What Jesus is Not — Saturday Sermon from the Sidelines

7 Pentecost B 2021; read Mark 6:14-29.

Today’s gospel reading should come with a content warning. We have graphic and explicit violence. We have visual depictions of torture and decapitation. We have misogynistic stereotypes and bias. We have, according to some interpreters, strong sexual content, including the sexualization of a minor. We have the use of a minor in the commission of homicide. We have alcohol consumption and abuse. And those are the warnings you might expect.

More than that, we witness a performance of toxic masculinity. We have rampant abuse of political power. We have a detailed description of elitist privilege. We have manipulation, court intrigue, deception, and stupidity. Public perception of power and position is a higher value than the preservation of a human life. People simply are pawns in one another’s prestige games.

We witness the cynical operations of the domination system that kept Galileans under the Imperial Roman thumb. We see leaders who are craven, crass, crude, criminal, and cruel.

In short, we observe business as usual in the world of power, privilege, position, and property.

We conclude the reading by declaring that “this is the Gospel of the Lord.” We respond, perhaps with some confusion if we’re actually present and listening, “Thanks be to God?”

Why in the world does the writer of Mark’s gospel include this text in the “Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”? And why in the world do we read this text in our public worship?

Herod is everything Jesus is not. That’s the point the writer of Mark’s gospel wants to make here. And that’s the point of our reflection together today. Herod is everything Jesus is not.

“Where’s the good news in Mark 6:14-29?” C. Clifton Black asks in his workingpreacher.org commentary. “There may be none. The drive shafts of corrupted politics torque this birthday party. Everywhere greed and fear whisper: in Herod’s ear, among Galilee’s high and mighty, behind the curtain between mother and daughter, in a dungeon prison. When repentance is preached to this world’s princes,” Black concludes, “do not expect them to relinquish their power, however conflicted some may be.”

Because this is the main point, the current message is Part One of a two-part reflection. I know it’s summer in the Church in the northern hemisphere. Thinking that people will be in worship two Sundays in a row and paying enough attention to connect two Sunday’s worth of reflection is asking a lot in some quarters. But that’s the deal in Mark’s gospel.

I don’t write it, as they say, I only report it (well, you know what I mean).

The “Herod” in this account is Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great. The use of the dynastic name, “Herod,” can cause confusion among readers of the text. We are not talking about the terrible tyrant of Matthew’s infancy stories who tries to manipulate the Magi and who orders the Slaughter of the Innocents. No, the “Herod” in Mark’s account is Herod Antipas.

Antipas was the man who wanted to be king but never got the chance. Certainly, one of the reasons the writer of Mark’s gospel uses the title of “king” for Antipas is to do some historical nose-tweaking of Antipas and his successors. Of course, as readers of the gospel account, we also know who the real King of the Jews is, and we shall see how that plays out in the later chapters of the gospel of Mark.

Herod is everything Jesus is not.

In our reading, we see what a weak pretender to the throne looks like in comparison with Jesus, the real King. This comparison foreshadows a similar contrast between Jesus and Pilate in the passion account in the Gospel of Mark. We also see the depths of human cruelty expressed in the careless privilege of the elites and the real risks involved when one is perceived as a threat to that privilege.

Mark chapter 6 contains “The Tale of Two Tables.” In this week’s reading, we witness the bloody birthday banquet in the palace of Antipas. Next week we get the Feeding of the Five Thousand in the wilderness. Well, we don’t really get the whole feeding story next week, but we will need to refer to it.

In any event, these seem to be companion texts, designed for edifying comparison and contrast. Herod dines. John dies. End of story. Jesus dies. We dine. Beginning of story. I don’t think the writer of Mark’s gospel missed this theological opportunity.

The table where cruelty is the point is offset and opposed by the table where service is the center. John the Baptizer is served up as a sacrifice to the casual cruelty of the powerful, the privileged, and the positioned. The bloody platter is a meal where death triumphs once again. Jesus prepares us to come to the table where he serves us with himself that we might have life in abundance.

Herod is everything Jesus is not.

The writer of Mark’s gospel is challenging disciples – then and now – to discern under which table we are putting our feet, the banquet table of Herod Antipas or the table of abundant life where Jesus is both the host and the meal.

It should be clear from the text of Mark’s gospel that this will inevitably be a political choice. It will be a choice between kings – the pretender and the Messiah. That choice faced the first listeners to Mark’s gospel, and it faces us as well.

We white, western, Enlightenment Christians have often resisted the notion that politics should find a natural place in our pulpits. In fact, that resistance to politics in the pulpit is, I fear, a sign of our allegiance to the domination system which guarantees our privilege, power, and position. That resistance is not a sign of our piety or deep spirituality. That resistance to politics in the pulpit is a mark of Herod’s table, not Jesus’ table.

“How might Jesus’ words inform a theology of political witness of the church?” Esau McCauley asks in Reading While Black. “Jesus shows that those Christians who have called out injustice are following in the footsteps of Jesus” (page 57).

Politics in the pulpit is not an irritant or an option. Indeed, it is required. When we affirm our baptismal covenants in the Rite of Confirmation, we promise to “…live among God’s faithful people; hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper; proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed; serve all people following the example of Jesus; and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”

Unfortunately, many ELCA Lutherans get to about the halfway point of these vows and decide that half a loaf is better than none. Too often we white Christians are pretty much everything that Jesus is not.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this text for us today is that some of us seem to celebrate Herod’s style of “leadership” as the image of a “real leader.” Herod is craven, crass, crude, criminal, and cruel. He wants to rule everyone but cannot even govern himself.

That sounds to me like a description of numerous public leaders in the United States today – many of whom are celebrated by certain sectors of the Christian tribe.

John names what everyone knows – that Antipas has broken the law and violated cultural and religious norms. More than that, he, and his household, assert that this arrangement is normal and good. Nothing to see here, they say. Move along and tend your business. Everything is fine.

