July 15, 2012 Proper 10
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Mark 6:14-29
14King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known. Some were saying, "John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him." 15But others said, "It is Elijah." And others said, "It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old." 16But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised."
17For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because Herod had married her. 18For John had been telling Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." 19And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, 20for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. 21But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. 22When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it." 23And he solemnly swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom." 24She went out and said to her mother, "What should I ask for?" She replied, "The head of John the baptizer." 25Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." 26The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, 28brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. 29When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.
The unsavory story of Jerry Sandusky has been back in the news though Sandusky himself is already convicted of multiple counts of pedophilia and is already imprisoned. The news this week is about the investigation that is trying to answer the question, "How on earth could such a high profile character have continued to rape little boys in his care at both his home and at Penn State when family members and university employees knew what was going on?"
The Freeh report, released this week, describes what they call "a striking lack of empathy" on the part of university officials and the Penn State newspaper asks the question, "Where were the heroes?" As horribly sad and morally repugnant as it is to have to think about child rape, we do know that it goes on and we accept that the perpetrators are mentally ill. What everyone around the university community is now trying to wrestle to the ground is the fact that people all of the way from janitors to the head coach, Joe Paterno, and possibly the wife and children of Sandusky, knew about it but did nothing to stop the abuse.
How do people who are not criminals or mentally ill themselves, manage to turn the other way and avoid getting involved when something so absolutely unspeakably horrible is going on? Especially when our population seems to absolutely love to talk about sex. We'll skewer a politician for having an extramarital affair. The media loves to find some gay bashing preacher or senator involved in a same sex relationship.
And those of us who live here in small town, Midwest know all too well that you can meet someone for a cup of coffee and by the next day you are having an affair. People love salacious gossip and they love it so much that if they can't find something real to talk about they'll exaggerate some tale or make something up whole cloth.
But, see, the Sandusky thing wasn't going to be idle gossip. Whoever reported him was going to suffer some personal loss. His victims had, from time to time, reported the abuse but even the police didn't want to take the reports seriously. The football program at Penn State is like a regional religion and Sandusky was a local hero.
In fact, the person who finally forced the issue was not a victim at all but rather a 22 year old, recent journalism graduate who followed leads and insisted on publishing an article about it. Were it not for Sarah Ganim, I'm not sure that Sandusky wouldn't still be recruiting new victims. And she took heat from everyone around her for a year for investigating Sandusky but she had the moral fiber to not give up.
In our gospel lesson today, we see another situation that needed a hero. Most of us are very familiar with the story of how Herod felt trapped into beheading John the Baptist though most of what we think we know is just speculation. Neither Matthew or Mark actually name the daughter of Herodias. Josephus says that she had a daughter by that name so maybe it is Salome, but the whole lusty dance of the seven veils is not a Biblical story and it isn't Josephus who tells us about it. It is actually Oscar Wilde who puts a name to it. Again, we like to attribute lusty, incestuous motives to Herod because we like to tell stories like that but that is not Mark's story.
Mark tells us simply that Herod's step daughter danced at his birthday party and he made the absurdly bold offer to give her anything she asked for. Because her mother hated John the Baptist, she influenced her daughter to ask for the head of John on a platter.
But the line this narrative turns on is verse 26..... and this is the description of everyone who knew what Sandusky was doing and said nothing.... This is the description of every Bishop who moved a pedophile priest to another parish.... Every business that decides to settle out of court with victims to hide the offenses of executives.... It says, "The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her."
The request was that he have an innocent man murdered and he did it because he didn't want his guests to think less of him! People will lie and gossip and tear another person's life apart for the titillating entertainment of talking about someone else's real or imagined foibles but when it comes down to putting your own flesh into the matter, then people have an amazing capacity to turn and look the other way.
We ignore horrible evil in order to not be excluded, to not be derided ourselves. Whistleblowers never become famous for whistleblowing..... they usually find themselves unemployed and unwanted by anyone.
