Sermon

Mark 6:14-29 & 2 Samuel 6:1-19

Fools for God

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Mark 6:14-29 & 2 Samuel 6:1-19

Fools for God

The Rev. Charles Hoffacker

It may be impossible for us as human beings to avoid foolishness.  Where we have a choice lies in whether our foolishness leads us to freedom or a loss of freedom, whether our foolishness takes us onward to the God revealed in Jesus Christ or traps us in our small selves.  Will our foolishness bring about holistic salvation, or will it take us down to irreparable loss?

Today’s readings from scripture portray both true and false foolishness, both freedom and the lack of freedom.

In one case they show us a party where wisdom is achingly absent, hope has been cast aside, freedom is nowhere to be found.

In the other case, we see a most memorable parade led by a man who knows both sides of foolishness, but at his best chooses the foolishness which points to God.

• First then the scene that is simply tragic, where hope has been cast aside and freedom is nowhere to be found.

King Herod throws a birthday party for himself.  He invites his courtiers, his yes men, the people he needs to impress.  He has no friends in sight, for he has no friends at all.

His daughter Herodias does a dance of the sort no father should approve of, but Herod is the one who applauds the loudest.  He sputters out a promise to give the girl anything she wants, even half his kingdom.  This promise exceeds Herod’s power; he’s but a puppet king, unable to give away even an acre.

But the girl does not ask for real estate.  After consulting with her mother, a latter-day Jezebel, she calls for the head of John the Baptist, King Herod’s prisoner, to be delivered to her posthaste on a platter.

Now Herod is in away fascinated with John; holding him prisoner keeps him safe from Herod’s bloodthirsty wife.  But now this so-called king has gone and shot off his mouth in front of a dining hall full of self-important guests.  Backing down from his intemperate promise would make him look bad in front of this snide, unforgiving audience.

Herod is not a free man.  He is far less free than his prisoner John who dies with his integrity intact.  There is no humor or honor or joy that night in Herod’s hall; there is only tragedy as gruesome as a severed head.

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• Thank God that’s not today’s only scripture story.  Thank God that’s not the only way life can turn out.  We hear also of a real king, King David, bringing the ark of God to Jerusalem in the grandest style.

He musters thirty thousand soldiers and a bigger crowd than the Arts Festival here in our city, and they accompany the holy ark carried in a cart, step by step toward Jerusalem.  The moving, swaying, dancing waves of people are bigger and better than a football game or a rock concert or a hot gospel revival.  Everybody is dancing, everybody is shaking it up!  Loud singing, lyres and castanets and cymbals, and still more loud singing!

The star of the show is King David himself, who, as scripture tells us, “danced before the (God) with all his might,” like Little Richard and Elvis and the Four Tops and Bruce Springsteen all rolled up into one.  David is a free man!  He dances before the Lord, dances for the love of the Lord!  His life is not easy, his life is not perfect, he has done wrong and dealt wickedly and been forgiven; this king dances with abandon, for the joy of the Lord is his strength!

• King David, though an obvious believer in monarchy, would have answered AMEN to what anarchist Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution!”

• David would cheer on the boys who each year on the feast of Corpus Christi dance at the cathedral in Seville, honoring the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, great David’s greater Son.

• King David would climb up on stage and play a harp or blow a horn with U2 as they sing out for justice, and this free man would join with choirs of Pentecostal churches and Anglican cathedrals and with the dancing liturgies of Ethiopian priests.

He will not dance alone.  He does not dance alone.  Look for him in the line of dancing saints that now encircles the throne of God and the Lamb, a conga line that stretches past the horizons of heaven.  Picture them all present at this altar when our Sanctus of praise sounds forth.

Heaven’s music is a lot like David’s dance, for there as well tragedy does not get the last word: joy and exuberance prevail.  The deep democratic energies of the co-equal Trinity ignite a cosmic dance that shakes, rattles, and rolls; that never wearies and never stops.

The dance David performs before the ark of God there on the road to Jerusalem offers a choreographic commentary on this statement about simplicity from the spiritual writer Francois Fenelon:

“If one of us wants a friend to be free and easy with us in the exchanges of friendship, how much more does God, who is the true friend, desire the soul to be free from self-consciousness, worry, care, anxiety, and reserve, in that sweet and gentle intimacy which God has prepared for this soul.  This simplicity perfects true children of God; it is the end to which they must move and the end to which they must let themselves be led.”

It may be impossible for us as human beings to avoid foolishness.  Where we have a choice lies in whether our foolishness leads us to freedom or a loss of freedom, whether our foolishness takes us onward to the God revealed in Jesus Christ or traps us in our small selves.  Will our foolishness bring about holistic salvation, or will it take us down to irreparable loss?

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2010, Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission. Fr. Hoffacker is the author of A Matter of Life and Death: Preaching at Funerals (Cowley Publications), a book devoted to helping clergy prepare funeral homilies that are faithful, pastoral, and personal.