Mark 6:1-29
One of my favorite old fables- I’m not exactly sure where it comes from - is a fable regarding investment and commitment in relationship to the stakeholder.
It goes something like this, but there are many variations.
A Pig and a Chicken were walking across the field at the farm one day.
The Chicken turned to the Pig and said;
“Hey Pig, why don’t we do something nice for the farmer?”
The Pig turned to the Chicken and said;
“Sure Chicken, Whatcha got in mind?”
To which the Chicken advised;
“Lets make the farmer some ham-n-eggs!”
The Pig stopped dead in his tracks and thought for a moment;
“I don’t think so, Chicken! You’d be invested but ME; I would be committed!”
~
In the past few years I have found myself citing that old fable time and time again.
This fable speaks to our Gospel for today, and certainly, it offers us an interesting perspective on the death of John, the Baptizing one.
We have two contrasting stories that are being read together in the narrative lectionary, today.
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| John and Jesus |
Jesus’ ministry in his hometown and instructions for ministry to his disciples,
combined with the death of John by the hands of Herod’s executioner.
Interestingly, John is portrayed throughout scripture as the one who is to precede the Christ.
Preceding Christ in not only his preaching and ministry but a sinister and barbarous death as well.
It is also interesting to find that the disciples are being prepared to share in a ministry not unlike the ministry of John.
Carrying with them the bare essentials, the clothes on their backs, old worn out sandals, and a staff.
If this were a modern context I, myself would be hoping that the new I-staff was about to be unveiled at the next Apple event.
Something with GPS, uploaded with all my favorite tunes, bible app, electronic books, and with all that walking, why not a fitness tracker?
But Jesus isn’t giving them much wiggle room on what to carry.
These instructions follow Jesus’ teaching at the synagogue,
An occasion that ushers in a bit of hostility from the hometown crowd.
Jesus’ own community looking on whispering and complaining about the “better than thou preacher that’s gotten a bit too big for his britches”.
Everybody knew him way back when, they know where he came from, and they certainly know he isn’t all he’s cracked up to be.
Having dirt on someone in this day and age was not as much about what someone had done, but where they came from,
what they were born into, and Jesus really isn’t born into a state of prestige in any way.
So what does one do if they have no inherited credentials? Inherited prestige?
Their resume isn’t quite up to par cause they just don’t know the right people or weren’t born into the right class?
Well, today, we like to think we can achieve it on our own.
Pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, so-to-speak.
But in this day and age, it doesn’t work that way.
You either have it or you don’t.
And John, much like Jesus, certainly don’t got it.
John is an itinerant preacher, living off the land, making no apologies for his place in the social order or attempting to climb out of it.
For the crowd in the Synagogue, listening to Jesus teach, this is why they are so offended by him.
To them, they cannot see the truth of his teaching, they can only see that carpenter kid down the street trying to preach his way out of his social class.
It doesn’t matter what truth that he may teach, he will never escape this social order in which he has been assigned.
Jesus sees this and knows that there is only one way but that way is not an investment, it is a commitment.
~
Both the story of Jesus and John provide, not just an example of living, but a dangerous example that can, and has been misinterpreted since the first century church.
What both John and Jesus provide in their ministry is the way, the word, the Truth.
Their efforts are so entirely misconstrued that many Christians found the example of John and Jesus deaths to be the primary function of the Church following the persecution of the Emperor; Nero in the year 64.
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| The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer Jean-Léon Gérôme |
At one point a Roman official even proclaimed to the countless Christians standing before his tribunal seeking their own execution;
“Here is a rope, there is a cliff, if you want to die, do it yourselves. I am tired of killing Christians”
During these dark days of the early Church Rome learned one thing about Christians;
they appeared to be nothing more than lunatics that were marching off to their deaths, senselessly for no reason what-so-ever.
Without even attempting to share their own beliefs many Christians in the early church were condemned to death, seeking a glorious afterlife.
What is by far the most ludicrous issue with this understanding of Christian mission, is in the very term; martyr.
Martyr has come to be defined in the English language as “a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs”.
Our very interpretation of the word betrays the Gospel, because martyr literally means witness.
Martyrdom has nothing to do with our mortality, our death, or the method in which death comes to us, but the message that we bear witness to, and the courage with which we bear that message.
Joseph Campbell, who studied mythology and comparative religion once said “a hero is someone who gives his or her life for something bigger than oneself”.
I think that is a pretty good definition of how I see a hero, but not a martyr.
