A pair of kings, but not two of a kind
Commentary
Object:
The Old Testament historian of the divided monarchy era had a simple method for evaluating the kings. Either they did (e.g., 1 Kings 15:24) or they did not (e.g., 2 Kings 16:2) live and reign like David. David was neither a perfect man nor a faultless king; yet he emerges in the Old Testament as a gold standard for monarchs. He is the one against which all subsequent rulers are measured.
Sports fans recognize certain figures who are so accomplished that they become the benchmark, the one to whom everyone else is compared. No one, for example, says that this basketball player or that one is better than Michael Jordan was. The question is simply whether a player is good enough to be compared, to be mentioned in the same sentence with Jordan.
So it is with David. The biblical authors never say that some king along the way was better than David. The question is only whether he followed David’s example or not. If so, he’s regarded as a good king. If not, then he is at least inferior and perhaps wicked.
Since it is the biblical pattern to compare subsequent kings to David, then our Old Testament and gospel lections combine to give us a chance to follow that pattern ourselves. We have a story from David’s reign and we have a story from a subsequent king’s reign. Let us set them side-by-side. Let us observe how King Herod stacks up next to King David.
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
As soon as human beings are involved in an event, that event automatically becomes a mixed bag. This episode from the early monarchic period of Old Testament Israel represents a happy and celebrative occasion. Yet it has within it at least two very unhappy elements.
The occasion is the move of the Ark of the Covenant to its new home in Jerusalem. The ark, we recall, was the most sacred and treasured physical item in ancient Israel. It represented the presence, the mercy, the law, and the covenant of the Lord. And during Israel’s wilderness years the ark was, literally, front and center. It was located at the front of the people when they moved, and it was located at the center of the people when they camped.
In our passage’s context, several hundred years after that wilderness period, we find ourselves early in the reign of King David. He has now succeeded Saul as king of all twelve tribes of Israel, and in an effort to unify his kingdom he has conquered a previously non-Israelite city to serve as his new capital: the formerly Jebusite city of Jerusalem. The city that he has made the political capital David seeks also to make the spiritual capital of the nation by bringing the ark there.
It is, we gather, not only a momentous occasion but a joyous one. We sense the festivity and rejoicing of a nation where everything is looking up. The celebrated presence of the ark is one way that this particular nation looks up.
The happy event turns tragic, however, in the verses that are excluded from our assigned text. The man named Uzzah presumed to touch the ark to steady it, and he was struck down for the trespass. We are troubled by the tragedy. So was King David. Yet the seeds of the trouble are sown by people, not God, and we see them evidenced in the early verses of our text: “They carried the ark of God on a new cart.”
From the days of Moses, the Lord had been very specific about the transportation of the ark. It was designed with poles, and it was to be carried on the shoulders of four priests. The very fact that the ark was being treated like freight in this way was a kind of mishandling of what was holy, and Uzzah’s subsequent trespass was perhaps a predictable result.
The Uzzah incident is airbrushed from our assigned text, but I mention it because it is one element in the larger pattern. The other element, which is included in the text, is the bitter reaction of David’s wife, Michal. We sense that David was entirely caught up in the moment -- spiritually, emotionally, and physically. He manifested his joy in dancing. When Michal saw the display from her window, “she despised him in her heart.”
Her very location may be a kind of tacit indictment of Michal. Why was she a spectator rather than a participant? Why was she removed from this national celebration? Beyond that, the human fact is that worship is always a bit repugnant to an observer. To the one who is wholly involved, it is sublime. But to the one who stands outside the experience and watches, it falls usually somewhere between incomprehensible and distasteful.
So it is that the human element predictably taints the sacred event. The ark was mishandled by the organizers to begin with, and then by Uzzah personally. And Michal, meanwhile, literally looked down on the whole event, revolted rather than inspired by it all.
Even with its human blemishes, the occasion is beautiful. It is festive and sacred. It is a national event with a spiritual impact, and vice versa. It is a watershed moment as Jerusalem becomes uniquely the earthly dwelling place of the presence of the Lord.
