Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Be Careful What You Promise …"

Text: Mark 6:14-29

we get a fairly nuanced portrait of Herod in these few verses.

I say "surprisingly" because, as we have seen in the past,

Mark’s tendency is to race through stories

and give us only the barest of details.

And this account does require some fleshing-out, to be sure,

but at least part of it shows us a side of Herod

that we very rarely hear about.

The story begins with Herod hearing tales about Jesus,

and assuming that the rumors are true,

that who he really is is John the baptizer,

raised from the dead.

And that would, of course, get Herod’s attention,

since he’s the one responsible

for John’s being dead in the first place.

Then Mark gives us a flashback as to how that happened,

and here’s where we get a really two-sided portrait of Herod.

Remember that Herod is a Jew;

he is of the royal family who ruled in Israel –

off and on, anyway –

until the Romans showed up on the scene.

Herod is still allowed a lot of kingly privileges,

as long as he doesn’t challenge Roman rule.

So on the one hand, he has a lot of power among his own people,

but he can always be trumped by Pilate and other Roman leaders.

Keep all of that in mind as we watch him waffle

between being honorable and being a complete jerk.

At first hearing, it sounds like Herod is the bad guy.

We learn that he had sent some of his men to arrest John the baptizer,

to bind him up, and to put him in prison.

Why?

"On account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife,

because Herod had married her" …

and John told him he couldn’t do that.

So Herod has stolen his brother’s wife …

Philip can’t have been dead, because according to the Law,

then it would have been entirely appropriate

for Herod to have married his widow.

No, Philip is still very much alive,

and brother Herod has stolen his wife.

And apparently she wasn’t too unhappy with the deal,

since she is the one who’s mad at John for bringing up the subject.

Mark tells us that "Herodias had a grudge against him,

and wanted to kill him."

But then … what’s this?

She was unable to kill John,

because Herod knew that John was a righteous and holy man,

and he protected him.

So what Herod has really done in locking John up

is more like a form of protective custody!

If he’s in Herod’s prison,

Herod’s guards can keep a closer eye on him,

and protect him from Herodias’ minions,

who would be only to happy to "rub him out."

Not only that,

but we learn that Herod actually finds John pretty interesting.

"When he heard him," Mark tells us, "he was greatly perplexed;

and yet he liked to listen to him."

There’s something compelling about John

and his strange habits and his harsh message

that touches even Herod,

and the king wants to listen to him and learn from him,

even if he can’t quite understand what’s being said.

That’s not the portrait of Herod

that most of us are walking around with, is it?!

Someone who, for all his power and posturing,

still has a hunger for God’s word.

Keep that in mind as we come to

"the rest of the story."

Herod’s birthday arrives, and he throws a big party,

with "courtiers and officers and the leaders of Galilee."

A veritable "Who’s Who" of the Jewish elite;

perhaps even a few Romans thrown in as well.

So to show off for them,

Herod has his stepdaughter dance for the audience.

The text calls her his "daughter,"

but that can’t be literally true,

since he has only recently married her mother.

To complicate matters,

apparently the girl’s name is Herodias as well.

Anyway, think about that scene for a moment.

When we talk in this context about a young woman

dancing for a group of men …

we are not talking about her latest

Shirley-Temple-tap-dance routine.

We’re talking the first-century equivalent of a "gentleman’s club,"

though certainly less exposed and more suggestive.

But really … what is Herod thinking,

asking his wife’s daughter to entertain his guests in such a way?

Would any of us ask our teenage daughter

to do a little dance to entertain our men friends?

What is going on with Herod?

Here we just got a glimpse of him

as being a person with a serious and thoughtful side,

and then he turns around and pulls a stunt like this?

Well, perhaps Herod is a lot like most of us:

feels just enough need to show off in front of other people

that he does something inappropriate in the process.

Perhaps he’s trying to stir up a little envy;

perhaps the originally-scheduled dancer didn’t show up;

perhaps he’s just clueless.

I suspect the latter.

At any rate, the girl’s dance "please[s] Herod and his guests" …

duh …

and so, feeling extravagant and wanting to show off in front of his guests,

Herod rashly promises the girl anything she wants in return,

even half of his kingdom, if that’s what she desires.

Being an obedient daughter,

she asks her mother for advice,

and this is too good a chance for Herodias to pass up.

So, acceding to her mother’s request,

young Herodias returns to stepdad and says,

"I want you to give me at once

the head of John the Baptizer on a platter."

Which Herod is going to respond?

Good Herod, or bad Herod?

The one who seeks the truth, even though it puzzles him,

or the one who is obsessed by his status, his wealth, and his power?

