Forgive, (yourself too)

This was a rather gruesome gospel reading this morning and a rather grueling one to get through.

We read of so many evil things occurring, the intrigue, the murder of Jesus’ earthly mentor, the presentation of a bodiless head placed upon a platter and given to Solome, the daughter of the king’s wife.

These are the players.

Herod Antipas, a leader of Israel installed by Rome to keep the peace and ensure Rome is not challenged by a sometime riotous population.

Herodias, Herod’s current wife and ex-wife to Herod’s brother Philip.

Solome, the daughter of Herodias.

The guests of Herod attending his birthday party and John the Baptist.

Those are the people in this morning’s reading from Mark.

Do you notice anyone who is not there?

Anyone important we might be missing in this story?

Jesus.

Jesus is not present in this morning’s gospel story, and I think this is the only time he does not play a part in Mark’s telling of Jesus’ life and ministry.

Keep in mind that it seems John played an important part in Jesus’ ministry.

He was there in the beginning for Jesus.

He baptized Jesus.

They were together when the angels whisked him away to the wilderness following that baptism.

And perhaps even more signaling the importance of John to Jesus, Jesus did not begin his ministry until after John’s arrest, saying “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

John’s arrest fulfilled something, became a reason to begin his own ministry; a light switch was switched on and the light of Christ became known to the humanity he was given to save.

And yet, in this story, Jesus is seemingly absent.

These are players acting outside the influence of and away from the presence of God’s only son.

They are scheming.

They are paranoid.

They hold grudges.

They murder.

They are entertained and are entertaining.

They are conniving.

They are joyful.

They dance.

They frolic.

They delight.

They are every bit of their human, imperfect selves.

The rundown here is Herodias holds a grudge against John and convinces Herod to arrest him because he said their marriage was illegal.

Now, before we turn this into misappropriating blame as we sometimes do to Eve who convinced Adam to eat of the fruit, we must remind ourselves that both men, certainly Adam, and most certainly Herod, had the agency and knowledge to not do what they did.

Adam was already warned by God away from the fruit and Herod was king.

He did not need to listen to what his wife was asking him to do.

But, as we know, Adam did bite the fruit and Herod did arrest John.

And it makes little sense as to why he ordered John’s arrest because he actually feared John; he knew John was righteous, he knew John was holy so why arrest him at all?

Perhaps he had John arrested to keep him close, keep him safe even, in a place where Herodias could not scheme to have John killed by other means.

John might have served as a sort of court philosopher as well.

Herod liked to listen to John.

He didn’t always know what John was talking about, his words sometimes flew above his head, but Herod liked to listen to John preach.

Yet even in the relative safety of Herod’s prison, John was not safe.

And on the night of Herod’s birthday, when Herod called all the VIPs and courtiers of the land to court to celebrate this special occasion, he watched Solome dance the Dance of the Seven Veils.

The poet Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy describes this dance in his poem “Solome” from “The Daughter of Herodias” thusly:

Her sweet arms were unfolded on the air,

They seemed like floating flowers the most fair—

White lilies the most choice;

And in the gradual bending of her hand

There lurked a grace that no man could withstand;

Yea, none knew whether hands, or feet, or voice,

Most made his heart rejoice.

The veils fell round her like thin coiling mists

Shot through by topaz suns, and amethysts,

And rubies she had on;

And out of them her jewelled body came,

And seemed to all quite like a slender flame

That curled and glided, and that burnt and shone

Most fair to look upon.

This was a dance of beauty and intent.

Solome’s dance was beautiful, and she danced intending to draw Herod in, to have him pleased so much by her movements that he would promise her anything.

And so, she danced; and so, he did.

And she asked for the head of the man Herod admired.

She asked for John’s head on a platter.

This saddened Herod, or, according to Mark, Herod was deeply grieved.

Yet he felt obligated to act, he felt he could not break his word because he already promised to give Solome anything she wanted and Herod could not break his oath in front of his guests.

