Pentecost Seven - Proper 10B Grace St. Paul s - 7/15/12. Well, well, well. Wasn t that a cheery little Gospel? Now be

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1 Pentecost Seven - Proper 10B Grace St. Paul s - 7/15/12 Well, well, well. Wasn t that a cheery little Gospel? Now be honest, how many of you are overwhelmed with gratefulness right now that you are not preaching this morning? It is Sundays like today when I could just kick myself for not pre-checking the lectionary months ahead. That way, I could have had some unsuspecting curate be assigned to preach this Sunday. Of course, we don t have a curate or an unsuspecting clergy of any kind, and even if we did, my deeply rooted Roman Catholic guilt would manifest itself all over the place if I attempted to trick anyone into preaching on today s lessons. So ready or not, here we go. As most of you know, I believe that one of the best ways to understand what is going on in many Biblical texts is to relate them to something from our own time and culture. But I have to tell you, the relationship that occurred to me for today s text scares me. Do you know what I thought of when trying to compare today s Gospel with something from our own world? The bizarre mind of Tim Burton. Do you all know this guy? Tim Burton has one of Hollywood s most creative, but also twisted minds. He was the director of such macabre flicks as Edward Scissorhands, Corpse 1

2 Bride, Sweeney Todd, The Nightmare before Christmas and Mars Attacks! Two months ago, he released Dark Shadows, a remake of the campy television series with the aristocratic vampire. Just out now is Burton s newest, with the weirdest title of any movie released in recent years. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Killer, where we learn that the Civil War was actually caused by deadly vampires and the 16th President goes to work to eliminate them. Perhaps today s Gospel is a nightmare to preachers, but the rest of American culture eats it up quicker than fast food burgers. We are so fascinated with lurid killings, that we have created an entire book and movie genre for it. The only thing better than a juicy horror tale for us is when we can also mix the element of eroticism into the danger. That, of course, is exactly what we get in today s Gospel and it is what Tim Burton has brought to a new art form; sex, murder, and mayhem all rolled into one. I am surprised that Burton has not yet used the text of today s Gospel as the basis of one of his movies. We might not be able to get secular folks to hear the parable of the lost coin, but even those who have never been in a church, know this story of seduction and slaying, of carnal lust and carnage. Folks like 2

3 Gustave Flaubert have written short stories about it. Richard Strauss and Jules Massenet composed entire operas depicting the events. Last week, when David Wachter was searching for images for the front cover of the bulletin, he searched high and low, finally giving up and settling on a generic image of Jesus with a group of apostles. There just are no artistic renditions of taking nothing but a staff for the journey. But for today s readings, his options were nearly limitless. On the first site I searched, I immediately found 78 paintings depicting today s Gospel, way more than there are for even Easter and Christmas. From Rembrandt to Bellini, from 1100 to the 20 th century, everybody loves to be Tim Burton, everyone wants to paint an interpretation of a juicy story like this one. There were far and away two favorite images in those paintings. The first were various interpretations of John the Baptist s head being presented on a platter. The second were erotic depictions of Herodias daughter, who has the same name as her mother in the Biblical text, but who the historian Josephus refers to as Salome, seductively doing a topless dance. You may have been disappointed to discover that David Wachter thought it 3

4 inappropriate and unwise to share any of those images with you on today s bulletin. So tell me, how many of you have ever heard an enlightening sermon on the topless dancer and/or the beheading of John the Baptist? Exactly. There are a couple reasons for that. First and most important, most preachers are chicken. Second, many Episcopalians have never had the opportunity to preach on this lesson before. That is because the Episcopal lectionary selectors thought that this Gospel was just too salacious for our refined sensibilities. Being proper Anglicans, they split last week s Gospel in two and did the second half of it this week, just so we could pass over this morbid tale. So what then, am I to do? My job is not to be Stephen King or Tim Burton, but to preach the Good News to you. Now you tell me, where exactly is the good news in the head of a prophet sitting on a plate? When I discussed the possibilities with other preachers, they all said the same thing. Don t be an idiot. Preach on the other readings. So let s see, how about a nice sermon on the dancing David in today s first reading? We could talk about how David experiences the presence of the Holy Spirit through his exuberant dance. We might 4

5 conclude from this how staid Episcopalians could learn a lesson here, how we could all stand to loosen up a bit and let the Spirit overwhelm us and lead us into ecstatic dancing. We could talk about the Sufis of Islam, who learned from David. They whirl themselves in sacred circles to experience the presence of God in their own lives. There is however, the little issue of David s wife getting a bit perturbed about her husband s euphoric dance occurring in front of all the other girls, with apparently nothing on under his kilt. Hmmm. That does not sound much better than preaching on Salome, does it? How about the Epistle? Paul s letter to the church in Ephesus would likely lead us to a discussion of truth, of how to identify truth, and how to speak truth in love. The problem is that this also seems to lead us inevitably back to what we were trying to avoid. Isn t it John the Baptist s courage to speak the truth to Herod and Herodias about their immorality that gets him killed? Therefore, we will not be taking part in avoidance tactics this morning. We are going to talk about John the Baptist and the ugliness of today s Gospel and we are going to find the Good News. To get there, I want to take you to a place far, far away, both in miles and in 5

