7th Sunday After Trinity 14 July
Readings: Amos 7. 7-15; Eph. 1. 3-14; Mk. 6. 14-29
Theme: The Beheading of John the Baptist
This is surely one of the most grotesque scenes in the gospels outside of the passion narratives. It is gory and salacious in the extreme. It has been famously depicted in various forms by the Italian artist Caravaggio and the painting of Salome with the head of John the Baptist on the platter, a copy of which accompanies this sermon, hangs in the National Gallery in London. It is well worth a visit to see it if you are ever there.
So, what is St Mark doing in this story and how does it speak to us of the relationship between Jesus and his cousin John?
Well, Jean’s well-chosen opening slide of this week’s power-point provides two helpful concepts that enable us to answer these questions. The first idea is that of a “flashback”. The scene we have in the sixth chapter of St Mark uses time to communicate the true meaning of this relationship between Jesus and John. It does this to explore just how the lives of John and Jesus have been lived in parallel. Whilst in St Mark’s gospel we may have none of the infancy scenes of Jesus, as we do in the gospel of Luke, for example, and so none of the mention of Elizabeth and John and so on, Mark’s gospel opens with the prelude to the public ministry of Jesus by recounting the proclamation of John the Baptist in the desert and the arrival of Jesus at the river Jordan to be baptized by John just at the start of Jesus’s Galilean ministry and the calling of the disciples to follow him. John is the forerunner of Jesus who prepares a way for him.
Jesus and John share much in common. They are cousins. Their mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, knew each other, and no doubt Jesus and John would have known each other as children. So, when St Mark has Herod Antipas, the tetrarch (ruler of a quarter of the kingdom) and son of Herod the Great, say that he is aware of Jesus, he does so in a way which indicates that he cannot differentiate Jesus from John. In fact, it seems from the passage that Herod thinks that Jesus may be the resurrected John. As is typical for St Mark, he then sandwiches a ‘flashback’ into his account between the mission of the twelve through Galilee and the miracle of the loaves which will follow this ‘flashback’ in order to tell us something of the cost of a disciple of Christ. This is meant to bring out the true meaning of the relationship between Jesus and John.
The confusion of Herod in conflating John and Jesus signifies that the fate of the disciples of Jesus will be the same as that of Jesus himself, namely, rejection, persecution and perhaps even death. John here symbolizes the archetype of the true disciple of Christ who so unites him or herself to the Lord that their destiny is to be conflated with the master. A Christian will thus be another Christ in the world. One who shares in the mission of Jesus and is prepared to pay the cost of this. So, as St Mark takes us on the ‘flashback’ to the story of the beheading of John the Baptist, he is reminding his readers that those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus will, like the forerunner of Jesus, John, pay a high price. John is a true disciple of Jesus.
The incident itself, of the beheading of John, recounts how John was in prison at the time because of his criticism of Herod. At Herod’s birthday party, Salome (the name of Herodias’s daughter revealed by the records of the Jewish historian Josephus), dances for him and demands, under the instigation of her mother, Herodias, the head of John the Baptist as payment for dancing for Herod, even though, according to the text, Herod was prepared to give her up to one-half of his kingdom (which would have been one-eighth of the whole territory). It is all very ‘soap operaesque’ isn’t it? But, the somewhat more hidden meaning in this barbaric transaction is that just as Herod the Great had divided his kingdom up to be owned and ruled by his family, then so too will the price of the head of John the Baptist confer on John the Baptist the true pearl of great price, namely, the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 11: 11). Whilst the earthly kingdoms may be divided amongst the tetrarchs, the heavenly kingdom will be given to those who share in the ministry of Jesus, his disciples, like John, who have paid the ultimate price.
And if this recounting of the story of the beheading of John the Baptist comes as a ‘flashback’ it also evokes a second concept that Jean’s slide notes, namely, a ‘foreshadowing’ of Jesus in two ways. First, it incorporates the brutal death of the one who is called to follow Jesus, as was the case in the martyrdom of the early disciples of Jesus, and indeed of Jesus himself. Second, it prefigures the resurrection of Jesus which is to come and is alluded to at the start of the story by Herod’s confusing of John with Jesus. This conflation of John with Jesus takes the form of Herod imagining that Jesus was a resurrected version of John. It is a ‘foreshadowing’ in the story of the fact that death and resurrection will be intimately connected in both the life of Jesus and also in those who will follow him, as the witness of John bears testimony .
So, if you find yourself in Trafalgar Square in London at any point, it is worth going in to the National Gallery and spending a moment in front of Caravaggio’s portrayal of Salome with the head of John the Baptist on the platter. Grotesque though it clearly is, it answers the question of the relationship between Jesus and John in a way which words could never convey. Though obviously a decapitated head, Caravaggio uses the figures in the scene to demonstrate that though John may be dead, he is the one who truly lives. His eyes, though naturally closed, appear to look down in silent contemplation. They seem to be at peace. The eyes of Salome look furtively to the side, hiding from the gaze of the onlooker, due to her shame. She may be alive and John dead, but the truth of the painting conveyed through the eyes of the key protagonists is that the deeper mystery, so beautifully narrated by the gospel of Mark, is that those who lose their life will ultimately save it and those who save their life will ultimately lose it.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.