Narcissist in Chief (Proper 10b)

 

Herod Antipas

 

Narcissist in Chief

Proper 10B
15 July 2018; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

When I worked at the U.S. State Department, we had a way of describing an officer or political appointee who built their careers and lives by ingratiating themselves to the powerful and lording it over others once they had a little power: kiss up and kick down.  The Herod in today’s Gospel is a perfect example.  Known to history as Herod Antipas, he was the youngest son of the King Herod who kills the babies in Matthew’s nativity stories.  Antipas was the ruler of the Galilee in which Jesus grew up, the king who ordered the huge Greco-Roman construction projects at Sepphoris and Tiberias where the young building contractor from Nazareth most likely worked.  

Pragmatic, practical, and goal-driven, Antipas makes all of his decisions on the basis of one principle: “how does this enhance my enjoyment and get me ahead in the world?”  In portraits, he is a handsome man, clean cut and shaven in the Roman style.  He follows the philosophy of Epicureanism, which said that pursuit of pleasure, rightly understood and properly limited from excess, was the highest good in life.   He was Machiavellian, extremely good at manipulating things in his favor, no matter how he might lie, bully, or on occasion appeal to high and noble ideals.  In Galilee, Antipas was Narcissist in Chief. 

Antipas starts low in the line of possible heirs to Herod: three other brothers precede him.  But he does all he can to enhance his royal prospects—he marries a Nabatean princess.  Maybe he can’t follow his father as the Roman-appointed “King of the Jews,” but he might end up as “King of the Nabateans” next door if he plays his cards right.  But then Herod the Great executes his two oldest sons for treason.  “”Business is business” as Don Vito Corleone might say.   Antipas, now second in line to this Mafioso’s throne, acts.  The Romans have marked his remaining older brother as ineffective—clearly he didn’t suck up well enough—and they want to sack him and divide up Herod the Great’s Kingdom.  That is the real reason Antipas seduces this brother’s wife Herodias.  She is Antipas’ own niece, daughter of one of the executed older brothers.  She is beautiful and desirable, but more important, she is Hasmonean royalty, having the blood of Judas Macchabeus in her veins through her mother.  Marriage to her makes Antipas a shoo-in for whatever thrones the Romans might be handing out to those who know their place.  Antipas divorces his Nabatean wife, arranges for his brother to divorce his wife, and then marries Heriodias, happy to step back onto the fast track of the social escalator.  Together, they can manipulate the Romans and make their country great again under their leadership. 

But the prophet John the Baptist objects:  the marriage violates Torah commandments against corrupting family relationships by having sexual relations with the spouse of a living sibling.  It is incest, and John calls it this.  Like Amos in today’s reading, come up to Israel from south of the border Judah and preaching truth to power, John holds up a plumb line and says what is straight and what is crooked.

Josephus says that Antipas feared the Baptist because his popularity posed a threat to Antipas’ political power.   Antipas has John locked up to separate him from his audiences, and then after a while quietly executes him. 

Josephus says that Antipas’ ex-wife returns humiliated and shamed to her father’s palace in Nabatea.  A war ensues, and Antipas almost is overthrown. But the Romans intervene and defend their puppet who sucks up so well.   Josephus says that the war was God’s punishment for John’s murder.

Mark tells a different story, one woven from popular rumor, not unlike tabloid news:  the deadly dinner party, Salome’s dance, the drunken promise fueled by lust and ego, and Herodias’s revenge on John.   Kick down indeed.  Mark sadly here is guilty of cherchez la femme: it was all a wicked woman’s doing, working her vengeance by manipulating a weak, drunk man.

Mark’s telling detail that Antipas did not want to execute John because “he enjoyed listening to him” fits elements of Antipas’ character that we see elsewhere in the Gospels.  Once, people in Galilee warn Jesus that “Herod is plotting to kill him” (Luke 13:31).  Jesus replies bitingly, giving the only personal insult about an individual recorded on the lips of Jesus.  “Go tell that vixen,” he says, “that I’m safe, because prophets seem to be killed only in Jerusalem.”   Jesus, like John, condemns Antipas and his kiss up kick down Realpolitik.  Tell that female fox!   Jesus thus says that Antipas’ pragmatism, manipulation, and narcissism, however tarted up for public consumption, really just smell to high heaven. 

