Penelope Bridges
I’ve had leadership on my mind lately. Our General Convention elected a new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church a couple of weeks ago, a young man who will bring fresh ideas and energy to our church. I think he is a great choice and I am hopeful about the future of our church. In another department of life, we are all aware that this year we will have a general election, and it’s impossible to escape the drama and chaos surrounding the presidential candidates. Nobody seems especially happy with the options before us. I’ve had many conversations along the lines of “How did we come to this?” and “How do we go forward?” There is a widespread sense of doom and gloom about the future of this country, a sense that was only heightened by the shocking attack yesterday in Pennsylvania.
Someone described this week’s Scripture selections to me as a dance party: we have heard stories of two very different dance events, and both of them relate to the question of what makes a good leader. Now, I’m not going to start dancing in the pulpit, and I’m not going to ask you to dance. Nor am I going to talk about current candidates for political office. But I think we can look to Scripture for some guidance on how we, as people of faith, can navigate these difficult times with hope and with confidence in our loving, life-giving, liberating God.
We read in Scripture of two national leaders, David and Herod. One is popular, charismatic, on the upswing of his career, but embarrasses himself and becomes estranged from his family with his wild and perhaps indecent celebration, as his army brings home the precious and sacred Ark of the Covenant. The other is a tyrant, corrupt and insecure, who permits a horrific miscarriage of justice rather than lose face with his immediate circle. Scripture contains lots of stories of leaders who are flawed and fall short of their calling; in fact, we shouldn’t expect any human leader to be perfect. But the Gospel depiction of Herod reads like a comic-book villain, and this extra-judicial killing of John the Baptist is reminiscent of the worst excesses of some contemporary world leaders.
We are at the point in the saga of David where he is fully established as king of both Israel and Judah; he has united the tribes; he is married to his predecessor’s daughter; and now he has achieved a major military and political coup by returning the Ark of the Covenant to its rightful place in Jerusalem. A huge national celebration ensues. I imagine that when all the remaining hostages held by Hamas are released, there will be similar rejoicing in Jerusalem.
At this point David is at the peak of his power and success; the negative reaction of his wife to the celebration is the first hint that things are going to start going downhill, even as he still enjoys God’s special favor. So, this is a human leader, blessed and successful, but flawed and vulnerable to very human temptations, as we will hear in a couple of weeks.
Turning to the Gospel it’s unusual in Mark to have a story that isn’t centered on Jesus. But the Gospels consistently portray John the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus: what happens to John will later happen to Jesus, whether it’s a miraculous birth, a preaching mission across the countryside, or a tragic and unnecessary death. In this story Mark is contrasting the ways things work in Herod’s kingdom with the way they work in God’s kingdom, while also pointing out the potential cost of faithfulness.
The passage before this one tells of Jesus sending the disciples out empty-handed to share the good news of the Gospel with everyone they meet. Immediately after today’s story we will hear about the feeding of the hungry multitude. In between is this: a decadent, luxurious banquet, where Herod, who is King of the Jews only by sufferance of the Roman occupiers, has to look strong in order to maintain his precarious power. He has already put himself in a troubling position by divorcing his wife in order to marry his sister-in-law, an action that has scandalized the Jewish authorities.
Now his weakness leads him to make an unwise promise to this girl – do you remember the other young girl, in the Gospel a few pages back, whom Jesus raised from the dead as her anxious parents looked on? By contrast, here’s a young girl in a very different context, who is inappropriately sexualized, dancing scandalously before the king and his guests as they indulge themselves.
When Herod drunkenly declares that his stepdaughter can have anything she wants as a reward, the girl herself is too innocent even to know what to ask for. She goes to her mother, who harbors a grudge against John, and she seizes the opportunity to win a power play against her husband, while disposing of this inconvenient preacher. How can Herod say no in front of his guests? Herod’s disregard for the value of a human life in the interest of maintaining his personal prestige demonstrates the worst kind of leadership, a leadership that is entirely self-centered, that cares more about appearances than about integrity, that silences the prophetic voice that might otherwise have helped to further justice and peace.
Walter Brueggemann writes extensively [1] about the two conflicting realities that we see in the Scriptural narrative. On the one hand there is the dominant reality, the empire consciousness, the structures of oppression and violence, silencing dissenting voices, denying the possibility of change, rejecting compassion and mercy in favor of keeping a grip on manipulative and unjust ways of government. In the Hebrew Scriptures the archetypal example is the Egypt of Pharaoh; in the Gospels it’s the military-religious complex controlled by the Herods and the Pharisees in collaboration with the Romans.
On the other hand there is the alternative reality, the Kingdom consciousness, a way of being that is founded on the achievement of Shalom, a deep and lasting peace, guided by the God of mercy, allowing change and growth, open to criticism and self-examination, an ever-expanding community of inclusion and freedom. In the Hebrew Scriptures Moses led the people of God towards this alternative world, and later we get a glimpse of it in the anointing of the humble shepherd boy David as king; in the Gospels, of course it is Jesus, who preaches and embodies the message of love, liberation, and eternal life.
The leaders of empire cannot tolerate the co-existence of the Kingdom; and the whole story of Scripture, from the third chapter of Genesis all the way to Revelation, is the story of the cosmic struggle between these two ways of being, the empire constantly attempting to tear down the Kingdom and snuff out the good news, while the Kingdom hangs on persistently, its seeds popping up over and over in bursts of light, love, and service; and ultimately defeating the power of death in the miracle of resurrection and the triumph of love.
As people of faith, people who have promised to further the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, our path is clear. In the face of oppression, we are to choose liberation. In the face of violence, we are to choose peace. In the face of greed, we are to choose generosity. In the face of power-hungry ambition, we are to choose humility. We will not be distracted by the shiny objects of short-term gain or cheap grace, but we will listen for God’s patient voice guiding us in the right way, to open our hearts to the needs of a hurting world, to stand firm for truth, integrity, and justice.
In the weeks and months ahead, we could do worse than adopt today’s Collect for our daily prayer: “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them;” In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann The Prophetic Imagination, Fortress Press 1978