Because a martyr is someone who shares that something in the lives of each person they touch, especially those who are so inclined to be resistant to it.
It is not an investment but a commitment to that truth, a devotion to the Truth that is so powerful it can change the lives of not only those who listen but those who hear, even if that hearer is the executioner of our own sentence.
In the 2009 film, Invictus, Nelson Mandela was portrayed as having a dialogue with one of the chiefs of security, shortly after his election to the Presidency of South Africa in 1994.
I’m not sure if it actually happened this way or not but during one scene, Mandela’s chief of security comes to him to complain about the four special police officers who have been assigned to President Mandela’s protection detail.
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| Nelson Mandela |
The primary job of the special police during apartheid was the suppression of the movement Mandela led and the persecution of his supporters.
In protest, Mandela’s chief of security proclaims;
“Not long ago these guys tried to kill us, maybe even these four guys in my office tried and often succeeded”
To which President Mandela responds;
“Yes, I know. Forgiveness starts here too, forgiveness liberates the soul; it removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon”
Again, I am not sure if it happened this way but Mandela did absorb those who opposed his election and the end of apartheid into his government.
The martyrdom of Mandela was exemplified in his living rather than a violent end to his life.
So then, we must ask ourselves:
How -if death is not the prerequisite for a Christian martyr- how does the death of so many martyrs serve as such a powerful symbol?
Nearly every one of the Apostles, Stephen, Timothy, Polycarp, Felicity and Perpetua, Justin, John Hus, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and on and on it goes.
What is the significance of such a death?
Where is the witness to the Gospel that we find in a death at the hands of an executioner?
John’s story helps to illustrate this in a way that we far too often overlook.
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| St John the Baptist before Herod Mattia Preti |
Because John bears witness to Herod, not only in his condemnation of Herod’s choice in violating what is right and ethical,
but in witnessing to Herod in ways that perplex Herod and bring him joy.
John is not just an enemy of Herod, John is his teacher.
John shares the Truth with Herod.
The Truth that has driven John’s entire life, given him hope, and it is a truth that he refuses to hide from Herod.
Hopeful that such a truth will change Herod from a lustful self serving tyrant.
And we have to believe that the Truth of John’s witness did bear fruit, because not only did Herod grieve, but John’s death haunts Herod.
Later on, John’s witness will also be the undoing of Herod because John’s very death is seen as so unjust that it sparks uprisings to overthrow him.
But even from the cell of a prison, John refuses to relinquish the chance to be a witness to the Truth of God.
And if John had not born witness to such a truth, not only would his death not have haunted Herod, but that same death would not have ushered in the defeat of Herod, in its own way.
Knowing full well the dangers, John’s disciples do something that even Jesus’ own disciples would not do at the cross,
They collect the remains of their teacher, John, and bury him.
The truth we find in the death of one who bears witness, is that death cannot defeat the Truth of such a witness.
It is in such a commitment,
-even a commitment that drives one beyond a mere “investment” all the way to the executioners sword-
that we discover how the executioner’s blade is shattered against the neck of that hope, that truth.
That truth that cannot be defeated but only condemns the oppressor by their own action, deflecting their own violent action back onto the executioner.
Condemning them to live a life haunted by the suppression of that witness they sought to break and defeat.
~
During my initial reading of the Gospel for today we were observing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday.
Dr. King has become required reading in many seminaries.
I have read several writings and books by Dr. King but none as influential as his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
I posted one of my favorite quotes on Our Saviour’s Facebook page last week to commemorate the day.
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| Dr. King arrested in Montgomery |
He said;
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
This is the truth of the martyrdom from our Gospel today.
It is in compassion and hope for not only our advocate but our executioner.
The hope that the story of John, the story of the Christ, can change not only the lives of those who look on as the cross is raised,
-that sisters and brothers is merely an investment-
But the hope that the story can change those driving the nails deep into the flesh of the very Truth that we have cried out for.
Now that is a difficult and painful reality.
Perhaps even too impossible to ask.
But that... is a commitment.
Amen
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| The Beheading of St. John the Baptist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes |
Sources
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a
Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. United States: New World Library, 2012.
King, Jr. Martin Luther, James Melvin M.
Washington, and Martin Luther King. A Testament of Hope the Essential
Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. 6th ed. San Francisco:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
Moss, Candida R, C Moss, and ida R. Ancient
Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions. United
States: Yale University Press, 2012.
Peckham, Anthony. Invictus. Directed
by Clint Eastwood. USA: Warner Bros., 2009. DVD.
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