We have great needs, the world has great needs, and we wonder why God doesn’t seem to provide for all.  Instead of giving us what we think we need, Jesus offers us himself, what we and the world truly need, and through him, life abundant and eternal.


Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 18, year B; texts: John 6:16-35 (adding 16-21 from last week); Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Last week I was reading on the Internet about a magician who invented an astonishing card trick back in the 1970s, a man named David Berglas.  Once he hands the deck to the people from the audience who’ve volunteered to help, he never touches it again, yet is able to predict the card they will pick.  What’s interesting is that no one has ever been able to figure out how he does it, not even professional magicians, and the only other person who does this trick is his close friend, whom most assume he taught.  Berglas has said he will never reveal how he does it.

Of course, that’s the only way he keeps it valuable and impressive, isn’t it?  Sleight-of-hand artists aren’t interesting except for the tricks they do that amaze and befuddle us.  The trick is everything; once we know how he or she does it, it seems easy, the mystery is gone.

What we learn today is that Jesus is exactly the opposite.  The last reason he’d want anyone to follow him is because of his miraculous signs.  He makes no attempt to hide that his power comes from God, in fact, through what he does people begin to believe that he is himself God.  But what he makes clear in today’s story is that he’d rather people believe in him for his own sake.  The sign, the miracle, is not important to what the people need.  He, however, is.

And that’s something of a challenge for us, even today.  When Jesus says things like, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry,” we tend to get confused.  What exactly is he offering us?  How is it possible never to hunger?  Like the woman at the well a couple chapters earlier in John’s Gospel who wanted never to be thirsty and for Jesus to provide a never-emptying pitcher, we wonder what all this means.  How is he our food?

We have company.  This entire sixth chapter of John, which provides the Gospel readings for the whole month of August this year, tells of people struggling to understand what Jesus is saying, even his closest disciples.  It’s an exploration of what Jesus is offering and what people would rather have, an examination of the difficulty in believing in Jesus instead of magic tricks, and a beginning of a series of promises in John’s Gospel that whatever Jesus is offering, it is life for us.

And we start by talking about signs.  Because John seems to suggest that signs are important, but at the same time, they’re not the point.

You may recall that John is the only evangelist who uses the term “signs” to refer to Jesus’ miracles.  It’s intentional.  In his Gospel, he tells far fewer of these stories, but each in more detail, and claims that these things Jesus did were signs to lead to faith.  Water becomes wine, a man blind from birth now sees, even a dead man lives.  If John is to be understood properly, these signs point us to the Son of God, present with the Father from the beginning of time, who is come to give us life.

But the confusing thing is that John also seems to ask for and commend faith without signs.  Thomas, who wants to see Jesus’ wounds before believing him alive, is told that those who believe without seeing are the blessed ones.  And in today’s story, immediately following last week’s account of the feeding of the 5,000, an admittedly enormous sign, Jesus dismisses those who have come to find him because of their meal yesterday.  “You are looking for me,” he says, “not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  Well of course that’s why they’re looking for him.  But what does he mean, they didn’t see signs?  And apparently he’s right, because even though they’ve witnessed that awe-inspiring miracle of bread and fish, here the next day they ask him, “What sign are you going to give us?”

The point seems to be that the signs themselves are not the point.  Believe in me, Jesus says, and find life.  In other words, if you’re only looking for the miracles you’re missing the point of everything.  Someone at Tuesday’s Bible study suggested, and I think they’re correct, that when they ask for a sign in today’s story, it isn’t that they didn’t think the miraculous feeding was a sign.  It’s that they want it again.

They bring up Moses, whom we heard about in our first reading, and through whom God provided manna, bread from heaven, not once only, but daily for years in the desert.  For hungry, poor people, one meal only fills your stomach for one day.  It makes sense that they were hoping for another round.  That’s why they wanted to make him king, as we heard last week.

But if we pay attention, John seems to be telling this story in a way that he downplays the importance of the miracle in order to point to the importance of Jesus.  We get a hint of that in the walking on water story with which we began.  It was assigned to finish last week’s Gospel, but I moved it to this week because it makes more sense to split the story this way, and start today with the episode on the sea.

But if you look at how John tells this story compared to Matthew and Mark, he almost implies it wasn’t a miracle.  He uses the same expression in John 21 where it’s always translated Jesus walked “beside the sea.”  Commentators are split over whether he even wants to suggest Jesus walked on water here, very unlike the other Evangelists who clearly tell that he did.

