The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27 So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, 28 and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. 29 On hearing of this, John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. — Mark Chapter 6
Keeping
Your Head
I wonder if John The Baptist ultimately lost his faith. I might have. In John's day, Christianity did not yet have a
name. Like most devout Jews, John had a specific idea of what
the Messiah would do when He appeared and how things would
change once that happened. I imagine John could not understand
how it could be possible that Jesus, his own cousin, could be
the Messiah and yet John could end up rotting away in a prison
cell. I imagine that made little sense to John who must
certainly have thought Jesus would bring political change,
establishing God’s kingdom on earth. I imagine John assumed
Jesus would topple Herod Antipas, the Roman-appointed governor,
if not Rome itself. That John would enjoy an honored place at
the side of the Messiah as God transformed the planet. Only,
those things never occurred. And, much to John’s chagrin, he was
abandoned in some horrible castle, likely tortured and
under-fed, charged with sedition for his rants against the
governor. Surely, John deserved better than that. With doubt
creeping in, John sent messengers to Jesus asking if He was the
One John prophesied about or should they seek another [SCR].
This may also have been passive aggressive language on John’s
part: if You’re the Messiah, let’s get this show on the road. We
all have specific expectations of God. When God fails to meet
those expectations, doubt creeps in. This is only natural. John
was facing a long, excruciating, slow death, a fate his
faithfulness to God certainly should not have earned him. John
had dedicated his life to doing what God called him to do. Being
abandoned to cruel guards, rotting away in his own excrement in
some dank tower, I believe John’s faith was sorely tested. He
must have begun to wonder if it all had been a colossal waste of
time. If his cousin was some fraud perpetuating the greatest
hoax in mankind’s history. The Messiah had come, but there’d
been no change. The Romans were still calling the shots. The
religious leaders were still oppressing the people. Jesus had
grown enormously popular, but was seen mainly as yet another
prophet roaming the countryside performing magic tricks. Worse,
Jesus seemed indifferent to John’s plight, “Report what you
see,” He told John’s disciples, without one word of sympathy for
or reassurance to John.
At a crossroads, I imagine John felt terribly confused. When
guards abruptly came for him, leading him to the executioner’s
ax, I imagine panic set in. Herod’s order to execute John came
seemingly out of the blue. There was no due process, no case
review, no hearing. Herod had married Herodias, his brother’s
ex-wife and his own niece, in violation of several Jewish laws.
John had embarrassed the governor by openly criticizing him for
this abominable marriage, which was how John ended up in prison
in the first place. At a feast for the governor, Salome [?]
Herodias’ daughter—who was also Herod’s niece and, technically,
Herod’s niece’s daughter, and who must also have been quite
young (if you figure Herod was not likely older than early 40’s,
Herodias, his sister’s daughter, likely early 30’s at
most)—performed what is largely interpreted as a sensual if not
explicitly seductive dance for her stepfather / great uncle
which got Herod’s nose open so wide the governor shot off his
mouth, promising the young girl anything she asked for. This
business is rife with icky implications for this guy Herod, who
seemed to have a predilection toward not only much younger women
but much younger women he was related to. The implication, here,
is that Salome, most likely in her early teens, seduced the
governor and may have done so at her mother—Herodias, Herod’s
wife / niece’s—urging. Herod’s earnestness in seeking to reward
the teenager suggests he may have begun thinking of ultimately
replacing Herodias with Salome. This was, after all, not a fine
arts performance from Lincoln Center. This was, essentially, a
lap dance, likely approved and encouraged by the girl’s own
mother. Given the opportunity to ask Uncle Stepdad Herod for
anything her heart desired, Salome was coached by her conniving
mommy Herodias to ask for the head of John The Baptist. It is
unlikely Salome even knew who John The Baptist was. Someone her
age would likely have asked for a car. Beyoncé tickets. This
girl asked instead for the grisly decapitation of a man she did
not know. A man who’d done absolutely noting to her.
It is interesting to note that John got himself into a jam by
shooting his mouth off, and now Herod had fallen victim to
essentially the same weakness. From cover to cover, the bible
makes a big deal about things we say and how words have power
and impact our life and the lives of others. Lessons, from
Genesis to revelation, cautions us to stop flapping out gums so
much. That we often speak our own fate into existence. The
Apostle James compares our tongue to the rudder of a ship [SCR],
the little fin mounted beneath the rear of the vessel that
determines which direction the ship will take. Over and over we
are cautioned to keep our mouths shut. Jesus, trying to explain
the concept of faith, said our words can bind things both on
earth and in Heaven [SCR].
John The Baptist’s ministry was not to effect political change
in Galilee. Was not to get involved with politics or even to
call people out for specific bad behavior. His job was to
announce the coming of the Messiah and, my belief, to step off
the stage. John should have followed Jesus. Instead, John kept
on preaching, I some cases competing with Jesus rather than
following Him. I think it unlikely the Holy Spirit inspired John
to call Herod out publicly the way he did. I think John was just
bloviating, as so many of our pastors do. The Holy Spirit had
stopped speaking, but John was still up there, gassing on.
Many, if not most, of us send ourselves to prison.
To our own prisons. Bondage to finances, to habits, to
relationships. Things we have spoken into existence by our own
arrogance and lust, just as Herod did. The last thing Herod
wanted to do was kill John The Baptist. He feared John, and he
knew actually killing John would make the prophet a martyr in
the eyes of the people and possibly inspire unrest. But Herod
had been trapped first by his lust and second by his own words.
