This summer saw the “resurrection” of an old tale of family rivalry and betrayal. The show that started an industry of prime time “soap operas” is back on the air. Do you know show I’m talking about? . . . . Dallas.
The ever-evil “J.R.” Ewing and all his battling, back-biting, embittered family have returned, with new generations, all of whom are admirably carrying on the family tradition of unabated greed and hatred. Added to yet another season of “Kardashians” and the History channel’s presentation of “The Hatfields and the McCoys,” “family life” is looking pretty grim. That is not even to mention the recent scientific study that put a question mark over the value of nightly meals together as a family. It found that eating together on a regular basis could be bad, not good for teenagers, if the family is dysfunctional. The family routine of eating together is very good for you if the family dynamics are good, very bad for you if the family dynamics are dysfunctional.
But all air-wave examples of families operating at “dysfunction junction” cannot hold a candle to the massive relational meltdown that was taken as “normal” within the first century ruling family of the Herodians. The family tree that sprung from Herod the Great was most frequently “pruned” by fortuitous “accidents” and by flat-out murders. Every famous story of betrayal — from Brutus and the Borgias to the Corlions and the Sopranos were still trying to keep up with the Herodians.
Being brutal and blood-thirsty appears to be a trait that surfaced early and often among Herod’s offspring. In today’s gospel text the one named Salome by historian Josephus, the teen-aged daughter of Herodias, creatively expands on her mother’s demand for “the head of John the baptizer” by insisting that she be brought John’s “head on a platter.” Over two thousand years later it is the teenage Salome’s twisted take on her mother’s well-plotted revenge that survives as the ultimate cultural expression of betrayal and rejection.
We all know, and we will all at sometime experience, the horror of having one’s head served up on a platter. And, as it was for John the Baptist, this service might very well come at the hands of a supposed “fan.”
There is a surprising detail in this story that is easily overlooked. Mark tells us that Herod Antipas was a conflicted, partially convicted, “fan” of John the Baptist. The greatest part of Herod was self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and self-concerned. Yet John the Baptist’s courageous message of repentance and forgiveness fascinated the ruthless ruler. Jewish by birth, the Herodian dynasty ruled according to the whims of Rome and flagrantly disregarded Torah mandates that interfered with their political ambitions. Still Herod Antipas could hear the ring of truth and the clarity of John’s call to repentance in the Baptist’s words. John the Baptist’s words flew in the face of Herod’s absolute royal authority. But they also stuck fast to his heart. Herod arrested and imprisoned John. But then he himself became a “captive audience,” listening to and learning from John’s message.
In the end, however, the Herodian side of Antipas won out. Unwilling to “lose face” in front of a banquet room full of upper crust cronies, Herod orders John the Baptist’s execution and indulges Herodias’ daughter’s whim that has his severed head displayed like some zombie-fest tidbit. Herod Antipas hates doing this to John. But not as much as he hates endangering his own position of power and prestige by not honoring his foolish oath to a teenaged dancer.
Mark’s text doesn’t discuss the relationship between Herod Antipas and John the Baptist. John was a prisoner, but apparently Herod was his audience on a semi-regular basis. Herod “liked to listen to him.” Yet it was his royal edict that silenced John’s voice forever. Despite John’s precarious position, despite his obvious knowledge of Herod’s violent family history and personal guilty, John the Baptist never wavered in his message. Herod was in the wrong. He was breaking God’s law. God demanded repentance and reform, even of Herod..
Tough talk, especially when spoken from the wrong side of a jail cell.
John was brazenly calling Herod on the carpet, specifically spelling out his sins. It left Herod both mesmerized and murderous. Living behind bars John had to know that his words were a recipe for disaster, although hopefully he never fully envisioned his “head on a platter” as a final course presentation. John the Baptist never stopped preaching his message because he fully embodied his calling — to proclaim a baptism of repentance and to offer the possibility of forgiveness, even if he knew that mission put his life in danger.
The world is still a place of personal politics and one-ups-man-ship. Whether you are clinging to a construction ladder or a corporate ladder, the climb is treacherous and the fall is can be fatal. Every since the first “fall,” the faithfulness of all our footing has been exceptionally fragile.
Here is the reality we all live with. Are you ready to hear it? Brace yourself: At some time in our lives we should not be surprised to find our heads served up on a platter.
Yes, you heard me right. If it hasn’t been, it will be: your head served on a platter. Betrayed, rejected, and punished for behaving in a way that threatens those who have, and want to hold onto, personal power.
Maybe you had your head handed to you as a child, when you tried to protect a sibling from harm. Maybe you had your head handed to you as a teenager, when you dared to defy an adult who bullied or abused you. Maybe you had your head handed to you as an adult, because you had the least influence or you were lowest in a pecking order. Maybe your head hit the platter as a sacrifice for some supposed “greater good,” even though decapitation had no possible positives for you.