And look what he does emphasize: when Jesus says, “it is I,” then they want to receive him, take him into the boat.  Then they believe in him.  They do what Jesus asks of the crowds after the feeding today: the disciples believe in Jesus, not the sign.

In fact, that expression “it is I,” “I’m the one,” is the big clue here.  The phrase in Greek is “ego eimi” and it can be translated “it is I,” or, “I am he,” or simply, “I am.”  By it John ties Jesus to Moses’ experience at the burning bush when God’s name was revealed as “I am.”  When Jesus persistently uses this expression, his hearers would clearly connect him to God.  It occurs about 25 times in John’s Gospel, including seven great “I am” statements, the first of which we have here, “I am the bread of life.”

With the incident by the sea, it could simply be read as identification.  They’re afraid, he says, “it is I,” and they are relieved.  But once he starts saying it with these images – here bread, and in later chapters, light, resurrection, life, Good Shepherd, vine, way, truth – he makes it clear.  He is the one we are to believe in.  As he says to the people today, the only work they need to do is believe in the one whom God has sent.  As for Moses, he says, Moses didn’t give you daily manna, God did.  And I’m not a prophet like Moses, I’m the bread from heaven itself.

And this is the hard place we find ourselves: Jesus says, I am.  It is I.  I’m the answer from God, not miraculous signs.  And we say, “What do you mean?  It’s incredibly abstract.  How are we to make sense of this?  Jesus says, “I am.  “I am food.  I am bread.  And I will keep you from hungering ever again.”  He says “don’t worry about miracles, don’t focus on them.  Focus on me.  I am life for you.”  And that’s what we need to understand.

The problem we have comes from not knowing what we really want or need.

The request of the people here is reasonable.  They’re poor, hungry.  He fed them.  They’d like this daily.  If we were to compare ourselves to these people, it would be on less dire grounds.  We’re not starving or desperately poor.  But we do live by the same sense, that there are things we need from life, from God, from others, from ourselves, that will make it all worthwhile.  How often do we say to ourselves, “If I only had this, or that, then all would be well.”  “If only these things were different, if only this blessing were mine, then I’d have what I need.”

It’s important to note that Jesus doesn’t dismiss these things as foolish, at least in this story.  After all, before ever getting into this conversation he feeds the crowd first.  The miracle came first.  Then he said, “But what you really need is not more bread.  You really need me.”

So that becomes our great question: what does it mean for us to really need Jesus more than anything else?  To receive him as the disciples did, as the great I AM from God, the one who answers all our deepest needs?

It all has to do with life, real life.  That’s what Jesus is offering here.  And it’s only the start for Jesus.

In all seven of the great I Am statements in John (and remember, today’s is the first), life is a part of the promise in one way or another.  Abundant life, he calls it in John 10 when he says “I am the Gate of the sheep.”  The gift Jesus offers in each of these is life, full life.  Abundant life.  In fact, the key to this seems to come in chapter 5, just before this whole episode we’re focusing on this month.  Jesus is involved in a dispute with some Jewish authorities who are unfavorably comparing him to Moses, a theme which we heard continue today.  And Jesus says this: “You search the scriptures because you think that is where you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.  Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”  (5:39-40)

It’s all there, he says, in the scriptures, which point to him.  Yet somehow we don’t know how to come to him to have life.  Somehow we’re settling for second best, for less than life.  So what is this life he offers?  How does this life look among us?  Or maybe we should ask, “what do we really need?  What truly sustains life?”

Of course the physical things: food, clothing, shelter.  Without these we would die.  But what makes life truly worth living?

Well, look at the things Jesus has given us in the Church, in our discipleship and we begin to understand.

He has given us the gift of community, people around us who make life worth living, people who support and pray for us, who are life to us.  Without the fellowship of the community of believers, would we know life?

He has given us the gift of forgiveness and restoration to God.  Regardless of whether or not we’re always ready to admit our brokenness or failings, the incredible gift of God to us in Jesus is the forgiveness of our sin, and the way to healing of our lives and of this world that this gives.  That in forgiving us God restores our relationships with each other and with God is a tremendous source of life.

And he has given us the gift of eternal life, life with God in relationship that begins now and continues with God even after we die, for we are brought into newness of life.  There is meaning and purpose to this life and a promise of life with such meaning and purpose in the world to come.  This is the greatest part of the gift of life Jesus gives.