6 culture. Let us take a journey to the country s Bible Belt, to the dense hills of Lookout Mountain, Georgia, the site of my wife s grandson s wedding. Now the Pastor of the PCA Presbyterian Church where the marriage took place, had known Chris and his bride Beth, since they were very young children. However, with the exception of one joke about Chris cleaning up well, the Pastor made no personal remarks about either of them. He also offered them no pointers on how to live into this Covenant marriage they were entering. In fact, he actually suggested that their marriage was...beside the point. The only reason, he said, for them to be together at all, was so they could be each other s partners in waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for the imminent arrival of Christ in the second coming. Their calling, he said, was to prepare themselves for the cataclysmic end of the world, and Christ literally descending the heavens to greet them. We in fact, concluded the wedding with the hymn, Lo, He Comes with clouds descending, # 57 right there in our Hymnal. Because this song was such a critical part of the Pastor s theology and it didn t appear in their own hymnal, he had actually taken our version and pasted it right into the front of everyone s book. 6

7 I would later learn that the people in this church had sung this hymn so often, that they all knew it by heart. Though I personally found his end of the world theology out of place at a wedding, I comforted myself with the notion that he had at least chosen to give what he felt was his most important sermon at Chris s wedding. But later that evening, I would discover that this same message had been delivered at every wedding anyone could remember in the church. Why would a Pastor choose to tell couples on their wedding day that their marriage was most probably a waste of time? Because of John the Baptist. The center of John the Baptist s theology is the same center as that Pastor s. Prepare. Get ready. The end is near. Very, very soon, God is coming to straighten out this mess, to extinguish the evil in the world through some sort of cataclysmic event. Every time we hear John in the Gospels, this is his message. Because he is convinced the world is ending at any moment, his first concern is that people be ready, that they repent, that they turn from their evil ways and follow the law. That pastor preaches about the end of days, even at people s weddings, for the same reason John the Baptist did. He is trying to save people before it is too late. 7

8 That is exactly what is going on in today s flashback Gospel. John says to Herod, Don t you get it? The world is ending. This is no time to be getting it on with your brother s wife. Despite Herodias attempts however, John s theology does not die when his head is placed on a dinner plate. It is in fact, carried on by the most prolific writer in the Christian scripture, the apostle Paul. Just like John the Baptist, Paul is absolutely convinced that the world is coming to an end in his lifetime. From this we can understand why Paul says in First Corinthians, So then, he who marries his fiancee does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better. Why take any chances when God is coming to wipe away all the sinners at any moment? And hence the Pastor s wedding sermon to Chris and Beth. His message was very biblically based, rooted in the theology of John the Baptist and Paul. Here s the fancy academic phrase you get to take home from all of this today. People like the wedding Pastor and John the Baptist and the apostle Paul are called apocalyptic eschatologists. Eschatology is the doctrine of the last things, and apocalypse, is a foreboding imminent disaster. Hence apocalyptic eschatologists believe that the world is so far gone that God is coming 8

9 and coming fast to save us from the wretched mess we have made of everything. As centrally rooted in biblical thought as it is, there are some inherent problems with an apocalyptic eschatological approach to life. First of all, if we believe God is blowing up the world tomorrow, it would be a waste of our time trying to take care of it or bring justice to others or to get married. It s too far gone. Only God can save it. That is why there is a large group within Christianity who couldn t give a flying flip about the environment or feeding starving people. Our only job, as they understand it, is to keep our noses clean and try to convince a few others to live righteous lives. I would suggest that it often results in a self-centered view of our place in society and the world. It is also a laissez-faire approach to life. We wait for God to fix everything. Our only job is to believe in God and that God is coming. John the Baptist is not jailed for fighting for justice for others. He is jailed because he tells Herod and Herodias that the end is near, so they better sit up and fly right. When Jesus s ministry begins, he becomes a disciple of John s. He is baptized by him and I think it is safe to assume that he also buys 9

10 into his theology. But somewhere along the way, I believe that Jesus parted company with John on this issue. What makes me think this? How do we know this? Well, for one, while people like John the Baptist and the wedding pastor spend all of their time preaching to believe, prepare, repent and live moral lives, Jesus rarely, if ever talked about any of that. Instead, his language is constantly about the realm of God. Jesus tells his apostles that they must actively take part in bringing about justice and dignity to all. John the Baptist and Paul talk about how we are to wait on God. But Jesus talks about how God is waiting on us. Rather than waiting for God to come save us from ourselves, Jesus suggests a wholly different path. He tells the disciples and us that God demands that we do something about the evil and chaos around us. We are to take an active role in bringing the realm of God to earth. Last week, you will recall, Jesus completed his call to the disciples to bring about this kingdom by professing the good news of abundance and full human dignity to everyone. In the verse before today s Gospel begins, we hear that those sent out have been successful in beginning to create this new world of justice. Demons 10

11 have been cast out and the sick have been healed, which are signs of the new realm. The flashback tale of John s horrid death in the midst of their success story is meant to be a sobering reminder to the apostles and us that spreading the social Gospel as Jesus insists, will not always be strawberries and cream. Sobering news though, does not exactly qualify as good news. So what is the good news for us in this gory story? It is obviously not, as John the Baptist and Paul thought, that God was going to come in their generation and fix everything. That, of course, did not happen. It is possible that the good news is that the apocalyptic end suggested by Paul and John is still coming, that maybe they were just off by a number of generations, and that Christ is returning in our generation to set the world straight. But the fact that Jesus seems to reject his cousin s end of the world theology suggests to me that the good news lies elsewhere. For an apocalyptic eschatologist, the good news occurs when we believe in God... but for Jesus, the Good News today is not that we believe in God, but that God believes in us. The good news is that God believes 11

12 that if we work in conjunction with God, together we can fix what is broken. The good news is, that despite the power brokers attempts to snuff it out, despite the heinous killings of John the Baptist and the death of Jesus it foreshadowed, despite the murders of thousands of prophets who have followed, God still believes in us. The good news is that if we are willing to not just believe in Jesus, but to journey with him, to live the life he lived, there is nothing the power structure can do to stop us. And that beloved, is not just Good news, but great news. Amen. 12