Sunday Musings
Party of Retribution
Dear friends,
Given the terrible political violence this evening in the United States, a number of readers asked if I could send my Musing out tonight instead of waiting for tomorrow. Many people in this community are pastors - and they are struggling with how to preach in the morning. Please pray for them as they seek to guide their communities.
Perhaps some of my words might help at this uneasy moment.
This piece was finished early on Saturday morning. The lectionary text for this Sunday is shockingly relevant - it is an account of political violence. So, be prepared.
You may have received the earlier version in addition to this one. Please forgive any duplication.
Pray for those wounded and killed. Pray that any spirit of retribution would be transformed by love. Pray for all of us.
We have choices to make. Pray we make good ones.
Love, Diana
A late addition to this post, following the violence at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania. This prayer is from the Catholic Health Association:
“Our God will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”
Isaiah 2:4
God who is beyond politics and nations,
Christ who transcends the power of violence,
Holy Spirit who animates all people,
Be with us in this moment of violence, division, and turmoil.
Transform our rage and hate that we might see our brothers and sisters with your eyes.
Break our hearts of stone, give us hearts of love and understanding that your peace might prevail. Amen.
Today is the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.
We’re in the long season of Ordinary Time.
Last week, Jesus was ridiculed in his hometown and he and his disciples set off with nothing to more welcoming villages.
This week, King Herod hears of Jesus’ miraculous and prophetic works and remembers that time he had Jesus’ cousin for dinner. Literally.
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Mark 6:14-29
King Herod heard of Jesus and his disciples, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.
But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.”
She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?”
She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.”
Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”
The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother.
When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.
When Raw Story published a report last week (the original is behind a paywall; this link is to a Guardian story on the report) about a “deep state target list” and a right-wing activist seeking to become Donald Trump’s “secretary of retribution,” I started to tremble. It has been an absolutely hideous week of news here in the United States, and I had reached my emotional limit.
“I’ll write my Sunday Musing,” I thought. “I’d rather reflect on scripture than read another thing about this mayhem.”
So, I turned to the lectionary. And there it was, almost as if ripped from the week’s headlines: the passage assigned for today is about a corrupt ruler and his even more corrupt family, retribution against one’s critics, and a political murder — one of the most gruesome episodes in the entire New Testament.
The story is true. It was corroborated by the ancient historian Josephus, who reports that “Herod had John put to death,” in his Antiquities of the Jews. Although his details differ somewhat from Mark’s account, the outcome is the same. John the Baptist was unjustly arrested and killed by Herod.
Josephus’ report makes Herod’s action rawly political. There’s no historical mention of his angry wife or cunning daughter being involved. That’s led more than a few critics to assign Mark’s version to the category of a “pious legend,” a well-spun tale of deceit.
But such suggestions overlook the political nature of Mark’s account.
King Herod was the grandson of Herod the Great, the brutal king when Jesus was born. This younger King Herod, named Herod Antipas, ruled over only Galilee and Pera. He was a kind of sub-king; his father’s realm was divided between him and two other heirs. But he eyed taking over the whole kingdom. He wanted, as his father had been, to be recognized by imperial Rome as both King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans.
To achieve this goal, he launched an ambitious building program in Galilee. He rebuilt the city of Sepphoris and renamed it Autocratoris, in honor of Caesar Augustus. Then, he built a glistening new Roman-style city on the Sea of Galilee and called it Tiberias, in honor of the new emperor Tiberius. The Sea of Galilee would eventually be known by the same moniker, the Sea of Tiberias. Herod liked naming things after Roman emperors.
In addition to boot-licking whoever sat on the throne in Rome, Herod Antipas freely used the women around him to advance his career. He first married an Arabic princess in a political alliance. But he divorced her when he inconveniently fell in love with his brother’s wife, Herodias, who, according to Josephus: “took upon her to confound the laws of our country, and divorced herself from her husband while he was alive, and was married to Herod Antipas.”
He might have loved her. But it didn’t hurt that Herodias was one of the last in the royal line of the Hasmoneans, a local Jewish dynasty that lent some credibility to the Herodian pretenders (Herod the Great had become king when Mark Antony convinced his friends back in Rome that this local thug would be good at the job). Herodias brought a daughter from her first marriage to Herod Antipas’ brother, Salome, a princess whose blood commingled the lineage of both royal houses.
And the whole business was abhorrent to serious Jews. They didn’t approve of either the Hasmoneans or the Herodians. The former had, after defeating a Greek colonizer empire in the Maccabean revolt, succumbed to the temptations of Hellenism and then Rome; the latter was basically a mob family installed as puppet rulers by the Roman emperor. Neither dynasty cared much to keep the Law or follow established rituals of Judaism. And their union was an affront to Jews who did.
Mark’s story is a flashback, placed strategically in his larger narrative of Jesus. It immediately follows last week’s passage — when Jesus was rejected in his own hometown and sent his disciples out to proclaim the Kingdom of God in more hospitable places. When today’s text opens, Herod heard of Jesus’ mission — “they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” — and was worried that Jesus might be following in the footsteps of his annoying cousin, John the Baptist, whom Herod had already murdered. Herod was looking back — worried that Jesus might be John resurrected. Was this a new troublemaker?
