Passage: This Week's Second Reading

"A Powerful Memory"

Our readings for this morning, although they deal with a number of people, all have a common theme of "place." The Old Testament reading takes us to Bethel, "the king’s sanctuary, and a temple of the kingdom." Although Israel has a "sanctuary" and a "temple," it celebrates king Jeroboam, not Yahweh.

It is there that the prophet Amos stands as a lonely prophet, voicing God’s judgment upon the wealth and injustice of Israel. Amaziah the priest maintains an unholy silence, calling Amos’ prophecy conspiracy, and trying to silence God’s holy Word.

Our Epistle takes us to prison. There, the Apostle Paul, even though he’s in prison for preaching, rejoices in the memory of promised salvation. He sings praises to God, "who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places." The apostle Paul trekked thousands of miles during his missionary journeys of spreading the Gospel throughout the Greek and Roman worlds, but before that, he worked feverishly to stamp out and destroy those who believed in that Gospel.

Having persecuted and been party to the murder of early believers Paul, grappled with guilt over his previous sins during his new life as a Christian. Yet, God's grace -- and forgiveness -- was greater than this horrendous past. He received Jesus Christ as his Savior and lived a remarkable life for the sake of Gospel.

Our Gospel takes us to the court of Herod. Here, violence against God’s Word has moved beyond accusations of conspiracy and beyond prison. Herod beheads John the Baptist. Now, his mind is filled with tormenting memories of John.

In the midst of all this, our Psalm raises our eyes to see a place filled with the glory of God. Here the world is a place of spiritual fulfillment, where "steadfast love and faithfulness meet," where "righteousness and peace kiss each other," and where "faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky."

So, how does a world filled with such sin and such unholy powers fighting against the Word of God become a place of spiritual completeness? To hear the answer, one must listen to the prophets and apostles who remember and sing. Their song ultimately relates to us the story of Jesus, who came to conquer sin and turn our world full of such troubling spirits into a spiritual place.

Our text this morning invites us to the halls of Herod’s palace, where his memories are plagued by his extraordinary sin.

Herod Antipas was a man who delighted in the extraordinary. He was the Son of Herod the Great. He had a love for magnificent architecture and built the city of Tiberias, a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. He liked listening to John the Baptist, this figure from the past who had visions of the future.

Herod was also ambitious. He wanted to be a king, but was never afforded the title. He delighted in hosting a banquet to celebrate his birthday. He delighted in having his brother’s wife as his wife and having her daughter Salome dance publicly before his guests. He even made a promise that he could never keep. You see, he had no kingdom that he could dispose of as he promised. He was just the Roman puppet ruler over Galilee and Perea.

But Herod was a man of his word. He was able to

keep his promise to his wife’s daughter because she didn’t really want that much. She could have had some gold or silver. Who knows for sure what she could have had. She even goes to mom for some advice. But mom is tired of John the Baptist pointing out the sin of her marriage. So they ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

So Herod’s delight in the extraordinary – his pleasure, his ambition, and his promises – filled his life with a haunting sorrow. When the extraordinary did occur in his kingdom, when demons were being cast out, Herod’s memories were filled with the troubling spirit of his extraordinary sin.

Herod is an easy figure for us to despise. His sin was extraordinary. It makes the sins we commit look like minor infractions, hardly worth a mention. Yet, God’s judgment is clear. All sin is worthy of damnation. We may not live in palaces, give great banquets, or make outlandish promises. But we, too, can be troubled by the memories of our sin.

Sin has a way of entering the most humble home, the most holy environment, and turning it into a place of torment. We can suffer, not because we remember beheading one of God’s prophets, but because we remember one extraordinary little sin.

Each sin, no matter how small from our worldly perspective, seeks to silence God’s Word. As our Lord explained in the Sermon on the Mount, anger with one’s neighbor is a sin against God’s command not to murder. A lustful glance is a sin against God’s command not to commit adultery.

While we might come to church on Sunday and listen to God’s Word with pleasure, when we fail to respond to that Word, when we fail to put that Word into action, when we fail to live according to God’s will, we silence God’s prophets. Such sin makes this world a troubled place.