And that, my friends, is our bread.  These gifts are life to us.  Without them, we’d starve.  It’s true that people can live without knowing this life from Jesus.  But we who know it would claim that knowing these gifts makes life abundant, powerful, different.  It feeds our heart, our soul, our spirit – in ways that nothing else can.

And that also doesn’t mean that we don’t care about people’s physical and emotional needs, the things that literally fill stomachs, quench thirst, provide shelter and clothing, provide love.  It’s pretty hard to think about abundant life if you’re starving to death, or oppressed and persecuted, or homeless.  The letter of James helps make that clear.

But it’s our job to take care of those things.  Jesus, before feeding the 5,000, tells the disciples to give the crowd something to eat.  In John’s version, he asks them what they should do.  That’s their job.  It’s our job.  As Jesus said in this very Gospel after the resurrection to Simon Peter: if you love me, feed my lambs.  So our job is to help people meet those needs.  And to point to Jesus.  Because once those needs are met, we can introduce the One who really gives life.

And that’s the point: in our love for each other and the world we make it a place where all physical needs are met, and in our love for God we become part of God’s love for the world in Jesus which gives life.  Abundant, rich life, in spite of any circumstances.

Maybe Jesus shouldn’t have fed the 5,000 at all, since it obviously distracted people from what he wanted them to know about him.

But of course he did it because his compassion compelled it.  And that’s our reason for working for justice and peace in this world in his name.  And these signs can mislead and distract, that’s true.  But they also can point us to the One who gives us, and the world, life.

Because that’s ultimately what we want to remember: there is nothing that gives us what we need that is comparable to life with our Lord Jesus.  He feeds and fills us in ways nothing else can.  It’s why we can go from here to make a difference in this world, because we’ve been fed abundant life by the risen Lord of all, and there is nothing else we need.  Our deepest hunger has been filled, and that gift is ours to share with the whole world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Christ is the bread of life, feeding all who hunger.  We share bread and feed the hungry at communion and at community meal; we share what we have been given.  When Jesus is involved, a little bit will go much farther than we expect.


Vicar Erik Doughty, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 17, year B; texts: Text: John 6:1-15

In the name of the Father, and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit; Amen.

First, a note of thanks.  This is my penultimate sermon as your vicar.  My final sermon and last day as vicar will be August 12.  Thanks to all of you; it has been a wonderful year.

This will be a short sermon.  I’d like you to consider it an appetizer, or the first course of a several-course meal.

Today we’re using a bread plate at communion that I got in Hebron, during my trip to the Holy Land.  On it is an image from today’s Gospel lesson, of loaves and fishes.  There are only 4 loaves showing on the plate, so I suppose one loaf is down in the basket, hidden by the others on top.  Come take a look at the ancient mosaic image after the liturgy.

I hope you like bread, because you’re going to be hearing about it for the next few weeks.  The lectionary turns from Mark to John (chapter 6 of John) and through the end of August we see Jesus with loaves and fishes, talking about the bread of life.  In John, Jesus performs a sign and then there’s discussion and explanation.  Today we get the actual sign, the “feeding of the 5000”.  If you don’t understand quite what’s going on, come back for the rest of the Sundays in August!

There are two “Eucharist-esque” meals in John’s gospel, meals with loaves and fishes, where the food is blessed and given.  One is here, not feeding the faithful but feeding the hungry.  The other similar meal occurs after Jesus’ resurrection, when he invites his faithless disciples (the ones who ran off at the first sign of trouble) to eat fish and bread on the shore of Galilee – a sign of forgiveness.  John’s Eucharist is not for the holy ones with a good understanding and pure doctrine; John’s Eucharist is for the hungry poor and some poor failures of disciples.

Jesus feeds them all himself, 5,000 people, 14 Mount Olives full, and he feeds them with the lunch one kid brought. This is the sign that begins the discussion; and we may never fully understand it ourselves, with weeks of sermons and study.

But we don’t have to understand bread; we just have to take bread, give thanks for bread, bless bread, share bread.  Whether at community meal when we share with those who hunger, or at our altar here where we share with those who hunger, the action is the same.  In both actions, Christ feeds the hungry, the uncomprehending, the faithful and the faithless, the sinners and saints.  Bread is not only for the holy; bread is for the hungry.

There is much more to say.  We’ll take another bite of the Word, and the Bread of Life, next week and through August.  But in our liturgy today, Christ will be bread for you, and bread will be Christ for you, and this body now gathered will go forth into the world, called to share the small amount we have with the hungry people in this neighborhood, knowing that we ourselves, poor excuses for disciples, have been fed and strengthened and graced and welcomed.  We offer what we have been given, that’s all.  But the presence and promise of Christ continues to feed hungry people from our offering that seems so small.