Ephesians 1:3-14
My wife has taken real pride in raising our children to be able to write meaningful thank-you notes. She inherited this from her own mother, and I’m grateful for the sensitivity and high standard. Some thank-you notes are so perfunctory, you know, that they are almost an insult to the gift. “Thank you for the (fill in the blank). I will enjoy (choose one) using, reading, wearing it.”
Our New Testament lection comes from what we might call the “thank-you note” portion of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians. Such thanksgiving sections were a customary element in letters of the ancient Mediterranean world. Of course, whatever is customary runs the risk of becoming rote, then mechanical, then impersonal, and ultimately meaningless. Not so with the apostle Paul, however; Paul writes a very meaningful thank-you note.
According to custom, Paul’s thanksgiving sections always follow the greeting or salutation, as we see here. The only exception to that pattern is in his letter to the Galatians, where he skips the thanksgiving altogether. That is his angriest letter, you recall, and the fact that he shuns the thanksgiving portion there is perhaps further proof that this customary section is not meaningless and mechanical to him.
In the Ephesian thanksgiving section, the key pronouns are “he” and “us.” The focus of the entire passage is what God has done for us and our relationship with him. We observe that Paul’s references to God are carefully Trinitarian -- that is to say, the work of each person of the Trinity is clear in the apostle’s mind and reflected in his thanksgiving.
The least developed portion of Trinitarian doctrine in this passage involves the Holy Spirit. Paul’s only reference to the third person of the Trinity comes at the very end, though the reference is consistent with the larger pattern of the passage: namely, the theme of our relationship to the Trinity. In this case, therefore, Paul says that we were “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,” which he calls “the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people.” It’s all about the relationship between God and us, you see.
The references to Christ are far more numerous -- too numerous to cover in individual detail here. We may observe in general, though, that Christ is not portrayed as the one who acts so much as the agency of the Father’s actions. That is to say, from first to last, it is the Father who is blessing, choosing, destining, willing, bestowing, and such. All of that gracious activity is “in Christ.” Furthermore, the benefits of our salvation and the relationship we enjoy with God are also all “in Christ.” Generating a simple list of what Paul says that God does and we have “in Christ” could become its own grand sermon series on Christology.
Finally, the portrait of God the Father is a picture of sovereign grace. If we understand that the sovereignty of God is a given, we will see more clearly his grace. He knows, he chooses, he wills, and he destines -- the natural prerogatives of an all-knowing and all-powerful God. But see the nature of his sovereign acts and their impact on us. He blesses us “with every spiritual blessing.” He chooses us “to be holy and blameless.” He destines us “for adoption as his children” and for an inheritance. He lavishes grace on us for redemption and forgiveness.
The lyrics and the tune are of two different sorts. The lyrics are theologically sophisticated, but the tune is childlike in its simplicity. An adult has plenty of vocabulary and doctrines with which to grapple in this passage, to be sure. Yet any child can sense and understand the beauty of its basic thrust. For beneath the themes of sovereignty, foreknowledge, and soteriology, this passage is a testament to a loving heavenly Father who has made every effort to save us completely.
Mark 6:14-29
Our gospel lection revolves around three main characters: Jesus, John the Baptist, and Herod. We ponder Jesus’ identity and we learn about John’s demise. In the context of this passage, it is the plotline of Herod’s life that brings the other two together.
The subject of Jesus’ identity is central to the gospels. Each gospel writer has his own way of exploring that central issue, and this excerpt is part of Mark’s treatment of it. We are given insight into the popular speculation about Jesus in the crowds, and we are also given a glimpse into Herod’s own suspicions. It is interesting to observe that none of the notions expressed were correct. More specifically, none anticipated the possibility of God doing something new, for every guess presumed that Jesus was some sort of recycled man of God.