But John declares that everything is not fine. No amount of power, position, and privilege can change the facts of the case. John is, therefore, faced with a choice. Be quiet or be killed. By the time we get to our narrative, that choice no longer exists for John. The question is not if he will die but only when and how.

Herod is everything Jesus is not.

When Truth confronts Power, the response is violent rage. We can see that in the character of Herodias in our text. We can see that as well in the characters of the Jerusalem elites who make sure that Jesus is silenced after he calls out the charade going on in Jerusalem and in the Temple. Such Truth-speakers have, on average, relatively short life spans – especially in authoritarian regimes.

I want to connect this to current conversations about anti-racism, critical race theory, history, and the like. We can, I think, leave the details of critical race theory aside. The real issue is that CRT speaks the Truth about Power. It simply asks, “What really happened? How did things get this way?” It is, like many academic disciplines, an attempt to get a glimpse of the “man behind the curtain.”

Therefore, we should not be surprised when the response is white rage, verging on homicidal insanity. Certain commentators have mused that perhaps critical race theorists should be erased from the conversation somehow. And certain of those commentators are not all that choosy about how the erasure happens. Short of that, state legislatures are erasing the conversation itself from school curricula in order to sustain the overarching mythologies of white supremacy and white innocence in those curricula.

Herod is everything Jesus is not.

Perhaps this is part of why John’s execution is in Mark’s account in such exquisite detail. We can kill in order to sustain self-serving superstition, or we can die in opposition to it. There’s a topic for discipleship discernment, eh?

What we learn is that Jesus is the compassionate shepherd – not the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Stay tuned for more next week.

On Bullshit and the Baptizer — Throwback Thursday Books

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit,” writes philosopher Harry Frankfurt. “Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.” Frankfurt’s slim volume, entitled On Bullshit, is one of those few works that makes me proud to have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. At least one of us in the guild has produced something useful and of substance.

Harry Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. He wrote this little gem in 2005.

Frankfurt is convinced that most of us think we can recognize bullshit when we see it, and that we are quite mistaken. As a result, most of us are routinely taken in by some variety of BS or another in our daily lives. He sets out to define and describe bullshit in such a way that people in general can be equipped to both recognize and reject bullshit when it is placed in our path.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

“However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to get away with something,” Frankfurt writes. “There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some kind of laxity that resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline” (page 23). Frankfurt notes that BS is analogous to shoddy, knock-off merchandise that the seller knowingly offers as the real deal.

The counterfeit character of BS is one mark of the substance. In addition, Frankfurt suggests, bullshit tends to claim more authority for itself than can be warranted. It has the character of exaggeration, hyperbole, and some measure of fabrication to support whatever has been asserted.

This is not, Frankfurt notes, intentional lying. It is, rather, a sort of mindless expression which the speaker assumes (consciously or not) that the listener will simply let slide because it’s too much work to track down the excesses. The bullshitter’s fault is not so much the failure to get things right but rather the failure to even try to get things right (page 32).

“It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are,” Frankfurt concludes, “that I regard as of the essence of bullshit” (pages 33-34).

Bullshit is language emptied of meaning and truth just as “excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed,” Frankfurt notes. “Excrement may be regarded as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in food have been exhausted” (page 43). BS is language from which the vital elements of meaning and truth have been removed – and are not missed!

So, to summarize, bullshit is not necessarily true or false. Rather, it is rhetoric which is simply unconcerned with whether truth matters. “What bullshit essentially misrepresents,” Frankfurt continues, “is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs” (page 53). Rather, “the fact abut himself that bullshitter hides,” Frankfurt argues, “is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him” (page 54).

In essence, Frankfurt proposes, the bullshitter “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out,” Frankfurt observes, “or makes them up, to suit his purpose” (page 56).

Therefore, Frankfurt concludes, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are” (page 61). I would add that the greatest friend the bullshitter has is the rest of us who believe to one degree or another that truth still exists. Part of the power asymmetry which the bullshitter exploits is precisely that differential approach to whether or not truth matters. This describes to some degree, I think, the difference between the major American political parties at this point in history.

The application of Frankfurt’s work to the rhetoric associated with Donald Trump and the current Republican party is both transparent and apparent. Frankfurt speaks “prophetically” about the precise rhetorical strategy which is the beating heart of Trumpism. Bullshit is what we get when truth is subservient to the acquisition and maintenance of power. In the hands of the powerful, positioned, and privileged, bullshit is a deadly substance. Such people have the capacity to insist that bullshit is Reality and to penalize anyone who dares to differ.

Why is this a useful discussion in the study of the beheading of John the Baptizer? I would suggest that a definition of the role of the biblical prophets, including John (and Jesus) is to name publicly, identify, and oppose the bullshit of the powerful, positioned, and privileged. When prophets do such a thing, they often pay for that behavior with their property, their liberty, and (often enough) their lives.

John names what everyone knows – that Antipas has broken the law and violated cultural and religious norms. More than that, Antipas, and his household, assert that this arrangement is normal and good. Nothing to see here, they say. Move along and tend your business. Everything is fine.

One of the hallmarks of bullshit is that when it is called out, the response is violent rage. We can see that in the character of Herodias in our text. We can see that as well in the characters of the Jerusalem elites who make sure that Jesus is silenced after he calls out the bullshit going on in Jerusalem and in the Temple. Anti-bullshit artists have, on average, relatively short life spans – especially in authoritarian regimes.

I want to connect this to current conversations about anti-racism, critical race theory, history, and the like. We can, I think, leave the details of critical race theory aside. The real issue is that CRT is an anti-bullshit methodology. It simply asks, “What really happened? How did things get this way?” It is, like many academic disciplines, an attempt to get a glimpse of the “man behind the curtain.”

