13th July 2003
Well, gruesome or what! A head being brought into a party and presented to one of the dancers on a serving plate, how revolting! (Mark 6:14-29) This is a story of extreme violence and total disregard for the rights of a prisoner. It is also the story of a leader being seduced and then making a promise he deeply regrets within minutes. Herod could of course have added after Salome’s outrageous request “anything sensible, I meant!” and told the girl and her mother to come up with something else. But he didn’t. To keep face he has the head of a preacher he finds annoying cut off and brought in to the banquet.
There is a deep hatred being presented here, a pathological hatred. We have such a resistance to a message that it leads to a despicable act, to a vicious response. But later on, with this flash back to a day he may well have wanted to forget, it also looks like Herod is being haunted by a ghost in his conscience. He is spooked by an error of judgement and weakness having been exploited. So he sees Jesus as being John’s ghost, or even John having defied what was an irrefutable death and come back to life. This implies that deep down Herod saw special qualities in John and thought that having him beheaded was not a wise move, was even a move against God.
There is a sense in which Herod’s own head was brought in with John the Baptist’s on that platter. On one level to have a holy man killed is to invite coals of fire down on your head. On another level,
Herod was certainly a violent man and would not have flinched at ruthlessly dispatching someone in his way or at his mercy, so that John was in prison implies that annoying as he found him, he was frightened of him. If we could put Herod, Herodias and Salome in the psychiatrist’s chair we may find deeply damaged, deeply brutalised characters as is so often the case when anyone acts in extreme ways. And an inability to respect the dignity of another is often a reflection of a lack of dignity within ourselves. Those who are at peace within themselves will behave with grace. Those in internal turmoil will batter and bruise everything they come into contact with: the proverbial bull in the china shop.
The first reading from the book of Amos (7:7-15) gave us that wonderful image of the plumb line. I was at a governors meeting at Temple Moor School on Thursday evening and they have the builders in, constructing a new sports hall. The young people are apparently fascinated by the building process and sit on the grass watching the men at work. It is the foreman’s job to keep on top of the standards. Surveyors and architects also monitor the quality. A plumb line is used to ensure that the walls are straight vertically. It is of course a simple device which consists of a piece of cord with a weight dangling from the end. It relies on the simple law of gravity to give a straight line and when held next to a wall being built shows instantly whether it is straight or wonky.
Watching such a construction operation in his own day the Old Testament prophet Amos sees a parallel. If he holds a spiritual plumb line against the rulers of his day, will they be found to be straight and sound or crooked and shoddily built? The answer he comes to is the latter. They are spiritually wonky and do not measure up to the standard he applies, so doom is prophesied against them. The response to this prophetic ministry is the age old tale: rejection and defensive hostility. They do not take kindly to it!
No one enjoys having painful things said to them or about them. It is easy to place ourselves in the role of Amos or even John the Baptist; to interpret painful words as the product of damaged people hostilly rejecting a message. There are occasions when that will be the case. But there is a warning in this passage to hold the plumb line next to ourselves whenever we hold it up to anyone else. And what is more only be prepared to hold it to others if we are also prepared to hold it to ourselves. The alternative is that we find ourselves joining the ranks of Herod and Herodias colluding to sever John the Baptist’s head, and Amaziah who told Amos to be quiet and go away! When we join their ranks we may not plot murder, but words can be vicious and wound just like a sword! And as we came to see Herod’s head on the platter too, so by thrashing out we reveal the turmoil we want to run away from.
There is wise counsel here for our Church of England as it gets into a real steam over contentious issues. As the editor of The Church Times wrote in The Independent yesterday (12 July 2003), if we bring a severed head into a banquet we will find that everyone loses their appetite for the meal. The severed head he had in mind was that of Jeffrey John who has just withdrawn from being Bishop of Reading. Responding to those we differ with in a vicious manner is not good for mission, it does not show us in a healthy light. Interestingly News Quiz on Radio 4 included a comment about the changing meaning of words. ‘Christian’, it was said, used to mean ‘caring and compassionate’ and now it means ‘narrowness and intolerance’! We can argue with the joke, but it is a dangerous image to acquire and imperils the dream that Christianity will once again capture the imagination of our nation.
Responding to difference with viciousness and bad temper also makes having a sensible debate so much more difficult. The viciousness implies that we have a high degree of irrationality present, that there are some troubled minds displaying their inner turmoil in their actions. There has been some unhealthy behaviour in recent weeks.
The plumb line dangles next to us all. This doesn’t say that we shouldn’t say anything to one another, raise our concerns or call to account. But it does remind us that we are not exempt from that process ourselves and that should temper the way we go about it. Warnings about specks and planks come to mind.
© Ian Black 2003