Friends, the glory of the Triune God is that life, and bread, and the bread of life, is for all who are hungry.  When Jesus is involved, even sharing your lunch becomes a sign of grace.  If you do not understand, then simply reach out.  Receive the bread of life, the promise of God, the Word made flesh.  Eat it.  Then go forth strengthened and forgiven, to share grace – and bread – with this neighborhood and the hungry world.

Mary Magdalene shows us the way home, that in Jesus we have our life and healing, that God has come to grace us and the world; she also models for us that we are sent from home to tell others.


Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, St. Mary Magdalene, Apostle; texts: John 20:1-2, 11-18; Psalm 73:23-28

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

I have to admit, I really like Mary Magdalene.  While the Gospels freely share many failings and much mental density found in the twelve male disciples, Mary comes off without a scratch.  In fact, she’s one of the most admirable characters in the Gospels.  All four Gospels agree that she was at the tomb of Jesus on Sunday morning, though they differ about which other women went with her.  Matthew, Mark, and John all say Mary Magdalene was also at the cross, and saw Jesus buried.  Apart from these references surrounding Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, there is one other mention of Mary Magdalene.  Luke, in chapter 8, lists her as one of Jesus’ female disciples, along with Joanna and Susanna.  And in every list of the women disciples save one, Mary Magdalene is listed first.  Any way you look at it, Mary Magdalene is a prominent, important disciple.

At least if you stick to the Holy Scriptures.  Once legend and even Church leaders got through with her, her reputation was less than stellar.  I was walking through the alley behind the church a couple weeks ago, coming back with someone from a lunch meeting at Midtown Global Market, and we were stopped by a visitor to one of our back alley neighbors.  He saw my collar and had a number of religious questions that he decided he’d avail himself of my presence to get off his chest.  At one point he said, “And what about Mary Magdalene?  She was a prostitute, right?”  I tried to explain that wasn’t the case, but he would have none of it.  He was convinced.  Given that our celebration of her feast day was coming up, I was already thinking about her, but his persistence got under my skin.

It’s the standard problem with Mary post-Scriptures.  It’s not just the prostitute misinterpretation.  There’s also the legend that she and Jesus had a marital relationship, even children, which was given all sorts of attention in the past years thanks to Dan Brown’s incredibly badly researched book The Da Vinci Code (which admittedly was a fun read, but the scholarship was horrid).  There’s a lot of misinformation on this apostle, this faithful disciple, and if you admire the person the Scriptures describe, it can be irritating.  But it also points to a problem that’s been stewing for the past weeks in our Gospel readings, the problem of how witnesses to Jesus are received in the world.

This is important for us to know, given that’s our call as well.  But let’s start by clearing some things up about Jesus’ good friend Mary Magdalene.

As I said, there are some details in Scripture about Mary.   But there’s a great deal of legend.  It’s pretty much worthless.

First, let’s address the prostitute question.  The connection of Mary Magdalene with a prostitute was first made by Pope Gregory the Great in 591 in a sermon.  He doesn’t have any more scriptural support than we can find today.  He confuses Mary of Bethany, who John tells us used a precious ointment on Jesus’ feet the week of his suffering, with the unnamed prostitute who comes to Jesus while he’s at a Pharisee’s house, earlier in his ministry, and washes his feet with her tears and with ointment, and he claims that both were Mary Magdalene.  Since then it’s become a common belief about Mary Magdalene, almost universal, that she was a reformed prostitute.

While it’s absolutely true that Jesus welcomed prostitutes, and in fact we know that all sinners were welcomed by Jesus to become new people, there’s no basis in Scripture for calling Mary a prostitute.  It’s simply sloppy, bad Scriptural work.

That story Pope Gregory referenced is at the end of Luke 7.  Then at the beginning of Luke 8 we find that list I mentioned where Luke names the women disciples, including Mary Magdalene.  There’s no reason in the text to assume she’s the unnamed woman of the previous chapter, any more than any of the other women on the list, and Luke specifically says that her healing from Jesus was that he drove out seven demons.  There is literally no reason to call her a prostitute.

And the other speculation over the centuries, fueled by those recent popular books, is that Mary and Jesus had an intimate and physical relationship.  On this the Bible is silent.  Everything said about Mary Magdalene in Scripture points to her as an important disciple, and as one close to Jesus.  As to whether they had more than that, or even married, as some legends have said, would be simply speculation and made up.  This isn’t to say it would be bad if it were true or anything – just that it’s strictly speculative, as much as if we debated the color of the robes Jesus wore.