Herod’s personal hunch was neither earnest curiosity nor detached conjecture. Rather, Herod had a guilty conscience, and guilt usually makes us fearful. Because he had arranged for John the Baptist’s execution, Herod was now afraid that Jesus was John come back to life.
This hypothesis becomes Mark’s opportunity to tell us the story of something that had already occurred prior to this moment in the story. So we are given a brief account of an unpleasant series of events. It is a dysfunctional soap opera that would make even contemporary television and movie screenwriters blush.
We need to begin by stepping back one generation in order to catch a glimpse of this awful family tree. Herod the Great, the monarch who slaughtered the innocents in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill baby Jesus, had a number of children. For our purposes, we need to know the names of three of his sons: Aristobulus, Herod Philip, and Herod Antipas (the Herod of our passage). The one son, Aristobulus, had a daughter named Herodias. Another son, Herod Philip, married his niece, Herodias. And then sometime later, yet another son, Herod Antipas, persuaded Herodias to leave her husband in order to marry him. When Herod married Herodias, therefore, he was marrying both his niece and his sister-in-law.
John the Baptist had said that was wrong. Indeed! But even though John was stating only the obvious, Herodias wanted him silenced. The text suggests that she would have had him killed earlier, but that her husband, Herod, was afraid to put to death a man of God. It is noteworthy that the chief priests and elders of the people did not have even as much perception or compunctions as immoral Herod when it came to Jesus.
Moses warned the people of Gad and Reuben, saying, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). So it was for Herod. Though he tried to straddle the fence between pleasing Herodias and preserving John, it was not sustainable. In the end his hand was forced, and Herod gave the order to have John beheaded. By this moment in the story of Jesus, Herod cannot recognize Jesus for who he is because he is haunted by his guilty fears.
We might preach the story of Herod this week because he is a profoundly sad example of several spiritual truths. He chooses the wrong path with his personal life, and it leads him into more and more trouble. He tries to silence rather than heed the word of God in his life. He allows the antagonist rather than the emissary of God’s word to win the day. He cannot know Jesus because he is so clouded by his guilt and fear.
Application
Our Old Testament passage and our gospel passage are just enough alike to make their differences conspicuous. Kings are at the center of both scenes. Furthermore, each episode features festive celebrations. Interestingly, dancing is a prominent element in both stories. But just as soon as we have identified the points of similarity, the dissimilarities become obvious.
Let us begin with the celebrations. Broadly speaking, each event is a kind of big party. Each is initiated by the king and each includes a lot of guests. Herod’s party, however, is all about him (his birthday), while David’s is about the Lord. One senses that Herod’s party is indoors, while David’s is out in the fresh air and daylight. Herod’s attendees are nobles and VIPs -- an exclusive guest list -- while David’s party includes “the whole multitude of Israel.”
Then there is the dancing. In the ugly episode from Herod’s reign, it is the king’s stepdaughter (and niece) who is dancing, and one senses that it is a seductive performance. Herod is too interested in watching this young girl dance, and he becomes so entranced that he foolishly blurts out reckless promises. In the Old Testament scene, meanwhile, it is the king himself that does the dancing, and for him it is an act of worship. He is not there to be pleased or entertained; he is there to serve the Lord “with all his might.”
So we have these two kings side by side. The one is self-absorbed and self-indulgent; the other is focused on God. The one is calculating and finds himself trapped by his own vices, while the other is confident, free, and effusive. At the end of each king’s party, the one has ushered the presence of God into his capital, while the other has decapitated the prophet of God within his palace.
We have before us this week a pair of kings, but they are not two of a kind. Herod does not compare favorably to the Bible’s gold standard for kings, for he did not walk in the ways and follow the example of David before him.
Alternative Application
Mark 6:14-29. “Cause and Effect” We observed above in the story and behavior of Herod his manifest combination of guilt and fear. In this regard, he serves as a metaphor for all of humanity. And a closer look at Herod might help us to understand more clearly the human condition.
