The Rev. Keri T. Aubert       2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont Psalm 20

July 12, 2009 Ephesians 1:3-14

Proper 10, Year B, RCL     Mark 6:14-29

When it comes to John the Baptist, Mark’s gospel doesn’t give us a lot of warm fuzzies. Luke’s gospel tells us of the unborn John in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, leaping for joy at the sound of the pregnant Mary’s voice. In contrast, Mark’s gospel opens with the adult camel hair-wearing and locust-eating John performing baptisms and announcing a coming messiah. John soon baptizes Jesus, after which Jesus departs for his wilderness temptation. Next we hear that John has been arrested, and Jesus has begun proclaiming the good news. Mark’s gospel moves at breakneck speed, and all that happens in the first 14 verses. We don’t hear of John again until Chapter 6, and he has been executed.

Mark’s usually concise narrative lingers over the horrific story of John’s death. Herod has had John arrested for calling Herod to account for marrying his brother’s wife, which in their tradition is committing incest. Herod makes a rash offer to his daughter, and his vindictive wife takes advantage of it. Herod lands in a position he would rather have avoided, as he fears John’s holiness but also appreciates John’s teaching. Despite these misgivings, Herod saves face with his guests by having John immediately executed. John’s head is presented to the girl. Herod later hears stories of Jesus and believes that the prophet has been raised from the dead. Perhaps Herod feels guilty. Perhaps he is afraid. We don’t know, and the narrative leaves Herod here, with his erroneous belief that Jesus is John.

As the person who called Herod to account, John served as Herod’s prophet. To put it another way, you might say that John was Herod’s truth-teller. As today’s story well illustrates, the task of telling truth to power is often thankless and dangerous. No one enjoys hearing about their own shortcomings. People such as Herod have the power to stop such talk. But stopping the talk doesn’t change the truth.

Politicians aren’t the only people who have shortcomings, and so this story is also about us. Each one of has bad habits that we ignore, that we miss, that we dismiss. Each one of us has done things that we shouldn’t have, and not done things that we should have. Each one of us is capable of distorting our thinking in order to justify those acts. We are sometimes in collusion with the powers that perpetrate terrible injustices. From our relationships with the environment to our relationships with our families, there are “inconvenient truths” in all aspects of our lives. We may not want to hear about them. But hear about them we must. God desires for us to be in right relation with God and with all parts of God’s creation. When we are not, we sometimes harm others, and we always harm ourselves.

John the Baptist calls every person who would follow Jesus to continuing repentance. Repentance begins with being honest with ourselves. For this we sometimes need help. If we’re fortunate, we have truth-tellers in our lives, people who are willing to risk being honest about the hard stuff. Of course, the revealing of the truth is just the first step. Unfortunately, newly revealed truth can leave us feeling defensive, hopeless, afraid, ashamed, angry, or depressed. These emotions can be so powerful as to paralyze us into inactivity. I think that’s when we are fortunate to not be left with Herod, thinking that John and Jesus are one and the same. We don’t have to be stuck there, because we know that, while John calls us to baptism, Jesus leads us beyond it. You might say that Jesus takes us past truth-telling and on to wound-healing. Through Christ, God lovingly heals our wounds and we become able and eager to carry God’s loving healing to others.

To put it another way, unlike Herod, we get to benefit from knowing the rest of the story. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are the rest of the story. I think you can say that today’s complex reading from Ephesians is a fancy way of saying just that. Through Christ, we are God’s adopted children, recipients of God’s grace, and inheritors of God’s redemption. All this, Ephesians says, is to the praise of God’s glory. If we are able to live in full appreciation of this gift, our lives, then, our very selves, can and will be living, breathing, continually sounding instruments of worshipful praise to God. This season of the church year, the season after Pentecost, is all about how we can live such lives. Appropriately, this is the season in which we linger the longest.

There are a couple of different schools of thought about exactly where the focus of this season rests. One school of thought offers that this season is about mission. It is therefore also about our status as present-day disciples. The gospel stories tell us about giving and receiving healing, about the collapsing of boundaries, about and Christ’s demonstration of God’s love and power. The other school of thought remembers that the other name for the season after Pentecost is “Ordinary time.” Playing off that name, we view this as the name indicates that this is the time when we are to figure out what it means to be Christians during regular moments and therefore in the ordinary aspects of our lives. In this, the challenge is to remember that God is to be found every place we are, from the grocery store to the beach, and in every thing we do, from washing dishes to walking the dog.

I suspect that we are best off not drawing too sharp a distinction between these two ideals. Service to neighbor and knowledge of God always inform one another. Some would say neither is possible without the other. In this Christian life, then, we are called to be truth-hearers and truth-tellers, would-healed and would-healers. During this season after Pentecost, you might listen for these themes in our readings and in your hearts, offering all that you do as a sacrament to God.