Sermon from November 12, 2000
I have a quotation for you. "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left to combat it," (quoted in Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge, 35). The institution in question is that venerable, if somewhat self-important institution of higher learning in Charlottesville, VA, the University of Virginia. The author of the quote was Thomas Jefferson, and the quote was part of a speech he delivered at the founding of that school.

"The times, they are a-changin'." In April of of this year Julie Catalano, a coed at Tufts University in Boston, filed a formal complaint with the Tufts Community Union Judiciary, a student judiciary body. She charged Tufts Christian Fellowship, part of IVCF, with violating university and student government policy against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Ms. Catalano is a lesbian. TCF leaders, student and staff knew that and knew she had asked help to leave the homosexual lifestyle. They allowed her to lead an accountability group for women. When Ms. Catalano announced early this year that she no longer saw anything inconsistent between being a Christian and being a practicing homosexual, the TCF leadership decided not to consider her for a position for senior leadership. That led to her filing charges.

The student judiciary met "without a hearing late on a Friday night in April" (CT, 6-12-00, 24), "found TCF guilty of discrimination and banished the group from campus, revoking $5,700 a year in student fees." The last I heard, "the group has been reinstated provisionally, pending a final decision by the student court later this fall," (FT, October, 2000, 100). They have been reinstated fully, pending a year of probation.

Whatever happened to diversity, pluralism, and tolerance? If the behavior of TCF was in error, does the Nazi-like behavior of the student judiciary mean there is no reason left to combat it? In case you had not noticed, reason, as the arbiter of rtuth, is dying on the American university campus. In its place is a will-to-power whose philosophy says, "Might is right."

Philippians 1:29 says, It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him. Two reflections on that statement have made me uneasy. On one hand, the apostle talked as if suffering for Christ was a privilege: It has been granted to you. Even people of strongly conservative values find that hard to swallow. What did he know that we do not know? On the other hand, the particular privilege of suffering persecution has not been granted to the Church in this country, and is right to wonder why.

The experience of TCF may be a straw in the wind heralding things to come. My own hunch is that when we are asked to pay a price for being Christians, it comes in the form of economic and social discrimination. When it comes, the Apostle Peter told us not to be surprised. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you (1 Peter 4:12). Peter learned that the hard way, as we shall see today in Mark 6:7ff.

Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

The stories of Israel, which are our stories as well, tell of David and Solomon, Israel's golden age. They tell of a long and terrible decline from that golden age. They tell of a day when the Babylonian armies of King Nebuchadnezzar came against the city of Jerusalem and destroyed it and deported the flower of the Jewish nation into captivity. The kings were gone; the nation was gone; Jerusalem was gone. There began a long and sometimes tragic succession of nations that ruled Israel, even after some Jews returned and rebuilt Jerusalem.

During the long and terrible decline from Israel's golden age, voices had spoken out that foretold the long and tragic history to which the decline would lead. But those voices had also prophesied a reversal of fortune and the return of a glorious age of Jewish ascendancy and worldwide blessing to follow. Such hopes came to be invested in a figure that did not yet exist. The Jews called him Mashiach, Messiah.

Jews came to believe more strongly than ever that the words of the prophets were nearing fulfillment. God's kingdom and God's king were coming to vanquish, first the Greeks, then the Romans. Pretenders arose, who said they were Mashiach. But their failed attempts at liberation and the occasional, gruesome row of crosses that gave the lie to their pretensions only made Jewish hopes of deliverance more fervent.

In this violence-tinged, revolutionary atmosphere a Voice spoke that said, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Could the moment have come when the promise of the prophets came to pass? Could this be the Man who would bring it to pass? Only if we read the gospels against this background of revolutionary fervor and national hope can we appreciate the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Against that background we can also appreciate why some people might have been alarmed at Jesus' disciples.

He started out with four fishermen and later added an unsavory tax collector. By Mark 3:14-15 things had developed much more. He appointed twelve – designating them apostles – that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.

He appointed twelve. To appoint twelve men said symbolically, "I am starting a new Israel, and here are my replacements for the twelve sons of Jacob." He designated them apostles. They, like him, were to be men with a mission. The mission He sent them out on was to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. In other words, He appointed them to do what He was already doing.

In the context of that mountaintop solitude something like an organization had come into existence. People might or might not think Jesus had political motives for what He was doing, but clearly He had gone up into the solitude of the mountain with a collection of followers, and then had come down from the mountain and into the jungle of life with a cadre of disciples who were committed to expand what had been going on before.