“John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” That was Herod’s extraordinary conclusion when he heard reports about Jesus. To believe that a prophet of God had been miraculously resuscitated was remarkable enough, but when the corpse in question had been beheaded, the conclusion is even more astonishing. In our day, we often link the words “irrational” and “fear,” and clearly Herod’s fear had sailed many furlongs from the shore of rationality.
Mark deftly makes the great psychological and theological connection for us. He follows the account of Herod’s irrational fears with this statement: “For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias.” And therein lies the sordid tale that peels back the layer of fear to reveal what is beneath: guilt.
We see the cause-and-effect connection between guilt and fear from the very beginning. “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze,” Genesis reports, “and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God... (Adam) said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself’ ” (Genesis 3:8, 10). There is no indication that Adam and Eve ever hid from God before. In the wake of their sin, however, came guilt, shame, and fear.
Isaiah’s response to a vision of God also reveals our human link of guilt with fear: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Peter expresses a similar sentiment in the presence of Jesus: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). And John, in writing about love, identifies the same truth from a different angle: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18).
In contrast to all of that, it is striking to note the number of times in scripture that the Lord says to people, “Fear not.” Even in the face of what we would consider to be serious danger, the Lord still urges his people again and again not to be afraid. I don’t think this sort of fear is precisely the same as the fear that results from guilt, but it does point to a larger principle.
There is something about fear, you see, that is fundamentally contrary to the perfect will of God for us. Fear makes us paralyzed, self-conscious, and cowardly. By contrast, God created us to be free, confident, loving, and at peace.
Furthermore, God wants us to know him, but fear is an impediment to that too. Adam and Eve’s fear skewed their perception of the provident Creator who had surrounded them with goodness. Fear poisoned the third servant’s understanding of his master, and thus handicapped his stewardship (Matthew 25:24-25). Here, in this episode, fear prevented Herod from recognizing Jesus.
Herod, then, is a morality tale for humankind. He begins with guilt, which leads to fear, which in turn blinds him to Christ -- the very one who could solve the core problem of sin and guilt. “Jesus, the name to sinners dear,” Charles Wesley sang, “the name to sinners given; it scatters all their guilty fear, it turns their hell to heaven” (“Jesus! The Name High Over All,” Charles Wesley [United Methodist Hymnal #193]).
Sports fans recognize certain figures who are so accomplished that they become the benchmark, the one to whom everyone else is compared. No one, for example, says that this basketball player or that one is better than Michael Jordan was. The question is simply whether a player is good enough to be compared, to be mentioned in the same sentence with Jordan.
So it is with David. The biblical authors never say that some king along the way was better than David. The question is only whether he followed David’s example or not. If so, he’s regarded as a good king. If not, then he is at least inferior and perhaps wicked.
Since it is the biblical pattern to compare subsequent kings to David, then our Old Testament and gospel lections combine to give us a chance to follow that pattern ourselves. We have a story from David’s reign and we have a story from a subsequent king’s reign. Let us set them side-by-side. Let us observe how King Herod stacks up next to King David.
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
As soon as human beings are involved in an event, that event automatically becomes a mixed bag. This episode from the early monarchic period of Old Testament Israel represents a happy and celebrative occasion. Yet it has within it at least two very unhappy elements.
The occasion is the move of the Ark of the Covenant to its new home in Jerusalem. The ark, we recall, was the most sacred and treasured physical item in ancient Israel. It represented the presence, the mercy, the law, and the covenant of the Lord. And during Israel’s wilderness years the ark was, literally, front and center. It was located at the front of the people when they moved, and it was located at the center of the people when they camped.
In our passage’s context, several hundred years after that wilderness period, we find ourselves early in the reign of King David. He has now succeeded Saul as king of all twelve tribes of Israel, and in an effort to unify his kingdom he has conquered a previously non-Israelite city to serve as his new capital: the formerly Jebusite city of Jerusalem. The city that he has made the political capital David seeks also to make the spiritual capital of the nation by bringing the ark there.
