Edgar Allen Poe, one of our great American authors, wrote a famous, rather chilling tale called the “Tell-Tale Heart.” In the story, we see the inner workings of an unknown narrator’s mind, as he wrestles with guilt, self-loathing, fear, and growing paranoia. From the beginning of the tale, the narrator feels mentally and emotionally tortured by encounters with an elderly gentleman, who he believes is watching him, and judging him. He is literally spooked by the old man, and as his paranoia grows, so does his fear of what he calls the man’s “all-seeing eye,” which seems to discern the narrator’s very spirit. Vexed by this sensed reveal of his innermost soul, black as it feels, the narrator kills the man with the all-seeing eye and buries him under the floorboards of his home.
Soon, called to the case by a neighbor who heard a scream, the local police come by to question our narrator. At first, the narrator feels he has been clever enough to fool the police, saying it was he who screamed. But as the police stand there talking, the man’s conscience begins to get the better of him. Guilt, fear, and paranoia begin to grow until he begins to believe, he can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart coming from beneath the floorboards. Certain that the police can hear it but are torturing him in his lie, he begins to sweat and fret. The sound increases until at last, he bursts out saying, “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here! Here!”
In the end, he realizes it was his own nervous and guilty heart beating loudly in his own chest that drove him to his confession. He could not hide from the all-seeing eye of God but was forced to reveal his deed by his own guilty conscience and anxiety.
Ghosts are real.
I’m not talking about the kind you encounter in Hollywood movies or at Halloween or in tales you tell in the dark. Real ghosts are much more frightening, the ghosts that live in our hearts –the ghosts of deeds past. Our guilt, our shame, our fear, our self-loathing, our insecurities, our pain. Within our hearts, these negative thoughts and emotions take on lives of their own, causing us anxiety, worry, fear, and distress.
In today’s scripture, we read about one of the most notorious and heinous crimes in the Bible: the beheading of John the Baptizer by the tetrarch Herod Antipater, 1st century ruler of Galilee and Perea at the goading of his wife, Herodias. And we read about Herod’s first knowledge of Jesus, whom he believes is a ghost. Guilt, fear, paranoia. Oh yes.
This is the story of a haunting.
Herod was a fan of John the Baptist. He had admired him and frequently had asked for his advice on personal and religious matters. But when Herod sinned by divorcing his wife and taking Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, for his own, he didn’t like John’s advice. He didn’t like it at all. John counseled Herod that he had done wrong, that he had sinned against God and his brother. Plagued by guilt yet driven by his lust, greed, and a good dose of peer pressure, Herod avoided John, finally having him imprisoned, so that he didn’t have to continue to hear his scoldings. Herod feared John. He knew, he was a man of God. Like the narrator’s fear of the “all-seeing eye” in the Tell-Tale Heart, John represents for Herod God’s all-seeing eye into his guilty spirit, and God’s judgment upon his sin. By locking John away, Herod doesn’t have to see John’s (and God’s) disapproval.
Herod was Jewish. But he was also a statesman and valued the prestige, honor, money, and power his position awarded him. He didn’t want to look like a wuss in front of his guests, or his wife and stepdaughter. He felt intense pressure to conform and perform according to his pagan counterparts. Herod was proud. And yet, Herod was Jewish. He knew what he had done was wrong. He knew John was right. He also valued John and his counsel. His conscience plagued him.
Knowing Herod’s conflict, Herodias is incensed and vows to have John killed. When Herod offers her daughter Salome a reward, anything she desires, to dance at his banquet, Herodias has the girl demand the head of John the Baptist to be brought to her on a platter tray. Unable to refuse or lose face in front of his entire kingdom of officers, Herod complies. Yet Herod is so plagued by guilt and fear after the execution of John that when Jesus begins his ministry in John’s footsteps, Herod is sure that he is the ghost of John incarnated to haunt him.
Is it John who is haunting Herod? Or Herod’s own guilt and fear plaguing him and causing his paranoia to escalate to the point of insanity? You be the judge.
