Headless Hopefulness

Mark 6:14-29

King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’ But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’

For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’ She went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptizer.’ Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.’ The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

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Many of you know of my penchant for crime dramas and documentaries. Not fictional horror stories, so much, but TRUE crime, the stuff that really happened –by and to real people. I’ll watch any of it. I’m not saying it’s normal. It may not even be natural or healthy. I don’t know where it comes from and maybe I don’t want to. When my kids were little I had to be careful about letting them see my Netflix history for fear of giving them nightmares.

So, oddly enough, I just finished a book called Last Call about a serial killer whose calling card was the dismemberment of his victims. And just the other night I started watching a new documentary on Netflix about a woman in Brazil who pulled a Herod or Herodias, depending on who you blame for John’s death in this morning’s Gospel. This woman killed and beheaded her husband, among other things, and they made a movie about it.

There’s no moral, as such, to either of these stories really. But it amused me that I happened upon them both alongside this crazy, creepy, horrible story about Herod and Herodias and John the Baptist, literally losing his head, all in the span of a week or two.

The story goes that Herod, the King, caught wind of this Jesus, from Nazareth, and about how he had started to gather disciples from out in the villages around Galilee. He gave those disciples authority over unclean spirits. He gave them some pretty detailed instructions, which we heard last week, about how to travel and where to go and what to do once they got there. And his followers hit the road and proclaimed the good news – they cast out demons and they healed people who were sick from all kinds of things.

And along with everything Herod was hearing about Jesus, came all kinds of rumor and questions about how something too good to be true really could be. So, there was suspicion that Jesus was some kind of prophet, like Elijah or Elisha, or Amos or Micah from way back when. But Herod had this crazy fear that Jesus wasn’t really Jesus at all … that he might be John the Baptist – whom Herod, himself, had had beheaded. Yeah. Herod thought Jesus was John the Baptist, come back from the grave.

And so – maybe to prove that Jesus really was Jesus, or maybe just to tell a really good, gory, gruesome kind of story – the writer of Mark’s Gospel goes into the details – he tells the backstory of just how Herod came to execute John the Baptist.

See, like Jesus, John the Baptist, was preaching and teaching and proclaiming the Good News. He was baptizing down by the river. He was paving the way for the Messiah, in Jesus. He was demanding repentance and promising forgiveness. He was announcing the Kingdom of God, which, if you were a king, like Herod, would really get your attention, and make you worry some, and threaten your power even, if you didn’t understand the difference between God’s Kingdom and your own.

And that’s why Herod didn’t like John the Baptist. He respected him, we’re told. He regarded him as a holy, righteous man. He feared him because of it, even, enough that he wouldn’t have him killed – as his wife had asked. But instead, Herod kept John imprisoned and under watch, like some kind of political prisoner who threatened the public order, or his power, or maybe his ego, if nothing else.

But then, this creepy King Herod, who likes to watch his daughter dance at dinner parties, gets himself into a pickle. (Yeah. Some people believe it was that kind of dancing and that kind of creepy. And coming from someone who would marry his brother’s wife, it’s a pretty plausible perspective.) Anyway, when his daughter dances for the king and his guests, Herod tells her he’ll give her whatever her little heart desires.

So, maybe he’d had too much to drink. Maybe he was trying to show off for his friends. Maybe he was just so enamored by daddy’s little girl, who knows? But when she runs out to ask mommy what she should take as her reward, her mother sees the opportunity to get what she’s wanted all along. And that was revenge against John the Baptist for suggesting that her marriage to the King was unlawful, immoral, unrighteous, unseemly, whatever.

So, Mrs. Herod gets her little girl to do her dirty work by asking daddy for John the Baptist’s head – On. A. Platter. And when she does, King Herod has to oblige, because he’d already struck that deal. An oath was an oath. A promise was a promise. The King’s word was the King’s word – even for a creep like Herod; even when offered to a child; especially when proclaimed in the presence of other people. So, John the Baptist was as good as dead. And his head was delivered, that evening …on a platter …to the child … for her mother. (If only there were surveillance footage or DNA evidence of it all, Netflix would turn it into a four-part limited series I’m sure.)

And like a titillating limited series on Netflix, there doesn’t seem to be a moral to this story. On the surface it reads like not much more than some good, gruesome, gory kind of gossip – if you like that sort of thing. So what does any of this have to do with life or faith? Why is it part of the Gospel narrative? And why are we talking about it on Sunday morning in worship, for crying out loud?

