John the Baptist, Best Supporting Role?

7 Pentecost Cycle b proper 10     July 15, 2012

Amos 7:7-15   Psalm 85:8-13

Ephesians 1:3-14  Mark 6:14-29

Lectionary Link

  In the Academy Awards, which award is best, Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor?  Lots of the hype surrounds the winner of the Best Actor but being nominated for any acting award is determined by the role that an actor is given in the screen play.  Since so few acting awards are given out, getting a Best Supporting Actor Oscar is not considered too shabby in the film industry.

  We could agree that Jesus would be in the Gospels, the Oscar equivalent of Best Actor, but who would be the equivalent of Best Actor in a Supporting Role?

  Would it be Simon Peter?  Would it be Mary, mother of Jesus?  Probably not, since she became better known many years later when popular sentiment demanded recognition of the feminine in church matters.  Would it be Mary Magdalene?  She had to wait many, many years for a popular novel, The Da Vinci Code to be elevated as playing the best supporting role for Jesus.

  If we just look at the amount of text that various people get in the Gospels, I think that we’d have to say that John the Baptist, hands down, is the Gospel equivalent of the Best Supporting Actor.

  Why would John the Baptist be regarded to be in a supporting role to Jesus of Nazareth?  That is his role in the scripts of the Gospel writers.  But why did John the Baptist attain so much coverage in the Gospel?   It seems from the internal evidence of the Gospels themselves that for many John was in the chief role.  Some thought that he was the Messiah and others thought that he was the reincarnation of Elijah (even Jesus said as much as the same).  So John the Baptist was quite high in the pantheon of prophets who inhabited first century Palestine. It is also highly likely that John the Baptist had quite a community of followers.  What did those followers do after he had gone?  John the Baptist had obviously some new theological and liturgical adjustments to the practices Judaism of his time as did Jesus of Nazareth.  John the Baptist had his own community of the baptized; those baptized in the Jordan River underwent this rite as a sign that they were intentionally committed to the spiritual renewal of their lives.  The message of John the Baptist was effective and engaging enough to comprise a community and some of the most famous disciples were those who switched from following John the Baptist and began to follow Jesus of Nazareth.  The switch from John to Jesus was presented as graduating from John the Baptist’s school of baptism for the remission of sins to the school of Jesus as baptism into the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.  John the Baptist gets lots of Gospel ink, because the writers, whom once perhaps followed John the Baptist, were appealing to the continuing members of their former community that had gathered around John the Baptist.  The writers of the Gospels wanted the remaining followers of John the Baptist to graduate to follow Jesus of Nazareth.

  Today’s Gospel might be call the Passion of John the Baptist and compared to the Passion of Jesus Christ in the Gospels, the Passion of John the Baptist is but a mini-Passion, but a significant one.  The Passion of Christ and the Passion of John the Baptist were significant for their early followers who themselves were in the circumstances that could force them into the decision of the martyr.

  In the Passion of John the Baptist, the stage has three other actors, Herod, Herodias and Salome.  The Herod in question, has to be designated as Antipas since Herod the Great, was so proud of his name, he gave several of his sons the first name of Herod.  Herod the Great, an Idumean or Edomite had supposedly converted to Judaism and had risen to be the Caesar’s petty monarch in Judea.  He divided his realm between his sons and Antipas was over the Galilean area where Jesus and John the Baptist lived and preached.  Now if Herod Antipas was playing political lip service to his constituents by appearing to be Jewish, then John the Baptist, a firebrand prophet was going to hold him to Jewish marriage and divorce laws.  John the Baptist rebuked Herod Antipas for taking the wife of his brother as his own wife.  Her name was Herodias and she came with her daughter Salome to the palace of Herod Antipas.  Herod Antipas is presented as being rather intimidated by John the Baptist, but Herodias was downright enraged by this meddling preacher, John the Baptist.  She regarded him as a moralist paparazzi who needed to be gotten rid of.  Herod Antipas was reluctant to do so because of Jewish political affairs, so the scheming Herodias had to trick him.  Herodias was also, a child abuser since it is doubly despicable to involve one’s child in a murder plot, and a gory one at that.  The Passion of John the Baptist is not a death on the cross; it is decapitation with his head being served on a platter as a party favor for the dancing Salome.

  My, my, how engaging are the stories in the Gospel!  They are so fascinating it is almost too easy to miss their liturgical purpose in the early communities of Jesus Christ.  It is easy to miss their relevance in our own personal liturgies of life in being renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  So how can we understand the Gospel as a narrative of insights for our own personal liturgies of renewal?  How can we let the words intermingle with the word structuration of our own lives so as to present us now with a kaleidoscopic arrangement of words that gives us a glimpsing vision of new insight?

  May I suggest to you that like John the Baptist we are but in supporting roles for the risen Christ?  And being in supporting roles, it means that we have learned to “check our egos” at the door, especially when we are faced with a more excellent model in the art of living well.  The Gospel stories present a Star and Supporting Actors.  This personality theme functions for us as a basic structure in our lives as we want to be on the road of manifold invention, creativity and excellence.  We too have our John the Baptist aspect of personality and Jesus Christ aspect of personality.  In a very attainable psychological insight, it is quite easy for me to be humble, when I contemplate all that I yet need to be.   I am but a supporting actor for the Phil who is a self-surpassing Phil in a future state.

  The Risen Christ represents always in very personal ways, you and I in beckoning and surpassing future states of excellence.  In our current states, we are but supporting actors for the future star that we are always called to be.   So the John the Baptist and Jesus dynamic of the Gospel becomes the narrative of the dynamic growth in excellence for our lives.

  The perfect and the excellent Risen Christ is always an elusive structure of our future as we always have the opportunity for humility in the vision of what is surpassing excellence.  We like John the Baptist are always in a supporting role for this excellence.  And unlike John the Baptist and the martyrs who lost their heads and lives for their witness to their principles, we don’t have to be so literal about dying to ourselves.  We can be coaxed out of old states of mind for better ones like a snake leaving its old skin for a new one.  We can contemplate the Risen Christ as always a vision of ourselves in a more perfect state and so our moral and spiritual target is always before us in a future state.  And we now can always be in a significant but support role for that future state because we have the witness of the star of our lives, the risen Christ. Amen.