Don't Kill John the Baptist

Jessie was four years old when a little bird flew into the glass picture window while she was eating breakfast in her kitchen. The little bird was killed instantly. Jessie was very sad and cried a lot. It was the first time that she had seen anything die. She decided to enlist her dad's help in burying the bird. So together they found a small cardboard box and covered the box with a paper napkin shroud. They processed the bird in its small coffin to the backyard where they dug a hole. When the hole was ready, Jessie carefully placed the box in the ground. Then Jessie's dad suggested that she say a prayer. So this is what she said, 

"Dear God, we have buried this little bird. Now you be good to her or I will kill you. Amen."

When they were walking back, Jessie's dad asked her why she had to threaten God. Jessie said, "Well, I just wanted to be sure that God heard me."

King Herod Agrippa had married his brothers Phillip's wife. I cannot imagine how that must have played out. Talk about a soap opera! Taking your own brother's wife while he was still alive was the worst form of rivalry. It was cruel and selfish. But Herod was King and, like David before him, he wanted what he wanted. And Herodias probably was flattered and happy to be elevated to the status of queen. But deep down, they both knew that they were wrong. And no one dared say a thing, no one.

The King and his wife had a daughter who Herod named after her mother, Herodias. Herodias grew into a beautiful young woman and her dad loved to show off her dancing. Most of the public had either simply forgotten that Herod had taken his brothers wife or they were too scared to say anything, but then John the Baptist came along. John spoke out to say that it was wrong. It was unlawful for a woman to marry one man, then divorce him and marry his brother. And it was unlawful for Herod to take his brothers wife as his own, even if she did so willingly. So John told Herod what he thought. No matter how much time had passed, it was wrong. Herod could not hide. 

Herod threw John in prison but he did not execute John for he realized that John was a man of God, a man worth listening to. Herod knew that he could still learn from John, even if he disagreed with him. Herod would call John to him and listen, with fascination, as John told the truth. I don't think that Herod had ever met anyone like John before. John fascinated and perplexed him. But Herod's wife hated John because he made her look bad and she wanted to think of herself as the perfect queen. 

Herodias was insulted, personally insulted and affronted. She had been openly criticized by John and she did not just disagree, she wanted him dead. Dead. The most deeply insecure people do not just hate those who point out their flaws, they want to kill them. Like Hitler and Stalin after her, this woman wanted John dead for his opinion. And so, when her daughter pleased her husband by dancing at a party, and Herod offered her whatever her little heart desired, Herodias told her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist. I cannot imagine the psychological impact that this one event had on this girl. She did what her mother wanted and became a murderer. And we never hear more about her again.

I can only imagine the look on King Herod's face when his own daughter came to him asking for the beheading of a holy man. Herod had a choice between his pride and the life of an innocent man. All his friends were looking at him. He had made a promise. And they were watching as he weighed his options. His reputation or the life of a man of God. Herod chose his reputation. Just like Pontius Pilate, Herod was willing to murder an innocent man rather than look bad. He was willing to kill rather than being shamed or proven wrong. He would rather murder than have admitted to making a mistake. 

When we disagree with one another today, we don't murder one another, at least not in this country, not most of the time, but we do try to get rid of each other. We don't want to be around people who don't think like us. 

All over this country, when you walk into church, it only takes a short while before you can tell if it is a liberal or conservative church. It is not hard to tell. People are worshipping only with those who think like them. After all, how could they find God if they disagreed? It might make them feel uncomfortable. 

But my vision for this church is to be more than a place where people agree. It is a harder vision, a tougher vision. This church is one of very few churches in this nation where people who disagree are still worshipping together. Church has become one of the most segregated places in our country. People tend to worship only with others who think like them and look like them. In essence, if someone disagrees with us, we get rid of them either by leaving ourselves or by forcing them to feel so uncomfortable that they leave. I have watched over the past decade as thousands have left our denomination. And we have let them go, thinking, great, now we can do what we want to do. But whenever we kill off those who disagree, we kill off the very people who can really help us grow.

You see, God works best when we are not sure of ourselves. God works best when we realize that we do NOT have all the answers and that everything we do, we do with the utmost humility and respect for those who disagree with us. God works best when we truly listen.

But the only way that we all will move forward is for us to continue to communicate. Disagreement should not mean that the body of Christ splinters. Disagreement is an opportunity to move more deeply into community. Read the book of Acts. The church is always disagreeing and has always done so. We do that. It is part of our life together.

Imagine if John the Baptist had not died. Imagine what he could have said and done. Imagine what he could have contributed to the people who knew and loved Jesus. Let us not be like the religious extremists who want to simply get rid of all who act differently than they do. 

When I was at General convention, people wore name tags. The name tags would tell not only your name but what diocese you were from. And people then took to putting buttons on their name tags to identify the causes that they believed in. Rainbow buttons, Anglican Covenant buttons, on and on they went on everything from liturgy to the environment. You could see a persons politics just by looking at the array of buttons. But I began to realize that we were no longer looking at each other in the eyes. All we were seeing is the cause, not the person.

I remember getting on an elevator and immediately reading the person across from me by his buttons. And I did not even look into his eyes. He had become nothing more to me than a series of political opinions. It was then that I vowed to take off my buttons and look into people's eyes.

When that young man walked into that prayer group in Charleston, he actually stayed and listened for over an hour before he killed those innocent people just because of the color of their skin. And in that hour, he realized that they were nice to him. He started to see them, to listen to them, as people. But he could not stop the hate in his heart and he ended up killing them to prove a point.

