Based on the Gospel reading: Mark 6:14-29

What did you think as you heard the gospel reading this morning?  Did it seem out of place on this beautiful summer day to be telling the story of the beheading of John the Baptist.  It is truly a horrifying story.  Its pathological nature coupled with its fairy tale setting captures our imagination, holding us almost spell bound.  A friend commented to me that his small niece’s favourite picture in her illustrated Bible is the one with John the Baptist’s head on a platter.  Gruesome as it may be, it is little wonder that this story became the subject matter for at least one dramatic presentation.  In fact, Richard Strauss achieved instant success with Salome, his opera depicting the story.  If you have ever seen the opera you know that he admirably captures not only its fairy tale qualities but also its horror.  It has an amazing, if terrifying appeal. 

The setting is a magnificent banquet hall in Herod’s palace.  From a terrace at one side of the hall you can see the dungeon in which John is confined.  Salome goes out onto the moonlit terrace to take a look at the prisoner.  John has denounced Salome’s mother, Herodias saying that she is an evil woman.  Salome is at the same time smitten by John and angered by his words.  He seals his fate when she tries to lure him, and he rebukes her instead of succumbing to her charms.  Later, during the sumptuous feast, Herod asks the beautiful Salome to dance for him.  He tempts her by offering to give her anything she asks.  She performs the seductive Dance of the Seven Veils.  After its wild climax she demands the head of John the Baptist.  Herod, knowing that it is wrong, offers her anything else, peacocks, gems.  But he finally gives in and has John executed, then in a fit of remorse kills Salome as well. 

The facts, though distorted, do not change the effect of the story.  The adultery, the evil, the lack of conscience, the weakness, the spirit of intrigue, are all in opposition to God.  John is caught up in the vicious feuding of an evil family.  It foreshadows for us the way Jesus gets caught up in the sinful power struggle that leads to his death.        

But surely the most sinister part of the story is our reaction or lack of reaction to the violence of the plot.  We may be appalled at the mother’s use of her daughter’s gift to have someone killed.  We might wish that the daughter had not done the terrible thing the mother requested.  But worst of all, we can imagine Herod being tricked.  We can consider his sense of shame, and forget his culpability.  Yet if you think about it, he was the one person who could have put an end to the violence.  He was the one who had the power to stop it in its tracks.  But he didn’t stop it.  He allowed a terrible, violent act to occur.  Does it cause you to reflect on how sin spreads to destroy even the good people and good things of life?  Does it cause you to reflect on what you might do to overcome violence in our contemporary world? 

How many times has this story been lived out in our own era?  It is a truly contemporary story.  It could have been written about Oscar Romero, the voice of the voiceless in El Salvador.  An all-powerful government martyred him as the church looked on helplessly. 

It could have been written about Esquivel, a human rights worker in Argentina, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.  In spite of torture, he continued to witness to his faith and to help the families of those who disappeared, fight back against an oppressive regime. 

It is the story of continuing terrorist acts throughout the world.  Senseless killing and loss of life carried out over and over again in the name of God!

It is the story of Colombia in South America, designated the most savage country in the world per capita.   A never-ending cycle of violence continues in a country described as being at war with itself.  A forty-year conflict between government and rebels drags on.  And, of course, it is the poor who pay the highest price in a country of thirty five million people where there are an astounding million refugees. 

It is the story of the Sudan, of the middle east, of Haiti, of all the troubled spots in our world. 

It is a story that happens here in our own country over and over again.  It is the story of countless people who have been hurt or lost their lives in acts of family violence.  We cannot open up the newspaper these days without reading yet another account of a senseless act of violence against a woman or a child.  Yet society seems to be at a loss as to how to deal with such violent acts.          

The story of Herod and the death of John the Baptist is shocking.  But by far the most shocking thing about it is that someone who could have acted differently didn’t.  That is also what is most shocking about the stories of violence that take place in our daily lives.  For most of the time someone who could have acted differently didn’t.  And lives were scarred irreparably or lost.

Any act of violence is shocking, all the more shocking when we see that violence is so commonplace.  It has become an expression of frustration, which by its silence is condoned by society.  We need to find a cure.  There are many models put forth for violent behaviour.  Movies and television are full of them.  Can we replace such models of violence, such heroes, with models of peace, with our own heroes and role models?  Can people like St. Francis, Mother Teresa, Ghandi and Martin Luther King be role models to us?  Can we ask God for peace in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls? 

There is a powerful message for the Church in this reading.  It is a call to each of us to seek for justice in the face of entrenched political power.  We are called to fight against the violence that abounds in our world.  We do not need to be part of it.  We can overcome it.  We can let God’s peace flourish within us.  This can be a different world.  That is the message of the cross.  Jesus came to bring peace.  Let us be instruments of peace. 

A Prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hop; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.  Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  Amen.