The raw skin on Marcus' ankle was still bleeding as he began work in Herod's palace. Never mind that the chains had rubbed raw the young skin. Never mind that the healing would take time, and would leave a life-long scar. Never mind that the cut, extending clear around his ankle, hurt with each step. Marcus was a slave. One did not have such concerns about slaves. They were expendable, like the clay tablets that the money counters used.

And, even if someone did care about the new slave, there were much more important things to think about. Herod's palace had been in an uproar since the jailing of the preacher, John. Nothing, it seemed, would silence this Jewish preacher. His wild dress drew the crowds, and his condemnation of Herod had become quite fashionable. And so, with slave chains, he was put into the prison of the palace. There he languished until one evening when young Marcus was called upon to bring the severed head of the preacher into the very presence of Herod! Marcus had seen much brutality in his young life. He was very familiar with violent death. But this gruesome task was beyond anything he had experienced.

Herod was drunk. His dinner party had long since become a shouting match between himself and his wife. As reported in the slave quarters, the great king had made a promise to his wife's daughter--a promise he had to keep. It was thought he wanted to retreat from it, but he had spoken the words. Once the words were spoken he could not take them back. Others had heard. And so Marcus the slave, with bleeding ankle, carried the head of John the Baptist into the presence of the king. It was a terrible moment, a moment that Marcus remembered all his days.

It can be a terrible thing to be held by the words of a promise.

Or it can be a wonderful thing!

This very familiar scripture story of King Herod's promise becomes a negative text from which a positive message may grow! I center our thought on verse 26 of the text. Herod made a promise in front of his family, his peers, his court. In his perceived position, in his arrogance, he discovered that he must hold to his promise. The words had been spoken. Because of those words, John the Baptist was beheaded.

Now verse 26 also speaks of another sort of word spoken. The Christian's commitment to Jesus Christ is a promise. Sometimes it is made before our family and peers. Always it is a promise made before God! The steadfastness of that promise is a very wonderful thing. It is like living water. It is like a house built on a rock. It is like putting on the whole armor of God.

But let another story tell of the power of the promise. This one is a true story. St. Radegund is a very tiny village in Austria, edged against the German borderland. It is hard to find. It is not on many maps. It is so small there is no post office in St. Radegund. In that little village there is a tiny church, perched high over the river dividing Germany and Austria. Next to that tiny church is a graveyard. Within the grounds is a grave holding the ashes of a farmer. He was a very simple man. His life was undistinguished as the world seems to judge lives, except that in 1943 that peasant farmer, a father of three little children, was taken away to die in Berlin. There is a wooden cross over the grave and upon the cross is the name, Franz Jagerstatter. Franz Jagerstatter was born in 1907. He was a farmer. He had no schooling beyond the fifth grade. His father was killed in a battle of the First World War. Franz grew up as a very average youth. He had a loud motorcycle of which he was very proud. He was once fined for his involvement in a fistfight with a group of youth from a neighboring village. It may be that he fathered a child out of wedlock, as he himself was born out of wedlock.

His friends and neighbors were surprised to learn that Franz, in his early 20s, enrolled in voluntary religious classes conducted by the pastor of St. Radegund. By the end of that decade of his life a change had occurred. It was a change that those close to him said was "sudden and total." "It was," said a neighbor, "as if he had been possessed by a higher power." Now he never passed a church without stopping in for meditation. Now he was sometimes noticed interrupting his labor in the field in order to pray. For a time he thought about joining a religious community, but ultimately he decided in favor of family life and farming. He married in 1936. He and his bride honeymooned with a trip to Rome. The children arrived: three little girls.

With his religious awakening came a deepened social concern. He saw the essential godlessness of the growing Nazi movement. His praying grew longer and more intense. In 1938, when Austrians voted in favor of national annexation with Nazi Germany, Franz resisted. He spoke out against the plan. He received pressure from the pastor, the mayor and many neighbors. "Don't call attention to our village," he was warned by all, "for our voting can change nothing." Still, he cast the village's only dissenting vote.

In the summer of that same year he had a remarkable dream. His words described it: "I saw a beautiful, shining railroad train that circled around a mountain. Streams of children, and adults as well, rushed toward the train and could not be held back." In his dream he heard a voice say the train was going to hell. It became clear in his mind that the train was Nazism; that he and every citizen of that Third Reich were among the passengers. He had to make a choice between his religious faith and the political order. To choose his faith would require a means of resistance. "I would like to call out to everyone," he wrote in his journal, "jump out of the train before it reaches its destination, even if it costs your life!"

Like every able-bodied Austrian man, Jagerstatter was called to military service. His draft notice arrived in February 1943. His oldest daughter was five. He sought spiritual counsel. "What does God want me to do?" Here was, for him, a meeting of the spirit world and the temporal world. Ignoring the advice of his pastor and many others, he refused to take the military oath. His promise had been to Someone else. For this he was immediately jailed. He was offered non-combatant service. He refused. It would still mean that he must wear the uniform. In pencil on the pages of an ordinary composition book he asked himself, "For what purpose, then, did God endow all men with reason and free will if, in spite of this, we are obliged to render blind obedience?" And, he wrote some letters from his prison cell. "Just as the one who thinks only of this world does everything possible to make life here easier and better, so must we too, who believe in the eternal kingdom, risk everything in order to receive a great reward there."

He wrote: "The surest mark [of the follower of Jesus] is found in deeds showing love of neighbor. To do to one's neighbor what one would desire for oneself is more than merely not doing to others what one would not want done to oneself. Let us love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. For love will conquer and endure for eternity. And happy are they who live and die in God's love." This was practiced, even in the prison cell. The prison chaplain in Berlin (Dean Kreuzberg) said later, "I can say with certainty that this simple man is the only saint I have ever met in my lifetime."

On June 6, 1943, Franz Jagerstatter was found guilty of "undermining the military power" and sentenced to death. New attempts were made to save his life. His wife and the young priest who had replaced his exiled pastor journeyed to Berlin to see him. As they talked with him, they could see traces of the hunger and abuse he was undergoing. They talked of "duty," of "only following orders," of the state's "authority," of the fact that his solitary actions would ultimately mean nothing. He replied that he did not wish to be guilty of any injustice, he could not take even the slightest part in it. They left the prison and Berlin with the assurance that he was happy to have come so far without weakening, and that he was confident he could continue so to the end.

The court's sentence was fulfilled. Franz Jagerstatter was beheaded. He was not yet 37 years old. The date was August 9, 1944. Just before his death, he wrote, "I am convinced that it is best that I speak the truth even if it costs me my life." A few people called him a martyr. In 1987 a memorial mass was conducted in Linz, Austria, culminating a three-day observance that would have been his 80th birthday. Other people have called him a deserter. They cited his family responsibilities. They said his act became a condemnation upon all those who did not express a conscientious objection. Still other people saw it only as a senseless waste of human life.

Historian Reinhold Schneider wrote: "When the commission of sin [intersects] one's sacred duty, there remains nothing else to do but to refuse and thus to bear witness, even solitary witness. But where such witness is, there is the kingdom of God!" Each one of us is involved in "solitary witness." It is because of a promise made, perhaps in front of friends and family, but always before God. The promise and the witness will not take us to the beheading block. But it will determine our course in life. Franz Jagerstatter saw his life as more than being a peasant farmer from St. Radegund. He saw his life as more than a span of years upon earth. In that vision he touched the core of religion. Of course, martyrs are made from such stuff. But so are you and I! That is the message of promises to be kept, even from such a person as King Herod!