July 14, 2024
Mark 6:14-29
Introduction
Do you ever feel like your life is haunted? I’m not talking about moving into a house that has ghosts, or being haunted because in preparation for this September’s blockbuster release of the Beetlejuice sequel you watched the original and then uttered, “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetle…”
The kind of haunted I’m curious about is being haunted by something unresolved in you and it keeps showing up to visit. Do you ever feel like something is wandering the corridors of your mind, heart, and soul? Let me give you some examples of the kind and types of haunting I’m talking about.
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Have you ever had the same dream over and over? I do. My reoccurring dream is always set at Bethany College—where I did my undergrad studies. It’s always during the last days of my senior year, just before graduation, and I have loads of work to complete if I want to graduate—and all of it is suffocating me. And then, in the dream, I realize, on top of all the work, there was an entire class I had neglected to attend all semester. But! If I get all the work done for that class, I could still graduate. I always wake up before I find out if I graduated.
Anyone have a reoccurring dream? If not a reoccurring dream, have you ever had the same images appear in your dreams? What is that dream or image? What does that dream want from you? What is that image referring to? Why do you think it won’t go away?
Or how about this… Do you ever replay in your head particular events or experiences wishing you could go back and redo or undo what happened, or what you said or did? It’s as if our past has been raised, is alive, and ever present like our shadow. I do this a lot as well—and it’s almost always about my days from Jr. High through High School when I was an extreme introvert, and didn’t want to be seen, but so wanted to stand up to the bullying and scorn inflicted by the “in-crowd.”
Or how about this… Do you sometimes feel like guilt, regret, or disappointment are always lurking close by, tracking and following you? No matter what you do or how long it’s been you just can’t get past the feeling.
What thoughts never go away? Even when you’re not thinking about them they just show up uninvited and unwanted.
What memories would you like to erase or delete? You want to forget them, have tried to forget them, but they’re always there. They won’t let themselves be deleted.
What haunts your life today?
I imagine we all have those kind of thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, and experiences. They keep showing up, demanding to be acknowledged, persistently nagging us like a mosquito we can’t swat and if we let it will suck out our blood life-force. And no matter how many times we let go of them, they won’t let go of us, relentlessly haunting and reminding us that though they are in the past, our failures, our mistakes are still following us in the present.
All of this makes me wonder if that’s what’s going on with Herod in today’s Gospel. I wonder if he’s a haunted man. That’s what he thinks after all—that he is being haunted by John the Baptist who he had killed. But I wonder if Herod is actually being haunted by his own shadow.
Move 1
In our text for today Mark is taking his audience in a slightly unexpected direction—backwards. Mark is flashing back to what Herod had already done to John, and how it all unfolded. And this haunting flashback happens when Herod hears about Jesus and his Disciples, and the powers at work in Jesus, all of which cause him to say, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
Now that’s how Mark puts it, but if you ask me that sounds way too calm, cool, and collected. I think Mark has sanitized Herod’s words. I willing to bet Herod was more like, “Oh $#%&! That crazy, locust eating, heckler to injustice, loudmouth preacher is back, and wants to do to me what I did to him!”
Herod is freaked out! He is scared! Jesus’ deeds of power: calming the stormy sea, casting out demons, healing the hemorrhaging woman, raising Jairus’ daughter, all if it, have confronted Herod with his own abuse of power— which reached its pinnacle at the beheading of John the baptizer. Herod killed the truth-teller, but the truth John told won’t die, it won’t leave Herod alone. Herod is a haunted man.
The haunting he is experiencing, however, is not between Herod and John though. Herod is haunted by himself. Something unresolved is haunting Herod. His mistakes and failures are haunting him. Remember, Mark tells us, on the one hand Herod knew John “was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him.” On the other hand, “Herod feared John”, and the truth he held up. On the one hand Herod “liked to listen to John.” On the other hand, he “was greatly perplexed” by what he heard. Herod was haunted—by the truth John spoke, by his past, by his conflict and confusion.
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I know what conflict and confusion are like… and I am confident you do too. We all have our specters, the unresolved parts of ourselves and our lives that come back to visit us. We all live haunted lives. And just like Herod we are usually haunted by what we have beheaded—or maybe we are haunted by what has beheaded us. And the question becomes… what are we to do?
Move 2
Now of course when I am talking about beheading I do so as a metaphor—a metaphor for the ways in which we deny, ignore, reject, and turn away from the parts of ourselves we don’t talk about at parties. I’m talking about the ways in which we cut off parts of ourselves and aspects of our lives in the hope we won’t have to see or hear from them again.
They are the parts of ourselves we keep hidden from others, but mostly we keep them hidden from ourselves. It might be something we’ve done or said. It might be a relationship or past experience. It might be a personality trait, behavior, or attitude. It might be thoughts, feelings, fantasies.