Peer pressure, posturing, skewed priorities. Herod is wrestling with his loyalties, the oaths he took both as a statesman and as a Jewish citizen, a follower of YHWH. He made an oath to Herodias’ daughter. The scripture tells us that “in regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.” And yet to uphold this oath, to appease his wife, his guests, and the life he had stolen from his brother, he had to betray his oath to God.
Herod faced what he saw as an impossible dilemma. Such is the power of peer pressure, of saving face, of being the head of a pagan empire subject to Rome, of “looking good” instead of “doing good.”
But in making this choice, Herod had doomed himself to eternal conflict. He had betrayed not only God, but himself, his own soul.
This is a choice we all make in our lives. Which covenant will we honor? Our covenant with God? Or our covenant with the objects of our own desires?
The metaphor of the “head on a platter” is not just a grotesque one but a telling one, as far as the Jewish faith is concerned. From the head comes the “mind,” the “awareness,” the “voice,” the “eyes” of God, that knows Herod’s sin. John’s “voice from the wilderness” gives us a clue about the power of his prophetic ability. The head symbolizes John’s and God’s control over Herod and his fault in marrying Herodias. To cut off this “all-seeing eye,” Herod must sever John’s head, and God’s sovereignty and authority. But this “cutting off” of the covenant is the ultimate sin.
In an irony of the “grand feast of God” that Jesus promises to all of His followers, here John’s head is feasted upon by all eyes, as it lays grotesquely upon a platter in the midst of Herod’s banquet hall. Herod’s greatest sin is his dancing to the carnal, eternally haunting tune of his sin in this twisted tale of peer pressure, fear, murder, and subsequent guilt.
All of us encounter some peer pressure in our lives, perhaps the urge for stylish clothes, the latest car, an equally expensive house as our neighbor, as good a job as our friend. To one extent or another, none of us are spared these kinds of everyday pressures to compare, compete, and conform. But when it becomes obsessive, peer pressure (this lust for power and prestige and recognition and saving face) can become dangerous, or even deadly.
It was peer pressure that allowed Herod to fell John.
It was peer pressure that caused Samson to betray his Nazarite oath.
It was peer pressure that allowed for Jesus to be crucified.
It was peer pressure that caused Peter, “the Rock,” to wimp out and deny Jesus three times.
It was peer pressure that made Paul persecute the Christians he would later serve.
It was peer pressure that allowed for many of the atrocities in human history.
Peer pressure in our societies today urges us not to follow Jesus, not to believe in the living Christ, to doubt the resurrection, to falter in our faith in Jesus’ healing power, to “crucify” him again in our minds and hearts.
And yet, Jesus will always be resurrected. Jesus will always have a church and followers. The question is, will it be ours? Will it be us?
The consequence of sin is most often not a punishment by God but a punishment created by our own haunted spirit. The darker side of our psyches can haunt us until, exhausted, we cave to reveal and display our worst faults, guilt, shame, terror, and sometimes, thankfully, our repentance. For the human mind and heart, there is nothing more terrifying than our guilt, our own conscience, especially as we stand before God in all of our naked humanness.
We can purvey stories such as Herod’s execution of John the Baptist with distaste, and a chill may run down our spines. But also running through our minds, perhaps haunting our own souls, is the realization of how far the human heart can fall.
Living life as a disciple of Jesus can often be a struggle. Often, our conscience plagues us either with real or imaginary sins that won’t leave us alone and which hang over our lives, preventing us from feeling good about ourselves or about the people around us.
But here is the good news, the good news that Herod would never understand about Jesus. Jesus came “not to condemn the world but to save it.” Like John, Jesus came with a call for repentance, and for all those who repent, forgiveness is granted, and salvation complete.
Hear the good news of the gospel! No matter how far you’ve fallen. No matter what you’ve done in the past or the sins you imagine that plague your mind and haunt your soul, Jesus can provide relief.
Jesus is here to salve your spirit and ease your mind, to lead you into the paths of righteousness and to lead you beside still waters, if only you will let him.
This day and always, may you be blessed by the healing power of Jesus, relieved of the burdens that bind you and weigh you down, and set free from your past to walk into a new and promising future as a renewed child of God.
Blessings and peace to you.
[You may want to help them recite the 23rd psalm.]