Therefore, we should not be surprised when the response is white rage, verging on homicidal insanity. Certain commentators have mused that perhaps critical race theorists should be erased from the conversation somehow. And certain of those commentators are not all that choosy about how the erasure happens. Short of that, state legislatures are erasing the conversation itself from school curricula in order to sustain the overarching bullshit narrative of white supremacy and innocence.

This strategy is the essential strategy of white supremacy. Kaitlin Curtice puts it this way in Native. “A thread runs through the history of America, a thin line that connects people, places, moments, cultures, and experiences. This thread started when Columbus arrived and deemed Indigenous peoples savage and unworthy of life, a thread that continued as African peoples were enslaved and forced onto this continent. We see it today in hate crimes against people of color and religious minorities. It is a thread of whiteness,” Curtice argues, “of white supremacy, that aims to erase culture, to assimilate those deemed “unworthy” of humanity.” (page 13).

“You shall know the Truth,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “and the Truth shall make you free.” We church people should be determined, deliberate, dauntless friends of Truth, wherever it takes us. That is, we Jesus followers should be implacable enemies of bullshit. Yet, in my experience, white churches have been and continue to be revered repositories of all sorts of bullshit – especially of the supremacist kind. We need only observe the theological self-cannibalism society called the Southern Baptist Convention to note the truth of the previous statement.

My own theological tribe, however, is not about to cast the first stone in this matter. We draft social statements, messages, policies, and letters. They have some impact in a few places. But for the most part, we are just as white, upper-middle-class, and insular as we were forty years ago. The quality of the bullshit is perhaps more refined, but the substance has changed very little.

Perhaps this is part of why John’s execution is in Mark’s account in such exquisite detail. We can kill in order to sustain the bullshit, or we can die in opposition to it.

There’s a topic for discipleship discernment, eh?

References and Resources

https://headtopics.com/us/i-want-his-head-on-a-platter-kentucky-mom-tells-911-dispatcher-of-suspect-who-took-her-baby-in-ca-10235366.

Black, C. Clifton. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-3.

Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Jennifer A. Glancy , ” Unveiling Masculinity : The Construction of Gender in Mark 6:17-29,” Biblnt 2 (1994): 34-50.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Jeremias, Joachim. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA.: Fortress Press, 1969.

Kraemer, R. (2006). Implicating Herodias and Her Daughter in the Death of John the Baptizer: A (Christian) Theological Strategy? Journal of Biblical Literature, 125(2), 321-349. doi:10.2307/27638363.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Kindle Edition.

McCauley, Esau. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2020.

Noegel, Scott B. “CORPSES, CANNIBALS, AND COMMENSALITY: A LITERARY AND ARTISTIC SHAMING CONVENTION IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST.” Journal of Religion and Violence, vol. 4, no. 3, 2016, pp. 255–304. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26671507. Accessed 1 July 2021.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-5.

Sandmel, S. “Herod (Family).” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2. Nashville, TN.: Abingdon Press, 1962. Pages 585-594.

Smit, Peter-Ben. “The Ritual (De)Construction of Masculinity in Mark 6: A Methodological Exploration on the Interface of Gender and Ritual Studies.” Neotestamentica, vol. 50, no. 2, 2016, pp. 327–352. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26417640. Accessed 1 July 2021.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller’s Commentary Year B. Cleveland, OH.: The Pilgrim Press, 2005.

Text Study for Mark 6:14-29 (Pt. 4); 7 Pentecost B 2021

The End of Innocence

In his workingpreacher.org commentary, Emerson Powery describes the report of John’s death as “the end of innocence for Jesus’ mission.” He argues, “Interpreters who choose to think that Jesus’ life and mission were disconnected from the socio-political affairs of his first century context must view this account (John’s death by Herod) as an aside… Mark placed this account between the commission and the return of the disciples,” Powery writes, “to intimate its significance for the expansion of Jesus’ mission.”

“Where’s the good news in Mark 6:14-29?” C. Clifton Black asks in his workingpreacher.org commentary. “There may be none. The drive shafts of corrupted politics torque this birthday party. Everywhere greed and fear whisper: in Herod’s ear, among Galilee’s high and mighty, behind the curtain between mother and daughter, in a dungeon prison. When repentance is preached to this world’s princes,” he concludes, “do not expect them to relinquish their power, however conflicted some may be.”

One might argue from this text that today we see the consequences of mixing the pulpit and politics. That lack of discretion gets John the Baptizer served up as the dessert course on the platter of the powerful. We church folks would like to avoid that sort of outcome.

Photo by Duanu00e9 Viljoen on Pexels.com

While we are not likely to risk execution if and when we bring political issues into our preaching, we are likely to bring about conflict. If the positions we take are partisan, we risk running afoul of federal tax laws for nonprofit organizations.

I should be quick to note that this risk has been honored much more in the breach than in the “execution” (a shameless pun). Publicly visible preachers have advocated partisan positions in their preaching for years and only rarely have they suffered any consequences. In fact, such preaching – typically of a socially and/or politically conservative bent – has been celebrated rather than censured. In my experience, the legal argument against bringing politics to the pulpit has been a convenient ploy rather than a concrete concern.

The greater risk to preachers has been the more local variety of “execution.” Progressive preachers in my denomination have experienced criticism, rebuke, cuts in compensation and benefits, bullying by leaders and members, public embarrassment, and death threats – both to the preachers themselves and to family members in response to preaching and teaching that has been deemed by some to be “too political.”

It is no accident that Mark creates a parallel between the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth and the foreshadowing of the crucifixion in John’s execution. Preachers know the risks of getting too public and specific in critiques of the powerful. The threats do not come from the larger world but rise up from the very members the preachers are called to challenge.