But even as we all get to feel that bite of steel on our necks — to experience the bitterness of betrayal at the hands of those who claimed to know and admire us the most it is also true that we all wield our own blade against those we call friends and family. We will all face betrayal at some point in our lives. Tell me your twelve closest friends, and I’ll guarantee you that one of them will betray you. You think you’re better than Jesus.
But the even harsher truth is this: we will not all be betrayed; we will all act as betrayers at some point in our lives. We have both John the Baptist and Judas Iscariot running through our veins.
Think you are not a member of the “platter party”? The truth is there are hundreds of ways to chip away at the necks of those we live and work with.
1) When you hear a friend being attacked — their work, their reputation, their person, and you don’t come to their defense — that’s a hack to the neck.
2) When you fail to give credit to one you knows deserves it — that’s a hack to the neck.
3) When you take credit for something that rightfully or more fully belongs t someone else that’s a hack to the neck.
4) When you block out the advice of others because it threatens your personal advancement — that’s a hack to the neck.
5) When fiscal concerns overwhelm faithful connections — when you choose promotions over relationships that’s a hack to the neck.
6) When doing what is safe and sanctioned replaces doing what is right and just that’s a hack to the neck.
7) When forging forward required running roughshod over the small and the weak — that’s a hack to the neck.
Sadly, putting heads on the chopping block is part of the sinful condition of humanity. Whether we are vegetarians or carnivores, vegans or gluten-free, omnivores or “locavores” — we are all serving up heads on platters at almost every meal we take. It takes a change in spirit, not a change in diet, to alter our most vicious (and environmentally unfriendly) dining habit.
At our meal tables we are increasingly more concerned with what we are putting into our mouths than what is coming out of them. But as aerospace engineer Mark Lake astutely observes, our fixation is one sided. Maybe what goes in should be less processed, and what comes out should be more processed? That way we’d betray less, and bless more?
Before we let this story go, for now, I want you to consider one more aspect to the story. Think of how Jesus must have felt when he heard what happened to John? In almost every way, as we saw in the exegesis, this story is a prelude story and mirror account of Jesus’ own head being served up on a platter by one close to him. How did Jesus deal with this sneak peek into his own future? Well, we know how we felt about Herod: “That fox!” When Jesus called Herod that name (Luke 12:32), he wasn’t calling Herod beautiful (“foxy”) or cunning (“like a fox”). In Hebrew culture a vulpine was an unclean animal because it was seen as shifty, self-serving, and unscrupulous. For Jesus Herod was all that and more.
And yet Jesus did not let other people’s treatment of him dictate his treatment of them. He showed compassion, even to his enemies, even to those who would betray him. In the 1970s, anthropologist Margaret Mead was on the Board of Trustees of Colgate Rochester/Bexley Hall, Crozer Divinity School, the seminary where Martin Luther graduated. One day a seminary student asked her what was the earliest sign of civilization in a given culture. She expected the answer to be a clay pot or perhaps a fish hook or grinding stone.
Mead’s answer stunned: "A healed femur."
Mead explained that no mended bones are found where the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest, reigns supreme. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person's hunting and gathering until the leg healed.
The evidence of compassion is the first sign of civilization. And Jesus’ whole ministry, and his treatment of everyone he met, was marked by compassion. Even to his betrayers.
The Gospels inform us, over and over again, that Jesus Christ was a human being filled with compassion. What is more, he was compassionate even towards those who would wound him, criticize him, and betray him.
Even though Jesus saw his future of betrayal and death played out in front of his eyes in John the Baptist’s head-on-the-platter, Jesus kept on keeping on. It didn’t deter him from his mission. It didn’t keep him from loving those who would betray him. It didn’t diminish his compassion one iota.
And neither should it us. Even though other people will hack away at you, every day and every way, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
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COMMENTARY
This week’s gospel text is unusual in part because it is a lengthy section in which Jesus is neither speaking nor acting. While the focus of this text is on the dramatic story of John the Baptist’s death, Mark manages to remind his readers of Jesus’ own experience. While the awful end that awaits John is one of the most compelling stories in scripture, it also points readers toward the greatest story ever told the story of God’s ultimate saving work through Jesus Christ.
What we do hear about in this unit is the twisted and nefarious nature of family life within the Herodians. Keeping track of the gnarled and nasty family tree that sprung forth from Herod the Great is about as confusing as a family reunion of the child of retired boxer/grillmaster George Foreman, who named all five of his sons “George.” Likewise the name “Herod” is ubiquitous among the many offspring with many different wives that followed Herod the Great into the “family business” of corrupt and conniving ruling. The “Herod” Mark refers to in today’s text is Herod Antipas, who ruled as tetrarch of Galilee and Perea from 4 BCE to 39 CE.
Jesus’ hometown may have rejected him, but throughout the rest of Galilee his works were garnering attention and making him a “name” (that’s the first century equivalent of “celebrity”). Enough recognition, in fact, to bring Jesus to Herod’s attention. The musings over Jesus’ identity, over the reason for the power and authority he wielded, offered three different theories: 1) first, he was a resurrected John the Baptist; 2) second, he was the long-awaited return of Elijah; or 3) third, he was one of God’s other “prophets of old.”
