Earlier this week, I was visiting Elmer, otherwise known as Stitz, with his daughter Becky. We were doing a brief communion service at his place. Instead of the usual tiny readings that are included in my little red pastor’s book, I thought we’d read the gospel for this Sunday, whatever it might be, and we could talk about it.

Well, it never occurred to me that the text would be the beheading of John the Baptist. It’s an awkward text to innocently walk into. As you just did. It’s sort of like going to someone’s house for dinner which you were expecting to be tasty, nutritious, and hopefully a bit surprising. But at the time of the meal, they serve you a plate with a plain, raw potato. You might poke it with your fork before looking around and wondering what are you supposed to do with this?

That’s how this part of the gospel can feel, when it first arrives in front of you. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me at Elmer’s home. What do we do with this?!

Thankfully Elmer is a man of great humor, so we bravely talked about the text. And what we talked about was the part of the text that describes Herod as being afraid of John, because he respected him as a righteous man. Herod was perplexed by his teachings, but he liked listening to John anyway. I imagine he felt the pull and the attraction of the living gospel that flowed by from John, but he didn’t know what to do with that.

This paints a different picture of Herod than just the cruel, dominating ruler. Yes, he was a cruel and dominating ruler, but it appears he was also ambivalent about it. He had an ear for righteousness, but he was also afraid of it. He likely didn’t know how to live and rule any differently. And so John’s calls for repentance and his teachings perplexed Herod, even as he liked what he heard.

In our conversation, Elmer and I talked about what it’s like to hear hard truths. Hard truths are hard because they make demands on us. We may need to change our life in response to a hard truth, like finding out your have diabetes or cancer. Everything has to change in response to such hard truths, even if we resist the changes. Truths are truths and they are hard to avoid.

In this incident in our text, Herod could have chosen to follow his inclination towards justice and just say that he wouldn’t kill an innocent man. But he needed to maintain his ego and put on a show of domination and power in front of his guests. Given this example, I can see why Herod was perplexed by John. It is indeed perplexing to figure out how to maintain a fragile ego, continue to flex power and domination over others, and follow God’s path of righteousness … all at the same time.

It’s not just perplexing, it can’t really be done. God is always calling us to die to our old ways, die to our small selves. We are always invited into greater honesty, greater vulnerability, greater love for each other and the planet as we are continually made new in Christ.

But there’s hope for Herod. Perhaps the fact that Herod was perplexed meant that he was on the right path. What if this is actually a great first step? Afterall, Herod’s wife Herodias wasn’t there yet. She did not seem perplexed about what needed to be done for her to maintain power and status. So, hurrah for Herod and his step one on his spiritual journey.

The next step he did not do as well, it seems. And this is the step, if there’s such a thing as steps to spiritual renewal, is to respond to this perplexity with honest questions. By honest I mean questions that are asked without knowing the answer in advance.

For example, Herod did not ask himself honestly, “Could I pardon John the Baptist and refuse this obvious manipulation, despite the hit I might take to my reputation?” He didn’t ask, “What am I doing with my life being a puppet king beholden to Rome, subjecting my own people? Why am I surrounding myself with people expecting to see the head of God’s prophet on a platter?”

Seems to me, Herod committed the sin of cowardice more than cruelty. He was cruisin’ along with his palace politics while also enjoying listening to John, but when it became time to make a choice, he didn’t even take a pause. He was too afraid of the consequences of righteousness to ask an honest question about what he was doing as a leader.

In the Christian Century this week, Marilyn McEntyre wrote on this text, “(Cowardice) is a fatal flaw. It puts self-protection first and blinds the coward to the wider, long-term consequences of self-preservation. It can be dressed up with names that normalize it: appeasement, expediency, compromise, consistency, cutting losses. But, acting out of fear usually does harm.” And I’d add to that it usually does the most harm to the weak, the vulnerable, and powerless.

In Marilyn’s writing, she poses questions for the “Herods” of the world, which include all of us at one point or another. When you find yourself responding to a situation out of fear, ask yourself:

1. What are you protecting?
2. What is the harm this action will cause, in the long- and short-terms?

Hopefully these questions, along with prayer and support, can help guide you to make choices of righteousness and goodness for all people.

When I was younger than I am today, I thought the power players of the world must be brilliant (or at least smart-ish people) who make strategic (or at least sensible) choices about life, politics, science, industry, and all the rest. But, the older I get, the more I see there are more “Herods” out there than I’d like to think – people making choices out of cowardice, expediency, and short-term gain. Our many “Herods” are likely not asking honest questions about what harm their Herodian choices are inflicting on others or on the planet. They are likely not asking honest questions about what their actual options are.

The longer I thought about this text, it began to change from a raw potato for dinner – awkward – to being a feast for pondering human frailty. This text lays out our human tendency to hide from hard truths. It shows how we might throw other people under the bus to avoid loss of personal status or power. It shows how our decision-making can be distorted by fear. And we’re just talking about Herod. We could have a whole other conversation about the women and what’s going on for them, as well as the disciples in their bravery and solidarity.

The Good News of Christ in this text is the juxtaposition between this scenario and what we witness in Jesus, the one who refused repeatedly to exert power over other people. Instead, Jesus lived and lives in the flow of power with people.

The Good News is we do not have to be Herod. We do not need to compromise our souls, our hearts, or our faith to maintain our false kingdoms. We can let the false structures of our lives go.

The promise of Jesus is there is new life after every ending, every death. Herod, for example, could have run out of his palace, thrown off the robes, put on the sack cloth and started living on wild honey and locusts with John in the desert. Unlikely, but he could have. He could have also picked some other less extreme choices, between giving up everything and murdering John the Baptist. He had choices. He was not without power in this situation. Neither are we in our lives.

The Good News is also in Amos, where we hear about the plumb line that God put in the center of the people. We too have plumb lines in our hearts. For the most part, we know when our desires on one hand and what is good on the other hand are not lining up. Thanks to our God-given plumb lines, we might be perplexed, like Herod, when things are out of whack. And when it is, we have the power to let our false narratives, false ideas, false facades go, and live in truth with God.

The Good News also is, in our faith communities, we are surrounded by others who are doing their best to also follow paths of good courage. Our fellow travelers also want to hear the necessary hard truths and follow God for the sake of love. We are not without resources to navigate times of hard truths.

This is a time of great uncertainty for many folks. The world is full of reasons for us to be afraid, to turn away from hard truths. The promise of Christ is that we can indeed walk into those hard times, those hard conversations and eventually be witness to new life. Herod suffered by clinging to his court, his power when he didn’t have to. We, as Christ’s disciples today, are invited to live boldly and courageously, with open hearts, for the sake of us all. This is the path of following Jesus.

AMEN