As I noted in a previous post, as the writer of Mark’s gospel preaches “The Tale of Two Tables,” that writer is challenging disciples – then and now – to discern under which table we are putting our feet, the banquet table of Herod Antipas or the table of abundant life where Jesus is both the host and the meal. It should be clear from the text of Mark’s gospel that this will inevitably be a political choice. It will be a choice between kings – the pretender and the Messiah. That choice faced the first listeners to Mark’s gospel and it faces us as well.

I think we can find some help in our thinking from those who are clear about their exile from the tables of privilege, power, and position. For that reason, I want to interact for a bit with chapter three of Esau McCauley’s Reading While Black, which addresses “the New Testament and the Political Witness of the Church.”

McCauley notes the pushback from white preachers who opposed Dr. King’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. One of the critiques was that his work incited violence and did not produce peace. They called upon him to stay in his spiritual lane and avoid any extreme measures, such as protests and civil disobedience. Was Dr. King jumping lanes and mixing politics with the pulpit to the detriment of both?

“For many Black Christians the answer to this question is self-evident,” McCauley writes. “We have never had the luxury of separating our faith from political action” (page 49). He refers to the great address by Frederick Douglass, “What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

In that address, Douglass criticizes white American Christians on that day: “your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to [God], mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages.” I hope that many white Christians have read or re-read Douglass’ stinging and honest words as American Independence Day has recently landed on a Sunday.

“Douglass called upon American Christians to live out their faith by establishing a truly equal and free society,” McCauley writes. “He argued that this country could make no claim to any form of greatness until she faced what she had done to Black and Brown bodies.” Douglass, I would suggest, comes as close to a John the Baptist as our country has produced in our history. He barely escaped a “head on a platter” fate several times in his life as he spoke truth to White power.

To summarize McCauley’s insights regarding politics and the pulpits, I will be brief. The New Testament does not prohibit resistance to governing authorities, but it does not authorize violent revolution. “Submission and acquiescence,” McCauley argues, “are two different things” (page 51).

We can and should pray for leaders who are in legitimate authority, but this is not an authoritarian blank check. As he discusses the argument in First Timothy, chapter one, he notes that the writer can walk and chew gum at the same time, in political terms. “Prayers for leaders and criticism of their practices,” he writes, are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both,” he argues, “have biblical warrant in the same letter” (page 53).

McCauley notes that Jesus wasn’t executed because he told people to be nice to each other, any more than John was beheaded because he was a stodgy moralist. Holiness and righteousness are inconvenient for the rulers of this world, regardless of party (job security for the Church as political critic). “It was precisely inasmuch as Jesus was obedient to his Father and rooted in the hopes and dreams of Israel,” McCauley suggests, “that Jesus revealed himself to be a great danger to the rulers of his day” (page 55).

“How might Jesus’ words inform a theology of political witness of the church?” McCauley asks. “Jesus shows that those Christians who have called out injustice are following in the footsteps of Jesus” (page 57). Politics in the pulpit is not an irritant or an option. Indeed, it is required. When we affirm our baptismal covenants in the Rite of Confirmation, we promise to “…live among God’s faithful people; hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper; proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed; serve all people following the example of Jesus; and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”

Unfortunately, many ELCA Lutherans get to about the halfway point of these vows and decide that half a loaf is better than none.

“When Black Christians look upon the actions of political leaders and governments and call them evil,” McCauley writes, “we are making a theological claim…Protest is not unbiblical,” he continues, “it is a manifestation of our analysis of the human condition in light of God’s own word and vision for the future” (page 62). In ELCA terms, putting politics in the pulpit is a necessary part of striving for justice and peace in all the earth.

The goal of this analysis, however, is not conflict. It is rather peace. But, as McCauley notes, there can be no Biblical notion of peace without justice. There can be no rejoicing without lament. There can be no forgiveness without repentance. There can be no repentance without confession. There can be no reconciliation without repair.

McCauley’s closing paragraph is worth quoting in full (apologies in advance for the less than inclusive language here).

“The Black Christian, then, who hopes for a better world finds an ally in the God of Israel. He or she finds someone who does more than sympathize with our wants and needs. This God steps into history and reorders the universe in favor of those who trust in him. He calls us to enter into this work of actualizing the transformation he has already begun by the death and resurrection of his Son. This includes the work of discipleship, evangelism, and the pursuit of personal holiness. It also includes bearing witness to a different and better way of ordering our societies in a world whose default instinct is oppression. To do less would be to deny the kingdom” (page 70).

I think John the Baptist would approve.

References and Resources

https://headtopics.com/us/i-want-his-head-on-a-platter-kentucky-mom-tells-911-dispatcher-of-suspect-who-took-her-baby-in-ca-10235366.

Black, C. Clifton. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-3.

Jennifer A. Glancy , ” Unveiling Masculinity : The Construction of Gender in Mark 6:17-29,” Biblnt 2 (1994): 34-50.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Jeremias, Joachim. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA.: Fortress Press, 1969.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Kindle Edition.

McCauley, Esau. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2020.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-5.

Sandmel, S. “Herod (Family).” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2. Nashville, TN.: Abingdon Press, 1962. Pages 585-594.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller’s Commentary Year B. Cleveland, OH.: The Pilgrim Press, 2005.

Text Study for Mark 6:14-29 (Pt. 3); 7 Pentecost B 2021

To Serve Man: This post contains spoilers for an episode of The Twilight Zone, called “To Serve Man.”

Season Two of the original The Twilight Zone series featured a loose adaptation of the 1950’s short story by Damon Knight called “To Serve Man.” The episode, of the same name, introduces us to Michael Chambers. He is lying on a bed. A voice over a loudspeaker asks him what he would like to eat. He answers that he doesn’t want anything to eat at the moment.

All innocent enough, but then the narrated flashback begins. One day, flying saucers appear in the skies over every nation on Earth. A race of aliens, the Kanamits, arrive with promises to help human beings resolve all the pressing problems facing the planet. All they ask in return is the trust of human beings. The Kanamit ambassador accidentally leaves a book behind as he/she/it returns to a ship.

