In the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’ve been so
glad to see the cooler weather come back.
When I’m at home, I’ve been holed up in my basement for the last several
weeks confined to my study which we fondly call “the Man Cave.” It’s about 10
degrees cooler down there and then with a fan it gets quite comfortable. But after a while it can be a bit oppressive
so I’ve gone to the other side of the basement at times which is storage, the furnace and the washroom,
and done some organizing. I was
rummaging through a box when I stumbled upon a very old binder inside of which I found, of all things, all the handouts
from my Confirmation class – written
on parchment. And when I read this
morning’s cheery Gospel reading, my mind went back to my Confirmation class
those many years ago.
We had
studied all the important facts of
the Christian faith: the Ever-blessed Trinity, the Humanity and Divinity of
Christ, the Seven Sacraments especially the Eucharist and Baptism. We’d memorized the Apostles’ and Nicene
Creeds and giggled through the Creed of St. Athanasius. We learned how to use
the Prayer Book and it’s place in the faith of the Anglican Church. It was all somewhat interesting though on
occasion rather dry. But the Rector did
his best to make it interesting and at times even fun.
One Saturday
morning he said, “You’ve been learning all the academic stuff about the Christian Faith – the nuts and bolts of belief.
But this morning we’re going to learn about what it means to put those beliefs into practice; what it really
means to be a follower of Jesus.”
He then
proceeded to open his big, black Prayer Book/Bible combination and read to us
the story of the beheading of St. John the Baptist. Of course, we boys were thrilled with all the intrigue and gore and the girls just shrieked at it – probably more
appropriately.
After the
reading, the Rector said, “Being a Christian is not about belief. It’s about
action. It’s about following Jesus and being
willing to face even death for what is right and true and moral.” We then proceeded to enter into a conversation about what was really
going on in this gruesome episode of the Gospel of Mark.
First off, we
found out that John the Baptist was in jail because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. By the time of his arrest, John was very
popular and very influential within
Jewish religious society. People eagerly
listened to him. He was a prophet. And he’d been loudly criticizing Herod’s
marriage to his dead brother’s wife. This
was not Herod the Great of the Christmas
stories, but Herod Agrippa his son. His
wife, Herodias, had probably been a
main instigator of the marriage
having been previously married to a nobleman and not willing to give up the
lifestyle, power, prestige and wealth that went along with it. But John saw this as nothing less than incest and had been screaming about it
for a while and turning public opinion
against Herod and especially Herodias.
So, she had a grudge and was out
for blood.
The second thing we learned is that if one
does the math, this being a second
marriage, their daughter, Herodias named after her mother, couldn’t’ve been
more than nine or ten years
old. This little creepy fact tells us that the poor girl was manipulated into her mother’s web
of revenge. I mean, what
ten year old girl knows what to ask for in such a setting? So, naturally she runs to her mother and asks what to ask for. And Herodias had a plan: to silence John for
good!
The Rector
continued, “Morality is not
something confined to what happens behind closed
doors. In fact,” he said, “much of what happens behind closed doors is nobody’s business unless someone is
being injured or abused.” He went on to say that morality is a much broader issue and has to do with the degradation of human dignity. That which claims that certain people are less than human or disposable or relegates
them to poverty, hunger or war
is what is truly immoral. John
seems to have either known Herodias or her reputationand her scheming and manipulation of people for
her own benefit.At least for John, this was beyond the limits of morality.
He’d probably even used her as
a teaching tool while preaching to
the crowds. And it had cost him his head.
The Rector
continued, “Being a Christian is not
just about reciting Creeds and elaborate rituals. Those things are fine and good, but their
function is to give usthe courage to be
willing to stand for what is right and just and moral in the face of institutional and individual greed and
selfishness which doesn’t care
who gets rolled over in the
process.
Being a
Christian is about standing up for
those who have no one to stand up for them; about being the voice for the voiceless; about standing
with the poor and the outcast and the marginalized and the unloved in the face
of criticism and even the threat of death because that’s what
John the Baptist did. In fact, it’s what
Jesus did on steroids. Jesus confronted the establishment of his time
with their greed and arrogance and
disregard for human dignity and demanded an end to it all. He threatened their wealth and their
power and their prestige so much so that their only option was to shut him up
too.”
Now, of
course, we listening to all this were about twelve years oldso we were starting to get a bit nervous and
uncomfortable. I mean, at that age,
being told that we were called to go to the gallows for a cause was a bit overwhelming as well as a big
heavy. But then, the Rector asked,“What happened after Jesus was crucified?” We all looked at each other until one of the
boys said, “They buried him.” The Rector
said, “Yeah. OK. What happened after that?”
One of the girls chimed in gleefully, “He rose from the dead.” “Bingo!”
said the Rector. “Jesus is raised from the dead showing that the powers of evil and
even death itself are no match for the Source of truth and love and morality
and peace and justice which is the very Being of God. In
other words, when we follow John the Baptist and Jesus himself and willingly
give our lives for the sake of what’s right, the result is new life and
transformation and Resurrection. It
may not happen overnight, but it has a cumulative
effect and in the end the powers of evil never had any hope at all.”
He then took
out a file folder in which there were several photos. The first was of
Jesus but the rest were of people from our own time: Martin Luther King; Mohandas Gandhi; Dorothy
Day of the Catholic Worker movement; Dietrich Bonheoffer, the German Pastor who
had stood up against Hitler; Nelson
Mandela who at that time was still in prison.
We passed the pictures around the room, reading the blurbs on their
reverse side about these remarkable and at times even non-Christian
people. And as we did, the Rector said
to us, “This, my friends, is what it
means to be a Christian. These are
the things that are not negotiable.”
When the Bishop came soon afterwards to
administer the Sacrament of Confirmation to us, he had an hour before the
Liturgy with us all to make sure that we were prepared to reaffirm our faith in
Jesus Christ. Afterwards, he asked the
Rector, “Where did these kids get all this stuff about being willing to give
one’s life for the Gospel?” The Rector
smiled, “From the Scriptures and the Saints.
Where else?” The Bishop then too
smiled and said, “Good work! These kids
may change the world yet!”
I have to
admit that I’ve not, as of yet, changed the world and I haven’t heard
the names of the others in that
Confirmation class in the news. But
I have listened recently to the decisions of the Supreme Court upholding the
dignity of the human being especially in ensuring that everyone has access to health care no matter their
economic standing. I followed online the
proceedings of General Convention in Salt Lake City as the Episcopal Church
reaffirmed its commitment to Christ and for justice and peace among all people and respect for the dignity of
every human being among a myriad of issues – rather than seeking the security and safety of the institution. And in these things had taken place because many, many people had followed the
examples of Christ and John the Baptist and put their lives on the line for the
truth.And as we continue to hear of the horror
stories of terror on far away shores and murders in Churches in our own land, I still have hope because I know that in the end, if we are willing to do more than just “believe,” but truly have faith, that we and people of
good will of every stripe will continue to bring transformation and new life
and Resurrection to our world.
As the years,
OK, decades, have rolled by since that Confirmation class, I’ve struggled with the idea of being like
John the Baptist or even Jesus himself. I’m
not very good at it. Part of me is a confirmed and devout coward. But then, I remember that I’m not called to give my life as an individual
but as part of a community of
faith called to give its life for the truth.
And so we come here, week after week, to support each other in our mutual
calling and to celebrate the fact that the Living Christ dwells deeply in
our midst and to be fed by him so that at least my cowardice and our
courage can be fortified and we can
continue the mission of transforming the world for the sake of him who gave his
life for the world and calls us to do the same: Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