But what is said in Scripture about Mary Magdalene is huge.  That’s what we want to know.

First, she is acknowledged by the Gospels and the Church as the first apostle, the apostle to the apostles.  Whoever else was at that tomb, Mary Magdalene went there.  And because she didn’t leave, because she had no idea what to do except stay, she was the first to see her risen Lord.  And then she went and told the other disciples.  And in a culture which didn’t accept the testimony of women in court because they were thought unreliable, for the early Church to base its formative story on the witness of a woman must have been detrimental to their preaching.  Yet it’s in all four Gospels, and that suggests she had a prominence in the early Church perhaps even more than most of the apostles.

Second, she was a disciple of Jesus and a woman and that’s important.  (As it is that he had other women disciples, too.)  Rabbis did not typically have women disciples, particularly wandering rabbis.  Women weren’t expected to learn the things about the faith that men were, to study Hebrew, and so on.  And it is certain that women who wandered with groups of men would not be considered respectable.  Yet Jesus has these women disciples, and clearly an important relationship with Mary.  They’re treated by Jesus as equal to men.  And Mary is foremost among them.

And third, what Luke says her ailment really was, demon possession, tells us a great deal about what Jesus meant to her.  Jesus literally gave her life.  He took her mind, torn about, broken, filled with pain, and restored her to her right mind.  Think of any mental illness we know today, let alone demon possession, and imagine the joy of having your own thoughts back, of being alive again.  It would be like resurrection.
But Jesus also gave her something more.  He gave her a home, a family.  Possessed people were shunned, outcast, sent away from their families.  They were torn from all the ties that gave them life and joy.  When Jesus restored Mary, he gave her both home and family with him.  We know this because she’s still there at the end.  It’s the only place for her to be.

And she gives us this gift: that we, too, can see our home in Jesus.

That’s the most powerful part of Mary Magdalene’s story, that Jesus becomes her home, her life.  And her witness to us is that is our gift from our Lord, too.

St. Augustine famously put it this way: “Our hearts are restless, till they find their rest in thee.”  Restless until they find home.  For Mary, the healing that she found in the Son of God brought her home, gave her life when she didn’t have it.  And in running to tell the others, to tell us, she’s inviting us to the same.

Like Mary, we have healing of mind and heart from Jesus, and Jesus is our true home.  The more any of us reflect on the reality of the grace and forgiveness we receive from God, the more we inevitably recognize Mary’s attitude toward Jesus and her need to be near him.  As the psalmist today sang, “It is good to be near God.”  When we pray, read Scripture, worship, gather with other believers, we are given a palpable sense of home, a sense which deepens the more that all those things center around the undying love of God for the world.

But Mary’s experience teaches us a harder thing today.  She also shows us that we don’t get to stay at home.

You notice that Jesus says to Mary after they greet each other, “Do not hold on to me . . . but go and tell my brothers.”  She wants to cling to him, and why not?  He’s her beloved Lord and Master, he gave her life when she had none, and now when she thought him dead, his body stolen, she sees him alive in front of her.  He calls her by name, “Mary,” and she knows him.  I’m sure she’d rather have stayed by his side for the rest of his life.

But that’s not possible, not on this Easter morning, and not for the rest of her life.  She becomes an apostle in that moment, one who is sent to tell the Good News.  She can’t stay with Jesus, because she needs to go and tell others.  And as far as we know, that’s her role for the rest of her life.

For we who are baptized, it’s also our role, our call.  We can’t just stay here in the comfort of God’s love.  We’re sent out to get others home.  But as we consider what that means for us, we should also notice the cost to Mary over the centuries, and to other women so called.

All the disciples of Jesus were told they would face persecution for witnessing, and as far as we can tell, most of them did.  Many died.  But half of all who eventually followed Jesus were discredited and disowned by the Church itself for nearly two millennia.

The early evidence is that both women and men were leaders in the early Church, co-workers, ministers according to Paul.  Surely Mary the apostle was among them.  But by the end of the 1st century the evidence shows that women were gradually removed from leadership in the Church.  Statements were made, policies established which tried to claim that only men could truly serve as leaders.  Efforts were made to claim that since the twelve were men, that settled the matter.

