A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 10
July 14, 2024, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs
Readings: Mark 6:14-29
We come today with two texts of political violence. The first is our gospel reading. Herod executes John the Baptist at the behest of his daughter. Mark wants to hedge a little bit; Herod comes off as a reluctant executioner. But we should be suspicious of that. Everything we know about the Herods paints them as a family of cruel and exacting tyrants. Herod executes John to send a message–don’t cross me, he says. And if a head on a silver platter will entertain his guests, Herod won’t hesitate.
I wrote my first sermon for this Sunday yesterday morning. After talking about the violence in this scene, I wrote this: “Why do we need to read such a text in worship? There seems to be little redemptive value to it. After all, we might say, don’t we come to worship to be lifted up? And aren’t there children in the room? This seems a little too far, a little too graphic for their ears and ours.”
Yesterday’s events make that concern seem naive now. When I wrote those words, I did not know there would be an assassination attempt on the former President’s life yesterday. That’s our second text of political violence today, the context we all bring with us. We give thanks that President Trump is safe. We mourn for the man who died. We continue to pray for those in serious medical condition.
Political violence is more than violence; it is violence with a message for the body politic. And there has been an uptick of it in the United States over the last several years. Yesterday’s events did not happen in a vacuum. While we have not had an assassination attempt on a president or presidential candidate since 1981, political violence has been on the rise. It all comes with a message of some kind, meant to instill terror and to intimidate, meant to tear away at the institutions of our republic and democratic life. That was the message yesterday. It was the message when Speaker Pelosi’s husband was beaten with a hammer by an intruder in the middle of the night. It was the message as rioters violently mobbed the U.S. Capitol. It is the message when swastikas are painted on synagogues; when Palestinian students are shot while walking down the road in Vermont; when effigies are strung up on trees in black neighborhoods and black churches are burned to the ground; when lawless militias send men to patrol outside polling places.
This cycle of violence starts with our speech. How do we speak about one another? How do we speak about those with whom we passionately disagree and see the world differently? Do we dehumanize them, serving them up on silver platters for ridicule and abuse? That’s the root of political violence, and we should not be shocked or surprised when these things take place. But it need not be that way. We could choose to see others, even our enemies, as created in the image of God. We could choose to see their lives as precious to the One who made them. We could choose to see them as our neighbors whom we are commanded to love as ourselves.
How can we turn the page on this violent cycle? I don’t have the answers. But we can turn the page in the gospel. Immediately after the execution of John the Baptist, Jesus and his disciples go away into the wilderness for prayer. But as they seek seclusion, a crowd shows up. Jesus feeds them. The feeding of the 5,000 is presented in sharp contrast to Herod’s party. Herod’s feast ends in violence and death. Jesus’s feast in the wilderness for all who hunger ends in life and health.
We can only RSVP to one party: Herod’s or Jesus’s. As the Church, we are called to Jesus’s feast in the wilderness. We reject Herod’s feast and way of death. We reject violence in all forms, from overt physical attacks to speech that leads to hatred. In the face of political violence, we must be witnesses to Jesus’s Way of Love and nonviolence, for we believe that is the only way to bind up the nation’s wounds. And in the wilderness of this world, even when things seem to be spiraling out of control, we are called to gather around our shepherd who feeds us and all who hunger. We are called to the point the world to him, to his way of nonviolence and peace, to his truth that calls each person beloved and precious, to his abundant life that sustains the weary and heals the broken.
Storied Grace 