It is, we gather, not only a momentous occasion but a joyous one. We sense the festivity and rejoicing of a nation where everything is looking up. The celebrated presence of the ark is one way that this particular nation looks up.
The happy event turns tragic, however, in the verses that are excluded from our assigned text. The man named Uzzah presumed to touch the ark to steady it, and he was struck down for the trespass. We are troubled by the tragedy. So was King David. Yet the seeds of the trouble are sown by people, not God, and we see them evidenced in the early verses of our text: “They carried the ark of God on a new cart.”
From the days of Moses, the Lord had been very specific about the transportation of the ark. It was designed with poles, and it was to be carried on the shoulders of four priests. The very fact that the ark was being treated like freight in this way was a kind of mishandling of what was holy, and Uzzah’s subsequent trespass was perhaps a predictable result.
The Uzzah incident is airbrushed from our assigned text, but I mention it because it is one element in the larger pattern. The other element, which is included in the text, is the bitter reaction of David’s wife, Michal. We sense that David was entirely caught up in the moment -- spiritually, emotionally, and physically. He manifested his joy in dancing. When Michal saw the display from her window, “she despised him in her heart.”
Her very location may be a kind of tacit indictment of Michal. Why was she a spectator rather than a participant? Why was she removed from this national celebration? Beyond that, the human fact is that worship is always a bit repugnant to an observer. To the one who is wholly involved, it is sublime. But to the one who stands outside the experience and watches, it falls usually somewhere between incomprehensible and distasteful.
So it is that the human element predictably taints the sacred event. The ark was mishandled by the organizers to begin with, and then by Uzzah personally. And Michal, meanwhile, literally looked down on the whole event, revolted rather than inspired by it all.
Even with its human blemishes, the occasion is beautiful. It is festive and sacred. It is a national event with a spiritual impact, and vice versa. It is a watershed moment as Jerusalem becomes uniquely the earthly dwelling place of the presence of the Lord.
Ephesians 1:3-14
My wife has taken real pride in raising our children to be able to write meaningful thank-you notes. She inherited this from her own mother, and I’m grateful for the sensitivity and high standard. Some thank-you notes are so perfunctory, you know, that they are almost an insult to the gift. “Thank you for the (fill in the blank). I will enjoy (choose one) using, reading, wearing it.”
Our New Testament lection comes from what we might call the “thank-you note” portion of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians. Such thanksgiving sections were a customary element in letters of the ancient Mediterranean world. Of course, whatever is customary runs the risk of becoming rote, then mechanical, then impersonal, and ultimately meaningless. Not so with the apostle Paul, however; Paul writes a very meaningful thank-you note.
According to custom, Paul’s thanksgiving sections always follow the greeting or salutation, as we see here. The only exception to that pattern is in his letter to the Galatians, where he skips the thanksgiving altogether. That is his angriest letter, you recall, and the fact that he shuns the thanksgiving portion there is perhaps further proof that this customary section is not meaningless and mechanical to him.
In the Ephesian thanksgiving section, the key pronouns are “he” and “us.” The focus of the entire passage is what God has done for us and our relationship with him. We observe that Paul’s references to God are carefully Trinitarian -- that is to say, the work of each person of the Trinity is clear in the apostle’s mind and reflected in his thanksgiving.
The least developed portion of Trinitarian doctrine in this passage involves the Holy Spirit. Paul’s only reference to the third person of the Trinity comes at the very end, though the reference is consistent with the larger pattern of the passage: namely, the theme of our relationship to the Trinity. In this case, therefore, Paul says that we were “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,” which he calls “the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people.” It’s all about the relationship between God and us, you see.
The references to Christ are far more numerous -- too numerous to cover in individual detail here. We may observe in general, though, that Christ is not portrayed as the one who acts so much as the agency of the Father’s actions. That is to say, from first to last, it is the Father who is blessing, choosing, destining, willing, bestowing, and such. All of that gracious activity is “in Christ.” Furthermore, the benefits of our salvation and the relationship we enjoy with God are also all “in Christ.” Generating a simple list of what Paul says that God does and we have “in Christ” could become its own grand sermon series on Christology.