The only conclusion that makes sense is that human nature and conflict with culture won out.  Not only would it have been detrimental in a patriarchal culture to keep claiming the first witnesses of the resurrection were women, having women in leadership would have been so counter-cultural in places that it would have met great resistance.

The Church didn’t edit the Gospels to get the women witnesses out.  I suppose we can give the second century some credit for that.  But women as ordained leaders, pastors, bishops, missionaries, were non-existent a century after Mary Magdalene became the first apostle.  And it took nearly 1900 years to undo that damage.

So the question I have, which I suppose can’t be answered, is this: was this attitude toward women behind the way Mary eventually was treated by the Church?  If you’re interested in keeping women out of the priesthood, if you identify women and sexuality as the root of original sin, if you think women must not be teachers of the Church, and you’ve got the persistent Scriptural witness that at least Mary Magdalene, not to mention Phoebe and Junia and others from the New Testament, was a prominent leader, maybe you try to bring her down a peg.

Make her a prostitute, diminish her luster, treat her as a fallen woman.  We’ll never know, but since the sixth century she has been the poster child for “fallen” women instead of a model for disciples everywhere.  Whatever the intent, the actual reality is pretty clear.

And that seems like something we should be aware of.  We might not face persecution and death.  But we might still be discredited, disrespected, treated as out of our minds, for standing for the Gospel in our world and lives, for trying to make a difference.  People might not want to hear what we have to say, accept what we are trying to do.  Even before the later centuries, Mary was discounted on Easter Sunday by the male disciples.  They thought she was just imagining things as a woman.  We’ve all seen it today.  If you can’t prove someone wrong, just slander them.  Treat them as outsiders.  If you say it enough times it must be true.

So from Mary we find a couple warnings.  First, a warning that as we are sent out it might not go well for us.  But as a Church she also stands as a warning that we not discredit and discount those who witness to Jesus among us who are different from us, or whom the culture doesn’t approve.  That we do not become part of the attack on disciples of Christ that the world is making.

But the wonder is that in spite of all that has been said, Mary Magdalene still shines through Scripture and becomes a model for us.

She’s a model for us of finding home in our Lord, and having the courage to leave that home and be sent out to tell the world the good news.  It may not be easy for us.  It may mean embarrassment, ridicule.  It may mean that people won’t want to be with us or hear us.  It may mean a struggle with our culture, our society.

But when you’ve found your real home, what does it matter?  When the Lord and Savior of the universe claims you and loves you and calls you by name, what does what anyone else says about you matter?  And when he sends us out to bring others home, how can we hold back, knowing what we know, knowing what Mary knew?  That’s what Mary’s joyful discipleship teaches us.  Even though we are sent out on the road to serve our Lord, we do not go alone.  We are always at home, always at Jesus’ side.  And through us, even more will find this joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

In Jesus we see the true reflection of what it means to be a human being, to stand in love with God and the creation, and to be truly ourselves as we are created and called to be, no matter the cost or consequences.


Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 15, year B; texts: Mark 6:14-29; Amos 7:7-15

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

One of the challenges Christians have with the Bible is that it is “other” than us.  It’s a set of texts from a completely different time, two to three thousand years from our time, written by a series of authors whose life and world view were shaped and formed by completely different experiences than ours, and written to cultures that are as foreign to our culture as if they were from another planet.  And yet we read it regularly, not only in our weekly worship of God but in our daily lives, and we expect somehow that it will speak to us with God’s voice, that somehow we will be led to the grace of God which Jesus embodied and lives in the world.  This makes for difficult struggles sometimes.  If you’ve ever read a portion of Scripture and set it down and thought, “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this,” you know what I mean.

Of course there are ways around this.  Study of the different times and cultures, study of word meanings and history, all these things help us enter the text with eyes different from our 21st century minds and lives.  Sometimes that helps.  But the thing is, we claim that these ancient texts are the written Word of the Triune God for us and for our lives, and that seems a more powerful claim than historical references and understandings can make.  Somehow, this Word is supposed to speak to us, for us, about us, it is supposed to challenge us, comfort us, instruct us, it is supposed to point to our Lord Jesus Christ and his grace in our lives and the life of the world.  Simply understanding historical context or other such things doesn’t necessarily bridge the gap between the written Word of God and us.  To put it simply, no matter how much we know about Herod Antipas and John the Baptist, and Herodias and Herod Philip, and even Herod the Great, we still need to know what at all this Gospel reading today has to say to us.  Otherwise all we have today is some interesting and rather sordid history, and we can move on to our Sunday afternoon activities untouched and unchanged.