Well, smarter people than me have said it’s no mistake that Mark tells the story as he does; that he places it where he does, right after Jesus sends his first disciples out into the world to begin their ministry and right before they return to hear more, to learn more, to be fed some more at the feet of their teacher.

Among other things, this story reminds us that following Jesus isn’t easy – even if you’re as cool and as faithful as John the Baptist. Life as disciples can be hard. Proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom – stuff about repentance and the forgiveness of sins, the grace, mercy, peace and justice of God – isn’t always what the world wants to hear, what people want to believe, what any one of us is always prepared – with faith or courage enough – to do. Kings and others in power might be fascinated and fearful of it so much, that it could cost you your head, after all.

But the good news in all of this for us, still today, is the same Good News that John the Baptist proclaimed and promised and believed for himself, in spite of so much ugliness: that someone better was coming; that something bigger was on the way; that God, in Jesus Christ, would arrive and overcome and undo all the ugly, the gruesome, and the gory. That God, in Jesus, would offer grace where there is judgment; love where there is hatred; light where there is darkness; life where there is death, even. Because, Mark’s Gospel really tells this story as a foreshadowing of what would happen to Jesus, himself, soon enough – at his crucifixion.

Even Jesus Christ, the Messiah – especially Jesus, because he was the Messiah – wasn’t removed from the dangers of the world around him. Jesus showed up to enter into all the ugly, fearful, ungracious ways of this world to let the rest of us know we could to – that we don’t have to just be scared of all the drama or sadness or struggle or sin or injustice or dying that surrounds us so much of the time. We have good news to proclaim in the face of it.

And when the struggle comes… when the sadness hits… when the loved one dies, when the marriage ends, when the friendship fails, when the you-know-what hits the fan we’re reminded, not just that life in the world hurts – and that it’s hard and unholy and unfair a lot of the time. We’re reminded, too, that this is God’s world.

And it’s into this world – where buildings collapse in the middle of the night; where presidents get assassinated in their own homes; where suicide wreaks havoc on a family; where too much tragedy seems to win too much of the time – it’s into all of this struggle and sadness and sin and despair that God’s love comes. And it’s into this same world – and all of its darkness – that we are sent, too, with Good News and great hope and the abiding promise, that God’s love for the whole of it wins every time, in the end – in Jesus Christ our Lord – crucified and risen for the sake of us all.

Amen

Desperate Measures, Deep Mercy

Mark 5:21-43

When [Jesus] had crossed again to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him and he was by the sea. Then a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, came and fell before him and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.

Now, there was a woman who had suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped and she felt, in her body, that she had been healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus said to the crowd, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you. How can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus looked around to see who had done it. And the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came to him with fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house and said to him, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” Overhearing them, Jesus said to him, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed only Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, to follow him. As he approached the leader’s house, he saw a great commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered the house, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead, only sleeping?” And they laughed at him. He put them all out of the house and took the child’s mother and father, and those who had come with him, into the place where the child was. He said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means “little girl, get up,” and the girl got up and began to walk about. (She was twelve years of age.) At this, they were filled with amazement and Jesus ordered them sternly that no one should know about this. Then he told them to give her something to eat.

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The woman in this morning’s Gospel reminded me of something I read – and the author, who I’ve seen in a couple of different ways on TV and in social media – recently.

(Newsun Zip)

Jane Marczewski is a 30-something-year-old cancer survivor from Zanesville, Ohio. She’s had the big, ugly, scary, evil cancer diagnosis three times already at her young age and has been given a 2% chance of survival. (Like the woman in this morning’s gospel, you might say, “she has endured much under many physicians. She’s spent all she had. She is no better, in many ways, but has only grown worse.”) Like I said, she has a 2% chance of beating this thing. And her husband left her, too. And all of that is hard to believe if you’ve watched her sing on America’s Got Talent or seen her interviewed on any number of television shows, lately. She’s full of wisdom and life and hope and joy – because of and in spite of all she’s been through.

And she wrote something in her blog called “God is on the Bathroom Floor.” I won’t read it all, but portions of it made me think Jane and the woman in today’s Gospel are kindred spirits. She wrote,

“I spent three months propped against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub like an insect, staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide, where I could scream and be ugly; where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.

“I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty. There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.

“I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.”

It's that last bit that brought to mind the nameless woman in Mark’s gospel. She was like God’s downstairs neighbor, too – not banging on the ceiling with a broomstick – but pushing her way through the crowd to get her hands on the cloak of Jesus.

