Eighth Sunday after Pentecost “More Than the Living Dead”
July 14, 2024 Mark 6:14-29
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Dear brothers & sisters in Christ,
This might be the wrong crowd to ask this question, but: are ‘zombies’ still a thing?
They never interested me – because they never made ‘sense.’ The ‘living dead’ is an ‘oxymoron.’ A rotting corpse slowly walking & catching people who can run, that doesn’t make sense. And somehow -with decomposing muscles- they fight & overpower living people = is that from some demonic power? Some zombies have a craving for human brains = how would eating anything satisfy a decayed digestive system. I don’t get it; or am I just overthinking it?
And yet, for a while, zombies were the rage. With the Night of the Living Dead movies in the 70’s, and Michael Jackson’s music-video Thriller in 1983, and more recently, the very popular TV series The Walking Dead, somehow zombies have been popular. In 2010, the toy company Mattel released their fashion dolls & games for kids called Monster High; and
Brad Pitt’s 2012 movie World War Z grossed over $540 million in ticket sales. To Hollywood, zombies are ‘make-believe’ & a way to make money. Altho, to those who practice ‘voodoo’ in Haiti, zombies are a more real thing, & a way to manipulate people by fear.
Even tho zombies are senseless, they do represent ‘death.’ And death is a real physical & spiritual thing – which is factual, curious, mysterious, & frightening. Science can explain the mechanics of death: the body simply quits working, forever.
But then, there’s that mysterious side of things = the unseen. What comes after death? Can the body be made alive again? Well, God’s people have historically had God’s own Word about that; but those that did not know God just had their own imaginations about the dead coming back to life thru the use of unseen powers. So, in man’s imagination, zombies can be something evil, such as with voodoo; or more neutral. In Greek & Roman mythology, the goddess queen of the dead-underworld, named Persephone (per-se-fon-ee), just reflected what they saw in creation. She is released from the doom of Hades in the spring & summer with new life, only to return to death in the fall & winter. We see natural seasons; they saw their gods at work. One thing all these ideas & myths have in common is that death is not the end.
In today’s Gospel lesson, we hear that the Jews of the first century believed that death wasn’t the end. According to v.14, many were saying that John the Baptist had come back from the dead in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. They thought that’s where Jesus got His powers to perform miracles; he’s John, raised from the dead!
In vs.16, Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great – who slaughtered Bethlehem’s babies, he believed that Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead, & he was worried. As we heard, Herod had given the order to have John beheaded because of a reckless promise made during a depraved, drunken feast. Drunk people make foolish decisions; but people with a guilty conscience will often fall into strange & superstitious thinking. Herod had a guilty conscience because he had a scandalous affair with his brother Philip’s wife. Tradition records that Herod seduced Herodias, and convinced her to divorce Philip and marry him.
In the Roman Empire, that was not a big deal; just like in our day in Hollywood or in DC, people change partners for power or prestige. But Herod was supposed to represent the Jewish Law & God’s people in the world. So, it was an abomination.
In our day, we hear the cry, ‘no one is above the law.’ Well, in earthly government, that depends on which political party is in power. Who’s going to hold powerful leaders to account = other corrupt leaders or corrupt media? But what about the heavenly government & God’s Law?
No one IS above God’s Law; and that’s where John the Baptist comes in. We picture John as a fiery desert preacher, but what we hear from him is a straightforward delivery of God’s unfiltered Word. Whether it is was: Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand. Or Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It is true that he was no ‘respecter of men’; that means that it didn’t matter to him if you were a high church or gov’t official, or a little old lady. His message for ALL was: repentance, baptism, forgiveness, & righteous living in Christ.
By God’s Law, King Herod’s conduct was adulterous & incestuous. John simply declared: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” And he might’ve added:
‘If you, O king, have a problem with that, take it up with God.’ This candid delivery of ‘right & wrong’ is not easy to do, as every parent knows. Yet, John does what all faithful prophets and preachers of God must do: proclaim God’s clear Law, and let the Spirit apply its force & severity = regardless of the position, power, wealth, or influence of the person.
Like the prophet Nathan, who stood in front of David, the most powerful king of Israel, to declare that David was the man who deserved to die for committing adultery, and then murdering Bathsheba’s husband to cover up the sin. John the Baptist declares to King Herod that his sins stink to high heaven.
This is what God’s Law says to each one of us: Repent, O man, O woman, O child! It’s not lawful for YOU ==… to have other gods; to misuse the Lord’s name; to despise His Day of Worship in Word & Sacraments; to dishonor parents & authorities; to harm your neighbor with hatred, or dishonor marriage with lust; to steal what belongs to someone else; to damage your neighbor’s reputation by lies or gossip; do not entertain those evil desires to get what some else has – which the Lord has not given to you. If it was not for the condemning Law, we would not realize how much we need the Gospel; the Savior.