There’s a theological concept that Christians have long held about God’s law that might be of help here.  Christian theologians sometimes will compare God’s law to a mirror which tells only the truth about us.  We hold God’s law up to our lives, in our face, and what we see is the true state of things.  So, for example, we can take one of the Ten Commandments, hold it up to our lives and see what it reveals, where we fall short, where we’ve lived up to it.  It helps us see the truth of our lives.

I wonder if we could adapt this approach to today’s readings.  None of us likely will ever have experiences like Amos or John, speaking God’s truth boldly to rulers or presidents, and suffering the consequences.  None of us likely will ever be a ruler or head of state that makes rash promises or is threatened by prophets of God.  In that sense, these stories have little or nothing to do with us.  But perhaps there’s some truth in each of these characters which reflects a truth about ourselves, and which might help us hear what God would have us hear about our lives, the world, and our call as children of God.

So, let’s first lift up Herod, then, and see what we might see.

First, though, the historical background would be helpful as a start.  The short story is that this is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, who was the king when Jesus was born.  Herod Antipas is not technically a king, though Mark calls him such, he’s a tetrarch, who rules over one chunk of his father’s former kingdom, under the permission of the Roman emperor.

Herod the Great, his father, had a number of sons, and a number of wives, and murdered many of his sons and even some of his wives.  One of his murdered sons, Aristobulus, had a daughter named Herodias.  She married her uncle, Herod Philip, one of Herod the Great’s other sons.  That alone was problematic.  But Herod Antipas, of our story today, seduced his brother’s wife, who yes, was also his niece, and she married him, while she was still married to his brother, her other uncle.  It’s an ugly story.

John the Baptist properly denounced these family values and said what everyone else was thinking, that this was wrong in God’s eyes in more than one way.  Herod Antipas then threw John in jail.  Now we’re caught up.

But look at what Mark says about Herod and what he thinks about John: He fears John, because he recognizes him to be righteous and holy.  In other words, he knows at a deep level that John speaks truth from God, including the truth about his illicit marriage to his niece/sister-in-law.

But Mark also says that Herod “liked to listen to John,” though he often was “perplexed” when he did.  We almost get the impression that Herod might have gone down to the jail cells and talked with John from time to time during this period of imprisonment.  So he’s jailed him, but he respects, fears, likes, and honors John.

And yet, when he traps himself by his rash promise to Herodias’ daughter, this powerful tetrarch develops a case of powerlessness.  He knows what’s right, that seems clear.  He knows John’s value and who he is.  He even likes him.  But he can’t bring himself to act in the right way.  He acts instead in an evil way.

So that’s our first mirror: how are we Herod Antipas?  How often do we know the right thing to do but out of fear or shame or cowardice we do the wrong thing?  He didn’t want his guests to think ill of him.  He didn’t want to lose face at his party.  How often is this us?  Where our fear of what others might think or do to us keeps us from following God with our lives?  Where our fear of the truth about our lives leads us to want to cover it up?  And not only keeps us from doing the loving thing, but even leads us to do evil things, wrong things?

Herod Antipas seems uncomfortably familiar.

Now let’s lift up Herodias, too easily the villain of this story.

Clearly she’s meant by Mark to be blamed for this beheading: Herod promises the moon, her daughter gets the promise, but she asks Herodias what to do.  Herodias wants John’s head.

But consider why: John has publicly humiliated her.  In speaking the truth about her bigamous relationship with two of her uncles, and speaking it publicly for the court (and probably more worrisome, the commoners) to hear, John exposed her.  Again, everyone already knew the truth.  But having someone walk around denouncing you publicly can’t be an enjoyable experience.

So she lashes out, and when she has a chance to destroy John, she takes it.  At a rational level she must know it won’t change the truth.  Or stop the talking.  But it doesn’t matter.  He must be silenced permanently.

Here’s our second mirror: when do we look at ourselves and Herodias looks back at us?  When have we been told the truth about who we are or what we’ve done and we were so embarrassed, or humiliated by it that instead of recognizing the truth we lashed out at the messenger?  For we who are not public figures more often than not this happens in our intimate relationships.  Someone has the audacity to call us on our misbehavior and instead of asking forgiveness we’re overwhelmed by the embarrassment and strike out against them.  Clearly not to have them beheaded.

But this attitude toward the truth that Herodias displays, this reaction to embarrassment, hits awfully close to home.

Next, I think we can consider John and Amos as one mirror.

