The World Changing Power of a Holy Life
Preacher: Tim Jenkins
Passage: Mark 6:14-29
So our gospel reading today comes from the gospel of Mark, and it is, as I said, so much more salacious than the Bible really makes it sound, I think, as we read it today. It is... it is a story just, like, ready for the tabloids. And so, one of our central characters today is this, this guy named Herod. Herod Antipas. And the first thing I want to clarify is: Who is this guy? Because he is not the Herod from the Christmas story. You know, that the wise men, like, went and talked to. This is a different Herod. And I can understand why that would be confusing. That Herod is Herod the Great, and this Herod is his son, Herod, because Herod the Great named all of his sons Herod. It's just like as an early indicator to the dysfunction of this family is, is Herod Antipas and his brother, Herod, Philip and all of his other brothers, Herod, are part of this family. And what happens is, after Herod the Great dies, Rome takes his kingdom and divides it into quarters and gives... each of his son he gives a fourth of... he gets one of those quarters to rule as tetrarch. Right? So not king, but tetrarch, which means, literally, just ruler of fourth.
And that is who Herod Antipas is. And Herod, he is not a well-loved guy by the Jewish people. And there's a reason for that. Number one, he represents Rome, who is occupying Israel. Right? They're not a big fan of that. But also, Herod, had this just great knack for doing things that weren't kosher, and I'm going to give you example of that. It's that he has this new quarter kingdom. Right? And he's got to put a capital somewhere, and he says, oh, I know. I will put it on this available land, which is an ancient cemetery. Right? And this is where I'll put that. And if you were a Jewish person, you can't really go to this place without becoming ritualistic- ritualistically unclean. Right? And so, like, this is just like the thing that he does. He just violates the traditions, the religious traditions of the Jewish people over and over again as he lives his life.
And the problem for Herod, Herod Antipas, who's just trying to live his best life, is that he has this guy who is leading this movement. And his name, this movement leader, is John, called the baptist or the baptizer. Now John, John is a weird dude. There's no other way really to put this. Right? And he is... he's not just weird because he's like old and did olden things, he's like weird by first century Israel standards as well. Right? You might think, like, leader of a movement: He's like very hip, very cool, wearing trendy sandals and all the college kids want to go to temple with him or whatever. But that's like, that's not who John is. John lives in the desert. He wears clothes made of camel skin- camel hair. He eats locust and honey. So he's not vegan, you know? And he's weird even according to the people of his day. But if we were to take him, if we were to take John, and we would bring him to 2021, and we'd put him in like Yeezys. Right? And we would, like, give him like a great haircut. And- Yeezys are the shoes that Kanye West made. Anyway, so... And we, if we were to take John and we give him like a taco, and be like, "Stop eating bugs. Eat this taco." He would still be awkward to be around. He would be weird. And there's a reason for this. It's because John was unflinchingly committed to righteousness. And he had no problem calling for it. It was his movement- was a baptism of repentance. And he had no problem speaking this... you know, the truth... truth to power.
And, again, we go back to our guy, Herod, Herod Antipas, who's just, again, trying to live his best life. And this is how John gets in trouble, because Herod divorces his first wife and marries his niece, which is gross. And he doesn't care, but everybody else cares, and John points this out. And he's calling out, like, you shouldn't be married to your niece, that's an abomination. And Herodias, because again, everyone in this family is named some version of Herod, who is his niece and now his wife, Herodias takes a lot of issue with John the Baptist pointing out their gross marriage. And so she has John, or, her- has her husband arrest John. Right? John the Baptist gets put into jail. Now, what Herodias really wants is for her husband to kill John the Baptist, but Herod is a little feckless, and he can't bring himself to go all the way. So he says, well, maybe we can do this thing where I'll take this really popular religious dude, and I'll just put him in jail. Maybe everybody will forget about him, and it'll be okay.
And, then, you know how it is, right? It's your birthday, and you're just going to have, like, just the biggest rager. Right? You're just going to, like, we're going to get just so much alcohol. And I mean, like, I'm not talking like it's Friday night and we're going to have two and a half pitchers of margaritas. I'm talking about like days of drinking and food and debauchery. This is what Herod throws for his birthday. And there's girls, and they're dancing. And one of those girls is his stepdaughter, which is still gross. And Herod's like, yeah, her dancing is just, like, just so right. "I will give you anything you ask for. Everyone who is here at my party, listen to me make this promise to my stepdaughter, because her dancing is so good, and it's gross, but I'm going to give this promise that she can have anything she wants." And his stepdaughter is like, awesome, I got like this promise to cash in on. And like a well-adjusted family, she goes to talk to her mom. And her mom, who, like in a totally normal way, is like, "We should cash this favor in for the head of John the Baptist." Right? And so, she goes back and she talks to her stepdad, and she says, "I want you to give me the head of John the Baptist on a platter." And so Herod, who does not want to be known as the guy who breaks his promises... That would be a problem. He's got a reputation to uphold, right? ... says, "Okay." And he goes, and John the Baptist is martyred. And his head, literally served on a platter to his stepdaughter, who takes it to Herodias, which is again, Herod's gross, niece, wife. And so, this is the, kind of like, tabloid story that is happening here.
And, two weeks ago, when I went to look at the preaching schedule to figure out, like, okay, what am I going to be preaching on coming up? And we plan this stuff ahead of time, and so it's been set for a couple of weeks. And I go and I look, and I'm like the beheading of John the Baptist? Like, oh man. And you read the story, and, number one, it's weird. The Bible is a weird place. Okay? There's just like people dancing naked and like chopping off their head. It's just like a whole thing. And you read the story, and, like, at the end of it, I get to this point, and I think to myself: Okay, I mean, Herod is just trying to live his best life, and Herodias is just trying to live her best life. And even though it's gross, and that's not good, but like why does it bother her so much that she wants to kill this guy? Why does it bother her so much to be called out about their improper relationship that she can't let it go? That she not only, like, gets him in prison, but, like, follows this plan all the way through to the end?
