Pentecost 8 Mark 6:14-29, Ephesians 1:3-14 July 15, 2018 Rev. Patricia Schutz

Grace and peace from God our Creator and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Do you have favorite scripture that are your “go to” readings when you need comfort, words of prayer when, in your grief or sadness, you don’t have any of your own, or that express your hope in and praise of a God whose glory fills the universe and your heart all at the same time? I often turn to the psalms, especially the praise psalms, when life overwhelms me, like these words from Psalm 150:

Praise the Lord!...Praise God for God’s mighty deeds; praise God according to

God’s surpassing greatness! The language of praise not only proclaims God’s glory, it fills the spaces and places around us and in us so that angry and hateful words, words that are not life-giving do not have room enough, air enough to thrive. Praise gives us new energy to be compassionate justice seekers.

There are no words of praise, there is no justice in today’s gospel reading.

It’s not the sort of story that’s going to be anyone’s “go to” scripture when we’re in need of comfort. Jesus doesn’t even make an appearance. It’s an “out of character” story for Mark—no Jesus and a lengthy, minutely detailed, play by play description of a flashback to John’s arrest and what led to his beheading. Up to this point Mark the “immediately” story teller, moves the gospel smartly along, but here he lets the story linger over16 verses, the longest account of an incident 2 anywhere in the gospel except the passion story. Why? Why this particular story, in all of its indulgent and grisly detail, in this particular place in Mark?

It could be because we’re about mid-way between the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the start of the last week of his life. Here, Mark apparently decides, is the place to give readers fair warning: the opposition to Jesus and God’s kingdom is alive and well and swells to ginormous and hideous proportions. Herod represents what Jesus has come to challenge and overturn—any ruler, empire, tradition that claims ultimate authority, whose only concern is to stay in power no matter what. To exploit and destroy the rights and lives of anyone who challenges their claim to supremacy is simply business as usual. Which is why Herod had

John the Baptist put in prison. Which is why Herod has to defend his position and can’t go back on this promise to the daughter of Herodias when she asks for John’s head. Herod can’t afford to let even the tiniest crack appear in the façade of his authority or it will all come tumbling down. Off with John’s head! And no one says a word of challenge or protest.

Preacher and theologian Karoline Lewis compares this story to our time and place. She writes, in part, “I continue to be astonished by the willingness to ignore observable lies, misbehavior, so as to rescue persons and institutions from certain demise. Rather than imagine a text like this telling the truth of our exploitive ways, we explain it away, justifying actions to protect ideologies, denominations, and 3 doctrines that perhaps are better off dead. The current climate of our culture is a mirror…of the story of John’s beheading. Persons in power deflecting fault, casting guilt on the most vulnerable targets, feigning some sort of ignorance….If we haven’t figured it out by now, the ways in which Scripture tells us the truth about ourselves, well, good thing we have a story like this to remind us.”

We, as persons, church, and nation are convicted by this story. It is a story through which God clearly calls us to advocate for those who are wrongly imprisoned or oppressed in any way. There is a danger, though, as Lewis says, that we, like Herod, will also create idols to protect our own interests, even if they are far different from Herod’s. Our acts of justice alone are not enough to save anyone, which is why God calls us to more than acts of justice. God calls us first of all to acknowledge and trust that God alone is God. God alone saves. // God calls us first of all to worship and praise God. Then, from this position and place of humility and reverence before God, God sends us out with the name of Jesus and words of praise and thanksgiving on our lips, not our own but God’s kingdom our vision.

When the name of God and the language of praise precedes and accompanies our acts of love and justice, space and place is created for something new and transformative to happen, in ourselves and in the world. Walter

Brueggemann, a UCC pastor and brilliant scholar and theologian says that “only where there is praise is there any emergence of compassion.” Praise will not let us 4 wallow in lies. Praise exposes the deception that pretends to be truth. To say or sing God’s praise no matter the circumstances of our lives or what’s happening in the world is an act of defiance and trust—defiance against all that tempts us into idolatry and despair, and trust in the one God whose power is ultimate, the power of love and mercy, which doesn’t look at all like power to the world. God uses our praise and justice to wear away at the foundation of lies and hatred and false promises, every idol that we construct and to which we cling, and to raise us up in the Spirit to new life and hope. That is the lavish promise of God’s grace, grace that assures us we are loved beyond measure, grace to challenge injustice, grace to make mistakes and begin again.

Ephesians was written not to a specific community but was a letter meant to be circulated among all of the churches. When we put the text next to the story of

Herod, we can see that the glory and praise of God overwhelms the depravity of

Herod and his actions. While Herod arrests and binds and throws in prison, orders the guard to behead John, God blesses and chooses and adopts, bestows, redeems, forgives, lavishes, makes known, saves, marks, all to the praise of God’s glory.

There is so much packed in these 12 verses from Ephesians. We don’t have to figure it all out, what it means theologically, to let it be a prayer of praise. We simply proclaim it, in parts or in whole, listen to what God might be saying to us in these ancient words that are new in our time and place, what it means to do God’s 5 will, to act with wisdom and insight grounded in Christ, what is true among all the words that fill the space around us and seek access to our hearts.

Every week in worship God shapes us and changes us through our practice communal praise. Every week the Spirit gathers us at the table to proclaim with the whole church that it is indeed right, our duty and our joy, that we should at all times and in all places gives thanks and praise to God to has saved us in Christ, and we desire to join our song of praise with the unending praise of the angels and arch-angels, cherabim and seraphim. The Spirit fills these words and all of our songs and prayers of praise and makes them awe-inspiring and formidable, energizing for justice-makers and terrifying for tyrants.

Would you join in the refrain of in this spoken song of praise inspired by

God’s word of grace in Ephesians. Your part is “All for the praise of God’s glory.”

Blessed, blessed be God, Holy One in Three, Three in One, Father/Mother, Spirit, Son. Blessed, blessed be God, who sang our names in Christ before God birthed the cosmos, before God fashioned us from clay and gave us breath, all for the praise of God’s glory!

Blessed, blessed be God, who sings through the Son, whose name is: Creator, Savior, Adopter, Redeemer, Bless-er, Forgiver, 6

Grace-lavisher, Gather-er, Name-giver, Incarnate-er. All for the praise of God’s glory! All praise to you, Hope-giver, Mystery-revealer, Truth-maker, Tyrant-breaker, Faith-creator, Story-gifter, Boundary-dismantler, Ravisher of our hearts. All for the praise of God’s glory!

Blessed, blessed be God, Holy One who gives us life and breath to sing God’s song, who makes us be: God lovers, gospel believers, pray-ers, inheritors, cross-bearers, mercy-criers, sin-confess-ers, grace-receivers. All for the praise of God’s glory! O God, make us be, Christ-followers, truth-beggars, neighbor-lovers, gift-sharers, justice-doers, laughter-makers, joy-singers, thanks-givers, praise-proclaimers, seekers of God’s face, All for the praise of God’s glory! All for the praise of God’s glory!