Finally, the portrait of God the Father is a picture of sovereign grace. If we understand that the sovereignty of God is a given, we will see more clearly his grace. He knows, he chooses, he wills, and he destines -- the natural prerogatives of an all-knowing and all-powerful God. But see the nature of his sovereign acts and their impact on us. He blesses us “with every spiritual blessing.” He chooses us “to be holy and blameless.” He destines us “for adoption as his children” and for an inheritance. He lavishes grace on us for redemption and forgiveness.
The lyrics and the tune are of two different sorts. The lyrics are theologically sophisticated, but the tune is childlike in its simplicity. An adult has plenty of vocabulary and doctrines with which to grapple in this passage, to be sure. Yet any child can sense and understand the beauty of its basic thrust. For beneath the themes of sovereignty, foreknowledge, and soteriology, this passage is a testament to a loving heavenly Father who has made every effort to save us completely.
Mark 6:14-29
Our gospel lection revolves around three main characters: Jesus, John the Baptist, and Herod. We ponder Jesus’ identity and we learn about John’s demise. In the context of this passage, it is the plotline of Herod’s life that brings the other two together.
The subject of Jesus’ identity is central to the gospels. Each gospel writer has his own way of exploring that central issue, and this excerpt is part of Mark’s treatment of it. We are given insight into the popular speculation about Jesus in the crowds, and we are also given a glimpse into Herod’s own suspicions. It is interesting to observe that none of the notions expressed were correct. More specifically, none anticipated the possibility of God doing something new, for every guess presumed that Jesus was some sort of recycled man of God.
Herod’s personal hunch was neither earnest curiosity nor detached conjecture. Rather, Herod had a guilty conscience, and guilt usually makes us fearful. Because he had arranged for John the Baptist’s execution, Herod was now afraid that Jesus was John come back to life.
This hypothesis becomes Mark’s opportunity to tell us the story of something that had already occurred prior to this moment in the story. So we are given a brief account of an unpleasant series of events. It is a dysfunctional soap opera that would make even contemporary television and movie screenwriters blush.
We need to begin by stepping back one generation in order to catch a glimpse of this awful family tree. Herod the Great, the monarch who slaughtered the innocents in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill baby Jesus, had a number of children. For our purposes, we need to know the names of three of his sons: Aristobulus, Herod Philip, and Herod Antipas (the Herod of our passage). The one son, Aristobulus, had a daughter named Herodias. Another son, Herod Philip, married his niece, Herodias. And then sometime later, yet another son, Herod Antipas, persuaded Herodias to leave her husband in order to marry him. When Herod married Herodias, therefore, he was marrying both his niece and his sister-in-law.
John the Baptist had said that was wrong. Indeed! But even though John was stating only the obvious, Herodias wanted him silenced. The text suggests that she would have had him killed earlier, but that her husband, Herod, was afraid to put to death a man of God. It is noteworthy that the chief priests and elders of the people did not have even as much perception or compunctions as immoral Herod when it came to Jesus.
Moses warned the people of Gad and Reuben, saying, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). So it was for Herod. Though he tried to straddle the fence between pleasing Herodias and preserving John, it was not sustainable. In the end his hand was forced, and Herod gave the order to have John beheaded. By this moment in the story of Jesus, Herod cannot recognize Jesus for who he is because he is haunted by his guilty fears.
We might preach the story of Herod this week because he is a profoundly sad example of several spiritual truths. He chooses the wrong path with his personal life, and it leads him into more and more trouble. He tries to silence rather than heed the word of God in his life. He allows the antagonist rather than the emissary of God’s word to win the day. He cannot know Jesus because he is so clouded by his guilt and fear.
Application
Our Old Testament passage and our gospel passage are just enough alike to make their differences conspicuous. Kings are at the center of both scenes. Furthermore, each episode features festive celebrations. Interestingly, dancing is a prominent element in both stories. But just as soon as we have identified the points of similarity, the dissimilarities become obvious.
