Reverend Philip Stringer
Mark 6:14-29
Ephesians 1:3-14
LET US PRAY: We ask, O Lord, that the words which we hear this morning, and the worship which we offer, may bear fruit in our hearts and be acceptable in your sight, our strength and our redeemer. AMEN
Love Conquers all. Is that a romantic notion? Idealistic? Naive? I, for one, believe it's true. But I also believe it is easily misunderstood. Love DOES conquer all -- but not by entering into a struggle for control. Rather, love conquers all by its sincerity and purity. Love conquers not by crushing, but by embracing. Not by taking, but by giving.
In a world where we are pitted against one another in job hierarchy, in wealth and status among our neighbors, the lines are drawn everywhere as people try to control and preserve the life they have carved out for themselves -- lines between nations, between political parties, between races, between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, educated and uneducated, beautiful and ugly, weak and strong.
This is not the way of Christ, and it is not the life God intends for us. Our God, indeed, is a conquering God - but not a competitive God. It is love that conquers -- not might.
I have spoken before about the controversy between Athanasius and Arias. It is at the center of this message today. The crux of the heresy of Arias is that he believed that what made God divine and worthy of worship is that God is all powerful -- perfect in the sense that God is complete apart from us. He taught that God does not need us, does not change, and is not subject to emotional changes. God is not vulnerable and therefore does not really feel. God simply is -- absolute. And this perfect, unchanging, absolute God will not tolerate what is imperfect, and will wipe it away. Arias’ viewed God from a power paradigm of control -- God's will over-and-against our will. God will crush our will eventually, and we must either resign or perish. As you might expect in a world that values the ability to control above all else, the Arian heresy rears its head continually.
But Athanasius and eventually the Church, held to a different teaching. Athanasius recognized through the scriptures that what makes God divine is not that God is distant and set apart as perfect in God's self. What makes God worthy of worship is not that God is all powerful and able to crush us. What makes God divine and worthy of our worship is that at the center of all that God is and all that God does, is love.
God loves completely and perfectly. God loves unceasingly. God is not far off -- isolated in perfection. God is not cold and emotionless. God exists in relationship and enters into relationship with us through love. "He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world," writes Paul, "to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will. . ."
The way of Christ is the way of giving and receiving in love. That is what God intends for us.
Harod Antipas found himself in an awkward position. He is the epitome for us of a life lived in conflict with God.
Herod played the game of control like a master. He was a selfish, greedy and treacherous man. Jesus called him "that fox." By our speech today we might call him a "weasel." He commanded only a quarter of the territory held by his father, Herod the Great. A puppet ruler of the Romans, he spent much of his time posturing for greater things, but in the end, burning more bridges than he built with his schemes.
In many of the New Testament accounts we hear of him; he is reckless and gluttonous and violent. But in today's gospel reading, we see something that is rare in him -- at least publicly -- panic. Herod was afraid.
Herod was fascinated with the supernatural, and our Gospel text tells us that he was both angered and attracted to John. But whatever price there was to pay in the future, Herod was living for the moment, and ultimately what that meant is that he had to do his best to control even God.
Deny it as best he could, the fact was that in a war against God, you're probably going to lose, and Herod surely knew it. And because he saw himself as pitted in a struggle against God, the COMING of God could mean only one thing -- Bad news.
Our gospel reading tells us about his reaction to the good news of Jesus' coming -- it was terror. He knew that his marriage to Herrodias was not lawful. He knew he had murdered a prophet of God when he beheaded John the Baptist, and something deep inside -- deeper than all the evil -- a place where he was actually human -- he knew it was wrong. He felt it. It was shameful, and it ate at him. It haunted him -- and he feared the evil of his deeds so much that when Jesus came, he felt only terror -- "I have been found out! He is coming to get me!"
If only he had not run from his sin, things would have been different for Herod. Jesus came to bring life and hope and freedom from the burden of sin. He came to love Herod, and He would have set Herod free from the shame and guilt of his sins. But Herod ran from it instead.
Later, when Jesus was brought before him, Herod must have felt a certain measure of relief. The Jesus whom he had feared was "coming to get him," was now about to be executed. He was fascinated by Jesus -- but could never quite put his finger on just what it was about him that was so special.
His fascination with Jesus began the first time he heard of him in our gospel text today -- and after his arrest -- when he finally had his chance to meet him, he stared Jesus in the eyes and had no idea of what he was missing. Good news was staring him in the face, and he didn't even know it. He saw only a beaten and battered man on his way to the cross.
In a world that measures success by control, Jesus was a failure. Herod left the encounter relieved -- no doubt -- and certainly unchanged. God wasn't going to strike him down after all. He was getting away with it, at least for now.
Herod never did see that what is divine and worthy of our worship is God’s love. He never did see that all of life is a gift of God’s grace, given so that we may have a way to express love, too.
I wonder how much we are like Herod. Yes -- even we Christians, I wonder how deeply we believe that the good news is truly good. I wonder if we are fascinated by grace -- maybe even afraid of what it means for us.
In a world of fierce competition and control, even Christians often mistake the good news for bad news. When we expect God's presence in our lives to be controlling and dominating, we view God's action as bad news - and we must either cower under this God or, like Herod, fight against it as best and for as long as we can. The world and sometimes even the church stares Jesus in the face and sees him either as weak and irrelevant to the moment, or as an angry, vengeful warrior to be feared.
But Jesus comes to us in neither of these ways. Jesus comes to love. God is not at war with you. We are at war with our own sinfulness. And the good news is that while we may often misunderstand Jesus, Jesus does not misunderstand us. "In him," writes, Paul, "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us." The war within us is over, not because we have mastered or controlled sin, but because it is conquered/defeated/blanketed with love. Love conquers not by crushing, but by embracing. Not by taking, but by giving. God embraces you as God's child and bestows upon you a new life without fear. We need not live like cornered animals in a struggle for life, but as inheritors of eternal life. A new life in Christ that does not come to reality in our future, but today.
In a world of violence and division the way of God may seem weak or irrelevant, but today, the Word of God assures us: Love conquers all.
AMEN
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