Sermon Cloud

PLAYING TO THE CROWD

             For the past week or so the news has been almost exclusively focused on the circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Jackson, who – at least until someone else takes his place – is known to the world as the “King of Pop.”  What is it about certain people – Jackson, Princess Diana, Elvis Presley – that makes people believe they know them well enough to mourn them with wails that exceed their mothers’?  What makes people think they have the right to attend their funerals as though they were friends and relatives?  What is it that would compel a family to hold a funeral in an arena in order to accommodate 17,000 people from among the 1.6 million virtual strangers who applied for tickets to attend?  And who puts a grieving eleven year old daughter up on that stage to say anything at all?

           If the reactions of the millions who mourned his death are our yardstick, his life was a staggering success.  If his lifestyle and his obsession with plastic surgery, along with the gossip circulating since his death is our indicator, his promising early stardom became a life of became a monumental tragedy. 

             On the other hand, one source I found estimated that 150,000 Christians die for their faith every year.  The math works out to 411 martyrs a day, or one every 3-1/2 minutes.[1]  I have no idea how accurate that is; just say they’re wrong, and the number is half that – one every seven minutes.  That means that by the time we’re headed out to lunch this morning, eight of our brothers and sisters in Christ will have died merely because they claim to be Christian and live in parts of the world where Christian belief and practice are illegal.

             I didn’t see that on TV this week or any other time.  It must not have been much of a funeral.

             Our gospel text this morning pauses between Jesus’ sending out The Twelve to heal and cast out demons and their triumphant return, to tell us how Herod felt about what he’d heard of Jesus’ growing fame among the people of Galilee.  Apparently Herod thought he’d taken care of that sort of commotion when he arrested and beheaded John the Baptist. 

             Now I’m pretty impressed that Carol was able to wring a children’s sermon out of this story that stinks of death.  I even offered her a couple of outs, but she met it head-on.  What is a soap-opera story like this trying to tell us about God and life in Christ?  After all, very few of us will die as martyrs, I suppose, and fewer still will rise to power like Herod Antipas.  I guess some of us might read about over-the-top celebrity birthday parties in People magazine or see them on Entertainment Tonight.  Up until a few years ago most of us couldn’t imagine a beheading in this day and age, but we’re over that now.   But mostly our orderly and carefully managed lives insulate us from the real evil that takes place in the halls of many of the rich and famous on an hourly basis. 

             Herod Antipas was the tetrarch of Galilee.  His first name was Antipas – Herod was his family name – and he was the son of the King Herod the Great who tried to kill Jesus as an infant.  Herod Antipas was a sort of low-level governor, with no land and no authority except what had been given to him by the Roman occupiers.  His only assignment was to see to it that the people under his jurisdiction in Galilee were peaceful and paid their taxes.  He’d been concerned because a good number of the Jews had been knee-deep in the Jordan River for a long time because of John the Baptist’s fiery preaching, and John was acquiring celebrity and a following.  

             On top of all of that, John was loudly pointing out that Herod had seduced and married his sister-in-law, Herodias, who was the wife of his brother, Philip.  Even though he was a Roman lackey, Herod was also a marginal Jew, who should have been obedient to the laws of Moses and John was calling for them to publicly repent of their in-your-face adultery. 

             But those who are very rich and powerfully placed often believe they are different.  So often they think the rules don’t apply to them.  We hear every day of financiers who give themselves loans from their clients’ savings entrusted to their management, and of congressman who don’t pay their taxes and employ undocumented workers in their homes.  So Herod did what all corrupt political hired hands do when their positions are threatened – he used what power he had to remove the threat.

           He’d arrested John to shut him up.  He didn’t want to kill him, because that would have just enflamed the people.  He’d only wanted to silence him, except that it hadn’t worked.  John had continued to preach while he was in Herod’s dungeon, only after his arrest he was preaching where Herod’s inner social circle could hear him.  Herod’s wife, Herodias, was embarrassed and vengeful, because John threatened their “success” and future in Roman middle-eastern politics.

        What do we consider success?  In truth our thinking is probably not that far off from Herod or the typical Michael Jackson fan.  Probably none of us will give back any of our lottery winnings; we like it when we are admired and well-thought of in our community, and when we have some power we tend to think we deserve it.

        And we are also very good at categorizing people.  We are at least as efficient and automatic at putting people in their cubbyholes as any experienced mail clerk.  We evaluate on the basis of snapshots and sound bites.  Meeting life on this shallow level is a frequent and pernicious substitute for thinking.[2]   Likely most people saw Michael Jackson’s recording success, his enormous estate, his entourage and his expensive bling as evidence of a successful life.  Not many spent a minute to reflect on the cost of his loss of privacy, of the toll on his health, or the low self-esteem that sent him to plastic surgeons time after time to alter his appearance.  In their happy categorizing, plenty of people believed that it was okay for a grown man to live in a place called Neverland, and that it was somehow normal for him to socialize with young boys.

             Like any rock star, Herod also played to the crowd, giving them what he believed they wanted, and he was right:  He was surrounded by people who believed they were rubbing shoulders with celebrity, people who were trying to advance themselves by being his dinner guests, just as he was trying to advance himself by entertaining them.  When his stepdaughter gave a particularly erotic performance for his guests, he offered her half of a kingdom that he didn’t own, because he was puffing his resumé - he wanted his guests to think he was richer and more powerful than he actually was. 