Chambers is a military codebreaker. He’s is charged with translating the book. He succeeds in understanding the title: “To Serve Man.” The ambassador returns and answers questions while connected to a lie detector. No deception is detected. All the Kanamits want, it seems, is a trusting relationship with human beings. Earth is only the latest planet to benefit from their philanthropy.

The Kanamits keep their promises. Soon Earth is demilitarized, and earthlings are well-fed and prosperous. The Kanamits invite human beings to visit their home planet, which they portray as an unimaginable paradise. Hundreds of people accept the offer. The only condition for travel is that each voyager must be weighed before embarking.

Chambers accepts the offer and is standing in line to board a ship. As he nears the scale, his assistant rushes to talk to him. She is restrained by the Kanamits, but she is able to scream out, “To Serve Man: It’s a cookbook!” But it’s too late for Chambers. He is hustled on to the ship and heads off to his fate.

In the final scene, the Kanamits encourage Chambers to eat. He looks at the camera. Chambers asserts that whether you are on Earth or on the ship, it doesn’t matter because sooner or later ‘you’ll be on the menu.’ Chambers, consigned to his fate, then sits down to eat the food prepared for him by the Kanamits. Fade to black.

I don’t think the writer of Mark’s gospel anticipated Rod Serling by two millennia. But I have sometimes wondered about how deep the irony runs in the writer’s account. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,” we read in Mark 10:45, “and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The play on the word “serve” doesn’t hold up very well when we move from English to New Testament Greek. But I’m not sure it breaks down entirely either.

One of the aspects of Mark 6 is that it contains “The Tale of Two Tables.” In this week’s reading, we witness the bloody birthday banquet in the palace of Antipas. Next week we get the Feeding of the Five Thousand in the wilderness. These seem to be companion texts, designed for edifying comparison and contrast. Herod dines. John dies. End of story. Jesus dies. We dine. Beginning of story. I don’t think the writer of Mark’s gospel missed this theological opportunity.

So, the preacher may offer the first installment of a two-part sermon. Good luck with that in the middle of the summer? But the table where cruelty is the point is offset and opposed by the table where service is the center. John the Baptizer is served up as a sacrifice to the casual cruelty of the powerful, the privileged, and the positioned. The bloody platter is a meal where death triumphs once again. Jesus prepares us to come to the table where he serves us with himself that we might have life in abundance.

Noegel notes that eating while others suffer, dining while others die, constitutes “a hitherto unrecognized artistic device rooted in social protocol that represents an inversion of the custom of abstinence during mourning” (page 256). In our case, Antipas may have revered, honored, and even enjoyed John and his preaching. But in the end, he was celebrating his birthday while John rotted in jail. Such a meal “thus functions to underscore the contempt of those dining for the dying by depicting their deaths as unworthy of lament” (page 256).

I am reminded of the standard scene in novels, television dramas, and movies. The victim, captive, or enemy (often the hero of the story) is brought into the chambers of the villain for questioning, gloating, or some necessary plot exposition. The villain is invariably eating some elaborate meal during the interview. Often the conversation is punctuated by the application of violence to the prisoner – an event which may even enhance the dining experience for the villain. We’ve seen this scene before.

This provokes a disturbing thought for me when it comes to our eucharistic practice as Christians. How often do we gather at the “Feast of Victory” while victims languish in the dungeons of mass incarceration, hunger, poverty, abuse, and oppression? From one perspective, we could observe that we do so every time we come to the Lord’s table. It all depends on that perspective. Mark’s identity question asserts itself as always. Not only “Who is Jesus?” but also, “Who are we?”

Notice who is at each table in Mark 6. At Herod’s table we find representatives of and collaborators with the Roman domination regime: Herod’s cabinet members, Roman tribunes, and members of the “first families” of Galilee. Smit notes that the guest list at Herod’s table is nothing but elite males. At Jesus’ table, we find the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the outcaste. And we find men, women, and children in the crowd.

If we sit at Herod’s table, it doesn’t matter much if the feast is in a palace or a pew.

Noegel notes that the inverse perspective can also apply to meals. He points to the Passover as a feast that takes place in spite of oppression (and in anticipation of the deaths of the Egyptian firstborn). The image of the feast of liberation is taken up as well, he notes, in Isaiah 25 and the description there of the Messianic feast. God’s people eat while the oppressor is destroyed. God’s people celebrate while Death itself is dying. In fact, in Isaiah 25, Death becomes part of the main course!

Smit provides an interesting comparison of the two hosts and the two tables in his 2016 article. Smit notes that Herod is portrayed as a “king.” Immediately, however, we have doubts about his ability to control his situation – as an effective king would – especially when it comes to the attitudes and behaviors of his wife. Throughout the banquet, as I hinted in earlier posts, Herod is a textbook example of a man utterly lacking in self-control. Herodias manipulates and out-maneuvers Herod and reduces him to a pawn in his own game of power.

The result, Smit suggests, is that Herod fails as the host at the table. “Herod is unable to serve his guests the kind of meal that he should have,” Smit writes, “in fact he only serves them death and chaos, the disintegration of himself as a man and a king” (page 337). He fails to create the banquet of comfort and control expected from a man who would be king.

Instead, Smit notes, “violence and chaos are the outcome. John’s literal loss of his head,” Smit observes, “was caused by Herod’s figurative loss of his head to his wife’s daughter and his subsequent less-than-willing (v. 26) surrender of all power and control to his wife and her daughter and his subjects, becoming little more than a puppet in their hands…He has lost the contest” (page 337).