And without a whole lot of work, I’m guessing we can see – or at least imagine – where the woman in this morning’s Gospel, and Jairus, that leader from the synagogue, are coming from, can’t we? Who among us hasn’t been there ourselves or loved someone who is or has been: sick for years, I mean; sick and tired of wrong or insufficient answers; sick and fed up with expensive treatments that may or may not work; sick and out of money, sick and out of energy, sick and out of patience, sick and out of time, even.

And I think the gift and the good news of this morning’s Gospel isn’t just in the hemorrhage that stops or in the little girl who gets up to walk again. Those are beautiful, hopeful, life-giving things. But you and I know not everyone wins that lottery.

(For what it’s worth, I decided this week, maybe that’s why Jesus is always telling people – “sternly ordering them,” actually – not to tell anyone about his miracles and healings. Because Jesus was sensitive and kind and wise. And Jesus knew those kinds of miracles and healings wouldn’t happen for everyone, all of the time. So don’t boast about it. Don’t brag about how your prayer got answered, leaving someone else to wonder why theirs did not. Just accept it, gratefully, joy-fully, with humility. And live differently because of it, but quietly, perhaps …) But I digress.

I think the gift and the good news of this morning’s Gospel – and in Jane Marczewski’s story, too – is in the way Jesus receives and entertains those in such desperate need in the first place, and no matter what. Even Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, was welcomed by Jesus. As a leader of the synagogue, Jairus was supposed to be suspicious of Jesus, if not downright opposed to what he was up to. Still, he stated his case, made his plea, and Jesus followed him home – no questions asked.

And along the way, Jesus gets interrupted by this unclean woman who he could just as well have ignored or dismissed or driven away, even, for having the nerve to soil him with her unclean, uninvited, unwelcome touch. But he calls her out, instead. He announces her healing for all to see. And he sends her home, blessed and better, in spite of what the crowds must have wondered about her – or him – because of it all.

In other words, it would have been easier – and expected – and entirely acceptable for Jesus to have nothing to do with either of these two who approached him that day as he went about his business. But Jesus chose otherwise. And we can be grateful for the kind of grace that portends for each of us, just the same.

And Jane Marczewski tells a similar story. Not of a miraculous healing or of being raised from death or deep sleep or whatever was going on with Jairus’ daughter. But she tells of the desperate ways she has come looking for God’s grace in her sickness and struggles and has somehow found it. She says,

“I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it. I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it. Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.

“Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened. But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: ‘I’m sad too.’”

And she writes about how she has learned to see God’s grace in spite of herself and her struggles and her sickness. She says,

“I see mercy in the dusty sunlight that outlines the trees, in my mother’s crooked hands, in the blanket my friend left for me, in the harmony of the wind chimes. It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.

“Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me.

“Even on days when I’m not so sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for Him. I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t really explain it, but God is in there—even now. I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.”

Unlike the woman in the Gospel, whose social status was such that we don’t even get to know her name, Jane Marczewski, has two names worth knowing about. See, Jane also goes by the stage name, “Nightbirde.” She tells the story of how she woke once in the middle of the night to birds singing in the dark, from a tree outside her window. She thought she was dreaming or imagining it, that it didn’t make sense, that it was too early for them to be singing because it was still too dark outside. The sun hadn’t risen yet. But the birds were singing, anyway, like they knew the sunrise was coming. Hence her second name, “Nightbirde.”

And that’s the kind of faith we long for, right? The faith of the woman with the courage to approach Jesus in the crowd… The faith of the man who asked Jesus to follow him home… The faith of Jane Marczewski, God’s downstairs neighbor who bangs on the ceiling to get God’s attention, who approaches God with songs and curses, apologies, hard questions, and more…. The faith of birds who sing in the darkness of night, because they know, somehow, that the sun is coming.

So let us be bold and brazen about our desire and our need for God’s grace in our lives – especially when it seems too dark to sing… or that we aren’t worth the bother … or when we’re too tired to find the words. Let’s not be shy about asking. Let’s not pretend we can live – or die – without it, God’s grace. Let’s not pretend we deserve it, either, of course.

But let’s go out of our way, nonetheless. Let’s fight the crowds and our pride and our fear and trembling, too. And let’s see what God does with our humility and our gratitude and our faith when we can muster however much of it is left.

God only knows what it might yield. And it may not be what we’re looking for. But we will always be God’s – Chosen, blessed, sought-after – as Nightbirde sees it. And that will always be enough.

Amen