Friday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s gospel reading (Mark 6:14-29) is one of those scripture passages that makes wonder, “What, exactly, was God trying to inspire here?” The story of the beheading of John the Baptist is one that makes me feel a bit slimy, to the point that it is difficult to see what the good news is. What is it about this story that jars me so much? I think it is the way people in this passage misuse their desire. It is the way that many small things come together to create a snowball effect, even to the point that a man gets killed.
The king, Herod, for example, is so captivated by the dancer in his hall. Most people would say there's nothing particularly sinful about admiring a good and beautiful dancer. But his desire for the dancer leads him to offer a far too-extravagant gift: anything she herself desires, anything at all. I think most of us would be overwhelmed with such an offer; the girl certainly is, and she asks for advice from her mother. This, too, is not itself a bad thing. Asking for advice with big decisions is often helpful. But the girl's mother desires revenge, revenge on one of the people (John the Baptist) who thinks her current marriage is sinful. So she asks for John the Baptist's head. The girl, maybe desiring to please her mother, makes her request. The king then feels trapped: he doesn't want to renege on a promise, lest his people think poorly of him. Again, not a bad desire: keeping promises is generally a good action. Yet here, it is so clearly wrong. The king knows it is wrong; the girl's mother almost definitely knows it is wrong; likely the girl does,too.
The story shows the problem and the difficulty of focusing solely on one action or decision as being good or bad, without paying attention to what else is going on. The great Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, noted that reflecting on whether the things we do everyday are good means also reflecting about our purposes, our circumstances, and a whole host of other things. In other words, our decisions - even our everyday decisions that can seem so tiny and insignificant, and even the ones that seem good - are actually quite complex.
The things we think are good may have very negative effects - but even the opposite can happen, as we see in today's first reading (Sirach 47:2-11). Last Friday, I was writing about King David and his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, which leads him to bring about the death of his best friend. Not good at all - and yet here, Sirach celebrates the fact that "The Lord forgave him his sins and exalted his strength forever...." Good can happen even in spite of evil.
I think it is simply part of the human condition that we find ourselves in a mixed up world where even the purest of motives doesn't lead to the best outcome. In one of his letters, Paul writes that "I have the desire to do good, but I do not carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:18-19) Paul is being very realistic about the fact that we try, and try again, and try yet again, and still we will not quite get there on our own.
What matters more is what Sirach reminds us: God forgives, and God works for good in us even though we are unable to do it all ourselves. Today, let us remember that what we do, good and bad, is so complex that we need a single-minded focus on God's ability to work in us. Let us pray for that focus on God, rather than on our own actions.
- Jana M. Bennett