Mark tells us that Herod was "deeply grieved," and yet,

because he had sworn it to her …

and not only because he had promised,

but because he did it with all his guests hearing him …

he is unable to refuse her.

It isn’t even so much that Herod feels obligated to make good on his promise,

as that he will lose face among the partygoers

if he changes his mind and won’t do what she asks.

And so John is beheaded,

and continues to haunt Herod’s conscience long after

his disciples have buried his body.

But what about the question of making promises,

and keeping them?

At some level,

should Herod be applauded for making good on a promise,

even though it demanded of him something he didn’t want?

Certainly that’s the spin placed on a much earlier Bible story,

in the 11^th chapter of the book of Judges,

where Jephthah makes a promise to God:

If God will grant him victory in battle over the Ammonties,

then when Jephthah gets home,

whoever first comes out the door of the house to meet him,

he will offer to the Lord as a burnt sacrifice.

Assuming, no doubt,

that it will be one of the slaves,

or the family dog,

or one of the goats that graze in the inner courtyard.

Instead, he is greeted by his daughter, his only child,

who comes to greet him with timbrels and dancing.

Though it grieves Jephthah very much –

not to mention how his daughter must have felt about it! –

he makes good on his promise.

He does grant her a two-month reprieve,

but at the end of that time,

the promise is completed.

He is praised as one who was faithful to his promise,

at least traditionally.

Okay, then, shouldn’t Herod be praised as well?

Is it different, somehow,

if the promise is made to God rather than to a human being?

Is it different if the promise is made

by a righteous person, or an unrighteous person?

Is it different if the promise is made

to a righteous person or an unrighteous person?

Are there promises that ought to be broken?

And how would we know?

Today, I suspect,

we would think of both Herod’s promise and Jephthah’s

as being way out of line.

Which suggests that one of the lessons we ought to draw

from this morning’s scripture

is that most of us ought to be a whole lot more careful

about what we promise.

Because, much as it may grieve us to admit it,

we are like Herod in many respects.

Certainly we don’t have the kind of power and authority that he had …

but we can certainly recognize ourselves in

his struggle to do the right thing

while powerfully tempted to do the wrong thing.

Listening to Jesus often perplexes us,

yet we like to listen to him.

He says things that sometimes make us angry,

things that challenge the choices we have made

and the priorities we have chosen …

even if none of us ever stole our brother’s wife.

Yet we find him compelling, and we continue to listen.

It seems that sometimes we lock him up in church buildings,

and we only go to listen to him on Sundays,

but even so, he draws us in,

and we know that his message is something we need to hear.

Even if we aren’t always ready yet to act on it.

So we can understand Herod’s conflicting feelings about John.

I imagine that we can also, if we are honest with ourselves,

understand aspects of the "bad Herod" as well.

Doesn’t it sometimes feel good to show off?

A new car … a fine-looking date … a swanky corner office?

And don’t we get caught sometimes making decisions

not on the basis of what seems right to us,

but what will look good to those who are watching?

As children, didn’t we sometimes take dares that we shouldn’t have?

- I dare you to jump off the garage roof

- I dare you to eat that worm

- I dare you to sneak out after midnight and come T.P. houses with me

And at some level you feel like you have to do it,

or lose status among your peer group?

Do we ever really have the chance to outgrow that?

- I shouldn’t spend money on this, but my neighbors just got a new one …

- I ought to say no when my friends invite me to go out drinking, but they’ll think I’m weird …

And in keeping with our "bad Herod" …

haven’t we all made promises at one time or another

that were made in the heat of the moment,

or at a time of desperation,

and we never should have done any such thing?

I do not think that God expects us to keep those promises.

Unless, of course, they happened to be good promises

even though they were made under not-good circumstances.

I do think that God expects us to confess to making bad promises …

to admit that we have let people down

when we promised what we couldn’t deliver,

to acknowledge that we use promises to impress others

instead of being honest with them and ourselves.

In a sense, we are asked to honor such a promise

by not keeping it,

and seeking forgiveness for having made it in the first place.

If we were in Herod’s place,

would we have the courage to say,

"You know what; that was a dumb thing I just said.

Forgive me, Herodias, but you have asked for something

that I cannot and will not do."

Have we the courage to make such confessions

in our own lives?

Even more, have we the grace to move forward

and to let the promises we make in the future

be real, and true, and for the good?

In the words of Jesus,

can we let our yes be yes, and our no be no,

and live with the consequences of our answers?

By the grace of God, we can.

Grace which forgives us,

protects us from our worst selves,

and draws us into the future which God promises.

And that is one promise

that we don’t have to be careful about.

Amen.