It was my great honor to meet Elie Wiesel on two occasions. Once here at MSU and the second time when I was a fellow at Harvard. I really hate it when people compare everything in the world to the holocaust because few things actually deserve to be held up next to that event, but Wiesel has written and spoken about the kind of moral test that was put to him and so many of his Jewish countrymen by the extremity of the holocaust.
He has made it very clear that it is not only the German Nazis who are to be remembered as being responsible for this horror but also everyone who knew about it and did nothing to stop it. Ships filled with Jewish refugees tried to come to the United States but they were turned away. The coast guard blocked the warm waters around Florida from Jews trying to jump off their ships and swim to shore.
We did not start or perpetrate the holocaust but we were partners in it because we not only stood idly by but we actively refused to be drawn into it. When Wiesel first wrote his short book of memories from the holocaust, no one would publish the book because, for nearly two decades after the war, when we knew what the facts were, still, no one wanted to acknowledge what had happened and how we had failed to stop it.
Once "Night" was published and when Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for it, at his acceptance speech he said that the ethics of all of the Christian and Jewish bibles could be distilled to one sentence: Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By.
When we started this church and we were meeting in a windows rented hall, we commissioned these two worship banners to be made to look like stained glass windows to represent the core values of the church. On the one is the multi-colored hands joining together in community.... Which is beautiful and nice and almost any church would be proud to display it..... this other one might be another matter.
It bears the image of a winged lion.... Powerful, with a look of determination on his face and his paw raised in a way that let's you know that he just might be dangerous. The winged lion is the traditional symbol for the gospel of Mark but we didn't want to be that narrow. We put that famous quote from Wiesel on the book the lion is holding.... "Thou shalt not stand idly by."
I got to speak briefly with Wiesel when he was in Springfield in 1998. I asked him why he was so certain that the holocaust would never happen again. He said that people had learned from what happened to the Jews and the people of the world would never sit back in such indifference again.
When he spoke at Harvard in 2004, after we had trumped up a case for invading Iraq, I reminded him of what he had told me in Springfield and I asked him if he still felt the same way. He sadly shook his head "no." Various types of ethnic, ideological or just plain old economic events take place within and between nations. We have learned lessons from the Holocaust. We learned from the story of Rwanda. We have both done too much and too little as we try to navigate the complex circumstances of people striving to gain freedom in nations with despotic leaders.
You would have thought that after our nation's experience in Vietnam that we never would made the mistakes we seem gleefully to have made in our current oil wars but the lessons to be learned must be learned and re-learned.
A part of standing idly by is that we simply cannot fight every fight. We know that there is racial discrimination in the justice system. We know that PayDay lenders in this state are charging up to 2000% interest on small loans to the poor. We know that many of the people who are executed by the state were not actually guilty of the crimes with which they were charged. We know that lethal weapons are sold all along the American border with Mexico and that tens of thousands of innocents are being killed in the Mexican drug wars with weapons bought at Walmart stores in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. I could go on and on with that list but we can't get involved with everything. No one has the energy to take on the world but somewhere between standing idly by and martyring ourselves this afternoon there is a conscionable place to stand.
Several years ago Sheryl Crow put a line in her song, "Love is a good thing," that said: Watch our children while they kill each other with a gun they bought at Walmart discount store. And this caused no small discomfort to Walmart executives because they do sell guns right next to the toy department in every Walmart in America.
So they had a meeting down in Bentonville to discuss this phenomenally stupid practice in their corporation and they made a bold decision. They decided that the would not cell that Sheryl Crow cd with the offensive line in it. As Lily Tomlin said, "It seems that no matter how cynical I become, I just can't keep up."
Folks, what I heard Elie Wiesel say is this: Take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed. There is no honor in remaining neutral in matters of ethical importance. Always taking the middle ground doesn't make you smart, or balanced and it certainly doesn't make you innocent because your silence always serves the will of the oppressor.
The Reverend Allan Boesak of South Africa, said during the battle against apartheid: We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us, "Where are your wounds?" and we will say "We have no wounds." And God will ask, "Was nothing worth fighting for?"
I don't want to pick your battles for you, but I do want to assure you that there is more to life than just trying to arrive at your funeral as a nice looking corpse. Be sure you go to that day with some meaningful wounds.