Our sins haunt the halls of our memories when we recall that one moment of weakness, that one word we can’t take back, that one night we lost our purity, that one day we lost our temper, and we tremble in fear before a holy God.

Yet, we do not despair. It is not beyond conceiving that you or I might have a past filled with misdeeds and wrongdoing that may even rival the crimes of Paul's pre-Christian days. Are there sins in your life that it would seem no amount of God's goodness or grace can touch and wipe clean? Think again. God the Father through Christ Jesus forgives you and will heal you from whatever sin haunts your past or – your present. Today, Mark offers us a glimpse of an even more extraordinary story.

Did you notice how Mark sets the past sins of Herod within the context of Jesus’ present ministry? Herod hears about what is happening in the name of Jesus. With that one small reference, Mark leads us to something as big as the salvation of the world. Mark surrounds the story of Herod’s extraordinary sin with an even greater story of extraordinary love.

Just in case you have forgotten, or for those who might have missed being here last week, what is happening in Jesus’ name is what Jesus’ disciples are doing. They are driving out demons and anointing people with oil and healing them. They are preaching that people should repent. They are in the world with a life-giving Word.

While Herod stands transfixed by his troubled memories, Jesus is transforming the world with his extraordinary love. He enters the troubled places of our world and challenges us with a call to repentance, changes us with a proclamation of

salvation, and transforms us by his life, death, and resurrection into people who remember God’s mercy and rejoice in God’s eternal love.

Although Herod missed this extraordinary work of God, we do not. Regardless of what sin you bring to this sanctuary today, you have come to a place of God’s life-changing love. Sometimes it may seem we are beyond redemption. But there is no sin that can separate you from the work of Jesus.

Today, Jesus continues his ministry. Through His Word, he calls everyone to repent. No sin is too small for God to notice. All sin, every sin is worthy of damnation, and we stand today troubled by the memories of our sin. Yet, Jesus enters the troubled places of our lives, bears the punishment of God’s wrath for our sin and dies and rises to bring us new life.

While Herod may have feared that John the Baptist, whom he had killed, had risen from the dead, we rejoice that God has raised the One we crucified and through Him brings us life. In Jesus we see the wonder of God’s mercy, the extraordinary nature of God’s love: God the Father sends his Son for our salvation; God the Son willingly endures the punishment for our sin and rises to send His Holy Spirit to bring us life; God the Holy Spirit works through God’s Word to turn us from sin, to bring us to Christ, and to awaken in us a memory of salvation and hope of eternal life.

This is a memory we will hopefully never forget. The Apostle Paul, even when suffering in prison, sings of salvation because of the powerful memory of God’s love.

The hymn composer Jan Bender once carried a painful melody in his memory for over 30 years. This memory was only overcome by the power of God’s Word.

Jan Bender was a student of the composer Hugo Distler. At the age of 34, Distler ended his life. Faced with being forced into warfare by the Nazis, he committed warfare against himself. Before his suicide, Distler had been charged by the Nazis to write a melody to celebrate the triumph of the Third Reich.

He did, but the tune was far from triumphant. Within its notes, one hears oppression and the mournful sounds of souls in distress. Such sounds, once heard, are not easily forgotten.

They weren’t forgotten by Distler’s student Bender. He carried this melody in his memory for over 30 years, until he finally published his variations on this theme. Yet, even that was not enough. He then asked poet and professor Martin Franzmann to put the music to words. Franzmann wrote the hymn "Weary of all Trumpeting", which we heard as our prelude/will sing in just a moment. By the words and music of this song, Franzmann taught us to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, and to follow Christ in a life of peace and self-sacrifice.

Franzmann’s words capture the painful truths of our sinful sad existence: the weariness of war, the ways of the world that kill, the songs that we sing but never bring true peace. Franzmann also sang about the memory of Christ, dying in this world, dying for this world, dying and rising again so that all of his people, wherever and whenever they suffer, might never despair – never – but might hear above the din and banter of our noisy fallenness, that single strong, triumphant trustworthy word of Jesus:

"In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." That powerful memory transforms suffering and brings life. Amen.