THE HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST – Mark Ch. 6
If I ever had to have a reminder of why I think that Motorbikes are so useful it is when watching the Tour de France on TV
Over the past couple of weeks over a hundred men have been riding bicycles around roads in France, Holland, Belgium and Spain.
Now, in the normal scheme of things you might think that is a pleasant way to spend a day.
Hop on a nice bicycle and go for a leisurely ride around some of the most scenic countryside in the world..
Visit some famous cities with great histories –
Strasbourg, Arles, Avignon, Lyon etc. etc.
The problem is that these people are racing each other and the opportunities for sightseeing are rather minimal!
Which brings me back to my first statement –
If the point of the race is to get from one point in France to another point in France as quickly as you can on two wheels –
Well let me tell you that I on my motorbike will get between those two points much more quickly than even the fastest of those bike riders!!
So..
What’s the point??!!
I have to say however that the race brings out massive crowds of people who line the roadsides urging the riders on – and it seems to me often getting in the way.
Every day at some point in the race-
The cameras will pick up one of the spectators who is dressed in a red devil’s suit.
Apparently he has been at every Tour de France over the past few years, and he follows the riders around each stage of the race so that he can be seen on TV.
No-one seems quite certain why he dresses up in a devil’s suit,
But you can pick him out clearly from all the rest of the spectators!
This man is actually one of a small group of people who spend much of their time and money trying to get on TV.
They are extremely persistent.
Some years ago there was a man who travelled to all of the major sporting events in the world –
Olympics, football games, basaeball games, boxing matches and so on,
And he would simply stand in some conspicuous place with a large cardboard sign over his head on which was written-
JOHN 3:16..
It was great advertising for the message of the Church,
Until organisers got to know him and refused to let him in.
But he was real persistent and became quite expert in disguising himself!!
These two people and others like them are good examples of the old adage-
Try, try, try again…
Persistence pays off!!
Today Mark’s gospel is a lesson in the importance of persistence in the presentation and application of the Gospel!
The story that the gospels, as well as the Roman historian Josephus, tell is that this Herod antipater, the son of Herod the great got into deep political controversy with John the Baptist.
John was mad at Herod for several reasons;
but the one that really got up John’s nose was Herod’s
marriage to Herodias.
John publicly accused this famous couple of “living in sin” and
that was enough to turn Herodias practically purple with rage.
Demonstrating that she
was the one who wore the pants in the family
, Herodias convinced Herod Antipas into
throwing John in jail until she could figure out what to do with him.
Well, apparently Herod feared John almost as much as he feared his wife.
He knew how popular John was with the people and how dangerous it could be politically if there was ever an uprising over whatever he decided to do to John.
At least in prison he could keep
an eye on him, thought Herod, as well as keep peace in his own bedroom.
But it wasn’t
just fear that motivated Herod.
He was fascinated by John and couldn’t help sneaking out
of the bedroom at night and wandering down to the basement just so that he could hear John ranting in his old, dark prison cell.
he portrait Mark paints is of a man who is
transfixed with the very thing he fears and despises.
“When he heard him,” Mark says,
…he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.
Unfortunately this fascination was not enough to convince him to change his life;
and the day Herod decided to throw a birthday party for himself to end all birthday parties,
he sets in motion forces the consequences of which he could never have
foreseen, unless, of course, he had learned a few things from living with a schemer like Herodias.
Apparently it was a banquet done in a fashion bound to impress all of
Herod’s political cronies and enemies and to offend the religiously scrupulous.
The
climax was when Herodias’ daughter Salome, who was actually Herod’s niece, danced an apparently lascivious dance that was meant to arouse Herod and make him vulnerable to suggestion.
Whether the sexy Salome meant anything by it other than strutting her stuff,
her mother saw it as the chance she had been waiting for.
Caught up in the moment like a
dirty-old man, Herod gave in to both his lust and his pride by following
through on an oath to Salome to give her anything she wanted
. Herodias made sure that it
was John’s head on a platter that “she wanted”; and that, as they say, was the end of
John the Baptist.
Or so everyone thought.
By the time Mark tells us this story, John has been dead for some time and Jesus has
been actively preaching his own message throughout Galilee. Although Herod apparently
didn’t know Jesus, he knew that something equally as powerful as John was stirring out
there among the people.
…when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
This is what Mark wants to tell us.
This is not just a story to remind us of the dangers of preaching the truth, although that is certainly true.
It is a story to remind us of the delusions of the powerful. Herod’s own actions have engendered in him a deep-seated fear about the results of his deed.
He interprets what he hears about Jesus “and his gang” by imagining John having come back to
get him. Nor is this merely a story to tip us off about what is likely to befall Jesus in
the end too. Of course, a similar fate is going to befall Jesus, as it befalls anybody
with the courage to speak truth to the powerful. But that is not something Mark’s church
would ever have questioned. What they would have had doubts about was the effectiveness
of such truth-telling.
Would following Jesus and speaking the truth to loveless power
ever make any difference in the end?
Mark says that even defenseless, unarmed, de-capitated, dead men, like John the Baptist,
come back to haunt the powerful of this world. They do.
It is a story about persistence –
That there is always another way
Always another avenue of approach –
The way of love and truth and hope!
The lesson for us in our lives is never to give up..
Never to allow our dreams and visions to fade..
Never allow the powerful, the wealthy or the arrogant stop you from being who you are and who you want to be..