Little did they know
What authoritarians in their narcissism fail to recognize, and the spiritual work of acting on a clear-eyed vision of reality
The following sermon was originally preached July 14, 2024 at St. Peter and St. Mary Episcopal Church in Denver. This was my original manuscript, and if you watch the video, you’ll notice places where I improvise — always fun to spot the differences! The preaching text is Mark 6:14-29 (the beheading of John the Baptizer by King Herod).
Some of the very best stories ever told are “Little did they know” stories.
You know the ones:
Little did Luke know that Darth Vader was his father.
Little did Lucy know that it was, in fact, a magical wardrobe.
Little did Princess Buttercup know that the Dread Pirate Roberts was her darling farm boy, Wesley.
Little did they know stories work for several reasons:
Sometimes they work simply because the narrator lets the audience in on information to which the characters may not be privy – like in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Sometimes they work because while the characters are absolutely gobsmacked by the revelation of previously unknown information, we as the audience have the emotional distance to stay vigilant for its impact – like in Star Wars or The Princess Bride;
And sometimes they work because we are reading the story with foreknowledge of outcomes that the characters do not anticipate or even imagine.
For all these reasons, today’s Gospel is a “Little did they know” story.
We’re dropped into a kind of deja vu moment for King Herod, who has learned that Jesus’ disciples are preaching repentance, driving out demons and healing the sick.
We can almost feel his shudder as he says:
“John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!”
Little did he know he would find himself in this situation – facing a growing movement led by a day laborer from Nazareth whose tactics are uncannily similar to John the Baptizer’s.
Herod operates within the common sense of empire – dividing and conquering, controlling those whom he governs through violent repression of any problematic elements.
But this turn of events doesn’t fit within the colonial playbook. There’s something else going on here:
Something that cannot be controlled.
Something that cannot be killed.
The Gospel writer flashes back to the impossible dilemma Herod had faced: John the Baptizer had wounded Herod’s pride and put him in a political predicament when he called him on the carpet for his marital indiscretion.
You see, Herod’s first wife was a princess named Phasael from Nabatea, a powerful Arab nation allied with Herod. Herod met his brother’s wife, Herodias, while he was still married to his first wife. He then divorced and effectively chased out Phasael in order to marry Herodias, who divorced Herod’s brother.
In and of itself, this whole arrangement was highly suspect under Jewish law, given the tradition’s high regard for fidelity.
And, John’s critique of Herod represents a common criticism leveled by the Jewish nationalist resistance – that the Jewish puppet kings installed by the Roman occupation were Jewish in name only. They only observed Jewish law when it was politically expedient, making their rule over the Jewish people illegitimate.
John surely also recognized that the political implications of this spouse swapping scenario included all-out war, which always imperils the most vulnerable.
By humiliating his first wife and angering her father, Herod placed not only himself but the entire people over whom he had authority in harm’s way. (In fact, ultimately, his regime would be overthrown by the Nabatean leader).
While the rich and powerful were free to follow their whims and live according to their pleasures, their choices had major fallout for those around them who lacked their power and influence.
And John would not shut up about this – which was just so annoying for those benefitting from the status quo.
Herod’s brother’s wife – oops, I mean Herod’s second wife – Herodias sees criticism from this desert-dwelling, authority-bucking, very popular prophet as a threat. She’s willing to exploit her child, using her as a political prop to get her way.
So, Herodias’s daughter dances for the drunken Herod and his guests – whom activist theologian Ched Myers describes as Herod’s “inner circle of power” – “an incestuous relationship involving governmental, military, and commercial interests.”
Pleased by the dance – with all the smarmy, incestuous energy that implies – Herod promises the girl anything she wants.
The girl asks her mother, who tells her to ask for John the Baptizer’s head.
On a platter.
This grotesque display of power is meant to titillate the powerful while suppressing future dissent.
The lives of the poor are cheap under imperial common sense — they are locked up to rid the world of the inconvenient reminder that all is not well, and then graphically and dramatically disposed of to entertain and make a point.
Having sworn an oath in front of the upper crust of Galilean society, Herod has two options:
Break his promise, thus breaking the illusion of infallibility. This would reveal him to be a human, prone to mistakes, much to his shame. So much for the divine right of kings! Or,
Keep his word to save face, while killing John and potentially making him a martyr and hero.
Of course, Herod decides not to sacrifice his reputation by going back on his word. Instead, he violates God’s law while upholding social decorum, effectively confirming John’s reproach that the regime only abides by Jewish law when it serves itself.
But, little does Herod know, he is dealing with the movement of the Spirit of the Living God.
And in responding, he makes three fatal miscalculations; common to authoritarians everywhere:
First, he makes the narcissistic assumption that movements work the same way authoritarians do, believing that taking out one charismatic leader will be sufficient to topple their movement, the same way that regimes can be overcome by deposing a dictator.
