Scripture: Mark 6:14-29
What’s a Herod to do? With a Jewish prophet in one ear, and a plotting spouse in
the other?
It’s
really a no-brainer. Why side with John the Baptizer – mentor
to a certain Jesus of Nazareth, steadfast proclaimer of a kingdom of God rather
than the empire of Rome? A man who criticized Herod marrying his half-brother’s
wife, not because of “family values”, but because – and here’s a political clue
to the self-extension – intermarriage consolidated the royal dynasty over
the area.
What's the church to do? Stand
on the side of the kingdom of God? Or sit on the sidelines, dreaming to reclaim
a glorious past?
Perhaps
Herod’s dilemma of allegiance – God’s kingdom, or Rome’s empire? – and the tale
of court intrigue speaks in a very direct way to our church’s
dilemma of allegiance and its new calling of the Spirit. A very direct and arresting
way, of a new allegiance to Christ and no longer to Christendom. That moves us
beyond this grand palace of civic-minded worship – to be and become a much
humbler place for healing.
A
movement that begins with how we dream. As
interpreters of dreams can tell us, the figures of our every dream serve as an
extension of how we perceive ourselves.
Herod
perceived himself through the extensions of his name and blood – consolidating
considerable power around him. As a result, he discovered he was living a
nightmare. “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised!” he moaned, hearing Jesus
had now taken up his mantle.
We
need not live that nightmare as well. We need not repeat his self-extension of institutional glory – wishful
thinking or otherwise. We need not repeat Herod’s self-absorption writ large. We need not do so, because ...
Through our dreams, we can self-extend in an entirely different way. Beyond the extension of our name to the town: this Church That Named Bethesda. Beyond a belief that we can somehow refashion the world still, after our church’s once-powerful pulpit and its spotlighted image. Those days are long gone – in reality, if not in memory.
Through our dreams, we can self-extend in an entirely different way. Beyond the extension of our name to the town: this Church That Named Bethesda. Beyond a belief that we can somehow refashion the world still, after our church’s once-powerful pulpit and its spotlighted image. Those days are long gone – in reality, if not in memory.
Through
our dreams, we cannot just self-extend our
name "out there." More primarily, we must practice our
hospitality in and around here.
Lest
we boast that old boast of being the Church That Named Bethesda, let us focus
on extending the Bethesda That Named Our Church – that biblical healing pool I
will preach on these coming three Sundays. A healing pool deeper in grace
and richer in mercy than any claims we ever made over this self-named town.
That’s
what our dreams for this church can tell us – if we let them. That’s the sort
of self-extension we are being called to practice. A self-extension that
doesn’t name others in our own image, but one that actively and openly sees
others in God’s healing image!
