In our gospel reading for today, we hear about how three sinful people conspired to murder John the Baptist. Herodias junior danced a sinful dance. Herod promised a sinful promise. And Herodias senior desired a sinful desire. And the end result was the death of a prophet – relationships with God were severed, and the voice of righteousness was silenced. Jesus comes to us as a murdered prophet also, but one who was raised from the dead, who came to restore relationship with God, to be the voice of righteousness that can't be silenced, and to be our guide who keeps us from this sinful cycle of dance, promise, and desire....
It's May 19th, 1962. The live TV cameras are rolling. Thirty-five year old Marilyn Monroe steps up to the microphone, and in her famous sultry, breathless voice, she sings, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to 45 year old John F. Kennedy, a married man who happens to wield the ultimate power on planet Earth. Same stuff, different day; there is nothing new under the sun.
You see, almost 2000 years beforehand, the influential men of the realm of Galilee were assembled at King Herod's table for HIS birthday party. The wine had been flowing for some time, and then step-daughter takes the stage. “Happy Birthday, dear step-Daddy,” she calls out to the man who has illegally married her mother, and then she begins to DANCE. It doesn't SAY what kind of dance it was, but it doesn't have to. The end result is that Herod and his boozy buddies are ready to do anything this girl asks of them. Step-daughter has seized control of them with her dancing, with the primary target being her birth mother's new husband.
And the king responds by making a foolish PROMISE in front of all of his powerful guests, “Step-daughter can have anything she wants, up to HALF my kingdom.” What a showoff! And what a moron! What is he trying to prove, other than his own total lack of self-control?! And then, when daughter asks for something totally inappropriate and barbaric, the king is stuck – he has made a solemn vow in front of all the important people around him. And he has to go through with it, or lose face.
Daughter didn't know what to ask for, but MOTHER knew exactly how to take advantage of the situation. Her DESIRE was to get rid of the prophet John the Baptist, the one who was trying to undermine HER position of power by claiming her marriage to the king was not lawful. She was benefiting from the king's unrighteousness, and she wanted to make sure that the king didn't divorce her in some act of repentance. So through the king's rash promise, mother made the king KILL God's annoying prophet, and close his judgemental mouth, forever. The mother desired to silence God from her own life, AND not let God interfere in the king's life. The DANCE led to a PROMISE which fulfilled a DESIRE – all of them sinful.
Whose dance are we watching? There are many dancers in our world trying to get, hold, and lock our attention. And like Herodias, these worldly dancers try to seize control of us with desires as well – desires not only for the sexual, but desires for power, control, money, fame, popularity, security – everything the world can possibly entice us with. The dancer named Materialism teases us with a picture of our life made perfect by owning ALL THE RIGHT STUFF – the newest toy, the latest gadget, the thing that all the cool people are enjoying, so that we can be the cool people. Another dancer named Isolationism flashes us security: as long as we have enough guns, as long as we impose tight restrictions on ourselves and others, as long as we’re willing to live in permanent surveillance in a state of paranoia, we will be SAFE. They're very persuasive, these dancers, and we find them very pleasing indeed, and there's a lot more than two of them.
And then we are enticed to start making promises. The people down the road buy a new truck, so we promise to the bank to pay them back with interest for our NEWER truck. The kids at school laugh at our antique cell phone, and so we show up the next week with the thousand-dollar latest and greatest, “I’ll do extra chores, mom, honest.” We say, AFTER the moment, “if we end up pregnant, we'll just get an abortion.” Promises, and more promises. We even go so far as to promise half of our kingdoms. We promise half our days - 12 hour shifts, one after the other - so that our employers can cover our credit card bills. We promise half our brain cells, for the sake of fitting in with those using drugs and alcohol. We promise to give up our better halves, divorcing our partners because of some shameless dancer.
These are damaging, lust-induced promises. And what's behind them is Satan's overwhelming desire – that we'll have to do the same thing King Herod did to fulfil his promise – kill our prophet, and cut our link with God. This is what Satan's dancers are truly after, to make sure our lusts end up severing our ties with God forever, so that we live apart from God, so that we live in misery, and in the end, so that we give away half our inheritance of God's kingdom – the eternal half. And when Satan saw us kill Jesus Christ on the cross, he thought his dancers had won - our prophet was dead and righteousness was forever silenced.