Little does Herod know, Jesus is already in the wings. The Gospel writer starts this story with Jesus to make it clear: He will become the new head of this movement. In a way, Herod is right to say that John has been raised from the dead.
But there’s more: Jesus, like John, is setting a pattern, a way of being in the world, based on a common sense of love in action for liberation. A movement is afoot and it is communal and collective and dynamic, and worst of all for Herod and authoritarians everywhere... It is terribly contagious.
The second miscalculation is to assume that keeping laws of propriety and social decorum is what is most important. Little does Herod know: movements of the Spirit are bound to a higher law of love. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught, “An unjust law is no law at all.” Those who walk in the Way of Love will continue to disobey unjust laws in favor of obedience of divine law – to preserve life, to love neighbor as self, to respect the dignity of every human being.
The third miscalculation authoritarians make is to assume they can shift blame, making others do their dirty work AND take the fall for them, with no consequences. Herod doesn’t have to own his decision— he blames a child. Even his wife gets some distance from the decision. Those with the most power are willing to hurt even the people closest to them in order to hoard power.
Little does Herod know, trying to pass blame will not redeem his story in the end. The only thing that can redeem a story is repentance – a changed heart and life.
John the Baptizer called people to do just this when he urged those who came to see him in the desert to repent— that is, to engage in metanoia, the transformation of mind and lifestyle.
Because Herod is not the only one operating within the common sense of empire – unfortunately this too is infectious: it operates as both implicit bias and internalized oppression, shaping our imagination of what is good, right and possible in the world.
Today, many people are rightly speaking about the necessary spiritual and pragmatic transformation of decolonization that must take place — the unlearning and undoing of the patterns of white supremacy and capitalism that exist within us and around us. The dismantling of the hierarchy of human worth that lives within us.
We must be continually committed to the work of examining our hearts and lives to see – are we living in alignment with the movement of the Spirit of God in the world, or with the common sense of empire?
We must ask: Whom are we dehumanizing? What stories have we been telling ourselves that need to die so that we can get free of the imperial logic that some people are expendable for the sake of the status quo?
These are the sorts of questions John provoked. This is why he was seen as so threatening – as was Jesus when he continued the work John began.
The movement of the Spirit of liberation empowers us to see reality as it really is and to know ourselves empowered by the divine to do something about it.
When we see reality and know ourselves empowered, we will remove our cooperation with those systems that uphold oppression, dehumanization and exploitation of others.
This is the ongoing, eternal divine invitation:
See reality.
See the death and destruction, the sin and suffering of the world as it is, and especially as those who are vulnerable, oppressed and exploited experience and describe it.
And then do something, everyday, to bring that world into deeper alignment with the dream of God.
Something loving and liberating.
Something brave.
Something risky.
Little does Herod know: the movement of liberating love cannot be killed.
Little does Herod know, capital punishment – the most severe repression in the empire’s playbook – will utterly backfire.
While Jesus will step in to symbolically continue the mission of John, an even more powerful subversion of empire lies ahead: resurrection!
Christ’s resurrection is the ultimate rebuttal of empire’s common sense of death and destruction.
God gets the final say.
And this same God, who is the Spirit of liberation and life abundant, is at work in those who follow in the steps of Jesus – in the Way of love.
We don’t know all — we’re not omniscient narrators. It has not been given us to know HOW that which has died is being raised up. How it is that, as the Apostle Paul writes, in the “fullness of time, (Christ will) gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
Yet in faith we look to the resurrection pattern set by Jesus as he took up the mantle from John, trusting that God will continue this liberating, life-sustaining work far beyond anything we can ask or imagine.
In faith we continue the work God has given us to do in this time and place.
Amidst fascism and rumors of fascism… war and rumors of war, amidst famine and climate catastrophe and genocide, we continue to pour ourselves into the work of building communities of faith, shaping other possibilities for life — a life abundant — unimaginable to those living within the common sense of empire.
A “little did we know” faith makes room for surprise at God’s liberating love at work amidst the most horrific of circumstances.
It makes room for lament in solidarity with all who suffer under the common sense of empire.
It creates space for our grief at how far the world is from the way it should be.
And it is a faith that holds onto the hope that even when we face consequences for speaking truth and standing in solidarity with those who are targeted, even when authoritarians seek to crush the movement with increasingly violent repression, even when death is served up in the most grotesque and dehumanizing ways imaginable, the Spirit-led movement of liberation will never be snuffed out, will never be killed.
May what little we know of God give us the strength and courage to keep living in love.
And may God grant us the grace to look back in amazement and say,
“Little did we know, God was with us on the way.”
Amen.