Let us begin with the celebrations. Broadly speaking, each event is a kind of big party. Each is initiated by the king and each includes a lot of guests. Herod’s party, however, is all about him (his birthday), while David’s is about the Lord. One senses that Herod’s party is indoors, while David’s is out in the fresh air and daylight. Herod’s attendees are nobles and VIPs -- an exclusive guest list -- while David’s party includes “the whole multitude of Israel.”
Then there is the dancing. In the ugly episode from Herod’s reign, it is the king’s stepdaughter (and niece) who is dancing, and one senses that it is a seductive performance. Herod is too interested in watching this young girl dance, and he becomes so entranced that he foolishly blurts out reckless promises. In the Old Testament scene, meanwhile, it is the king himself that does the dancing, and for him it is an act of worship. He is not there to be pleased or entertained; he is there to serve the Lord “with all his might.”
So we have these two kings side by side. The one is self-absorbed and self-indulgent; the other is focused on God. The one is calculating and finds himself trapped by his own vices, while the other is confident, free, and effusive. At the end of each king’s party, the one has ushered the presence of God into his capital, while the other has decapitated the prophet of God within his palace.
We have before us this week a pair of kings, but they are not two of a kind. Herod does not compare favorably to the Bible’s gold standard for kings, for he did not walk in the ways and follow the example of David before him.
Alternative Application
Mark 6:14-29. “Cause and Effect” We observed above in the story and behavior of Herod his manifest combination of guilt and fear. In this regard, he serves as a metaphor for all of humanity. And a closer look at Herod might help us to understand more clearly the human condition.
“John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” That was Herod’s extraordinary conclusion when he heard reports about Jesus. To believe that a prophet of God had been miraculously resuscitated was remarkable enough, but when the corpse in question had been beheaded, the conclusion is even more astonishing. In our day, we often link the words “irrational” and “fear,” and clearly Herod’s fear had sailed many furlongs from the shore of rationality.
Mark deftly makes the great psychological and theological connection for us. He follows the account of Herod’s irrational fears with this statement: “For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias.” And therein lies the sordid tale that peels back the layer of fear to reveal what is beneath: guilt.
We see the cause-and-effect connection between guilt and fear from the very beginning. “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze,” Genesis reports, “and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God... (Adam) said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself’ ” (Genesis 3:8, 10). There is no indication that Adam and Eve ever hid from God before. In the wake of their sin, however, came guilt, shame, and fear.
Isaiah’s response to a vision of God also reveals our human link of guilt with fear: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Peter expresses a similar sentiment in the presence of Jesus: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). And John, in writing about love, identifies the same truth from a different angle: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18).
In contrast to all of that, it is striking to note the number of times in scripture that the Lord says to people, “Fear not.” Even in the face of what we would consider to be serious danger, the Lord still urges his people again and again not to be afraid. I don’t think this sort of fear is precisely the same as the fear that results from guilt, but it does point to a larger principle.
There is something about fear, you see, that is fundamentally contrary to the perfect will of God for us. Fear makes us paralyzed, self-conscious, and cowardly. By contrast, God created us to be free, confident, loving, and at peace.
Furthermore, God wants us to know him, but fear is an impediment to that too. Adam and Eve’s fear skewed their perception of the provident Creator who had surrounded them with goodness. Fear poisoned the third servant’s understanding of his master, and thus handicapped his stewardship (Matthew 25:24-25). Here, in this episode, fear prevented Herod from recognizing Jesus.
Herod, then, is a morality tale for humankind. He begins with guilt, which leads to fear, which in turn blinds him to Christ -- the very one who could solve the core problem of sin and guilt. “Jesus, the name to sinners dear,” Charles Wesley sang, “the name to sinners given; it scatters all their guilty fear, it turns their hell to heaven” (“Jesus! The Name High Over All,” Charles Wesley [United Methodist Hymnal #193]).
