Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 14 July 2024.
Iconostasis in the Church of the Ascension of Jesus, Skopje from 1867, Northern Macedonia. The Beheading of John the Baptist is carried out by figures stylized like Ottoman Turks. (Source and large image)
• First Reading: 2 Samuel 6: 1-5, 12-19 (The ark brought to Jerusalem)
• Epistle: Ephesians 1: 3-14 (Praise for spiritual blessings in Christ)
• Gospel: Mark 6: 14-29 (John the Baptist beheaded)
There used to be stories of how the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue had to be called out to help distressed hikers who had set out with little or no preparation. Poorly clad, no map or compass, scant experience or skill.
Perhaps their image was of a gentle walk in the South Downs of England, not realizing that even the British Army did some of their winter training there.
Somehow these mountains were not real ones – not like the Alps or Himalayas. Easy walking, almost domesticated. Nothing to get too excited about.
A trivialization of the risks that they were about to encounter.
But this sense of trivializing things also applies to the things of God. Worship becomes routine, prayers become formal, the quality of singing degenerates into dirges and the preaching is also bland and unchallenging.
But then we have the account of how King David brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. It was on a new cart, whose oxen were being supervised by two of the prophets of the land: Uzzah and Ahio.
And the oxen stumbled and Uzzah put out a hand to steady the cart – and was struck down. He had only wanted to help, but was presuming instead. God was not a silly old man with a beard and a walking stick who needed help to get around. Uzzah had acted beyond his calling and was forcefully corrected.
Then the Ark was housed in the barn of a nearby farm and despite all that had happened, the farmer had prospered. So David tried again, and the Ark was brought into Jerusalem with great ceremony and rejoicing.
But this was a solemn celebration. The Ark was handled with total correctness and installed with utter devotion and honour. Nothing was going to be taken for granted for as was said much later, ‘It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’
And even though David had stripped off – within the limits of decency – and celebrated with dancing before the Lord, this was an act of self-surrender, rather than one of self-promotion.
Handling the Ark of the Covenant was never to be taken lightly or with any kind of levity. It was utterly serious – and yet within that it was a time of the fullest celebration. All in awe and in the fear of the Lord.
God was never to be taken for granted and yet could, and should be approached in humility and faith.
Now look at the issues facing Herod, King of Galilee under the Romans. Not a man given to much sentiment, but ready to take his brother’s wife as his own, with no regard for decency or the law of Israel.
So John the Baptist had called him out and having done so was locked up. But Herod still liked to talk to him and kept him alive.
Until. Until. That party, for all the big-wigs of his territory. Magnificent in its food and drink, its furnishings and decor. And then the dance. And that must have been quite something. Just how provocative, how revealing, how explicit we are left to wonder: that is in the need to know territory.
But Herod then lost it. A drunken and extravagant promise, by one who knew few limits himself. The head of John the Baptist?
If he feared God then this would be arbitrary and beyond the rule of law. No charge or hearing, and certainly no defense. Just one head? Not really a problem if law, never mind godliness were not his thing. But he rather liked John – but not so much as to refuse the request as being beyond law or godliness.
Herod had liked to play at church – but was not going to live it. He liked to taste sermons, but not to be taught by them. He might have a form of religion – but with no content or cutting edge.
And the price for this level of superficiality was paid by John.
Finally we have Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus. A small group living in the shadow of the great temple of Diana of Ephesus – a notable fertility cult whose devotions would also have been something to behold, never mind its feasts.
But the Ephesian church as seen by God was something else. Blessed in the sight of God, called and chosen to be holy and blameless. Predestined to be adopted as the sons and daughters of God, in and only in Jesus Christ. He would be their strength and their glory and there was none other. Even Diana was false.
The Ephesian church were redeemed from their addictions to self and their self-importance. They were called into the wisdom and understanding that God would bestow on them.
Called to be the people taken up with the praise and worship of God in Jesus Christ and to find that faith in Him was going to transcend any and all of the entertainments that Diana might have on offer.
These were the people for whom the message and the reality of Jesus Christ would lead them in their lives and would strip death of its power to terrorize them.
In Jesus they might be led away from their sins, finding a forgiveness in Him that was total and without limit. Where they failed, He would meet them and renew them.
And yes, what was true then is true today: the lessons of King David, King Herod and of the church in Ephesus are all there for us to receive and ponder. For God is never to be taken lightly.
