Pentecost 7

Pentecost 7 (Mark 6: 14-29) “King Herod heard of it.”

It isn’t easy being king. The perks are great: wealth, power, prestige, palaces. The demands are never ending. And the threat is constant.

The ruler was Herod Antipas, grandson of Herod the Great. Herod the Great was the king when Jesus was born. They were not Jews. They were Edomites- descendants of Jacob’s older brother Essau.

Herod ruled as an absolute monarch who had to please two main constituencies in order to stay in power: the Romans and the wealthy Galileans. A more troublesome constituency was the people over whom Herod ruled. The people were restive, contentious and almost impossible to satisfy.

Herod dealt with the Romans and the wealthy by discerning what they wanted in a king. The Romans wanted the king to maintain order. Herod maintained order through brutal suppression at the hands of the police, the military and the internal security apparatus. Herod discovered quickly that the Romans did not concern themselves with the means only the result.

Herod understood that the wealthy landowners and merchants of Galilee were essential allies to maintain his power. What they wanted was easy to figure out. They wanted the labor laws and the tax laws written in their favor. In exchange, they made substantial cash contributions to King Herod personally. They refused to pay taxes for roads, aqueducts, reservoirs or hospitals but they were more than willing to pay bribes to ensure the law favored their business interests.

Of course, this meant that ordinary working people were at a disadvantage. In order to keep taxes on the rich low Herod had to reduce services to the poor and raise taxes on them to pay the police, the military and the internal security agents.
Herod used two very old principles to deal with the people. The first is called: bait and switch. The second is called: divide and conquer. Herod was very effective in both. He knew the people were bitterly divided over the issue of religion and culture. He didn’t create the divisions. He did exploit the divisions. He played off the various factions against each other.

He told the Pharisees that the real problem in society was not the Romans- who after all were far away in Rome. Nor was the problem the unjust labor laws and tax system. The real problem was the Sadducees. They had perverted the true religion of Israel. They were the real problem. They held weird beliefs and strange customs.
Of course, when Herod spoke privately with the Sadducees he used the same tactic and blamed the Pharisees.

Herod was very clever at the politics of shame and blame to please the Romans and the wealthy and to divert the attention of ordinary people from the oppression of his rule. Jesus once commented on Herod’s intelligence by calling him “that fox.” Herod was clever but not wise.

As with many who are successful in ruling, King Herod had one fatal flaw: hubris, pride. He thought he had life, people, even God figured out and in the palm of his hand.

Then, God did something he hadn’t done in the previous 400 years. He sent a prophet, John the Baptizer.

It isn’t easy to be a prophet. Most prophets resisted God’s call. They knew that people would not listen to them. They knew they would meet opposition, threat, arrest, torture and death. They knew that a true prophet of God is accountable only to God. He must speak two words: repent and prepare.

Repent of your sin. Prepare to receive the Messiah.

A true prophet is not a fortune teller. A true prophet is a truth teller. His mind is not just formed by scripture it is saturated with scripture. A true prophet must be very careful to say and to do only what God directs. He cannot innovate. He cannot deviate.

John was the last of the prophets. He was the last of the prophets because he was the one appointed to declare the arrival of the Messiah. Since the coming of the Messiah there is no prophetic office. Anyone after John the Baptist who claims to be a prophet is deceived. They can be a teacher, a philosopher or a theologian. They cannot be a prophet.

It isn’t easy to be a true prophet of God. God’s word is alive in the mind, the heart and the will of the prophet. John burned with a passion for the word of God. He called people to repent of their sin. Most people were both impressed and entertained by John.

They knew the stories of the ancient prophets. They expected John’s unusual behavior, diet and preaching style. They delighted to hear John announce the coming of the Messiah and to denounce the rich and the powerful.

They were less enthusiastic about John when he moved from a generic call to repentance to a critique of specific sin. One sin in particular that John denounced angered King Herod. It was the sin of divorce.

