The Beheading of John the Baptist

Mark 6:17-29

If you were to stand in the south gallery of what used to be the Church of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, you would be standing in the footsteps of emperors and empresses. And in the footsteps of these powerful rulers, you would also be able to see the Deesis mosaic, a monumental icon of the enthroned Jesus, flanked by his mother Mary and John the Baptist, who turn toward him in deesis, that is, in prayer or supplication.[1]

The church’s calendar in this season forms a kind of Deesis as well, with the feasts of the births and deaths of Mary and John braided together through the summer, flanking and pointing toward the Transfiguration. As the eyes of the disciples were transfigured to see Jesus’s true nature, so are the very human lives of mother and forerunner themselves transfigured by their relationship to Jesus.

John’s death by beheading is a striking one. But not only because of the lurid details of a world of luxury and nasty family politics that seems so very far away from the gospel. It’s striking because in the agents of John’s execution—Herodias and her daughter—we have two figures who never, as far as we are aware, have any direct encounter with Jesus—perhaps the only two figures in the gospels who do not.

And this lack of direct encounter is telling, because they provide us the gospel writer’s view of what untransfigured power looks like. Selfish and arbitrary. Relationships built not on love or respect but on deceit and gamesmanship. And, in the figure of Herod, weakness cultivated by his worst excesses. This is far from the power proclaimed by Jesus and pointed to by John and Mary: the power of God’s kingdom.

John called Herod and his family out for their transgression of Jewish law. He used his power as a prophet to stand up and speak truth to those in authority and, like so many other prophets, to be killed for it. Mary proclaimed God’s inversion of the world’s power: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Lk 1:52). She who at first glance seems to be the person with the least power, herself bore God to the world in the lowliest of circumstances. A call to repentance, the uplifting of the lowly: this is power, transfigured.

We may not be emperors or empresses. We may not be powerful as the world measures power. But each of us has power. It may be your resources; your voice, advice, or counsel; your work and actions; your physical presence; or, especially for us Christians, your deesis, your prayer and supplication. What is your power?

Recognizing and accepting your power is a first step, a necessary first step because, unlike Herodias and her daughter, each of us has, in our own way, encountered the risen Lord, and in that encounter each of us has been changed, and our power transfigured. How is God using your power? How are you yourself an icon pointing to God’s kingdom?

Amen.

[1] Images of this mosaic are available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Deesis_mosaic_(Hagia_Sophia).