Today’s passage is Mark 6: 14-29. Jesus becomes famous in Galilee. Herod thinks Jesus is John the Baptist born again. Herod had arrested John because John preached against his marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias, who resented the public condemnation. When Herodias’s daughter pleased Herod so much with a dance at his birthday party, he offered her anything. Coached by her mother, she asked for John’s head on a platter. Herod had John beheaded.
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How has sex destroyed you?
How has Jesus been raised up in your life?
Because a pretty girl dances sexily for a drunken Herod, who pridefully will not go back on a hasty, I'll-thought promise given at a celebration of himself, John the Baptist loses his head.
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The pretty girl is biddable daughter of the woman living in an adulterous and illegal marriage to King Herod.
A tangle of sexual desire, pride and worldliness coalesce to destroy a prophet of God.
How my life is like that!
Although my first wife was dying of alcoholism, I killed her with my adultery and failure to love and care and pray with her.
I turned from her and God to dance with the world of sex and happiness that only ended up with more death--job loss, loss of my lover and our daughter, loss of my other children’s faith because of the life I chose.
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My daughter Erika ran away and lost herself in the world, drinking and partying and getting pregnant.
My son’s marriage ended in a heart-breaking divorce that led him to the fuzzy belief in the universal spirit of harmony and no evil.
Out of the tomb of my dead life in a small room at the YMCA, God called me like Lazarus to Korea to begin restoring my faith, rebuilding my life with a new wife, a new church and a new job.
What was old needed to die in order to be reborn in Christ Jesus, finally sealed with my own adult baptism last fall.
In my new life, my daughter Erika has returned to faith and a new life as a chef.
But not yet my other children.
My mother remains in her tomb of hate and anger and will not hear God calling.
How much I need to pray for them each day!
Application: to go to prayer each morning at 5.
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Lord, fill me with your love and strength to carry on and to pray for those who so desperately need your word and your healing.
