When Power
Meets Power
Sermon based on Mark 6:14-29
by Rev. Rick Thompson
The word “gospel,” as you probably know, means “good news”.
Typically, we preachers conclude our reading with the glad
announcement, a bold affirmation, “The Gospel of our Lord!”
But sometimes, when I read the Gospel reading, I have an odd
reaction—and this is one of those times—it feels more appropriate to
conclude the reading with a question: “The gospel of our Lord?”
Where is the Gospel, where is the “good news” in this story?
Where’s the good news in a story about a drunken king, worked up to
a lather by the exotic dancing of his step-daughter, egged on by his
wife’s desire for revenge, and bound to keep a promise he regrets
making, orders John the Baptist beheaded.
Where’s the good news in this story of a king who cannot bear to
hear the words of a prophet of God any longer?
Where’s the good news in the story of a truth-teller, a prophet of
God, who gets his head cut off as a reward?
The Gospel of our Lord?
It sounds, rather, like more of the same. More of the same in the
world of power politics. Someone offends the king—or, in this case, the
king’s wife—and he’s removed from the scene, occasionally by violence.
Doesn’t that happen all the time? Maybe not by murder or beheading, but
certainly by being discredited, or removed from a position of power.
Pres. Harry S Truman fired the popular war hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur
when he felt MacArthur had overstepped his bounds. During the Nixon
Presidency, heads of high government officials rolled in the famous
“Saturday Night Massacre,” when the President was desperately trying to
contain the damage during the Watergate scandal. Gen. Colin Powell
resigned as Secretary of State—some think under pressure—when he began
to question the wisdom of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy.
Yes, we’re used to people having their heads cut off—usually
figuratively, sometimes even literally—in the world of power politics.
So this gruesome story about John the Baptist’s death seems like
just more of the same.
Somebody—the more powerful one, like Herod—wins.
And somebody—the weaker one, like John—loses.
But there’s a problem with that way of viewing the world, isn’t
there?
The assumption is that power is a political commodity: whoever can
get the best of the other, by whatever means—that one is the stronger
one.
But in the world of the Bible, we’re presented with a very
different option: that real power belongs not to the powers that
be in the world, but to God; that the truly powerful are not
those who lord it over others, but to those who speak and live God’s
truth.
In the world of the Bible, power belongs to people like John the
Baptist, whose head ends up on a platter—and, of course, to Jesus, who
dies nailed to a cross. In the world of the Bible, power belongs to
those who tell the truth, who live with integrity, who follow God at all
costs.
So here we have a story—a story that hardly seems like good
news—about what happens when power meets power. This is a story about
what can happen when people—perhaps even you and I—follow God without
regard to the personal cost. This is a story about what happens when
the powers of this world are challenged by the power of God.
Even Herod, deeply immersed in the world of power politics—that was
the family business, after all—had an inkling of the power of God.
This story of John’s beheading is told as a flashback. The
disciples have been sent out by Jesus on their assignment to teach and
heal and cast out demons in Jesus’ name. They’ve met with some success.
And immediately after this story, Mark reports their return. (One
reason for telling this story here is as a reminder, a warning that
discipleship can be dangerous.) At any rate, the disciples have been
successful, and Herod hears about it, and knows Jesus is someone to
contend with. He knows they’ve got power of a different sort from his,
and he names the power he’s witnessing: “I think Jesus is John the
Baptist—the one I beheaded—raised from the dead!”
Now what kind of power can raise someone from the dead? This
is no petty power we’re talking about here!
Even Herod knows that Jesus has power! Jesus has power to
heal the sick, and calm the sea, and cast out demons, and proclaim God’s
kingdom with authority! In fact—and Herod seems to know
this—Jesus, and his colleague John—are armed with the power of God.
And that’s the power that threatens Herod—more so even than the
power of Rome, to whom he owes his earthly power.
Threatened by the power of God, Herod tries to
destroy God’s power by killing John the Baptist.
But he can’t destroy God’s power, of course, just as Pilate could not
destroy Jesus. Nor can they destroy the power of the disciples of
Jesus, either. Herod—and all those who’ve come after, all those who
wear the mantle of earthly power—have tried to silence, tried to co-opt,
sometimes tried to destroy, and sometimes even tried to put to death the
church—but they have not succeeded.
Why?
Because God’s power can’t be defeated, can’t be destroyed—even by
all the powers of the world, lined up against it!
So, in the midst of the terrors of apartheid in South
Africa, when the powers that be were brutally resisting those who spoke
and lived the truth, Bishop Desmond Tutu spoke up. In a meeting with
the Minister of Law and Order, the government official whose task it was
to silence dissent, Tutu—sustained by the power of God—bravely spoke
this truth:
“Mr. Minister, we must remind you that you are not God. You are
just a man. One day your name shall merely be a faint scribble on the
pages of history, while the name of Jesus, Lord of the church, shall
live forever!”[i]
That Minister of Law and Order is no longer in office. In fact,
that whole system of apartheid, and the powerful ones it
benefited, has been dismantled. Tutu, however, is still alive, winner
of a Nobel Peace Prize. He’s retired now, but still proclaiming the
Gospel, still proclaiming the absolute power and lordship of Jesus
Christ.
Like that Minister of Law and Order, King Herod is little known
today, except to historians of the 1st century Middle East.
Unlike Jesus, whose power he tried to silence, Herod is not on the
list of best-known and most influential persons in history. He is not
worshipped by over two billion people in the world. I am not aware of
any schools or hospitals or nursing homes serving the young and the sick
and the aging in Herod’s name. Unlike Jesus, Herod has disappeared into
the distant shadows of history.
Herod may have had the power to kill John the Baptist.
But he did not have the power of God—the power to raise the dead!