Now in Mark 6 Jesus deploys them on a mission. Verse 14 makes it clear that their mission had come to the attention of the authories. King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. Down in verse 30 Mark says that the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. But Mark does not show us the report. He had another purpose for this story of Jesus' disciples. That purpose was to establish further the true identity of Jesus. That purpose fills chapters 5-8. The rest of verse 14 and verse 15 carry out that purpose by giving us an idea of what Herod was hearing.

Some were saying, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him." Others said, "He is Elijah." And still others claimed, "He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago." It is a curious mix of superstition, enthusaism and Jewish hope. Some might find it all flattering. At one point at least it squares with Jesus' statement that He thought of Himself as a prophet. King Herod, however, came down on the side of the superstitious. Verse 16: But when Herod heard this, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!" That brings us to the dark side of our story in verses 17-29. Verses 17-20 present the basic data.

Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he had married, and probably without a hearing, wouldn't you think? It wouldn't surprise me if he did it under cover of darkness.

In any case, these verses give us closure. Do you remember Mark 1:14? After John was put in prison ... Mark said that with no explanation. Now we have an explanation. John the Baptist had stuck his nose into the king's business. Verse 18: John had been saying to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." The law John had in mind was Leviticus 18:16: Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.

John just did not get it, did he? The Bible is okay for people who believe it, but if someone doesn't believe it, it does not apply to that person, does it? Or does it? What do you believe? John the Baptist operated on the assumption that the Torah revealed God's truth for everyone, including the king and his new wife.

Herod's new wife was not very impressed. Verse 19: Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. By the way, she was the granddaughter of Herod the Great, who had a very short and lethal fuse, when it came to people who crossed him. But for the moment the only thing she accomplished was to get John the Baptist off the street. The curious thing was that, as verse 20 says, Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.

Herod seems double-minded, but I don't think the two sides of his mind had equal strength. That last statement in verse 20 stinks. He liked to listen to him. And what did he do about it? Herod typifies the powerful. Even if he did not personally want to do it, he had a pretty good idea of what he would do with John if push came to shove. He was uncertain only as to when and how he would do it. In the meantime why not schmooze a little with this powerful, popular figure?

Finally, say verse 21-23, the opportune time came. On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the girl, "Ask me for anything you want, and I'll give it to you." And he promised her with an oath, "Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom."

This royal decadence is not pretty, and it quickly became lethal. She went out and said to her mother, "What shall I ask for?" "The head of John the Baptist," she answered. Why take half a kingdom when you can vent your fury on the man you hate? At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: "I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter." The king was greatly distressed. I wonder why. Was it because Herodias got her way after all?

He was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediaely sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. On hearing of this, John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

You who know how the story of Jesus ends, does this sound familiar? A powerful man in two minds about a difficult decision, taking the course of least resistance because of social pressures that threatened his status. Don't let go of the thread of Mark's story here. John the Baptist was a prophet. Jesus has identified himself and has been identified by others as a prophet. Mark was saying, "This is what happens to prophets."

David Smolin, professor of law at Samford University, has written, "In considering the blind spots of other generations or cultures from a safe distance, it becomes clear that there is no atrocity, no horror, no injustice which human beings, under some circumstances, will not defend, or even posit as a positive good," (FT, Oct. 2000, 27).

The Supreme Court exemplified this in its ruling last term in Stenberg v. Carhart to overturn the state of Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion. In their dissenting opinions Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Clarence Thomas put into plain English the court's clinical description of both partial-birth abortion and the abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation (D&E). What happens in those procedures is so gruesome to read that I will not read it in this setting. I will say that five justices and the man in the oval office have the blood of the innocent on their hands. I will say (Isa. 59:14-15a), that increasingly in the halls of power and in the privileged circles of academia

     Justice is driven back,
     and righteousness stands at a distance;
     truth has stumbled in the streets,
     honesty cannot enter.
     Truth is nowhere to be found,
     and whoever shuns evil becomes prey.

Ask the Christians in IVCF at Tufts University about that. I do not say the bigotry of the student judiciary at Tufts is an atrocity. It certainly represents a blind spot. We with the longer perspective, which Holy Scripture gives us, can see the blind spot. We can see the lie in all the propaganda about tolerance and pluralism. Tolerance means tolerance for those who do not threaten those in power. For those who do there is an uncertain future.

Today, thousands of churches are praying for the persecuted Church around the world. It is appropriate to include the Christians at Tufts. It is also appropriate for us to prepare ourselves for the day when we feel the sting of intolerance. Places like BVBC offer indispensable resources of spiritual knowledge and power. Drawing deeply on those resources is not elective for those who need to prepare for the coming darkness.