Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
July 13, 2003
Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

How Do You See?
The Rev. Canon William A. Kolb

Gospel: Mark 6:14-29
Old Testament: Amos 7:7-15
(A copy of this sermon is also available in audio.)

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Old film title. It is also a violent, violent, violent, violent world. Meridian, Mississippi: employee murders five co-workers and himself. Iraq: months after the war is pronounced “over,” our troops are wounded or killed each week, some almost every day. We have gangs, drugs, husbands killing wives – we have it all. A 12-year-old boy is killed by an alligator while swimming in Florida. Nine people drown in one week just off Destin, Grayton Beach, also in Florida. Hundreds of thousands die of AIDS, hundreds die of SARS. Must be that the longer the world goes on, the worse it gets.

Well, not necessarily. I remember commenting to my Senior Warden up in New York how bad things were getting, when we had two particularly bad crimes in Central Park within a short period of time. She reminded me that two hundred years ago one could not travel a road in England without risking robbery and perhaps murder by bandits– land-based pirates. She reminded me of the “Black Plague” in the Middle Ages and of the hundreds of thousands who died of the great influenza epidemic in 1918, not to mention a much larger toll worldwide.

So, I had to reassess. What I came to is that life is always tough. Scott Peck, author of the great book, The Road Less Traveled, talks about this in the introduction. He says something like, “Life is difficult. Once you get used to that it’s not so bad.”

The worldwide website explorefaith.org, got a letter the other day asking for help. A woman spoke of the beatings that her daughter’s father repeatedly gave her grown daughter after the daughter generously let her father live with her when he needed a place to stay. The writer asked, “How can I restore my faith in humankind?” I wrote some gentle words, but then I said, “You do not need to restore your faith; you need to rebuild it, based on reality. God does not promise us a rose garden; God promises us that He will walk through the roses and the thorns with us if we will ask God to do that. If our faith is built on the expectation that God will protect us from pain and suffering in this life, we are bound to lose our faith.”

You have heard the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished”? Look at Nathan in the Old Testament and John the Baptist in today’s Gospel. Both did something good–living out God’s Word with great courage. You may recall that Nathan the prophet confronted King David, KING David, who could order anyone’s death with the snap of a finger, about his unethical behavior with Bathsheba. Now that was a brave thing to do. This man Nathan must have known that God has bigger things in store for us than whether we are in the good graces of earthly rulers, and that God calls us to live and speak in a way that shows that we know He has us in the palm of His hand.

John the Baptist had this same wonderful slant on life, death and God. John knew that God’s Kingdom was made for us, and John was committed to serving God. What valor and faith it took for him to do what he did. John the Baptist was an evangelist in the sense that he knew that Jesus was just about to begin his earthly ministry. John was baptizing hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the river in preparation. He said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

When it came time to say something to King Herod, KING Herod, he did not shrink from speaking God’s truth. Herod had taken his brother’s wife and married her. John told Herod that this was wrong. He said to the King’s face, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” Herodias, Herod’s wife, wanted to see John dead. Herod on the other hand, loved to listen to John talk, and knew John was a holy man. Herod reluctantly had John arrested but continued to protect John from those who wanted to silence him.

Herodias his wife, however, really was determined to silence this prophet. She craftily got the King to promise her daughter, also named Herodias, that she could have whatever she asked for, up to half his kingdom. He made this promise at a celebration at which he was honoring what in effect were all the members of his government. Now Herod, in making this promise, was thinking of material goods. But at her mother’s prodding, the girl asked for John’s head on a platter. Unwilling to break his word in front of all those who served him, he very reluctantly agreed. And according to scripture, that same evening, John was dead and his head was delivered to Herodias the daughter on a platter.

Talk about violence. The world has always been violent. Actually in many respects we have come a long ways over these two millennia. The world in some places is much more civilized than ever before. But life continues to be violent. Pain, suffering and grief go on. Disease, poverty and war all persist. Innocent and sometimes really good people are slaughtered daily somewhere in the world.

How, then, can we live a life of peace and faith? How can we believe that God is in charge? Well, some of us can and some of us can’t. And some who can’t today will be able to tomorrow or next year. Because it all depends on how we see the world. We can either we see life through secular eyes (You’re born, you live, you die and that’s it.) or we can see through the sure and certain hope that God has bigger things in store for us; that deaths are commencements, beginnings. Nathan knew that. John knew that. How else could they have had such courage? Birth may not be the beginning of life in God for us, and death is surely not the end of life in God for us.

Amos the prophet tells of God saying that God is placing a plumb line in the midst of His people. I have always taken strength from that. They say that life is not black-and-white. I say it often. But there is this plumb line of God that tells us the right way to do. That assures us that God is good and we need to do the best we can to line up with that plumb line, God’s Word to us of right and wrong, of goodness and love.

In today’s life we face all kinds of unsettling and sometimes frightening events and possibilities. We are at war with terrorism, we are at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, our economy has been having a terrible time. If we look at these things as the Alpha and the Omega, the whole of life, we surely are in danger of despairing. To despair is to say that God cannot help us.

But through that sure and certain hope, Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega–the beginning and the end. He is wider and deeper and higher than human life and events. Violence, even death, are like books between bookends and the bookends are God, surrounding us with the arms of God’s safety.

From the beginning of time through this very day, life has not changed with regard to the mystery of evil in a world created by a God of love. Nor has life changed with regard to our need to see the life of this planet through our soul rather than through the world's eyes.

Way back in the 14th century a young girl named Julian, who lived in the English village of Norwich, prayed endlessly for a closer relationship with God. There was much suffering, violence and death all around her.

“ Writing in the midst of it all, with a mind full of compassion and a deep questioning of why so much suffering was ‘necessary’, Julian had an overwhelming vision of the love of God.”

She later had two visions of Jesus who spoke to her. About one of these experiences Julian said, “These words: You will not be overcome, were said very insistently and strongly (by Jesus), for certainty and strength against every tribulation which may come. He did not say you will not be assailed, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted, but he said: You will not be overcome.”

Julian’s Her lifelong passion was her “longing was to see people delivered from their pain and sorrow and released into the joy of God."
(From The Wisdom of Julian of Norwich, compiled and introduced by Monica Furlong; Copyright Eerdman’s Press, Grand Rapids Michigan)

After all her struggles her own hard-won awareness is the vision she offers us this morning for our lives: “all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”
Amen.

Copyright 2003 Calvary Episcopal Church

Gospel:Mark 6:14-29
14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, "John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him." 15 But others said, "It is Elijah." And others said, "It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old." 16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised." 17 For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and
put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife,
because Herod had married her. 18 For John had been telling Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife." 19 And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. 21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the
leaders of Galilee. 22 When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it." 23 And he solemnly swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom." 24 She went out and said to her mother, "What should I ask for?" She replied, "The head of John the baptizer." 25 Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." 26 The king was deeply grieved; yet out of
regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27 Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, 28 brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. 29 When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb. NRSV

Old Testament: Amos 7:7-15
7 This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. 8 And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; 9 the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword." 10 Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house
of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. 11 For thus Amos has said, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.' 12 And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; 13 but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom." 14 Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of
sycamore trees, 15 and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel.'" NRSV

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