Look at each other. Do you see each other? Each of us is a human being. Each one of us is so much more than just one issue, more than our political persuasion, or ethnicity or race or gender or sexual orientation. Look at each other. Stop seeing a cause or a perspective. See the person! Do not stop being in relationship when you disagree. In fact, when we disagree is the moment that we should move closer not further apart. Don't try to get rid of each other and don't flee. This is just when we can become a real community, this is the time when things get rich and deep and we all realize that we know nothing when it comes to understanding God. This is the moment when we can become a great leading community in the Christian world and beyond. We still have disagreement here! That's when we can truly start to listen and be changed by one

 another. That's when Christ's work of reconciliation can truly be done.

Unbelief

Jesus goes first to Nazareth. After he has been baptized, after he fully realizes what God has called him to do, he takes the message home. It is the first place he goes...Nazareth. Of course he goes there first! If you discovered that you had the best news in the world, the message of salvation itself, wouldn't you want your loved ones saved first? Jesus walked home to begin his ministry.

I can only imagine how excited he must have felt, going home.  He had learned who he was. He was going to share news about God that was so good that it would change the world. And he couldn't wait to go home and share this news with his family, his friends, with the people he loved. Judging from his surprise at their reaction, Jesus expected that everything would go well. But it didn't. Jesus first attempt to tell people about God completely failed. Remember that, if you ever think that following God means immediate success. Remember that Jesus failed the first time he tried to do what God asked, and his failure did not mean that God was not with him. Success does not mean that you have God's backing and failure doesn't mean that you have failed God.

What Jesus found was that the people of Nazareth strangely couldn't hear him. Instead of listening to him, all they could think about was what they already knew about him. "This is the carpenter's son. We know his brothers and sisters. We already know him." They could not hear a word that he said. They had already made up their minds about him because he was one of them. He was, quite literally, too close to home.

The people of Nazareth had watched Jesus grow up. They had watched him play with other kids and get water from the well and work and eat and sleep. How could he be anyone special? He was one of them. Who was he to tell them about God?

We often cannot see the greatest gifts that God gives us because they are simply too close for us to notice. Our loved ones, our homes, our safety...even our country. 

Just a few days ago, there was a scare at the Navy yard in Washington, DC. They thought that a shooter had snuck onto the property. And Luke, my sixteen year old, was there. Luke is doing an internship on Capitol Hill and was working out in the Navy Yard early in the mornings. I woke to the phone ringing. Don't worry! My husband said. Luke left five minutes before the shooter arrived. He is fine.

My heart felt like it might stop. What would have happened if he had been hurt? It took my breath away.

We live and breathe and work and learn in a free country. The ramifications of this great gift are so great as to change the face of the earth, but often we do not stop to appreciate this gift because we simply take it for granted. It is our home. We live here. It has always been this way. This is the air that we breathe, the water that we swim in. Why should we give thanks for it? But every once in awhile we are jolted awake and reminded to give thanks for the great gift of the country and for freedom.

I just spent the past ten days in the midst of a democratic process in our Episcopal church. Once every three years, we meet with representatives from all over this nation. We debate from morning to night. We argue. We pray. We worship. We make each other mad. We vote. Some lose the vote. Some win the vote. But we do not hit each other or resort to gossip or swear words (at least not in public), we stick it out and keep praying together. 

At the root of democracy is a kind of trust and humility. Our country is built on that trust and so is our church. We are called to believe that the wisdom of a whole body of people may be greater than any one individual opinion. Each of us must hold to the humility that we as individuals may in fact be wrong, so when I lose an argument, I can accept the outcome.

Hear me out on this. Let us not forget how blessed that we are. We live in a country where debate and questioning are possible. Just this past week, 75 children were slaughtered in Iraq because they did not practice Ramadan. Some of them were crucified because they had been accused of acts of sodomy.  They are prisoners. They are slaves. They have no freedom. Even their lives can be taken from them if they do not say or act in a particular way.

I am so sorry that we have to disagree. I am so sorry that the world cannot be easier. But I would rather live in a community that disagrees than a community in which everyone thinks the same thing. Church has become the most segregated time of the week in this country. Let us not aim to worship in a place where everyone thinks as we do. Then we might get so comfortable that we miss Christ. Then we might become like the people of Nazareth, so sure of ourselves that we miss out on what God is calling us to do. I am proud to lead a church that is willing to ask hard questions and suffer the consequences. I am proud to lead a church where disagreement is possible, where failure is possible, where we can pray even when we don't see eye to eye.

We look to the founding fathers with a kind of reverence on this day. We admire their tenacity, their incredible wisdom in designing this democracy, their faith in the wisdom of the people. But they were not gods. They were men (and their women were behind them but at the time they were mostly men). And they struggled. They disagreed. They were not always right.

When Jesus came, he ushered in  a radically new way of thinking about God, a new way of worshipping, a new way of praying. But the people of his hometown missed out because they could not listen. They could not open their hearts to his message. They had already made up their minds about who he was. They were too comfortable.

The gospel says that he marveled at their unbelief. He marveled at their unbelief. What is unbelief? I think it is when we start thinking that we know so much that it is time to stop listening, time to stop questioning. Unbelief is certainty without humility. It happens when we become so attached to the world as we know it that we can no longer open our hearts to Christ. Unbelief occurs when you stop listening and watching for what God is doing in the world. It is not only denying faith but perhaps more importantly, believing that you have all the answers and that everyone should think like you think. Unbelief, that is the word that Jesus used when describing the people of Nazareth. Unbelief.

The people of Nazareth were not free so long as their minds were already made up. And that is all that I ask of you on this weekend of our Independence. Give thanks that you are free.  But make sure that you embrace the gift of your freedom by never ceasing to consider other perspectives, to ask questions, to remember that it is God alone who knows all in all. Listen to one another, pray with one another, and give thanks for our freedom.