             Some commentators speculate that Herod capitulated to his stepdaughter’s gruesome request for John the Baptist’s head, because he was drunk, his judgment was impaired and his values were distorted.  I think he probably was drunk, but I find it to be more often the case that alcohol magnifies, rather than diminishes, the twistedness that lies inside the best of us, that we find easier to hide when we’re sober.  Herod was, after all, already legendary for his cruelty.  I think, instead, that it was more that he had made an oath in front of his guests, and the death of a nuisance like John was little enough of a price to pay to save face.  On top of that, it would make his wife happy and solve the problem of John’s presence in Galilee without it being Herod’s own fault.  He could avoid inciting John’s disciples, since he was only honoring his oath to the girl who made the request, and any alcohol involved only made that twisted logic more reasonable.

         But while that’s the deal with Herod - and it’s certainly instructive for us - what’s the deal with God?  Why did God allow John to come to this pathetic end, when Jesus would say that there was “no one greater than John” who had ever been born.[3]  You’ll remember from our Advent sermon about Elizabeth, John’s mother, that he was a miracle baby whose impending birth was announced by the Angel Gabriel. 

         It is as though John died for nothing – he wasn’t confronting power for the sake of justice, to right some wrong that was being done to the people, or to free them from the yoke of oppression.  No one’s life was on the line but his.  He saved no one.   He died as the result of a request from a stupid girl at the urging of her vengeful mother, who was up to her neck in sin with her husband’s brother.  John died for the sake of God’s righteousness and the people to whom he witnessed completely missed the point.  It seems like an awful waste.

          Paul gives us the answer in today’s reading from Ephesians:   “[John was] chosen [in Christ], having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.”[4]  That’s a mouthful, so let me paraphrase that:  God didn’t just take John’s life and choices and Herod’s life and choices and say, “Well, isn’t this a hash, what will I have to do to make this scandal smell better?” 

        It says that John’s life and choices and Herod’s life and choices were part of God’s plan all along.  That doesn’t mean that they were puppets or that their choices were predetermined.  John was freely obedient to the task set before him by God:  the task of preaching righteousness.  He wasn’t a puppet, he didn’t have to obey.  Herod also performed freely, and he performed – not as fated or predetermined – but he too performed as expected.  His actions were completely predictable and compatible with someone whose heart was set on evil self-promotion.  John was chosen and predestined to be imprisoned and he died just like he was supposed to, and God used both John’s righteous death and Herod’s evil heart and actions to serve God’s purposes for the redemption of the world as Jesus walked toward the cross.  I can’t explain it any other way than to say, “God is sovereign and will work his purposes out.”

        Luke recorded that John’s task – assigned to him by God from before his birth – was to preach repentance and “turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous…”[5]  John didn’t die for nothing – he died faithfully doing exactly what God intended him to do from before the foundation of the world – preaching righteousness to prepare a people fit to receive the Messiah – as far as we can tell from his biographers in the gospels and from the Jewish historian, Josephus, John never did anything else.  He died fulfilling his destiny.  Would that we be so certain of our purpose in life that we would find ourselves engaged in faithful ministry until we meet our ends.

        Matthew wrote that John’s disciples came and took his body and buried him without his head and afterwards went and told Jesus that his cousin had died.[6]  It was a stark and humble funeral for someone that the God of the Universe said was the greatest man who’d ever lived.

         It was a different sort of funeral last week for the King of Pop.  In life and in death, Michael Jackson was still playing to the crowd.  He had a bronze casket with 14-carat gold handles; actually there were two such caskets, because one was a decoy to fool the crowds who might follow.  A woman I saw interviewed on television said that she was there because she and her sister had “flown in from Houston to make money” -  there were vendors selling bottles of orange and grape soda labeled with the pun, “King of Pop”, and you could buy sequined gloves.  Lots of people, of all ages, came dressed like Jackson in black outfits and fedoras with veils over their faces, trying to look like him – and there were other imitators who danced on the sidewalk, mimicking every move of his trademarked dance steps, and yes, he patented the Moonwalk. 

         When people see your life, every day, not on TV, just on Main Street - how do you think they’re measuring your success?  Do you have enough stuff to impress them or do you think you need more?  Are you a big enough deal in your professional circles for most folks to notice when you enter the room?   And are you playing it up like Michael Jackson or puffing your resumé, like Herod?

         I think that most people who see a person who calls himself “Christian” measure him by a different standard.  And if that’s the case, do you think they want to imitate you, to try to be like you – not just to dress like you or walk like you – but do you think they want try to be just the same kind of husband and father you are?  Do your kids want to learn to read the Bible and pray just like they see you do?  Do I think enough about the people who are watching me when I make the choices I do?  Would anyone ever mistake me for someone who is imitating Jesus?  Will I be able to live my life in such a way that the only people at my funeral will be the ones who actually knew me? 

         I guess there are a lot of different ways of playing to the crowd. 

         Let’s not forget to pray for the families of the eight saints who will die for Christ’s sake this morning.

 ©2009 Deborah Hollifield

[1] http://theundergroundchurch.110mb.com/

[2] Interpreter’s Bible, Mark, 733.

[3] Matt. 11:11; Luke 7:28

[4] Ephesians 1:11

[5] Luke 1:17b

[6] Matthew 14:12