Herod stages a banquet in a palace. Jesus meets God’s people in the wilderness, a deserted place. As John’s gospel will expand and expound in chapter 6, the scene, Smit notes, has all the hallmarks of the manna story in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11. The question posed in pairing these two tables is, Smit suggests, “Will Jesus succeed where Herod failed?” I’m not sure that’s a sharp enough question, however. I think, as other commentators note, the question is much more about the identity of the real king. In addition, the question is about the identity of those at the table.

Smit notes that the wilderness table is spontaneous as opposed to Herod’s carefully planned and provisioned palace banquet. The disciples are sure that Jesus has lost control of the crowd and the schedule, but Jesus does not fail as the host. Instead, Smit notes, he takes inventory of the resources. He blesses the food. He orchestrates the serving and the cleanup. There is plenty left over and no bodiless head on the dessert platter. Jesus creates and sustains a table of peaceful abundance – a royal task that Herod cannot accomplish.

Do we dine while others die? Or do we commit ourselves to be served up as the body of Christ for the life of the world? The former puts us at Herod’s table. The latter puts us at Jesus’ table.

Are we being served?

References and Resources

https://headtopics.com/us/i-want-his-head-on-a-platter-kentucky-mom-tells-911-dispatcher-of-suspect-who-took-her-baby-in-ca-10235366.

Black, C. Clifton. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-3.

Jennifer A. Glancy , ” Unveiling Masculinity : The Construction of Gender in Mark 6:17-29,” Biblnt 2 (1994): 34-50.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Jeremias, Joachim. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA.: Fortress Press, 1969.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Kindle Edition.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-5.

Sandmel, S. “Herod (Family).” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2. Nashville, TN.: Abingdon Press, 1962. Pages 585-594.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller’s Commentary Year B. Cleveland, OH.: The Pilgrim Press, 2005.

Text Study for Mark 6:14-29 (Pt. 2); 7 Pentecost B 2021

It’s All in the Presentation

On December 16, 2019, a panicked mother called the Bullitt County, Kentucky, 911 Center. She was reporting that a man had stolen her car with her baby in the back seat. “Please find this bastard!” she told the police dispatcher. “Want his head on a platter!” Soon police apprehended and arrested the man they charged with kidnapping and auto theft (for starters) for carjacking the woman’s SUV with her 13-month-old child inside, but not before the man led them on a 100-mph chase, ending in a crashed vehicle.

“I want his head on a platter!” This is a demand for punishment that is certainly swift, certain, and severe. It is also a wish, intended or not, to subject the offender to a punishment that is humiliating, degrading, and commensurate with the worst possible crime. The phrase appears to originate in our gospel text for this week.

The unnamed girl consults with Herodias, her mother, regarding the nature of her request to Antipas. “What shall I ask?” she inquires. “The head of John the Baptizer,” her mother replies. The girl immediately re-enters the banquet hall “with haste,” returns to the “king” and says, “I want you to give me at once upon a platter the head of John the Baptizer.” The girl apparently adds the urgency of the request and the manner of presentation on her own.

Perhaps it’s a small detail, but it is intriguing. It’s worth spending some time with Richard Swanson’s comments on this matter in order to absorb the grisly symbolism of the scene. Up to the moment when the girl issues her request, Swanson writes, “it was possible to read the scene as a contest between Herod and Herodias, a contest that was conducted on the unwitting body of a little girl. She is sent in to dance,” Swanson continues, “she is sent back to Herod, and John is executed” (page 192).

Then she adds her own flourish to the demand. “Why the innovation on her part?” Swanson asks. Perhaps she’s “getting into the spirit” of the event, enjoying the contest, “and may be adding humiliating details to the ritual of execution” (page 193). This is the disturbing description of the additional instructions. “John’s head is brought out as if it were the next course in the banquet,” Swanson notes.

“If this is the implication,” he continues, “then she has just rung all the rituals that go with ceremonial cannibalism. John, the enemy,” Swanson notes, “is to be treated as food” (page 193). Hurtado concurs with this description. “The gruesome request presents the daughter as adding a touch of evil humor to her mother’s suggestion. On a platter,” he argues, “makes the head of John a kind of meal course at this wicked banquet” (page 98).

The other alternative, Swanson suggests, is that the girl does not wish to deal with “the mess that would be made if a bleeding severed head were to be brought into the room. A plate would contain the gore,” he notes, “she might hope in her innocence” (page 193). Which is the right perspective, Swanson wonders, and answers, “Yes.”

Swanson notes that we might find some eucharistic foreshadowing in this story. Jesus will say to his disciples, “This is my body for you.” The fact that the account is placed shortly before the Feeding of the Five Thousand in Mark’s gospel gives some additional support to this suggestion. It is also a grim reminder that when we hear the glowing reports from The Twelve as they return from their missionary journeys that the price of success might well be homicidal homage from the rulers of this world.

Why does Mark emphasize this detail – the head on the platter – in the account? Kraemer suggests that early Christians wanted “to refute not simply the suggestion that John the Baptist has been resurrected but more precisely the possibility that Jesus is John raised from the dead by telling a narrative in which the body of John is desecrated in a manner that makes it impossible to resurrect it, at least physically, by severing the head from the body, and by leaving the head with Herodias while burying the corpse” (page 341).

We need to take a moment to remember ancient views of the nature of resurrection. Suffice it to say, Jews of the time expected that whole bodies were required for the resurrection at the end of the age. That’s why it was so important for bodies to be buried intact and for the bones of those bodies to remain in one collection even after the flesh had decayed away. It’s also why it’s noteworthy that the writer of Mark uses the word for “corpse” in Mark 6:29 rather than the word for “body.” John was not entombed intact and therefore could not be resurrected, in the view of the ancients.

Kraemer’s view depends on reading Antipas’ statement that John whom he beheaded had been raised as more of a question – “Has John, whom I beheaded, been raised?” This is a possible interpretation of the text and the one that Luke takes for granted in Luke 9:7-9. Kraemer argues that the writer of Mark is not wondering why John was executed but rather why John was executed by decapitation (page 342).