And I thought on that, and I thought on that. And eventually, I think the truth that Mark is trying to get at here, it is a message to the disciples of Christ, to all of us who are answering the call of Christ with our lives, to be reminded that there is power in the message of God, in the kingdom of God, in the calling of truth and righteousness. There is power, and that power threatens the world. Threatens the world to a point that it can topple power structures and turn them upside down. And so the world sees these things, and they want to push it down. They want to step on it. You got to kill it before it catches, right? This is the message that Mark is trying to communicate. And when we look at this gospel message, and we pull it back a little bit, this is the reason I think this, it's that you see that Mark has sandwiched the story right in the middle of Jesus sending out his disciples. Okay? Right before, literally right before it, in Mark, chapter 6, you have Jesus who is empowering his disciples to go out and cast out demons and tells them to go and preach repentance to the people. And then we get this story about John the Baptist. And then, Jesus disciples, right- immediately after, come back, and they tell Jesus what happened. So Mark is saying to disciples: stay true, remember your call, that the message of the gospel is powerful, and the world is going to try to make it as difficult as possible; and it may even cost some of you a lot. But stay true and hang on.
This is the kind of message that I personally get really jazzed about, but that's also because I'm a weirdo. Right? I'm the kind of guy who at, you know, 24 decided I was going to move to a foreign country and I was going to become a missionary. Right? Because it's like, the gospel can change the world. Right? The message of God can- we can turn this place upside down. I was like, yeah! And there's some of you who are hearing this and you probably, like maybe, are feeling the same way. And you're like, yeah, that gets me jazzed, too. And to you people I'm saying, like, maybe God's calling you to do something radical with your life. Maybe he's calling you to sell all your things and like go to another country or to become a priest or to do something like that. Listen to that call. Of course, I also know that there are maybe a great many of you who are like, no. I am not very jazzed by this message. I like my suburban McKinney life. I like my very corporate job. I just upgraded my Internet so I could watch Netflix in 4k on my new TV. I do not want to do something radical. I want to sit and watch many hours of The Office in 4k. To you I have one more story to tell.
When I was in college, I went to a little college in Farmer's Branch, Texas called Dallas Christian College. And I was studying for ministry. We did an internship one summer- or, part of the program is you do an internship in the summer. So one summer I had this internship at this great little church in north Houston called Second Christian Church. And it's still there, and it's been around for a long time. When I interned there, I think it was 115 years old. I don't- I should've done the math. I don't know how many years old it is now. But the pastor there, who's still the pastor there, his name is Jeffrey Eernisse, he was a great mentor. He is still a good friend. And I spent the summer at this tiny little church, 115 year old church that runs like 60 to 80 people on Sunday. Right, like a good week would be like 90. And we did- and I preached and we taught classes and I sat in on meetings. And I remember there being this one particular meeting where they were planning a children's movie night. Right? And they were discussing, a very earnest and sincere discussion, about what was required of them to be able to show a movie at their church. What kind of license did they need to get so that it was OK for them to show? And I just remember being so impressed by that summer, of seeing this tiny little church, in everything that they do, and the reason they're having this conversation, and many conversations like it I heard over this three months, is because they felt like it was important for them to pursue righteousness and holiness and the way they ran their church in every conceivable way, even when it was inconvenient.
I mean, this is, the fact of the matter is, Pixar does not know that Second Christian Church exists, right? They can show Finding Nemo, and no one's going to notice. But they cared about it. And seeing them care about these things, and these small details, had such a profound impact on me that when I returned to school, at 20 years old, I was just like convicted to organize my life in the same way. I have not cut corners. I need to commit to holiness. I need to commit to righteousness. I gotta hear the call of Christ. Can you imagine how good like a vestry meeting has to be to change the life of a 20 year old? And yet here were these people, they weren't like- they didn't have me in this 115 year old, you know, building talking about movie licenses because they thought it was going to have an impact on me. I just happened to be there because they knew that one day I was going to be in a church and we'd have to maybe talk about movie licenses. And yet the way that they chose to live their life, in all of the small details and all of the small choices they were presented along the way, changed the people they came in contact with.
There are some of you for whom the radical message of "the gospel can change the world" resonates with you. And again, I say to you, pursue that. God is calling you to something radical, and you should pursue that. But there are some of you for whom your suburban McKinney life is also good and presents you with lots of opportunities to choose, every day, to pursue righteousness and holiness and to build the kingdom of God on Earth, just in the way that you interact with people and how you are at work. That we, as people of God, don't have to just move to a foreign country. I mean, that would be neat if we all just moved to a foreign country together, but what I'm trying to say is that also, at your work, you can work with integrity. You can get to know your neighbors and your coworkers and really get to know what's going on in their lives and really care about them and pray for them and let them know that you're praying for them. You can invite people to church. We've got space. Heck, they even watch it online now, it's not hard. And when you invite people to church, you can also just not give up after the first time they blow you off, because they probably will. Say, "Well, I tried."
We can commit ourselves to, in our daily lives, saying the call of Christ on me is for all my choices to pursue righteousness and to build the kingdom of God on Earth. And I'm going tell you that the people you come in contact with living those lives, some of them are going to be changed. In the same way that a 20 year old could sit in a meeting about movie licensing and walk away changed. I want to encourage all of you today to remember the message that Mark is saying to disciples, which is: Commit yourself, no matter the cost, whether they be big, and they end up with something like the martyrdom of John the Baptist, or they be small, and they end up like Second Christian Church's movie license, commit yourself to the call of Christ, no matter the cost, and we'll change the world. Amen.
