Ephesians 1.3-14; Mark 6.14-29

Ephesians 1.3-14; Mark 6.14-29

Adultery, revenge, rumors of people coming back from the dead, the powerful using the weak for their own purposes: what’s all this about?! This seems less like good news and more like tabloid news. Even though there are plenty of graphic, violent stories in the scriptures—the exploits of Samson, David and Goliath, Elisha and the bears—the cycle of scripture readings appointed to be read in church on Sunday mornings usually spares us grim episodes like this. Why tell it at all?

Some Christian denominations that share the same pattern of Sunday readings we use shy away from this gospel and don’t include it. But the Bible itself never shies away from including accounts of the shocking depth of human corruption and sin. That’s good. It means the scriptures aren’t a collection of quaint, antiquated stories from an old-fashioned world so different from our own that we can’t relate. Even at 2000 years distance, today’s gospel has familiar themes. A politician engages in an extra-marital affair. He blurts out a promise in haste that he quickly regrets; he follows through on that promise anyway, not for the sake of what’s good and right, but to save face with his friends. There’s denial of responsibility and a child caught in a conspiracy of adult revenge leading to the violence, the execution of John the Baptist with his head served up on a platter. Where is God in all of this?

There are only two passages in the Gospel of Mark that are not directly about Jesus. Both center on John the Baptist though both point to Jesus. In the first, at the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark, John is the forerunner of Jesus’ ministry; “Prepare the way of the Lord.” In the second, today’s gospel passage, John is the forerunner of Jesus’ death. And of John’s death and Jesus’ death, there are parallels and similarities for us to note. Political authorities condemn both men: Herod puts John to death; Jesus suffers under Pontius Pilate. In both cases, the respective rulers recognize something good and true in the men brought before them: Herod, “feared John, knowing he was a righteous and holy man;” Pilate believed Jesus was innocent and couldn’t see what evil he has done. Yet both Herod and Pilate issue orders for a violent death. In both, the disciples of John and the disciples of Jesus take their friend’s body and place it in a tomb. And there’s even a hint of resurrection. Herod hears about Jesus and comes to an interesting conclusion. “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” In the gospel, John the Baptist is linked to Jesus in life and death.

But the Gospel of Mark tells about the death of John the Baptist to do more than set the stage for Jesus’ death. If, at 2000 years distance, the dynamics of revenge, power, and conspiracy in today’s gospel story sound familiar, perhaps this whole lurid account can still speak to us, that God can speak to us through it in our day. I don’t think Mark didn’t include today’s story merely to boost book sales of his gospel. Mark wrote his entire gospel, today’s passage included, to help Jesus’ first followers make sense of where God was present with them in their life, at work in their experience, giving them courage when their faith met with conflict and their world was shaken by violent events. And it can do the same for us.

When Jesus first sent his disciples out to proclaim the kingdom of God in word and deed, he gave them astonishing power to heal, forgive, and cast out unclean spirits that held people captive. But Jesus also warned that they would face hostility. They would be rejected. “They will bring you to trial and hand you over…and you will be hated by all because of my name.” Nothing quaint and quiet for the followers of Jesus. If John the Baptist, who prepared the way of the Lord was treated the way he was, the people who follow the way of the Lord shouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t always welcomed either.

Note, for example, how everything that Jesus preached against in the Sermon on the Mount contributes to the death of John the Baptist: bitter anger and revenge; the prohibition against making oaths, the danger of the lust that compelled Herod to marry his brother’s wife—all of it contempt for a moral life shaped and guided by Jesus. Now it’s rarely popular to speak about the moral will of God for one’s life; much better to speak of love and the grace of God, yes? But John the Baptist took his stand on a Jesus-shaped life in all its dimensions, grace and holiness. And his courage was costly—ultimately so. For us, when being a person of faith and having our life shaped by Jesus’ life is met with challenges and conflict and when our world is shaken by violent events, where will we find courage and hope to persist in faith?

Today’s reading from Ephesians gives us a map to explore that question. This New Testament letter places the life of the Christian church, and of individual Christians—each of us—within the scope of God’s cosmic plan. Long before we chose to follow Jesus, Ephesians says that “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” In the eternity of God, in the eternal mind of God, before Genesis 1.1 and God saying, ‘Let there be’ anything, Ephesians says that God had you in mind and heart, had chosen you in Christ. “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.” Life and faith begin in God. Christian faith isn’t first and foremost about the things we do. That’s all and only an echoing, grateful response to the work of God in our lives in Jesus Christ. Our good works—the very thing Ephesians will later say that God has created us for, “created in Christ Jesus for good works”—our good works are not where faith begins. Permeating our lives from before our beginning is the work of God that always comes first. “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.”

Now, knowing and trusting this cosmic plan and purpose of God, and how we are a part of it, doesn’t always take away our fears, may not always help us see clearly where we are going in order to make the next step in faith easily. Many, many days and weeks and months can pass by without any sign that the small deeds and good works we do are welcomed by others or matter to God. When John the Baptist was on his way to his death, could he see God at work in his life in that moment? It couldn’t have been what you might call obvious. Yet for the people that Mark first wrote his gospel to in their day, and for us following Jesus in our day, when faith is met with challenge or you wonder if you have any faith left at all, when God’s work in your life isn’t always obvious and your world is shaken, the steadfast love and faithfulness of God in our lives will not be thwarted but will endure through all things. Theologian Karl Barth says, “We exist through the God who is gracious to us before we existed at all. We are cared for…we are not lost.”

When Herod wonders today if Jesus is John the Baptist raised from the dead, he’s wrong, of course. Yet the power of the resurrection is at work in this gospel story, lurid as it is. And the power of Christ’s unending life is at work in the story of our lives. This would have been the message the Gospel of Mark wanted to convey through today’s passage and in our question of where God is in all of this. John the Baptist, in his death, points to a kingdom where forgiveness not retribution, peace not violence, courage, not fear, and life not death, reign. At Herod’s banquet there is pride, arrogance, scheming, murder. At Jesus’ banquet, today in this Holy Eucharist, there is self-giving love, truth, healing, forgiveness. British writer Jane Williams says, “God has made us to be part of his glorious life and love. We carry in our very blood the antidote to the belief that life is pointless and that evil always triumphs.” We can live as people of forgiveness not retribution, peace not violence, and life not death. We can live in courage, not fear, because the world and our lives are in God’s hand and the One who has held us in love from before the beginning will not let us go.