Kraemer argues that the narrative need of the writer of Mark brings about this story in the gospel account, not any actual historical involvement in the execution by Herodias and her daughter. That may or may not be the case, but it doesn’t really impact the import of the story in the text itself.

Kraemer’s concluding point in the article is well-taken, however. This story has developed a life of its own in later Christian (and secular) literature as a convenient trope “to vilify these women far beyond anything in the gospels themselves.” This portrayal suggests, he argues, “that subsequent Christians have been particularly fond of the representation of voluptuous, seductive, evil Jewish women, who may serve, perhaps, as a counterpoint to the virtuous and generally chaste women who attend Jesus at the cross and at his burial, and witness to his resurrection” (page 349).

Part of the import of this story, according to Kraemer, is to set up an intentional contrast between Antipas and Jesus. “In Mark,” he writes, “Antipas’s execution of John is represented as the intentional choice not of a ruler whose decisions are grounded in the judgment and self-control appropriate to masculinity but of a man fall victim to his own appetites and desires, something many ancient writers understood as a feminine frailty” (346). Antipas surrenders to his base, animal nature and loses his male honor as actor, agent, and author of his own fate.

“My primary purpose here,” Kraemer notes, “is to suggest that concerns about gender may play some additional role in the formation of a narrative that implicates Herodias and her daughter in the death of John, through their exercise of indirect power and the manipulation of a weak, emasculate ruler whose lack of sufficient masculine self-control enables Herodias to accomplish her destructive (female) desires” (page 347). There’s no extra credit for long sentence in journal articles, but perhaps there should be.

Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest that the dancing itself is a sign that Antipas is a dishonorable and therefore weak ruler. “Dancing, most commonly done at weddings, is often quite erotic and usually done only for extended kin,” they argue. “Here officers and the leading men of Galilee are present. In non-elite eyes, honorable males would not allow a female family member to perform such a display; their failure to prevent her from doing so pegs them as shameless.”

“It is also shameful for any man to be bewitched by the proverbial sensuality of a woman in public,” they continue. “Since the maximum a woman could receive was only half of what a man was worth, Herod offered everything he could. The oath made by Herod was made in front of guests. He was therefore,” they conclude, “honor-bound to keep his word. Had he not done so, his officers would no longer have trusted him” (pages 216-217). Antipas was in control of no part of the situation.

At the time of the story, honorable women were expected to remain indoors and out of view in order to retain their purity and virtue. “In the royal households, for the most part, no one was greatly troubled over these customs,” Jeremias writes (page 361-362). Instead, in the royal households of the time, it was typical for the women to exercise influence, control, and power with and sometimes in spite of their husbands. Especially when it comes to the Herodians, this story has the ring of truth about it.

For the writer of Mark’s gospel, this story accomplishes several things. First, John is “Elijah,” not the Messiah. We, as readers, know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Second, John cannot have been resurrected since his body was not intact. Resurrection is for Jesus, not for anyone else in the story. Third, we can see what a weak pretender to the throne looks like in comparison with Jesus, the real King. This comparison foreshadows a similar contrast between Jesus and Pilate in the passion account in the Gospel of Mark.

Fourth, we can see the depths of human cruelty expressed in the careless privilege of the elites and the real risks involved when one is perceived as a threat to that privilege. I find several resonances between this account and accounts of lynchings in the United States, both historically and in the present moment. More on that, perhaps, downstream.

References and Resources

https://headtopics.com/us/i-want-his-head-on-a-platter-kentucky-mom-tells-911-dispatcher-of-suspect-who-took-her-baby-in-ca-10235366.

Jennifer A. Glancy , ” Unveiling Masculinity : The Construction of Gender in Mark 6:17-29,” Biblnt 2 (1994): 34-50.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Jeremias, Joachim. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA.: Fortress Press, 1969.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Kindle Edition.

Sandmel, S. “Herod (Family).” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2. Nashville, TN.: Abingdon Press, 1962. Pages 585-594.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller’s Commentary Year B. Cleveland, OH.: The Pilgrim Press, 2005.

Text Study for Mark 6:14-29 (Pt. 1); 7 Pentecost B 2021

Mark 6:14-29

One Man’s Family

This week we read and reflect on Mark’s account of the beheading of John the Baptizer. In a previous incarnation of our Lutheran lectionary, this reading was omitted. On the one hand, this is therefore new territory for exploration and research (Hurrah!). On the other hand, this is such a weird text to read and then solemnly intone, “The Gospel of the Lord.” What are we humble preachers supposed to do with this gossipy tale? Why does the writer of Mark include it in the account? How in the world do we find in this text “the Gospel of the Lord”?

Perhaps, by the end of the week, we may find some answers to those questions. Or, like the writer of Mark, we may need to leave the questions hanging. We’ll see.

First, let’s figure out the structure and location of the text. The story of John’s execution is the middle part of another Markan sandwich. Mark 6:6b-13 is Mark’s report of the sending of the disciples into the Galilean mission field, two by two. Mark 6:30-32 gives the report of the mission work and Jesus’ counsel that they all ought to take a little break to re-charge a bit. This latter paragraph also provides the bridge to the next intercalation – the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which comes between the invitation to rest and Jesus’ actual retreat for prayer in Mark 6:45-46.

Remember that these Markan sandwiches are invitations to allow the interior section to inform and interpret the exterior sections of the textual sandwich. We should begin, then, by observing that the story of John’s execution is supposed to tell us as the readers something about discipleship that The Twelve do not know. Perhaps the message is that speaking truth to power as disciples can cause disciples to lose their heads. The gospel of the Lord? We’ll see.

The connection between the outside and inside elements of the sandwich is that Herod takes notice of the reports of Jesus’ activity and that of his disciples. The “it” in Mark 6:14 (of which Herod heard) is a somewhat non-specific. But it’s clear that the word is getting out and making its way to high places in the Galilean political world.