Divorce is never God’s plan. Moses permitted divorce under certain extreme circumstances. God revealed through Moses that marriage is both a covenant and a sacrament. It is a covenant among three people: husband, wife and God. It is the outward and visible form of a union that represents God’s relationship with humanity.

God is very clear: wedding vows do not just form a contract between two individuals that civil law can annul. Wedding vows create a new reality in a threefold relationship among husband, wife and God. That threefold relationship holds the very image of God. God infuses his own life and love and holiness into that new reality.
King Herod ignored God’s plan for marriage. He had an affair with his brother’s wife, Herodias. They each eventually divorced their respective spouses and married each other. John declared that this action violated the covenant and sacrament of marriage.

Herod had John arrested. It is one thing to issue a general call to repentance. It is another to name a particular sin for someone to acknowledge and repent.

King Herod had just enough belief to admire John but not enough faith to hear the word of God John brought. Herodias understood how Herod relied on his personal contacts with Roman officials and Galilean businessmen. She understood King Herod’s fatal flaw was his pride and his weakness was his dependence on his ability to fulfill his promise to his supporters. She very cleverly arranged a scenario where Herod made a rash promise in the presence of some very rich and powerful men.
If Herod broke his promise to give Salome what she requested he not only embarrassed himself he called into question his reliability to fulfill his promises to other people. He was out maneuvered and he knew it. He reluctantly ordered John to be executed. He chose to have John beheaded, which was considered a merciful form of execution. Then he brooded in superstitious fear that God would punish him for killing a prophet.

When news of Jesus reached King Herod he irrationally concluded that Jesus was John the Baptist returned from the dead to haunt him and to harass him.

That was Herod’s most serious character flaw. Herod believed everything was always about him. He had the authority to rule and used that authority to impose his will on other people. He was clever and manipulative. But, he was lost.

He was lost in his own will to power. He had just enough knowledge of religion to induce fear but not enough to produce faith.

As the Bible says and the prophets warn: be sure your sin will find you out. Herod had the authority to alter civil law but he lacked the power to annul divine law.
Eventually, the family of Herod’s first wife sought revenge for Herod’s infidelity and betrayal. Herod could impose his will through the legal system to define marriage as a contract in civil law between two people that either person could terminate in court. He could use his position to manipulate the people and reward the rich. His end came because his former in laws, the rulers of Nabatea, had plotted against him to get revenge for the way he treated their daughter.

Revenge in the Middle East is a fine art. It takes time to plot an adequate revenge. They attacked Herod’s armies and plundered his lands. Suddenly, Rome took notice. Herod had failed to maintain order. Suddenly the rich took notice. The Nabateans were stealing their property. Herod lost his position. The Romans recalled him and reassigned him to a small province in Gaul, modern France.

God had given Herod an opportunity to acknowledge his sin and to repent of his sin. He chose a different path. He chose the path of pride. He chose the path of the will to power. He chose an outward form of religion and rejected the inward and spiritual reality of faith.

Jesus helps us to understand the distinction between religion and relationship. Jesus clarifies for us the perfection and holiness of the law and the inability of anyone to keep the law. The problem is not in a lack of understanding of the law. The problem is not in the lack of enforcement. The problem is separation.

The solution to separation is reunification. That solution is to make a real choice to enter into a real relationship with God in Jesus Christ. It is only after we accept God’ solution to the problem of separation that we can begin to deal with the particular sins in our lives that have resulted from separation.

God gave Herod three significant opportunities to repent and enter into salvation. The first was through the last of the prophets: John. The second was the personal invitation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Herod killed John and helped set the momentum for Pilate to kill Jesus. The third opportunity was in his exile. It was in the last years of his life as a minor bureaucrat in a remote province. There is no record of whether Herod repented and came to faith.

God gives all people multiple opportunities to accept Jesus as our personal lord and savior. God gives all people multiple opportunities to repent of a particular sin. Sometimes the invitation comes from hearing the reading of God’s word. Sometimes the invitation comes from another person. Many times the invitation comes from the ordinary events of life. The call to salvation is universal and it is personal. Everyone receives the call. How do you receive the call?