For Sunday
Proper 10B
Collect
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. **
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
It is hard to imagine being a king, let alone one in this situation. Chances are you don’t have a prison in your castle. But I think we can relate to the interpersonal and the divided loyalties exposed in this short tragedy.
The story’s tension begins when we realize the king feels haunted by his decision—a decision based on his own sense of loyalty. He promises anything—and when the girl asks for murder, he feels obligated.
This highlights a different tension: between one’s word and one’s morality. Why would a king feel so obliged to keep a commitment to anything: to kill and to feel obligated to kill?
There are plenty of other questions to ponder, but let’s keep it simple this week. Is keeping a promise more important than murder? How do we decide between these things? I’m confident most of us think the opposite, and why is that? Are we so cavalier about keeping one commandment and not another?
Most of these questions are rhetorical. We have hierarchies and not killing is higher on the list than keeping our word—which is good—but hierarchies are built for difficult decisions. It is easy to see why Herod’s decision is terrible here. But it is perhaps harder to see that breaking our word ought to cause us some frustration, too.