Jack Hardaway
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Family is complicated.
That would be an understatement for today’s scripture readings.
David dancing before the Lord offering sacrifices every six paces, an ox and a fatling.
That’s a lot of sanctifying life poured out onto the way, copious, as they moved the Ark of the Covenant.
David’s wife, Michal, the daughter of Saul, the previous King, who had tried to kill David on multiple occasions, she observed from her window and she despised him from her heart.
It was a marriage of political expedience. They never reconciled. They never had children.
Haunted by the past, by the ghosts of her father and the prophet Samuel. She despised her husband.
King Herod watched a dance too, though not one done before the Lord. A legendary dance speculated upon in music, art and drama for centuries.
His step daughter, sometimes called Herodias, like her mother, sometimes called Salome. She was also Herod’s niece and cousin, because his wife was a cousin who left his brother to marry him…a marriage of political expedience and long complicated syntax. When family trees become a spider’s web.
That dance had a sacrifice as well, a horrific macabre sacrifice, a perversion, a mockery of the holy.
The sacrifice of John the Baptist, his head the last dish of the banquet, served up on a platter. A sacrifice of political expedience. Again, artists have been fascinated with the scene for centuries, today’s bulletin cover is one of the more moderate renditions.
Herod was haunted by this. He was sure that Jesus was John the Baptist raised again, who couldn’t be stopped, sent to pursue his killer.
Jesus haunted Herod. God’s word being spoken, miraculous healings and feedings and exorcism of the demonic. He had John killed, but that searing Holy Word kept speaking and remaking the world. There was nowhere for Herod to hide.
God’s prophet could not be silenced. The Prophet keeps appearing.
Of course, John and Jesus were cousins.
Its like two families colliding, one family of God’s Word, haunted by the Holy Spirit and the other family willing to do literally anything to hold onto privilege, a family of expedience, haunted by Christ.
Complicated.
Family is complicated. Family is often haunted by ghosts of the past.
Flannery O’Connor wrote about those who were not convinced that they were made in the image and likeness of God.
She wrote that they were very much afraid that it may be true, afraid that the image and likeness were for real. They were Christ haunted, a ragged figure lurking and moving from tree to tree in the back of their mind.
Herod was like that, tempted by belief, but unable to because he could not imagine living any other way, so he did horrible bloody things, to hold onto his privilege.
So, Herod was haunted by Christ, terrified of the possibility of being created in the divine image and likeness, and the consequences of shattering that image. The consequences of disfiguring the divine image. A night mare.
Sad broken hearted stories, of people doing horrible things, murdering and despising each other. The image and likeness of God poking and shining through every crack, lurking, moving behind every tree, haunting a world afraid of being holy.
It isn’t the sweet, meek and mild story of the fairy tale Jesus where everyone is perfect and everyone lives happily ever after.
The Gospel is found in the horrible bloody things we do to one another.
The Cross exposes us and then it overwhelms us.
The grace of God abounds out of our darkness.
God is like that.
Such is the stuff of life, such is the stuff of the Bible, such is the stuff of family.
The image and likeness of God.
It can’t be stopped. The searing Holy Word is remaking us.
Like Herod we are haunted.
Do we dare belief? Do we dare live like that?
Do we have the imagination to live differently?
God does.
God dares to believe.
God dares to dream of a different way to live.
We haunt God. We keep God awake at night.
Jesus is God dancing before us, the copious pouring of God’s life onto the way, every six paces, making everything and everyone holy.
