Human Frailty and Divine Grace
Proper 10 – 2012 – year B – Trinity 6
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been treated to the rather unedifying spectacle of the trial of an English footballer for racial abuse on the field of play. The individual in question has been found not guilty but will face further proceedings by the football authorities. At the heart of it all was a very public row in which things were said that should be totally unacceptable in any civilised society.
Our Gospel reading, which includes St Mark’s account of the death of John the Baptist, is a story of a powerful man trapped by his own vanity and weakness. Rather than lose face in front of his guests, he feels trapped into fulfilling the request made by a pretty woman to whom he has made a rash promise. In the process, John the Baptist falls victim to human frailty, human sin, manifesting itself in the vanity of Herod.
This is a reminder that our Christian witness, our Christian service does not happen in isolation; it is offered in the context of our life in the wider world. This is a world that operates under very different value systems. It is a reminder that, even in a society that would describe itself as Christian, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world are not identical; they may at times be at odds with each other.
But of course, it is easy to point the finger at others. The more I think about this story of Herod and John the Baptist and its setting in the wider story told to us by St Mark’s Gospel, the more I come to realize that we are ourselves a bundle of ambiguities. In our daily living, we find ourselves caught between the demands of the Kingdom of God and the demands of the world; caught between our own aspirations to Christian discipleship, Christian service, and our own frailty.
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:21-25)
Like Paul, I must accept the reality of that tension within me; and I bring the whole of my being, the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the strong and the frail, the attractive and the ugly; I bring it all into the presence of God and I offer the whole of my being in the service of God.
There is a prayer that I would often use around Passiontide and Holy Week:
“O Jesus, Master Carpenter of Nazareth, who on the cross through wood and nails didst work man’s whole salvation; Wield well thy tools in this thy workshop; that we who come to thee rough hewn may by thy hand be fashioned to a truer beauty and a greater usefulness; for the honour of thy name.”
That in itself is a prayer for Christian healing and restoration.
God is a God who can work in and through our inner tensions and ambiguities. I take encouragement from the way the writer of St Mark’s Gospel has set out his material. Either side of the tragic and pointless death of John, something wonderful is happening in the lives of twelve ordinary men as they are sent out in the service of Christ and return with wonderful news of all that has happened on their journey. We are witnessing the beginnings of the Christian Church which has outlasted the Herods, the Neros, the Hitlers, and the Stalins of this world.
May God take each one of us in all our weakness and imperfection:
“that we who come to thee rough hewn may by thy hand be fashioned to a truer beauty and a greater usefulness;”
that God’s name may be honoured and advanced in our lives.