Posts Tagged ‘Mark 6:17–29’
Power, Transfigured – Br. Lain Wilson
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The Beheading of John the Baptist
If you were to stand in the south gallery of what used to be the Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, you would be standing in the footsteps of emperors and empresses. And in the footsteps of these powerful rulers, you would also be able to see the Deesis mosaic, a monumental icon of the enthroned Jesus, flanked by his mother Mary and John the Baptist, who turn toward him in deesis, that is, in prayer or supplication.[1]
The church’s calendar in this season forms a kind of Deesis as well, with the feasts of the births and deaths of Mary and John braided together through the summer, flanking and pointing toward the Transfiguration. As the eyes of the disciples were transfigured to see Jesus’s true nature, so are the very human lives of mother and forerunner themselves transfigured by their relationship to Jesus.
John’s death by beheading is a striking one. But not only because of the lurid details of a world of luxury and nasty family politics that seems so very far away from the gospel. It’s striking because in the agents of John’s execution—Herodias and her daughter—we have two figures who never, as far as we are aware, have any direct encounter with Jesus—perhaps the only two figures in the gospels who do not. Read More
Called to be Prophets – Br. James Koester
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Feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist
2 Chronicles 24: 17 – 21
Psalm 71: 1 – 6, 15 – 17
Hebrews 11: 32 – 40
Mark 6: 17 – 29
It was over thirty years ago, while I was still serving in parish ministry, that a couple from one of the congregations in the parish came to me. They were concerned, on my behalf, that I might feel constrained in my preaching. It’s not that they had a complaint about the content, or my style, although that may have been true as well. What they were concerned about was the use of a lectionary. Having come from a Baptist tradition they were unfamiliar with the use of a lectionary. They were worried that by using a lectionary Sunday by Sunday, and basing my sermons on the appointed lessons, I was somehow not free to say or preach about what I might otherwise want or need to say. As a lifelong Anglican, I was a little surprised by their question. I think that they were equally surprised by my answer. Read More
Beheading of John the Baptist – Br. Curtis Almquist
Mark 6:17-29
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. For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” Read More