Later, on Good Friday, Pontius Pilate realizes that Jesus is from Galilee and thinks he might spread the blame of condemning Jesus by sending him to Antipas, who after all is ruler of Galilee.  Luke 23 tells us that Antipas received Jesus, “because he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him.”   Where the Galilean peasantry had sought Jesus and his miracles for healing, for food, and for hope, Antipas sought Jesus and his miracles so he could have a good cocktail party story to share with his Roman buddies.   

 

Jesus, for his part, refuses to even speak even one word to Antipas.  This is the guy who murdered his mentor, John.  This is the guy who reigns supreme in Jesus’ homeland, Galilee, and has done so well under the Roman oppression.   So Antipas, to show this silent upstart his place, orders his soldiers to dress Jesus up in what Luke calls “a gorgeous gown” perhaps with glam make-up to boot. We’ll show him who’s a vixen and who’s leading the fox hunt!  And that is how they send Jesus back to Pilate.  Pilate apparently appreciates a good joke as well, for Luke ends the story with “and from that day on, Pilate and Herod remained friends.”  

So what does this sad and ugly story mean for us?

Mark often makes his point by juxtaposing stories.  He starts here with the story of Antipas’ deadly dinner party, but immediately follows this with the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

The party is exclusive:  elite guests, the finest delicacies, amusements and enjoyments, possibly a chance for face time with Antipas, friend of Caesar and aspirant to the title “King of the Jews.”  But Antipas, Narcissist-in-Chief, Mr. Kiss-up-kick-down himself, has had too much to drink. It ends badly, very badly. 

The very next story Mark tells is of a different dinner party, one offered by Jesus.  It is not exclusive.  It is in the open, and all are invited.  They go to a desert place, and the crowds follow.  “It’s late, we must send them away for them to buy their dinner,” say the disciples.  Jesus is not interested in sending people away.  He is also not afraid of what the guests might think of him if he does not deliver.  “How many fish and loves do we have?” he asks, “Not many,” they reply.  But then he proceeds to feed all.  No deadly dinner party this.  Just life and love overflowing, inclusive, supporting, and nourishing.    No kiss-up-kick-down here.  Rather, “let the first among you be the last, and the greatest be servant of the least.”  And everyone must share what little they have. 

Antipas was all about self, about pleasure and control, about manipulation and gaining and keeping power by whatever means necessary.  Though superstitious, he uses spiritual things for his own purposes.  He is the ultimate practitioner of “Boutique Religion,” of choosing a little here that suits you and a little there that fosters your political program: anything, as long as it helps you on the way up.   His pathological lying and his habitual abuse of others is just an extension of this narcissism.  

The Baptist and Jesus were about sacrifice, and restraint of self.   They wanted true religion, religion of helping the poor, the widowed, the orphaned.  No self-serving manipulation for them, no amusing spiritual-but-not-religious fads.  Like Amos, they hold up a plumb line to reveal the lies of their leaders, and suffer for it. 

Ultimately, Antipas too fell from Caesar’s grace.  His estranged nephew, another Herod named Agrippa who judges Paul in the book of Acts, was best friends with the Roman Emperor Caligula when he ascended to power.   Agrippa was the only one of the five "other" Herods to actually receive Herod the Great’s Roman title "King of the Jews."  He made sure Antipas was relieved of his duties and banished, so Agrippa could reclaim control of Galilee and Perea.  Antipas was retired, appropriately for such a sybaritic, to the south of France.  Herodias accompanies him into exile. 

We today continue to live in a world that praises “quality” and the “right kind of people.”  The wicked prosper and the just suffer.  Liars are rewarded for their lies, not punished.  We reward self-promoting hucksters like Antipas and Herodias, who behind all the glam and show are heartless, even murderers.   They are, as we also said in the foreign service, nasty pieces of work. 

Let us pray that God deliver us from such Herods, and save us from the temptation to mimic them in their kiss up kick down ways.  Let us pray for the strength to speak truth to power. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.