what he saw as an impossible dilemma. Such is the power of peer pressure, of saving face, of being the head of a pagan empire subject to Rome, of “looking good” instead of “doing good.”

But in making this choice, Herod had doomed himself to eternal conflict. He had betrayed not only God, but himself, his own soul.

This is a choice we all make in our lives. Do we stand up for what we believe is right, especially in the eyes of God? Do we seek life for our neighbor even at our own expense… or do we work to save our own reputations?

Herod’s greatest sin is his dancing to eternally haunting tune of his sin in this twisted tale of peer pressure, fear, murder, and subsequent guilt. And why does he do it? For the sake of his own reputation.

Our Struggle

All of us encounter some peer pressure in our lives, perhaps the urge for stylish clothes, the latest car, an equally expensive house as our neighbor, as good a job as our friend. To one extent or another, none of us are spared these kinds of everyday pressures to compare, compete, and conform. But when it becomes obsessive, peer pressure (this lust for power and prestige and recognition and saving face) can become dangerous, or even deadly.

There’s a series on Paramount+ right now called, Why Women Kill. Season 2 of the series tells of a woman trying to join a gardening club… she wants to prove herself as good enough to the rest of the ladies. The story speaks an intricate, interviewing tale that delves into peer pressure and the desire to fit in driving an otherwise perfectly wonderful lady into unthinkable decisions.

It was peer pressure that allowed Herod to fell John.

It was peer pressure that allowed for Jesus to be crucified.

It was peer pressure that caused Peter, “the Rock,” to cave and deny Jesus three times.

It was peer pressure that made Paul persecute the Christians he would later serve.

It was peer pressure that allowed for many of the atrocities in human history.

Peer pressure in our societies today urges us to conform and keep quiet rather than speaking out on behalf of our neighbor. It’s better to mind our own business than it is actively seek life for someone else.

Worrying more about what others think of us for supporting someone on the fringe rather than boldly proclaiming love and acceptance for that one is an urge to stray from Jesus’ teachings, to not believe in the living Christ, to doubt the resurrection, to falter in our faith in Jesus’ healing power, to “crucify” him again in our minds and hearts.

And yet, Jesus will always be resurrected. Jesus will always have a church and followers. The question is, will it be ours? Will it be us?

The consequence of sin is most often not a punishment by God but a punishment created by our own haunted spirit. The darker side of our psyches can haunt us until, exhausted, we cave to reveal and display our worst faults, guilt, shame, terror, and sometimes, thankfully, our repentance.

For the human mind and heart, there is nothing more terrifying than our guilt, our own conscience, especially as we stand before God in all of our naked humanness.

We can purvey stories such as Herod’s execution of John the Baptist with distaste, and a chill may run down our spines. But also running through our minds, perhaps haunting our own souls, is the realization of how far the human heart can fall.

Living life as a disciple of Jesus can often be a struggle. Often, our conscience plagues us either with real or imaginary sins that won’t leave us alone and which hang over our lives, preventing us from feeling good about ourselves or about the people around us.

But here is the good news, the good news that Herod would never understand about Jesus. Jesus came “not to condemn the world but to save it.” That’s what we hear in the Gospel of John 3:17

Like John, Jesus came with a call for repentance. But unlike John, Jesus also offers forgiveness even to those who are still caught up in sin… which is good because that’s all of us.

The Good News is that Jesus is NOT John the Baptist like Herod feared. While John condemned King Herod for his marital improprieties, Jesus, hanging from a cross, dying a slow and painful death proclaimed in prayer, “Father, forgive them them for they know not what they do!”

Hear the good news of the gospel! No matter how far you’ve fallen. No matter what you’ve done in the past or the sins you imagine that plague your mind and haunt your soul, that you fear will separate you from God… Jesus seeks to bring relief, not condemnation. He seeks to bring life, not death.

And if we take our own discipleship seriously, we too should consider how we might seek relief and life for our neighbors even at the cost of losing face with our peers if necessary.

Christ suffered for the sake of those who were humiliating him. He gave his life, for those who were murdering him on a cross. He came to bring life to those who chanted for death.

And still today, Jesus is here to salve your spirit and ease your mind, to lead you into the paths of righteousness and to lead you beside still waters. Let us hear the Holy Spirit nudgings that he blesses us with. Let us move to act with love and life for others rather than worrying about ourselves.

This day and always, may you be blessed by the healing power of Jesus, relieved of the burdens that bind you and weigh you down, and set free from your past to walk into a new and promising future as a renewed child of God.

Blessings and peace to you.

[Recite the 23rd psalm together out of the ELW]