Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Everyone in my day who graduated from high school knows the poem entitled “IF” by Rudyard Kipling. Perhaps you also know the updated version:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs . . .
Then you do not understand the situation!

John the Baptizer lost his head. Herod had him beheaded. That is the story for today. What that has to do with the gospel is of great value for us.

John is a prophet sent by God to proclaim the will of God in specific circumstances. As a prophet John was obligated to go to the king and offer an alternative view to power as it was understood by human beings. Power appears in this story under the guise of its opposite: weakness.

The office of the prophet was bound to the office of the king. When we remember the stories of the prophets, there is always a king involved. Samuel anoints Saul and then later David. Nathaniel condemns David. Elijah opposes King Ahab and his wife, that Jezebel. Amos warns Jeroboam. Isaiah faces Ahaz. The list goes on. When the monarchy faded after the exile, the prophets also disappeared from the scene.

The role of the prophet was to counterbalance the might and vanity of human power--especially as it appeared under the monarchy. There was a big price to pay for opposing the king. John the Baptizer was not the first prophet to lose his head in a confrontation with the king.

John posed a great threat to Herod. The Bible is not our only source about John the Baptizer. Listen to what Josephus writes about him.

Herod had John put to death, though he was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to live righteous lives, to practice justice towards their fellows and piety toward God, and so doing join in baptism. . . . When others too joined the crowds about him, because they were aroused to the highest degree by his words, Herod became alarmed. Eloquence that has so great an effect on the people might lead to some form of sedition, for it looked as if they would be guided by John in everything that they did. Herod decided, therefore, that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising, than to wait for an upheaval, get involved in a difficult situation, and see his mistake (Ant., XVIII,v2).

The Gospel does not tell us exactly the charges leveled against John. The king’s claim to the throne was weak. He had married the daughter of Aretus of Nabatea. The marriage was strictly political. Aretus was a powerful Arab king and could have easily defeated Herod in a war. Once Herod felt secure, he dismissed his Arab wife and took the wife of his brother, Philip. John criticized Herod not only on moral grounds but on political grounds.

John “threw the book” at Herod---the book of the law, that is. The prophet subjected the king to the law of God. To characterize John as a moral purist is to get only half the point. John was mixed up in politics. As any preacher will tell you, getting mixed up in politics is a dangerous act.

There seems to be an unwritten law in the Church today that our faith has nothing to do with politics. The Church should not be mixed up in political affairs. The preacher should not take sides in political struggles.

The gospel is filled with references to the rulers of this world and their accountability to a power greater than they. But the rulers of this world are not just kings and queens. They are any group that would make claims to power.

We Americans are especially are opposed to monarchs. Our history is founded on a rebellion against the whims of arbitrary power. But we have a noble history in the struggle against oligarches and autocrats. One has only to think of Teddy Roosevelt who saw the government’s role not only to advance business but to protect business from domination by a small circle. Our country has never been the same since Roosevelt sided with the coal workers against the mine owners in a wage dispute. He thereby prevented bloodshed by counterbalancing the mine owners’ tendency to use violence against the workers with the government’s blessing.

John the Baptizer sat in a prison cell. He had kept his head while Herod was running from one expedient option to the next in order to hold on to power for power’s sake. John the Baptizer was under the custody of the king.

John is the forerunner of Jesus. He establishes a pattern for us by which we can see more clearly what God accomplished in Jesus Christ. John sat powerless in prison and ultimately fell victim to the power of the Herod to exercise capital punishment for political goals. But it was John who kept his head.

We have made fun of the wonderful poem by Rudyard Kipling. I wonder if he had John the Baptizer in mind when he wrote:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Amen.