A guilty conscience is a spiritually useful thing. It is the Holy Spirit, using the Living Word, to scratch at our soul – concerning the thoughts, words, & deeds that violate God’s Holy Law. King Herod knew his sin against God, and his conscience made him scared on 2 fronts: afraid of godly John and godless Herodias. He knew John ‘was a righteous and holy man,’ and that’s why he would gladly listen to John teach. But Herodias hated John; so to make her happy, the king put John in prison, tho he had broken no law. Herod was conflicted. He both punishes & protects the man who calls him out on his sin. He is drawn to hear John preach, even tho John also reminds him that his life-choices are a deadly offense to God.
This same conflict can be present in our lives, with our souls. God’s Church & pastors can be both attractive and repelling at the same time. The guilty conscience says, ‘How does he know about that sin? It’s like he’s preaching directly to me! But who does he think he is – to single me out from everyone else?!”
Sometimes a conflicted Christian will stop coming to church because they hate being reminded of their ongoing disobedience to God’s Law. And yet, you might hear that same person staunchly defending the Bible’s teaching against the sinful immorality of our culture. ‘Conflicted’ is not a good thing. Being inconsistent boarders on being a hypocrite. Wanting to confess a love for God’s Church with your words, but refusing to participate in His Church with obedience. It’s a zombie-like existence; not quite dead to the things of God, but not living in them as God expects for His people.
‘Christian-zombies’ don’t make sense. But then again, sin twists everything that is Godly & good & true. The first sin of Adam & Eve didn’t make sense = they had everything good; our sins don’t make sense. The apostle Paul speaks of this zombie-condition in Romans 7:
“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, BUT I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (22-24) The ‘living-dead’ have both the desire for sin and the desire for righteousness – all in one person.
Is there any rescue for us = ‘the living dead?’ Yes; we have a deliverer. The very one that King Herod thought was John the Baptist returned from the dead. But Jesus was much more: God-the-Son, in the flesh. John’s preaching of repentance & baptismal-forgiveness is the promised connection to our Savior, who gives us the heavenly gifts of a cleared conscience, and the Holy Spirit of holy, Lawful living. Our Rescuer is bringing us out from slogging thru just existing in a dead world, and into the way of God’s grace & righteousness, and being alive to God; beginning now, and continuing forever. And there is proof for this promise.
John the Baptist died a tragic death; but that too was part of John’s proclamation of the mission of the Promised Messiah. Scripture warns us that sin is a corrosive disease. Herod & Herodias’s immoral law-less marriage led to injustice, hatred, murder. We want to think that such sins will never infect us; but when sin gets a foothold, it can lead from one thing to another, when those things wouldn’t normally ‘make sense.’ And who among us has never had the thought that ‘well, since I already did this sin, what does it matter that I do a couple more?’
But it does matter. And that’s why the Son of God had to come -in person- to rescue us from this body & mind of death, by facing & breaking death’s power over us. None of us wants a tragic or senseless death; not by illness, or random violence, or by fire, or flood.
None of us would want to share the kind of senseless death John suffered = to be beheaded in prison; that was a drunken decision made because of a sensuous dance & a cruel hatred. Even so, the death John the Baptist was prophetic = pointing to Jesus’ pending death.
Our Lord would not die under the order of King Herod. But Jesus did unjustly die under a different pagan government official, Pontius Pilate; he knew Jesus was innocent & righteous, but Pilate was also afraid of the murderous anger of others. The disciples of John took the body of their martyred teacher ‘and laid it in a tomb.’ Likewise, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus, would take the Lord’s crucified body from the cross and lay Him in a tomb. John the Baptist proclaimed the Savior’s mission by his words, his life, & even by his death.
But the difference between the prophecy & the fulfillment here is huge. John the Baptist had not been raised from the dead to haunt King Herod. Like us, John will have to wait until the Great Day of Resurrection. But not so with Jesus. The Son of God raised Himself from the dead on the Third Day, just as was promised. His crucifixion assures the whole world of God’s forgiveness; and His Easter resurrection assures all of us that the power of death & the devil over us is destroyed. The cross cleans our conscience of all guilt; and the empty tomb guarantees our eternal living where there are no more tears or death, crying or pain. Halleluia!
It is pitiful, or ‘pitiable’, that so many in our world are fascinated with the myth of zombies: the living dead. It’s not reality. But this is real: our Lord Jesus is not part of the living dead; He is the living Conqueror of death.
Because Jesus lives, you are not a conflicted, spiritual zombie; you are a child of God = so live like one. You are washed in Baptism with Him, and clothed with Him, so follow Him; listen to & obey your Savior & Lord. Live like death is not the end, because in Jesus,
it is not.
Amen.