Sometimes they are parts of us we are not even aware of until someone points them out, and when they are pointed out we feel angry, hurt, embarrassed or shame. And it is these cut off parts of our lives that become our dim shadowy side that haunt us.
Now, to be clear, our dim shadowy side isn’t necessarily bad or sinister, it’s just that we don’t recognize, acknowledge, or deal with this side of us. But here’s the thing. We can never get away from our shadow, can we? It’s always there, always following us, haunting us, never letting us go. And it all causes us to become like Herod where we are left saying our own version of, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
Move 3
Do you remember being a kid and on a sunny day trying to outrun or get away from your shadow? How’d that work for you? And I can’t help but wonder if we are still trying today. But how’s that working for you?
We can’t outrun or out maneuver these shadow parts of our lives and yet we keep trying, fighting harder and harder to do so, all the while thinking and believing these shadowy parts of us that haunt us are our enemy… but what if that’s just not true?
Think about what haunts you today.
What if the parts of us that haunt us are not out to get us, but rather are out to save us? What if each haunting serves a purpose? What if our hauntings are telling and showing us that something in us is wanting and needing to be dealt with? What if each haunting is asking us to stop, pay attention, and intentionally deal with what is really going on? What if each haunting presents an opportunity for grace, healing, forgiveness, wholeness, and being made new? What if our hauntings are a holy and divine visitation? And what if, like for Herod, Jesus is hidden in each of our hauntings?
I wonder what it would be like for you and me to hold what haunts us as a faithful guide to a better and healthier future.
Conclusion
If we keep reading chapter six of Mark’s Gospel, we will soon get to his story of how even the Disciples, when they saw Jesus walking on the sea, thought he was a ghost, and they were terrified. But instead of hiding themselves from this terror, they kept their focus, and soon saw it was Jesus coming to them.
Over and over again, Jesus and his teachings and his ways uncovered parts of the Disciples, and many others, they did not want to see or face—chief among them, Peter, the most devote follower of Jesus. And though he didn’t want to face those parts, through the grace, forgiveness, and healing of Christ, all were able to find new and renewed life—because they faced, with Jesus, the shadows that haunted them.
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So often we use hope as a tactic to deal with the shadows that haunt us. We hope our shadowy side won’t sneak out at the wrong time or place and reveal an ugly or shameful part of us we never want anyone to see. But hope as a tactic is like trying to outrun or out maneuver our shadow on a sunny day—it just isn’t going to work.
So instead, what if we faced our shadows, and were completely honest about them? Yes, we’ll have to deal with the difficult and painful parts we’d rather forget, but in doing so, with the help of Jesus, we will likely find that which can save us, serve us, help us, forgive us, and heal us. Because the truth is, the shadows that haunt us can actually lead us… lead us to becoming…becoming more real, more whole, and more alive than ever before.
Like Herod, we are all haunted by our shadowy side. But let’s not be like Herod. Let’s not waste a good haunting. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, July 14, 2024
Creator God, help us to remember the truth of your goodness in every new day, but help us to remember the truth of your goodness, most especially when we try to hide—when we try to hide parts of ourselves we don’t want anyone to ever see or even know about. Parts of ourselves we try to hide from you, and even from ourselves. Because Lord, when we are honest with ourselves and with you, and we have to admit, we are haunted—haunted by our past, haunted by what we have done, what we have left undone; haunted by deeds and actions that didn’t reflect a Christ-like way of life.
So it is our prayer, gracious God, that instead of hearing our inner voice that keeps trying to remind us of the parts we are not proud of, help us hear your still small voice, speaking words of hope peace, forgiveness, race, and love. Help us to embrace the truth that it is by your grace, forgiveness and love that we are given a new day to be better than we are the day before.
Holy God, there are so many parts of the world that haunt us—and we saw some of those parts unfold yesterday when senseless violence erupted in gunfire—taking a life, injuring more, including former president Trump. We ask for your comfort to be an abiding presence to the family and loved ones of the person killed. We ask for speedy recovery for President Trump and others who were injured. We give thanks to the Secret Service and law enforcement who responded with the resolve to protect all life, even if it meant giving theirs.
And we pray that your presence and voice will be heard throughout our country—reminding all there is no place for violence or hate; there is no chance of unity without civility and decency; that scorn and judgement will only server to divide us as a country.
God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow… send your Holy Spirit and enfold our country in that great cloud of witnesses who sought out, and found a path through the harsh, cruel, and ugly times of our history, and lead our country to being a city on a hill that became a beacon of truth, justice, equality, along with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
And may this work of your Holy Spirit guide us to truly be the United States of America.
We asked, you would listen now to the prayers deep within our hearts that we live to you here and now in this time of holy silence.
We pray all of this in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying, “Our…”