Sermon for Time after Pentecost – Mark 6:14-29

Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. The gospel of the Lord? I don’t know – that’s one messed up story. First off, it’s a story about Herod, so let’s remember who he is. This is Herod Antipas. His dad was Herod the Great. Dad’s ruthless, murderous, paranoid. Hears about the birth of Jesus, the king of the Jews, and orders the slaughter of all the male infants in the kingdom because he thinks Jesus is a threat. There’s more but you get the picture. This Herod is the son. When that’s your parental role model, you’re going to have a few issues. You’re probably used to getting whatever you want. So, this Herod goes off to Rome to visit his brother Philip, wife Herodias, and daughter Salome. He likes what he sees and steals Herodias away to be his wife. But he takes Salome too. Family values?

Sermon for Time after Pentecost – Mark 6:1-13

I think I’ll call today’s gospel reading the gospel of naked baby photos. Imagine when you meet that special someone. Let’s pick a holiday. Thanksgiving. You bring them home to meet your family. Everything’s going great. Your parents are behaving themselves for a change. Your siblings press pause on the rivalries. It’s all nice, until…. out come your naked baby photos. Oh how CUTE you were then! Oh how MORTIFIED you are now! Has that ever happened to you? Here’s what happened to me on Facebook. SHOW PHOTO. So CUTE! So let’s fast forward a few years. The high school reunion. You’ve changed. You’re wiser. Happy. Well-adjusted. But then you run into that person or clique that always got under your skin back in the day, and the old stories come up that you thought you forgot. Maybe you haven’t moved on like you thought you did. YOU know you’re not the same person you were, but other people apparently didn’t get the memo, so you feel like you have to defend yourself now. It’s like other people only want to prove you’ve never changed.

Sermon for Time after Pentecost – Mark 5:21-43

So, the lectionary likes to jump around, but these last weeks we’ve kept with the gospel of Mark. It’s interesting because you can notice repeated details. Here’s an example. In Mark, everywhere Jesus goes, this crowd suddenly comes out of nowhere and CRUSHES him. Literally. Mark says things like “the crowd came together so they could not even eat.” That means no elbow room. Or Jesus is on the shore and tells his disciples to have a boat ready so that the crowd can’t crush him. His getaway car. Or Jesus is in a house, and they want to bring a paralyzed man to him for healing, but the crowd is so thick around the house that they have to remove the roof and lower the guy down on a mat (not the same thing as Jesus blowing the roof off the place!). What kind of insanity is that? What would it feel like to be in a crowd like that? Suffocating. It reminds me of the year I went out to SF for the pride festival. The crowd was so thick that I had to move with it. I’d never been in a situation like that before. I’m not claustrophobic, but now I have an idea what it might feel like.

So, maybe that’s what the crowd in Mark felt like. But, why are they there? Why do they always swarm in whereever Jesus goes?