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S. Pentecost 8.24 Mark 6:14-29

“When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly.”

Probably the most widely denied teaching of the holy scriptures is the clear statement of St. Paul in Col. 1:23 that “the gospel which you heard was preached to… every… creature… under heaven” which is also clearly stated (among other places) in Ps. 19 and Romans 10—that the sound of gospel proclamation has gone out to every corner of the earth.

I suspect this because I rarely hear it acknowledged, much less taught. Indeed, it’s widely denied in every missions pamphlet and program. So, I’ve been pointing it out for decades to widespread scorn and derision especially from Synod and District presidents, professors of our seminaries, some vicars and many fellow clergy.

Of course, that a virtually undiscovered (though crystal clear!) teaching of scriptures that upsets the modern apple cart would be a sore tooth that I just can’t resist poking (does it hurt… here? Oh? What about… there?) should not surprise you very much if you know me it all 😉 But… why would such a comforting teaching—that God gets his word out all on his own to every creature under heaven, always, already, everywhere, bug so many so much?

I think it’s simple, really. Pharisee-ism, the notion that there’s something we have to do to be saved is the default setting of sinful humanity. It’s a PRIDE thing (in every sense of that word 😉 If God does it all—the dying, the rising, the proclaiming of the word that alone grants faith, and we do nothing but receive, pure passiva, like beggars, well now; that’s humiliating. And we are Prideful worried at the notion we might be charity-cases! Oh, no!

Herod Antipas gets all ate-up with pride. Son of Herod the “not-so Great, Bob!” (if you ask me) he became “tetrarch” ruler of a quarter of Palestine, Galilee and Perea, in 4BC when his father Herod died and divided his kingdom to him and his 2 other sons Archelaus, and Philip.

Brought up in Rome, highly privileged, some say with pals like the infamous future Emperor Caligula ,Herod Antipas would, as Philip Marlow says in The Great American Novel, The Long Goodbye, ‘kind of sour you on what a lot of golfing money can do for the soul’.

He’d married Herodias (his niece) who was divorced from Antipas’ half-brother Herod II (aka Philip) apparently shortly before Philip’s death. The marriage was also a power-grab of his half-brother’s territory which caused a war with other claimants that Herod lost…

The ministry of John the Baptist was particularly worrisome to him, raising uncomfortable questions about who the real King of Israel is, and shining an uncomfortably bright light on Herod’s debauchery. So he threw John in prison at Herodias’ urging.

Here is where the story becomes interesting, to me. Nothing about Herod Antipas’ upbringing, life, character, would suggest that he’d have the slightest interest in anything John the Baptizer would have to say. And yet, contrary to everyone’s expectations (Herodias’ most of all!) Herod feared John as a righteous and holy man, and not only kept him safe, but starts hanging out with him, talking, hearing John gladly even though with a great deal of perplexity.

It’s like God’s word really does go out to everyone, everywhere, always—even the most unlikely hearers and in such a way that it is not easily rejected, even by them!

If I could make a movie—which I would love to do but, of course, no sane person would ever have funded or allowed—it would be based on a screenplay my friend Barry and I worked up in grad school called “Christmas: The Real Story” about the magi, played by bad ah… uh, cool guys like Ian McKellen, Tom Cruise, and George Clooney—who are a combination of Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, and Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt (Clooney is just Clooney—as always) fighting their way in and out of Judah with highly entertaining wizardry and sardonic humor (‘lotta killin’ in that one’) very athletic, yet heart-warming, in the end, I think.

Since it would naturally have been a great hit, for a sequel I would have done a quirky buddy movie, probably with Clooney as Herod and Ben Wishaw as John the Baptist about how these most natural adversaries become pals—till tragedy strikes… in the form of a jealous woman.

This film focuses on how John the Baptist fascinates Clooney, er, Herod Antipas—frustrates, perplexes, yet beguiles him with a vision of another world in which Jesus reigns in a way utterly unlike his dad, or Antipas himself, yet in a way that, for a debauched, conniving playboy gone to (not unglamorous) seed, glistens like a glimpse of an undiscovered country where truth, beauty, and goodness are the order of the day.

The key scenes would be the ones where Clooney, I mean Herod Antipas is like “that’s a lovely fantasy world, you paint, my perplexingly though charmingly, weird friend. I read the Narnia books as a kid and loved them, of course, but I’ve journeyed a long way from Aslan’s country into a dark realm and surely there’s no turning back for a dirty old man like me, is there?”

Clooney, uh, I mean Herod is perplexed and dubious that such a transformation is possible. Yet, debauched and despairing, hating his miserable life of bougie self-indulgence and deceit, the disillusioned tetrarch begins to imagine that a new life, a new creation is possible—even for him.

But, Nicole Kidman, playing Herodias—his scheming, once gorgeous, now overly Botoxed^TM wife, is having none of it. They’ve grown apart, she and Clooney, Herod. We see the fractures in their star-crossed marriage, in snatches of conversation verging on the edge of romance that never quite re-ignites. So Herodias sends Scarlett Johansen, er, Salome as Josephus tells us Herodias’ daughter was named, to beguile Herod back into his old, debauched ways.

In a gauzy but gorgeous scene that’s unfortunately but not gratuitously R-rated, Scarlett, uhm Salome (whom we’ve seen earlier flirting with Herod) dances, seductively—and he, losing his trademark cool, rashly utters: “Ask me anything, my dear—up to half my kingdom!” Expecting she’ll fall breathily at his feet, pleading: “Whisk me away, darling, to live happily ever after…” she goes: “Paint my house. No, kidding; give me the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

Nice girl! Our cover art shows how that ends…

But; here’s the point: there is a moment in every life, no matter how debauched, when the door to the secret garden… opens, a new life in Christ glimmers, even after childhood innocence has long left the building with Elvis.

And what happens next is all that really matters, in any life. Herod shows that faith is simply the non-rejection of that impossible dream of Jesus, how the Spirit moves us towards that in powerful and surprising ways. But, ‘hey now, hey now/ when the world comes in/ they come, they come’ to dull and damn us, and, with Herod Antipas, it seems they win…

“Today Your mercy calls us to wash away our sin. However great our trespass, whatever we have been. However long from mercy our hearts have turned away, Your precious blood can wash us and make us clean… today.” In the Name of Jesus. Amen.