After all, he had his honor to uphold and in so doing ordered the death of this man he admired so much.

There is a disconnect when honor, or the perception of such, is valued over life.

So, there we have the subject of so many bits of art, the head of a man, Jesus’ friend and cousin being presented to the king’s daughter so that she in turn might give it to her mother.

And now do we recognize the absence of Jesus?

Keep in mind, this story is told as part of a flashback, Mark is reminding us of what happened to John when Herod and his advisors were talking about Jesus, wondering just who he was.

And like Peter and the disciples, they go over some options.

Some say he is a prophet.

Some say he is Elijiah.

Some say he is John the baptizer, having been raised from the dead.

That is the option Herod settles on.

Jesus must be John raised from the dead.

How tormented must Herod have been, how confused about the murder he ordered to be committed in the name of his honor to not see Jesus for who he was.

The more obvious answer, this worker of miracles, this healer of the sick, this one who raises up the dead is not Jesus, the Son of Man, but is John, the man Herod had murdered.

John is back from the dead to torment Herod once more.

This betrays a certain amount of guilt to me.

Herod’s judgement is now made askew by the discomfort of what he did, his reason has been taken over by paranoia.

He is unable to forgive his own actions, the vision of the man’s head on that platter haunts him; his vision is clouded, he is unable to see past his crime, he is unable to envision himself ever being forgiven.

Herod is unable to see Jesus for who he is because, as does this in story, Herod lacks understanding of the presence of Jesus.

Herod, who saw clearly his sense of honor and need to hold true to the oaths he made, cannot see Jesus as the Son of Man, the very Son of God.

You know, I am pretty sure not one of us had ordered the head of one of our rivals to placed on the head of a platter.

No matter how poorly that game of golf might have gone or even if our opponent might have cheated a bit in tennis or on a math exam, I am almost certain none of us has ordered our rivals to spend time in our homemade basement dungeons.

First, dungeons are expensive to construct, what with the cost of materials and then employing a dungeon master even on a part time basis, the money adds up.

And secondly, and more seriously, we all hold some faith in Jesus.

Without Jesus, we can act as Herod did, twisted up and tormented; he imagined John the baptizer is walking the earth once more.

But with Jesus, we know we can be forgiven.

I am not talking about imaginary dungeons here, I am talking about true forgiveness.

We only need to ask forgiveness and through our atonement we will make things right.

We will apologize to those we hurt.

AND!

We will change our behaviors.

We will not be beholden to such things as false pride and false honor when those might be the things that remove us from our paths of reform and making things right.

When we do the work of forgiveness, not when we just say “Golly, sorry about that!” when we not just apologize but ask to be forgiven, God responds.

And God responds with clarity and a path back to Jesus.

Or, rather, a path that leads us to understand Jesus was with us all along.

When we act as if we are separate from Jesus, or Jesus is not perceived as being part of the story, we hold fast to such imperfect things as a sense of honor or a need for validation in keeping oaths that would have us do wrong or evil things to those we admire or even love.

And still, forgiveness is hard.

Not only must we seek forgiveness from those we harmed, we must forgive ourselves as well.

Seek out forgiveness so that we can make amends; forgive ourselves so that we can understand Jesus lives within us and we are made holy.

Forgive ourselves so we might understand that it is not our sins that will be raised from the dead so much as we are promised the light of eternal life.

Understanding that fact is of utmost importance if we are amend our ways and keep them changed for the better.

It can be easy to be hard on ourselves by not forgiving ourselves or claiming we do not deserve forgiveness, but the difficulty in performing the work to heal relationships and heal ourselves goes hand in hand in healing a world that might sometimes skew towards anger and disruption.

Ultimately, it is on us not to see in others the sins they might have committed but to forgive when asked for forgiveness and to forgive ourselves when we seek the same

Ultimately is on us to seek out Jesus; Jesus who walked the earth and paves for us a path toward forgiveness and the clarity to see it was he who was a part of the story and present all along.

Amen.