Discipleship isn't meant to be cosy!

Mark 6:7-29

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our reading this evening from Mark’s gospel recounts one of the more gruesome stories to be found in the New Testament, that of the beheading of John the Baptist. There really is no way to sanitise or dress this event up to make it seem somehow better than it was. During his birthday celebrations, at the request of his niece, Herod orders the brutal execution of the one who had prepared the way for Jesus. It is almost beyond comprehension to even consider that such an act could happen seemingly on a whim!

It is almost too easy at times to become acclimatised to incredibly brutal and often graphic violence as we switch on the TV news and hear of the latest act of mindless violence, sometimes very close to home. I come from the generation that first experimented with video games, and back then it was all about PacMan or trying to stop aliens from invading the earth. Contemporary video games with increasingly realistic graphics are thought by many to possibly blur between what is real and what is not! It is understandable perhaps, in that context that some people can seemingly become so immune to increasingly high levels of cruelty and violence.

We are more used perhaps of thinking about John the Baptist during Advent as we consider his role as the forerunner of Jesus…….the one who prepared the way. There the story is of one who is “crying out in the wilderness…..proclaiming a baptism of repentence for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:3-4). Here now, we see this great figure at the end of his life, still in a sense preparing the way ahead for Jesus, even as he himself faces death. In his own death he mirrors something of what lies ahead for Jesus. Herod, like Pilate with Jesus, seems to want to protect John, but ends up allowing him to be killed instead. The ones responsible for the death, in John’s case……Herodias, and in Jesus’s case, the Jewish religious leaders have no real authority of their own. Rather they exert pressure on the one who ultimately makes the decision. With John, what makes the whole episode even more chilling is the apparently casual manner with which he is dispatched……then his head paraded on a platter like some kind of trophy.

The church often speaks about Stephen being the first Christian martyr, as recorded in Acts. In a very real sense though it is actually John the Baptist who is the first to die for Christ.

Looking back to the beginning of our gospel reading we hear of Jesus sending out the disciples in pairs. They are told not to bother with material possessions, only take what is absolutely necessary and to go out healing the sick, casting out demons and accepting whatever hospitality they may find. And they are told, if anyone isn’t interested in their message, to brush themselves down and move on.

There are similarities here with the ministry of John the Baptist. He spent many long years in the wilderness, as an itinerant preacher proclaiming a message that wasn’t always popular or well received. Yet he did so because of the call of God upon his life, a call which itself is recounted at the beginning of Luke’s gospel. His life (and that that of the disciples) wasn’t about looking for the easiest or most convenient way to get by, but rather about obeying the call of God wherever it may lead and whatever the consequences.

I’m reminded of some of our more contemporary martyrs who like John the Baptist devoted their entire lives to proclaiming the Kingdom of God in both word and deed. Saint Maximillian Kolbe was one of them, having been imprisoned in Auschwitz for protecting Jews from Nazi persecution. As a catholic priest, who had dedicated himself to living out the gospel, he offered his own life in the place of another who had been selected to die.

It is unlikely that any of us here will ever be called upon to make that kind of sacrifice, though there are still those around the world who do just that. What each of us is called to do however, as disciples of Christ, is to go out and proclaim the Kingdom of God in both word and deed to all we meet. Some may be receptive, others less so, but we are called to do it in humility and obedience to Our Lord.

Both Maximillian Kolbe and John the Baptist heard and obeyed the call of God upon their lives, even to the very end. May we not allow ourselves to become so used to our comfortable and sometimes quite cosy Christian lives that we forget how radical and often dangerous it can be to be a follower of Christ.

AMEN