Both are prophets of God, both speak to rulers, both are told to be quiet in one way or another.  And significantly, neither backs down.  Amos reminds King Jeroboam’s lackey that he isn’t on the royal payroll, that he’d rather be back home in the southern kingdom tending his flocks, but that God told him to do it, so he has to do it.  John presumably persisted in his preaching until Herod had little choice but to jail him.

And this becomes the interesting mirror for us: is this ever our experience?  And it’s related to last week’s story of disciples being sent out.  When in our daily lives are we called to speak the truth for God, and what does that mean for us?

Do we ever feel the sense Amos felt, that we are compelled to make a difference, to speak up for justice and righteousness, regardless of cost?  Do we ever feel the sense John felt, that the world was and is a disaster and it needs to be cleaned up to prepare for God’s coming into the world?  Or do we even ever feel the grace the twelve felt when they were sent out two by two to heal and cast out demons?  Do we feel we are empowered to do the same ministry Jesus did, or do we imagine that job must be someone else’s?

And what about the truth when we have to face it?  Do we stand firm, regardless of consequences, or find other ways like Herodias and Herod?  Surely Amos and John must have been tempted to back down or change their tune, but they didn’t.  And in speaking God’s truth to a world which needed to hear it, these two who really had no power ended up powerfully changing things, whereas the power people in these stories were powerless to stop God’s truth.

By now you may have noticed the odd absence of Jesus in our discussion so far, and perhaps a similar absence in the Gospel story.  It’s a fair question, though: what does the Son of God have to do with any of this?

Well, for one, Jesus is the source of our sending.  Amos and John presumably had a direct sense from God about what they were called to be and do, and so, too, we are given our orders by our Lord and Savior.  Like the disciples who were just sent out by twos a few verses earlier, so we in our baptism are given the call by Jesus to go out and proclaim the coming reign of God, and to bring the grace of God.  So Jesus gives us assignments similar to Amos and John.  The good news about that is that we know exactly what we are to do, like Amos and John.  We have a clarity of call.

But second, we also have a model for how to do this call, how to live.  Jesus, more than Amos and John, models the life of a child of God, standing in a broken, evil world with the grace and love of God, no matter the consequences.  Jesus doesn’t call us or even model for us the fiery preaching of John and Amos, though some of his followers might have that gift and that call.  Jesus rather models for us a life of forgiveness and grace, a life where we are known by the love we have for each other and the world, a life where we stand for the transforming love of God in our words and in our actions, no matter what.

And last and most important, Jesus gives us the power to be who are meant to be, who we are called to be.  The whole telling of the episode of John’s beheading comes from Herod now wondering who Jesus is.  But he wonders because of what Jesus’ followers are accomplishing.  Quite unexpectedly, especially after Jesus’ failure at Nazareth, the sent disciples return with amazing stories of how they were able to cast out demons, heal in Jesus’ name, preach repentance.  They were so impressive that news reached Herod not only of Jesus’ preaching and power but his disciples’ preaching and power.  And he wondered where that all came from.

And so we are promised to be effective in the world.  I sometimes think we underestimate the power of the Spirit we are given to be new people and faithful witnesses to God’s work in Jesus in the world.  It’s so strong that we ought to be making people wonder where it comes from, like Herod did.  There’s no reason we can’t expect abilities beyond what we think we have.

And certainly we can expect the courage, wisdom and grace we need to act differently than Herod and Herodias, to face uncomfortable truths about ourselves with confession and trust in God’s forgiveness.  To be able to face such truths and find a way to become, with the Spirit’s power, different people, holy people.  Just as we certainly can expect the same courage, wisdom and grace to boldly be God’s servants as Amos and John were, no matter the consequences.

In the end, the mirror we want to look into is the face of Jesus.

That’s the true gift of the Scriptures, the written Word of God.  When they lead us to Jesus, they also lead us to our call.  We are made Christs ourselves in baptism, and when the Triune God looks at us, what we look like to God is in fact little Jesuses, little Christs, anointed ones in the world.  That’s what God’s Word tells us.  And that’s also our model to which we aspire.

And the remarkable thing about Jesus, as we saw with his disciples in this sixth chapter of Mark, is that when he sends us, or any disciples, out, he changes them to be able to be who they are sent to be, called to be, created to be.  In other words, he changes us so that when we look in the mirror we actually see our true selves, the only truth that really matters, beloved children of God who are loved and who are called to love.
That’s a power that makes the powers of this world powerless, and a grace that, when shared by all of the graced children of God, can change the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen