The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Promises, Promises: A Sermon for July 14, 2024
The Episcopal Church of St. Martin
Text: Mark 6:14-29
I spent a lot of time last night wrestling with whether or not to rewrite my sermon, in light of what authorities are calling an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. This is a very fraught moment in our nation and in the world. Does it help to preach about a story of political violence in this situation?
For better or worse, I decided to stick with preaching about the Gospel passage. Writers are often told to write about what they know, and preachers do well to remember that adage, also. So, to enter into this story, I’m going to start with something I know well, which is medieval literature. There are elements in this passage that remind me of medieval tales of kings and soothsayers, set in a context of elaborate banquets where social norms are overturned. I hope you’ll bear with me and find some relevance in all this.
In many Arthurian legends and other folktales, there is a motif called the “rash boon” or blind promise, which is when a character, usually a king or a knight, swears to give another character anything they ask for, without first learning the nature of the request they are about to grant. The request is always outrageous, something that the promiser would never want to give, but it cannot be refused without losing face. As one scholarly article puts it, “Keeping one’s promise, no matter how rash, is a cornerstone of courtly reputation and chivalry.”[i]
Sometimes this motif is put to comic effect; it can be a clever way to trick a powerful person into doing something good that they wouldn’t otherwise want to do. More often the result of the rash boon is tragic personal loss.
Although written many centuries before the flowering of medieval literature, today’s Gospel passage follows a similar trajectory. The king makes a rash, impulsive promise, and he is asked to do something that he knows is a wrong. The importance of the promise itself is shown through repetition; Mark, the shortest and most concise of the Gospels, uncharacteristically repeats the words of the promise, making it even more emphatic the second time: “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.”
Herod is doubling down, painting himself into a corner. He seems not to have worried that the girl’s imagination or ambition would get the better of him. What he forgot about was her mother, his wife, the one who has been nursing her grudge against John for some time now. The queen is quick to seize her opportunity by taking advantage of her husband’s foolishness. The trap is set and sprung.
The fulfillment of the promise he made so rashly fills King Herod with dread; he knows that killing John is wrong, but he puts his reputation and honor ahead of doing what is right. To be clear, it’s not like Herod is exactly an innocent at this point in the story. He had already acquiesced to his wife’s grudge against John by unjustly imprisoning him. But even this morally compromised puppet king knows that killing John, an innocent man, is beyond the pale. And he does it anyway.
Sadly, this story not only contains parallels to medieval literature; it contains parallels to the political and cultural context we live in today. Indeed, it reads almost like a morality play or an allegory about the corrupting influence of power. Many of the leaders on the world stage appear to us just as heartless and spineless as King Herod. While “honor” is now a quaint anachronism, people today are still compelled by concerns about appearance and image. Leaders go back on their promises all the time, but they are careful to do so in a way that consolidates their power and burnishes their image. There is nothing worse than looking weak, as Herod surely knew.
Fear is the driving force behind this kind of power. The brutal execution of John the Baptist was meant to instill fear, lest anyone else get the bright idea that they could expect their king to have a moral compass or hew to the same standards of behavior as his subjects. But Herod himself is also afraid. Mark tells us something important about how power works when he tells us that “Herod feared John.” People who rule by fear are often ruled by it, as well. They are afraid and so they want others to be afraid; they cannot imagine a world built on any other foundation.
Fear has been unleashed on our world today by those who cling to power by any means necessary. Fear of change, fear of the other, fear of obsolescence or meaninglessness. Fear pits people against each other, turning neighbors into competitors. We don’t think well when we’re afraid. It cuts off creativity, curiosity, and generosity. It is potent weapon.
Thomas Merton, the great 20th century mystic and peace activist, wrote an essay about the connection between fear and violence. He says,
“At the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves. … It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves.”[ii]
These words resonate more deeply for me today than they did even 24 hours ago.
The word Gospel means “good news” and I have to admit it took me a long time to find any good news in today’s Gospel story. It came to me from a commentary written by New Testament scholar Matt Skinner,[iii] who lauds the “faithful resistance and courageous hope” of those disciples of John who come to take John’s body and give it a proper burial. Faithful resistance and courageous hope feel like attributes we all need to be cultivating today. We must resist the drumbeat of fear that is everywhere around us. We must resist dividing the world into us and them, insiders and outsiders, good guys and bad guys. We must cultivate courage and hope in our relationships, starting close in and expanding out to embrace all whom God has created.
There’s one other thing that I hope we will take away from this Gospel passage. I want us to go back to the rash boon, the promise King Herod made to his stepdaughter that he would give her whatever she wished, whatever she asked for, even half of his kingdom. This promise was really a kind of a boast, arrogant and shallow. Now think about the promises we make in our Baptismal Covenant. These promises are the opposite of a boast. They are a way to examine our own conscience, day after day, so that we can do the work of rooting out fear and cultivating hope and courage.
The service of Baptism includes a renunciation of evil, of the evil powers of this world and of all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God. Those are followed by promises, vows, to put our whole trust in Jesus, to follow and obey him. We are reminded of these promises not only when we renew our Baptismal Covenant but also in our communal confession and absolution, which we say at almost every Eucharist. The confession we use in this season specifically asks us to repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil have done, and the evil done on our behalf. These are powerful words. I pray that they will cause us to look in our own hearts, and to know that our only hope is to look for goodness in each other, in ourselves, and in the world God created, and then to follow as best we possibly can in the footsteps of Jesus, wherever they may lead.
Remember, Jesus makes promises, too. They are as rash and as grand as any king’s. Jesus promises us not half his kingdom, but all of it. Without bloodshed, without fear, without any need for the calculus of honor and shame and retribution. Jesus gives to us freely. He calls us his friends, shows us our intrinsic worth and belovedness, and promises that he will go ahead of us and prepare a place for us. Those are promises we can believe in, place our trust in, indeed stake our lives on. Amen.
[i] https://medieval-kingfisher.commons.yale-nus.edu.sg/rash-boon/
[ii] Quoted in https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/reflecting-thomas-mertons-root-war-fear-today
[iii] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-2/commentary-on-mark-614-29-6
