Thursday, November 9th – Losing Your Head

Thursday of the Twenty-Sixth Week of Ordinary Time – Year 1
Psalm 70, 71, 74
Ezra 7:1-26
Revelation 14:1-13
Matthew 14:1-12

Losing Your Head
Matthew 14:1-12

Death by removal of the head has been a favorite means of execution throughout history.  It’s quick, merciful, and painless.  Well, I don’t know about that last part.  I mean, we don’t really know because we’ve never been able to ask anyone.  Dead men tell no tales, it seems.

There are, of course, famous stories of men and women who lost their heads for this or that offense.  During the French Revolution, a lot of folks lost their heads at the hands of the guillotine.  It always seems that dissidents, revolutionaries, or people bucking the system are the ones that most often lose their heads.  It’s the quickest way to deal with someone who doesn’t agree with you, I suppose.

John the Baptist had been sitting in King Herod’s jail for some time.  We know John the Baptist, not as a political dissident, but as the one who was to prepare the way for the Lord.  He was an odd fellow, living in the desert, wearing camel’s hair clothing, and eating locust and honey for lunch.  Yet, it seems that John the Baptist wasn’t a quiet man either.  He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, or rather, what he felt that God would have him say.

It’s a tricky thing – saying what God would have us say.  Sometimes, it turns regular, run of the mill fellows into political dissidents.  This has been the case for as long as Israel had been a nation.  People of power would act in ways that made God upset.  Those ways usually had to do with the ways in which the powerful treated the lowliest and the most vulnerable.  For his part, besides calling the Jewish religious leaders a “brood of vipers,” he challenged Herod’s move to take his brother’s wife as his own.  Stealing your brother’s wife is a scandalous move, regardless of what century it is.

Anyway, John the Baptist has angered the entire royal family, and one day, Herod promises to give the daughter of his stolen wife anything she wants.  To please her mother, the daughter asks for the head of John the Baptist.  Herod makes good on his promise, and John loses his head.  If only John had kept his mouth shut, he wouldn’t have lost his head.

Most places don’t lop off the heads of those who speak out against injustice and the like.  But you can still create a world of trouble for yourself by speaking truth to those in power.  John the Baptist spent his life preparing the way for Jesus, calling people, people in power especially, to live lives of obedience and justice.  He swam in the same stream as all Israel’s prophets.  You and I are called to do the same thing; we’re called to speak out against the injustices perpetrated by the powerful.  Doing so isn’t easy and will often lead to negative consequences, but we’re called to do it just the same.

If we had the chance to talk to John the Baptist, he’d probably tell us that being faithful to God’s call for his life was worth it, even though it cost him his head.  So, let us go forth into our communities and our world with courage like John, speaking the truth and working for justice, even though it might cost us dearly.

Prayer: Oh God, help us to have John the Baptist’s courage to speak the truth of justice to the powerful.  Grant us the strength to challenge those who are in authority when they use their authority to oppress the powerless.  Amen.