Be sure to note that the question posed by the writer of Mark in this section remains the same. Who is Jesus? Who are people saying that he is? Some, according to the writer, were saying that Jesus was John the Baptizer returned from the dead. This, of course, means that the execution of John had taken place earlier and will now be described as a flashback. Others were sure that Jesus was the reincarnation of the Hebrew prophet of prophets, Elijah. Still others were describing Jesus as a generic prophet like the great prophets of old. We will see this same recitation in Mark 8, when Jesus turns the identity question to The Twelve.

Herod is of the opinion that Jesus is John returned from the dead to haunt and taunt him. Why would Herod have such anxieties? That’s why we get the flashback narrative of the execution – to describe this odd relationship between Herod and the Baptizer and how, according to the writer of Mark, it all came to such a bloody end.

The “Herod” in this account is Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great. The use of the dynastic name, “Herod,” can cause confusion among readers of the text. We are not talking about the terrible tyrant on Matthew’s infancy stories who tries to manipulate the Magi and who orders the Slaughter of the Innocents. No, the “Herod” in Mark’s account is Herod Antipas.

It’s probably useful to make sure we have this detail straight in our thinking. In addition, we may need to briefly remind our listeners that this is the case, just to clear up any confusion. And it may be worth mentioning that the Christian scriptures tend to see all the “Herods” as coming out of the same mold. That’s probably why the dynastic name is used rather than the personal name. If there’s anyone reborn, perhaps Mark is saying, it’s nasty old Herod the Great, now in the person of his spineless and scheming son.

When Herod the Great died, the Romans divided Herod’s kingdom into four parts. Each of the Herodian sons who got a share was called, therefore, a “tetra-arch,” a ruler of one-fourth. Later, we’ll talk about why it is that the writer of Mark’s gospel refers to Herod Antipas as a “king,” even though he is never granted that title. I’ve noted before that I don’t think any of the vocabulary choices in Mark’s gospel are sloppy or accidental. Mark’s irony is quick and surgical. That ironic style is part of the report about Antipas here.

I would recommend that, if you have the time and access, that you (re)read the article in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible on “Herod (Family)” by Sandmel. Herod the Great inherits a reign that had displaced the failing Hasmonean rulers, the heirs of the Maccabees. He solidifies his hold on the territory through political marriage and strategic murder. He wends his way through Roman imperial intrigue, allied first with one contender and then another, eventually persuading Octavian (Augustus) that a productive ally was a good ally, regardless of events leading up to the new alliance.

Herod the Great was an advocate of Roman power and Jewish accommodation. He was not regarded as a Jew by most of his subjects, but he was perceived as brutally effective. He was known as a monument builder, a skillful manager of the relationships with Rome and the Jerusalem priesthood, and a thuggish murderer – even of his own family – when that suited his purposes. He died in about 4 BCE.

Herod’s territory was divided up among three (or four, depending on the time period) surviving sons: Archelaus, who was Herod the Great’s principal successor, Philip, who has tetrarch of the northwest part of his father’s realm, and Antipas, who wanted to be “king” (the role given to Archelaus), but who ended up as tetrarch of the northeast part of his father’s realm – the part including Galilee and Perea. Later Agrippa, mentioned in the Book of Acts, succeeds Archelaus in a rump version of his father’s former kingdom (and is actually named “king” by the Roman senate in 37 CE).

And that’s the simplified version of things!

Then there’s the marital history that stands behind our text. Philip was married either to Herodias or to Salome, daughter of Herodias. The gospel sources and historical reports outside the gospels (mostly Flavius Josephus) disagree on many of the details. Josephus also disagrees with himself on numerous occasions! The writer of Mark believes that Philip was married to Herodias and (perhaps) that Salome was indeed a step-daughter to Herod Antipas.

Antipas was first married to the daughter of the King of Nabatea. When he met Herodias at a family do, he became infatuated with Herodias. Philip died (conveniently), and Antipas divorced his first wife. That divorce was regarded by the King of Nabatea as an insult and a breach of an agreement. As a result, the King of Nabatea sent his army against Agrippa’s forces (inconveniently) and soundly defeated them. Nevertheless, Antipas married Herodias and took her (and her daughter, the writer of Mark assumes) into his household. Please note that the name “Salome” does not appear in the gospel accounts but only in Josephus.

This is the situation to which John the Baptizer points, according to the writer of Mark’s gospel. Prohibitions against such a marriage existed in Jewish scripture and legal codes. Whether John the Baptizer actually made such a “moral” critique is a matter for some debate, since it’s not nearly so clear cut, for example, in the works of Josephus. But at the very least, this tortuous marital and extra-marital history depicts Antipas as a prisoner of his own passions long before the dance recital that leads to John’s untimely demise.

The Herodian intrigues continued long after John’s corpse was buried. Eventually, Antipas is outmaneuvered by Agrippa in the imperial court. Antipas ends up banished to Lyons, in France, accompanied by Herodias, where he dies.

As will become clearer as we go along, neither the writer of Mark’s gospel nor Flavius Josephus can be counted on to give us what we moderns would call “history” – a carefully researched and “objective” rehearsal of what actually happened. Efforts to force the gospel accounts into that mold do violence to the intentions of the gospel writers and misunderstand ancient models of history writing. Therefore, I will have no interest in adjudicating “what actually happened.”

The more important question for our purposes is this. What does the writer of Mark’s gospel intend to communicate in this text about the identity of Jesus and the identity of the disciples? The writer makes it crystal clear that this is the real agenda for this text and for the whole gospel account. We readers know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. How does this text help us to deepen and expand our grasp of that good news?

References and Resources

Sandmel, S. “Herod (Family).” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2. Nashville, TN.: Abingdon Press, 1962. Pages 585-594.