He had been trapped by the wiles of a woman, Herodias, whose
vanity had been injured and insulted by John. It is this
nonsense, a woman’s passion overwhelming her logic, that is the
classic cautionary tale. It is in, like, every movie: the
protagonist is going along, achieving some success, things are
going well. And then, he meets the girl. I mean, you can see it
coming. He meets the girl, and you just know that is where the
wheels begin to come off of the wagon. He meets the girl and the
girl’s ego, her selfishness, her vanity, her pride, her lack of
self-control, quickly undermines and then overwhelms the hero,
creating conflicts between him and his friends and ultimately
destroying everything he’s built. I have seen this in real life
over and over: our weakness for women destroying ministries,
destroying lives. Yes, this sounds terribly sexist, but it is
nonetheless true. Most women I have ever met think with their
emotion. Most I’ve known are virtual slaves to their emotion.
Their choices are emotionally driven and their passion dictates
their action. The same can be said of the men who love them, who
set aside logic because of their desire for or loyalty to these
women. This is, in my view, weakness. An abdication of a higher
calling. We set aside logic and complicate our lives by
welcoming in these emotional, vain, often petty creatures,
driven by impulses, by color and light rather than by reason. We
turn over important choices, made by sober and patient review,
to persons whose logic is routinely overwhelmed by their emotion
and whose values are corrupted by a lifetime of capitulation to
their own vanity. This is Adam and Eve. Abraham and Sarah and
Hagar. This is Jacob and Rachel, who neither knew nor trusted
God. This is Samson and Delilah. David and Bathsheba. This is
Job and his ignorant wife. Solomon and his ten thousand
bedmates.
It is a very old story. I am not anti-woman, I am anti-stupid.
Our task, for both men and women, is to honor and serve God and
to do so in complete submission and obedience to His will. Any
compromise to that is not of God but of Satan. It was wrong for
Herodias to encourage her daughter to dance seductively for her
husband. It was wrong for Herod, who should have been
embarrassed by this unseemly public display, to sit there and
watch this child wiggling her butt at him. Sensuality is a kind
of hypnotism, convincing us to do and say tings we know we
shouldn’t. I believe Herod was drunk with lust for this young
girl, which, rather than annoying his wife actually pleased her;
it was likely her plan all along: get Herod to make Salome a
public promise. Once Herod shot his mouth off, that would be
that. Herodias, whom the record suggests understood nothing
about the greater ramifications of John’s political stature,
simply wanted revenge. She thought about no one other than
herself. Her energy, her intelligence, her wiles, were employed
only to serve her vanity. Her vanity was the preeminent driving
force of her life, and she was apparently a creature of emotion
and not logic. She neither trusted nor particularly respected
her husband, whom she manipulated seemingly at will. And this
guy, Herod, was led around not by his vanity but by his lust,
handing over a critical an delicate political matter to this
person of selfish illogic and her equally clueless child. This
made even less sense considering Heard, a man of considerable
prestige and power in the region, could have quietly and
discreetly bedded almost any woman he wanted. His willingness to
buy Salome’s affection (if not specifically her sexual
surrender) spoke of an obsessive and addictive personality.
Addictions cause us to abandon our values, our logic and our
commitments.
John The Baptist was a delicate matter, Herod’s Cuban Missile
Crisis. He had neutralized John not by killing him but by
removing him from the stage—something John himself should have
done. The smart move would have been to allow John to live out
his remaining days in exile and despair, John’s disciples
withering to the faithful few. But Herod was weak. Herodias, who
likely knew nothing of the intricate politics of the matter,
simply wanted John dead, so much so that she was willing to
prostitute her own daughter to achieve that goal.
I imagine being dragged abruptly to the executioner’s block came
as a jolting shock to John. Why on earth would Herod suddenly,
and for no apparent reason, decide to kill him?! John was
clearly worth far more alive to Herod than dead. There must be
some mistake. You sure you got the right John?!? Had
John’s inquiry of Jesus somehow set Herod off? Pressed against
the executioner’s block, I suspect John may have completely lost
faith. A better sermon to preach is some happy ending of John
singing hymns and glorifying God as the ax fell, but scripture
does not in any way imply that end to the story. The last
recorded actions of John suggest a man at the end of hope. It is
likely John did not realize, as most Jews at that time did not,
that he had gotten it wrong. That Jesus had not come to
transform the world but to redeem the people in it. That His was
not a political kingdom but a Heavenly one.
The bible is full of stories with less than happy endings.
Stories that do not include satisfying closure and leave plot
threads dangling. This mirrors real life, where questions often
go unanswered and where, no matter how hard we try, we often
fail to wrap up episodes and relationships neatly with a nice
bow on them. IN dark times and at critical moments, it is most
difficult to have faith. To trust or to believe. It is also
difficult to assume responsibility for having created that dark
space, that prison, ourselves. For having spoken it into
existence. John’s was yet another great story in a collection of
the greatest stories ever told which did not end on a high note
of overcoming faith. Your mileage may vary, but my takeaway from
scripture is the end of John’s life came suddenly and abruptly
amid John’s deep despair and possible loss of faith. I also
believe the real lesson, here, is that God did not leave John,
but John left God. That John got it wrong, as most of us do at
one time or another.
Christopher J. Priest
25 September 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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