The conjecture by some and conviction of Herod that Jesus is John revived from the dead reminds us how unknown Jesus had been until this recent spate of miracles and missions (4:35-5:43). Anyone who knew that Jesus had been baptized by John would know they were contemporaries, not successors. But as Mark now reveals by inserting another story into the midst of these musings, Herod has a specific reason for seeing John the Baptist alive again in Jesus. An unusual fit of apparent guilt and remorse convinces Herod Antipas that “John whom I beheaded, has been raised” (v.16).
The whole story of John the Baptist’s arrest and ultimate fate is now told. John’s arrest, merely mentioned in 1:14, was ordered by Herod for both personal and political reasons. Herod Antipas had convinced his half-brother’s wife, Herodias, to divorce Herod Philip and to marry him. Antipas himself had to first divorce his own wife, who was a daughter of King Aretas of Nabatea, a move that ultimately led to war between the two rulers in 39 CE. Typical of the Herodian family tree, Herodias was not only Herod Antipas’ brother’s wife, she was also his niece. Despite Herod Antipas’ well-established reputation for eliminating rivals through murder, John the Baptist publically reprimanded the ruler for breaking Torah law by marrying his brother’s wife (Leviticus 18:16, 20-21). Not only was John’s message a judgment against Herod’s personal life, his repeated reminding of the people that their ruler was in violation of God’s law may have incited local rebellion (a point made explicit in Josephus’ telling of John the Baptist’s fate — Ant. 18:116-119)
Little wonder Herodias “had a grudge” (“eneichen”), or more literally, “had it in for” John the Baptist. Mark’s depiction of Herodias’ death-wish for John would certainly remind his readers of Jezebel’s murderous malice against Elijah (1 kings 19:1-3). While Herodias’ reaction is hardly surprising, Herod Antipas’ own response is strangely ambiguous. Once Herod has John arrested and so safely under wraps, he refuses to kill him. Instead of feeling free of John the Baptist, he is fearful of him. He knows John is a “just and holy man.” The same personal magnetism and powerful message of John the Baptist that had drawn great crowds out to him in the wilderness attracts Herod as well. The conniving and cruel ruler is both convicted and confused by John’s preaching. The text itself is a bit confused here as well, although in vs. 20 “perplexed” is the most accepted description of Herod’s reaction. The translation that “he heard the many things he was doing” is simply awful.
If Herod is conflicted throughout this tale, Herodias is focused and fixated on her virulent vendetta. An opportunity at last comes in the form of a birthday bash. Ironically the Greek term for “birthday” (“genesia”) was used to describe both an actual birthday and for a memorial of a birthday of one who was deceased. The events that now transpire will make both meanings of the term applicable. The assemblage at this event was strictly upper crust. Only those with either political, military, or community power and prestige were invited. Even the entertainment is provided by royalty, for it is Herodias’ daughter who dances for them.
The text of v.22 is rendered as “his daughter Herodias” in some manuscripts. In others the text reads “Herodias’ daughter,” which of course best fits with the rest of the story. Josephus’ account of this story names the young woman as “Salome.” Although Mark’s version does not explicitly state this was part of a plot hatched by Herodias, the inference of her influence is heavily suggested. Later artists’ renditions of this scene paint the daughter’s dancing as sensuous and seductive, but Mark’s text does not offer any comment on the content of her dance, noting only the remarkable response her performance elicited from Herod.
With effusive enthusiasm Herod promises to give the young girl anything she wants, “even half of my kingdom.” Herod’s pledge recalls that of Ahasuerus to Esther (Esther 5:3,6). Although his promise of property was mere braggadocios posing (since he “ruled” only at the pleasure of the true land-owner, Rome), his solemnly declared oath to the young girl would be seen as binding.
Herodias’ influence over this whole scene is once again inferred by the daughter’s immediate rush to her to find out what she should request. Herodias states succinctly what she wants: “the head of John the baptizer.” The dancing daughter outdoes her mother with a flair for the theatrical. With a kind of teenage slasher-movie delight in the gruesome and grisly, the young girl demands John’s head be brought to her “on a platter.”
Herod’s response is to be “deeply grieved” (“perilypos”). This term is used only one other time by Mark, when it is used to describe Jesus’ own spiritual state as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (14:34). It is truly a wrenching sorrow, a personal agony, which Herod experiences. Yet the weight of Herod’s social status among the elites gathered as witnesses, and the self-importance of his royal oath, are heavier than his heart. Despite all of Herodias’ plots and ploys, it is Herod himself who ultimately gives the order for John’s beheading. The parallel to Pilate’s bowing to the shouts of the crowd to crucify Jesus is evident. Likewise, not unlike crucifixion, beheading was a form of execution designed to dishonor and belittle the reputation of the one being executed. Finally, even as Jesus’ body was claimed by Joseph of Arimethea, John’s disciples claim his corpse and “lay it in a tomb.”