Christopher Thomas
Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, Year B – 7/11/21
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29
The collision of truth and power.
It’s the tale that is old as time, and yet it defies time, this cornucopia, a banquet feast of sexual lust, seduction, political ambition, scandal, and murder! It titillates, scintillates, actuates, if we are honest, our most intrinsic human responses. For we are after all, and in the end, gloriously and wonderfully made, in the image and likeness of God, we humans. Not perfect. But human.
For it is in these tragedies that we so often identify resonant traces, footprints, of our own humanity bound up in “larger-than-life” representations of who we have been, who we are, and who we aspire to be. Maybe that is why these stories hold such great allure!
Has the Baptizer John been raised from the dead, resurrected, as it were, to new life, in the form of this Jesus? Or is this all just import, a foretaste, for us of things yet to come? Follow in John’s footsteps, and here’s what happens. Follow in Jesus’ footsteps, and this is the outcome.
Herod knows. Somewhere, deep within the dark recesses of his mind, Herod knows. Within Herod, there resides a conscience.
For Herod, I believe, knows in that moment, that the voice he condemns to death, the voice crying truth in Herod’s own wilderness that night and many nights before, would not, could not, ever be silenced by Herod’s kind of power. I can imagine it is frightening for him. Why else would he replay that bacchanal scene? What else could take him back to that pivotal moment when he must decide, in that instant, between doing what is right, saving a man’s life, and saving his own face in front of all these people?
But if we are honest, there is some part of our own personal identity bound up with Herod’s, in this moment of choice. And it is not always as easy and straight forward as it seems, when you are watching the drama of someone else’s larger-than-life existence. Truth and power collide in a multitude of ways, in our lives, each and every day, large and small, and we are presented with choices, moral moments, to decide between doing what is right, and saving face.
So often, we acquiesce to saving face because of our intense desire to belong, to be a part of, to be accepted as one of the group.
In her book “The Gifts of Imperfection,” author and shame researcher Brene Brown defines belonging as:
“the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in (acquiescing) and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”[1]
This desire to belong is an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac, motivating us beyond what is right into what gains us acceptance.
And so I find myself ruminating through the ash heap of Herod’s own existential struggle, hoping upon hope to find some remnant of what might have been, how things could have gone differently, to see over which horizon redemption might lie? For there must be, after all, at the very least, the possibility of redemption in every story. (For that is the great hope of gospel!)
As I look to other stories of prodigal redemption, stories that involve repentance and turning, stories rewarded by mercy and grace, they seem always to be fueled by humility, the risk-taking, self-effacing ability to humble one’s self to another. This is scary stuff! It takes courage and the willingness to be vulnerable to meet another human being in humility. It takes strength to say, “I was wrong. I am so sorry,” and mean it. But in humility, that kind of humility, we really are speaking truth to power. It is our truth. We are showing up and being our authentic selves, the ones that we really do want to have accepted, and to belong.
I think one of the reasons that humility is such a frightening choice, so frightening that we continue to power on in our own authority, seeking the world’s approval, is because we don’t always really trust that grace, God’s grace, is big enough, or wide enough, or long enough, or deep enough, to catch us when we take the plunge of making ourselves vulnerable, of speaking our truth, and being who God has called us to be. Imagine if Herod could have experienced the redemption of God’s all-encompassing grace in the face of saying “no” to the execution of John the Baptist. Maybe the other party-goers wouldn’t have liked him. Maybe they would have made fun of him. Maybe he would have lost his throne. But could he have had his own prodigal son story if Herod had found his way, through humility, out of his own proverbial pig sty?
I have had a week of confronting my own humanity, with a heaping helping dose of humility. I would modify the subtitle of Brown’s book, “The Gifts of Imperfection,” from “Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are,” to “Let Go of the Priest You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace the Priest You Are.” Admitting that you are wrong, humbling yourself, the repentance process is a scary, frightening, loving, liberating, life-giving, grace-filled act.
Humility, true humility, is not about finding the log in someone else’s eye. True humility is being willing and open to see and to witness our own humanness, our own humanity, and how we impact those around us. True humility is being willing to see that we can and do have flaws and imperfections, and that we can learn and grow from just those very things. True humility comes with the risk of God’s redeeming mercy and grace, just around the corner, waiting with outstretched arms.
There is a reason why Jesus models humility for us and commands it of us. We need humility for the process, God’s process of salvation, to work. We need to recognize that we are human, that God is God, and we are not.
And being found in human form,
he (Jesus) humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
- Philippians 2:7b-11
What is waiting on the other side of humility is grace!
Amen.
[1] Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2010), p. 26.
