Poolesville Presbyterian Church
07.15.2012; Rev. David Williams
I wish we could look forward to election season. You’d think, what with the future of a country that we all purport to love at stake, that we’d manage to focus ourselves on the issues at hand, and that we’d recognize our mutual and common interest in insuring that these United States don’t come apart at the seams.
But instead, we find ourselves engaged in a political process that seems to most closely resemble my boys...um...”discussing”...who gets to use the Playstation 3, only substantially less polite and mature. Arguments, accusations, and mockery are the rule of the day, as the airwaves shimmer with attack ads and negativity. It’s frustrating. We’d like a return to civility, or so we say. We want things to go back to when politicians treated one another and us like mature adults, respecting each other and the principles of our great democracy.
Problem is, there’s been pretty much no time ever when that’s been the case. Take, for example, the election of 1800, which featured founding father John Adams running against founding father Thomas Jefferson. You just can't get more founding-fathery than that. And yet it was a remarkably knock-down, drag-out brawl of an election, as the nation chose between the Federalist party on the one hand and the Democratic-Republican party on the other. Although both Adams and Jefferson were key figures in the founding of our country, who’d both worked to draft the Declaration of Independence, each a genuine patriot in their own right, you’d never have been able to tell that from the rhetoric that poured from their blogger..I mean, pamphleteers.
Supporters of Adams suggested that if the “ragingly atheistic” Jefferson was elected as the third president of the United States, the results would not just be a less centralized government. Instead, a Jefferson victory would mean that, and I quote, “..the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, and the soil will be soaked with blood and the nation black with crimes.” Adams, a Federalist, was variously attacked in the pro-Jefferson press as being not just a supporter of a stronger central government, but also for being blind, bald, crippled, and toothless, for having imported both French and German mistresses, and I again quote, “..a hideous hermaphroditical character, with neither the force or firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
That’s not one we’ve heard yet this election season, but there’s probably another half-billion dollars worth of attack ads and oppo research to go, so let’s not rule it out.
The real issue, I think, is not that we’re getting less civil. It’s that there’s something about the human condition that has always driven us to say and do remarkably negative things to one another when power and social standing is involved.
This is particularly true when we’re confronted with someone who opposes us, and yet find ourselves surrounded by those who are technically in our camp. If we don’t attack, or don’t show ourselves as strongly part of the “us,” our legitimacy can be questioned. We can be seen as weak, or as unreliable. The pressure from those around us can drive us to do things that we know aren’t the right thing to do...but we do them anyway.
Herod did just that in the passage we heard from Mark’s Gospel this morning. The Herod we hear described was not Herod the Great, who founded the Herodian dynasty in 40 BC. Instead, we’re encountering his son, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, as opposed to his brother Herod Philip, Tetrarch of Batanea, Trachonitis, and Auranitis. It must have been hard running regions that sounded like upper respiratory tract infections, but so it went in the ancient world.
Herod Antipas was one of the more colorful figures of the first century, perhaps because he came out of one of the most epically dysfunctional families imaginable. His father had executed one of his wives and three of Herod Antipas’s half-brothers. Herod Antipas himself was regarded with some suspicion by many in Galilee for a variety of reasons, among which was that he’d married his brother’s wife Herodias, who also happened to be his niece. I’m not sure I even want to know how that works.
It was that peculiar relationship that got Herod into some ultimately mortal trouble with John the Baptist, as the story is told by Mark. John had been challenging Herod’s somewhat messy approach to marriage, and...peculiarly enough...the story presents Herod in a not-entirely-negative light.
Despite John’s direct attacks on Herod, we’re told that Herod found him fascinating, both fearing his connection to the people and “liking to listen to him.” John, or so the story is told by Mark, was protected by Herod.
But that protection proved relatively flimsy, as Herod found himself being trapped into giving the order to kill John the Baptist. As king, his power was his word. If he promised something, and promised it publicly, he was obligated to follow through with that promise. To those who’d hitched their wagon to the power of the Herodian dynasty, that form of consistency was foundational. You always knew where you stood, so long as the king remained consistent in his intent.
And so when Herodias’ daughter...Herod’s grandstep-daughterniece, I suppose...danced for the royal court, and Herod told her she could have whatever she wanted with a grand flourish, Herodias took the opportunity.
The request came back for the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and Herod was caught. He’d given his word, the word of a king, in front of everyone who was anyone in Galilee. To turn back would have been interpreted as a sign of weakness, that the king’s word couldn’t be taken seriously.
As the story goes, even though Herod was completely aware that serving up John the Baptist’s head would be fundamentally unjust, he was compelled to follow through and fulfill the request. Driven by his relationship to the community in whose power his power lay, Herod acted in a way that both preserved his integrity and shattered his integrity.
Each of us faces similar pressures as we both participate in society and encounter those who oppose us. As we participate in groups that share our basic worldview or interest, our integrity relative to the group can become defined by the degree to which we articulate the party line. The more clearly we express the party line, the more trustworthy we are. The more vigorously we show our willingness to attack those who do not hold our position, the more our authority within the group wanes.
It’s how human political and social systems work. Unfortunately, it’s not how God works. Our integrity as created beings, as sentient living and aware parts of God’s creation, that integrity rests on an entirely different foundation. That foundation is our capacity to be just, even if it is to our detriment. That foundation is our willingness to be gracious and kind and fair, even and particularly if that grace and kindness and fairness is being shown to someone who opposes us.
The argument could be made, of course, that this is unrealistic. The only way to get anything done is to cling with a deathgrip to the beliefs of your group, and to never for a moment waver in your commitment to your social and political identity. If you do otherwise, you’re obviously weak. And none of us want to seem weak.
But sometimes, as the Apostle Paul said during our reading last week, our weakness is our strength. And as monkey-gut satisfying as partisanship is, this is one of those times. That doesn’t mean that we’re obligated to believe nothing. That does not mean we cannot advocate for what we hold to be best and most just path in our culture. But it does mean that...if we claim to be Christian...that we have to leaven that with grace, no matter what the cost to our standing or our desire for anger.
So remember this as we move through the cash-fueled attack-ad partisan fever-frenzy of this season. Don’t let the fires of political anger diminish your capacity for grace, or the pressures of expectation reduce your ability to be just.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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