Proper 10B
In the name of God who is right in front of us, and Christ
who is right in front of us, and the Holy Spirit, who is still right in front of us.
Amen.
The gospel lesson today is a cautionary tale. This story only ever comes up once in each
three-year cycle of the Lectionary, but even being that infrequent, it’s become
a cautionary tale that has guided much of my ministry through the years. And that caution is: ALWAYS check the lessons
before scheduling a baptism.
That’s a mistake a priest will only make once.
This first time I preached on this text, I had scheduled a
baptism for that day. To say nothing of
how hard it is to tie together John’s beheading and the grace of baptism -
let’s remember that when there is a baptism, I become “Jon the baptizer”. It’s a dangerous road to walk down - so now I
always insist on reading the lessons for a given day before finalizing a
baptism schedule.
But where my mind went this week - aside from happiness at
knowing that we’d scheduled Alex Luino’s baptism for NEXT Sunday - was recognizing how much of Jesus’ life was
centered around people wondering who the heck he was.
Last week we heard the story of his return to his hometown
of Nazareth. There, the people couldn’t
make sense of him. Where did the wisdom
come from? Where did the power come
from? It couldn’t be just from him -
that kid who’d grown up here, whose family we know, whose background seems so
plain.
It was that familiar variation on “Who is this man?” that
comes out something like, “Just who does he think he is?”
We talked about how our own journey down the path of Christ
could leave us similarly as outsiders in our own communities - how people might
begin wondering just who we think we are…
Maya Angelou once shared the timeless wisdom that when
people show us who they are, we should believe them the first time. But through the story of Jesus’ life, he
showed people again and again who he was - but even so, most people were still
perplexed.
“Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised form
the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ But other said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one
of the prophets of old.’ But when Herod
heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’” But despite all that Jesus had shown them,
none could believe it. None could
believe that God was at work in him, because it didn’t align with all that they
thought they knew about the world.
Herod had believed
John, though. He had been a trusted
advisor, even though he sometimes spoke truth to Herod’s power in painful
ways. In the story of John’s death, we
hear that when Herod heard John, “he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to
listen to him.”
So, perhaps he was wracked with guilt. He hadn’t intended to kill his trusted friend
and advisor, John. He’d merely become
swept up in the moment. He’d become
transfixed by beauty and talent, and in his short-sightedness, had made a
promise he didn’t want to keep. But even
so, he did keep it. His pride kept him
from following his better angels.
As I read this story again this week, it reminded me of the
silly sitcom that Michael and I have been watching recently: The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It’s a series on Netflix that tells the
farcical tale of Kimmy, a young woman, who is re-entering the world after
having been kidnapped by a cult-leader as a teen, and held in an underground
bunker for 15 years. But that makes it
sound more serious than it is… The
premise is really just about setting the stage for a comical look at our own
culture from the perspective of someone with new eyes.
There’s a scene when Kimmy’s step-sister - whom she only met
after leaving the bunker - runs away because she’s jealous of all the attention
that Kimmy gets. Kimmy’s step-father, a
bumbling doofus of a small-town police officer, tries to find her, but he never
makes it any further than Kimmy’s stoop in a bad neighborhood in New York
City. He asks the drug dealers loitering
there if they’ll help him, but they insist on him proving he’s not a cop. So to prove it, he samples some of their
wares. And then he samples again. And again.
And again, and again, until he’s taken it way too far. He’d become too undone to continue with what
he set out to do. He’d taken it all too
far.
It becomes a comical, even if a bit of a racy, example of
the proclivity we all have for getting lost in the moment, and taking things
too far.
When we get in those moments - when we’re frustrated, or
angry, or whatever else - sometimes we can be like all those people - like
Herod himself - who can’t see the truth that’s right in front of us. We can forget who Jesus is, and lose
ourselves in the moment.
Even in simpler ways - we can get lost in the day to day
tedium of life, and we can fail to see the unexpected blessings that are all
around us. We become blinded by our
prior experiences, and they turn into expectations so strong, that they prevent
us from seeing God in all the surprising ways that God can become known to us,
if only we could pull ourselves out of the moment, to see what’s right in front
of us.
And God is right
in front of us, all the time. Christ is
being realized in the world every day, in ourselves and in the people around us,
all the time. But too often we can’t
even see it. Too often we get lost in
all the things that hold us, and sometimes even hold us back.
Who is Jesus, after all?
The question isn’t so much like the one that was asked in his hometown,
or like the ones asked by Herod and all the others - “Just who does he think he
is?” The better question is; who do WE think he is? How could WE
see Christ in the world around us, if we’d open ourselves up just a little more
to recognizing the miracles and the blessings that are right in front of us?
Christ is there. We
just have to keep teaching ourselves to see.
Amen.
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