John the Baptist wasn’t just a religious zealot who opposed divorce and remarriage. He charged Herod with ignoring Jewish law. And, in doing so, highlighted the corruption of these two idolatrous dynasties joined in this unholy matrimony. John wasn’t only attacking Herod for having sex with the wrong person (his brother’s wife) but for both of them being in bed with the Romans.
John didn’t accuse him of sexual immorality. By going after this scandalous marriage, John attacked Herod’s entire imperial project of collaborating with Rome while trying to gain religious legitimacy with the Jews to further his ambition. Herod could ill afford the bad publicity. The Arabic kingdom to his south was already angry at him for divorcing and exiling their princess; he couldn’t risk angry local Jews at the palace gates.
So much was a stake for Herod — and for Herodias. Personally and politically. Marriage and kingdom were their power and security. Sometimes, murder is the only way to save a crown.
Mark’s account intertwines this tale of personal revenge with its political implications. Indeed, the occasion for John’s torturous ending was the autocratic Herod’s birthday banquet. The scene was set. The guests included, in hierarchy of importance, nobles, army officers, and leading citizens. This was the elite, a kind of state dinner of, as one commentator says, “governmental, military, and commercial interests,” all intent on currying favor with the dictator who himself had truckled to the ruling empire.
Flatterers, fawners, and flunkeys all.
These were the anti-disciples, the followers of Herod. He lusted to be King of the Jews. They might not like or trust him, but they’d get their share even as he got his. This was their blasphemous banquet, a sacred meal of shared purpose — to break bread and drink wine to honor him and his ultimate patron, Caesar in Rome. What a kingdom! What an empire!
Here, at this table, no feet were washed and no prayers of gratitude said. There’s no anticipation of God’s reign, only an insatiable hunger for power. Slaves served the food and women watched the men sate themselves.
A girl was called in to entertain them. She danced with such provocation, pleasuring the drunken disciples and Herod (who was both her uncle and step-father; surely the incestuous possibility of her becoming his next wife crossed his mind; had he gazed on the girl before?), that a ghastly oath was sworn — the head of John the Baptist will be her prize.
It was her mother’s idea.
Revenge can be so cruelly sweet.
And thus, at this sinister supper, the two royal lines, their histories and desires embodied in this child, carried out a plot to kill their greatest rival — a dusty prophet who dared criticize them and challenge their right to rule the world.
That’s Mark’s point. There are two kingdoms — the reign of God and the rule of Caesar. It is horrifying and oddly humorous at the same time, Mark’s mockery of imperial politics. It is Herod Antipas’ Gospel of Antithesis — this is what you get if you join his party.
Where would you rather be? With Jesus and his homeless friends who have “no bread, no bag, no money in their belts” wandering from village to village? Or with Herod and his lackeys, in a glistening palace having a gluttonous party with political murder for dessert?
Come along, says Herod, to my party of retribution. Follow me. I’ll feed you well. Dance for me.
You choose.
INSPIRATION
Herodias, in the Doorway.
More than anything I ache to see her
so girlish. She steps languidly
into their midst as if onto a pooled expanse
of grass…or as if she were herself
the meadow, unruffled green
ringed with lilies
instead of these red-rimmed eyes,
this wasteland soaked in smoke and pleasure.
Ignorant, she moves as if inventing
time – and the musicians scurry
to deliver a carpet of flutes
under her flawless heel.
— Rita Dove, from “The Seven Veils of Salome.” Please read the entire, breathtaking poem HERE.
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AT THE CONVOCATION
Every Thursday, the Convocation, an online magazine/digest of writing from me, Robert P. Jones, Kristin Du Mez, and Jemar Tisby, is published. On alternate Thursdays, we convene the Convocation Unscripted, our podcast about one — or two — stories in the news about faith and politics.
This past week, we started with a conversation on Project 2025 and education — especially in the field of social studies and the nature of history.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…
Here’s the most-read piece of the last month at The Cottage on why we must talk about religion and politics in church:
When I finally looked up the excerpt in the Bible, I was surprised to discover that it was not Salomé but her mother who had devised this theatrical revenge. I was shocked, actually, to realize how easily I had forgotten the real story . . . or repressed it.
Perhaps I’d been too young to understand what was at stake for Herodias, perhaps because I wanted to believe in the power of beauty to get whatever it wanted; I hadn’t understood the sorrow underlying the drama.
— Rita Dove
We were sitting at our table after lunch here in Wellington, NZ where it was already Sunday. Shocking news, but not entirely surprising given the level of violent rhetoric we have had reported. May those of you with decisions to make be courageous, and remember there are others elsewhere holding you in prayer.
Wow. Thank you so much for writing & sharing this very insightful piece. It is helping inform my perspective to today’s news, and one I would’ve missed since I am out of town and won’t be in church hearing this scripture tomorrow.