Saving Face

Mark 6:1-29

               In the book and movie, “The Help” we meet a young woman, Elizabeth, who is really a child trying to be an adult.  She has a young daughter whom she doesn’t actually like and to whom she is truly unkind.  Her “help”, Aibileen, cares for her daughter instead, so much so that the young, two-year-old daughter even says to Aibileen at one point, “you’re my real mama.”  But the young mother has other problems as well, and one of those is that she desperately wants to be loved and valued by her friend, Hilly, who is bossy, pushy, demanding and the clear leader of her group.  So when Hilly insists that Elizabeth fire Aibileen (or rather when Hilly herself fires Aibileen), even though Elizabeth knows it is wrong, knows that it will only hurt both her daughter and herself, knows that she cannot possibly care for her daughter on her own, she allows Hilly to act, she allows Hilly to fire the only person who ever cared for her daughter at all. 

               This is mirrored in the book by another situation.  The mother of the main character has had a helper the entire life of her adult daughter.  Constantine raised the main character, loved her, made her the person that she is.  But when the mother has a racist but highly respected member of her community at the house for lunch, and the community member is aghast at the place Constantine has in the family, she too is fired.  The main character’s mother “saved face” by allowing the unthinkable, unacceptable, and unjust result of losing a valued member of her own family because she could not bare the judgement of another person, a person she respected.

               This is similar to the story we heard in Mark today.  Herod had made a promise, a really stupid, impulse promise or oath.    And so when it comes down to a choice between honoring a promise in order to save face in front of his guests, or sparing a man’s life – and not just any man, but a man he actually valued and respected,  Herod chose to save face. 

               We get confused about what is truly important.  We think that the promises we make are sacred, and they are.  But the relationships we have with people are MORE sacred.  The choice to love and to have compassion and to care for ALL people, that is much, much MORE sacred.

I’m reminded of a story in which a holy man was meditating beneath a tree at the crossing of two roads. His meditation was interrupted by a young man running frantically down the road toward him. “Help me,” the young man pleaded. “A man has wrongly accused me of stealing. He is pursuing me with a great crowd of people. If they catch me, they will chop off my hands.” The young man climbed the tree beneath which the sage had been meditating and hid himself in the branches. “Please don’t tell them where I am hiding,” he begged. The holy man saw with the clear vision of a saint that the young man was telling him the truth. The lad was not a thief. A few moments later, the crowd of villagers approached, and the leader asked, “Have you seen a young man run by here?” Many years earlier, the holy man had taken a vow to always speak the truth, so he said that he had. “Where did he go?” the leader asked. The holy man did not want to betray the innocent young man, but his vow was sacred to him. He pointed up into the tree. The villagers dragged the young man out of the tree and chopped off his hands. When the holy man died and stood before Judgment, he was condemned for his behavior in regard to the unfortunate young man. “But,” he protested, “I had made a holy vow to speak only the truth. I was bound to act as I did.” “On that day,” came the reply, “you loved vanity more than virtue. It was not for virtue’s sake that you delivered the innocent man over to his persecutors, but to preserve a vain image of yourself as a virtuous person.”

Again, we see this with Herod.  He, too, had an innocent man killed because he’d made a stupid, stupid promise.  He did not expect it to be taken to such an extreme.  But he followed through on his promise because saving face, keeping his oath, was more important to him than another human’s life.  He could justify this to himself by declaring that the law required that he fulfill his oaths.  And it did.  Lev 19:12 reads: You must not swear falsely by my name, desecrating your God’s name in doing so; I am the Lord.” Num 30:2 says, “When a man makes a solemn promise to the Lord or swears a solemn pledge of binding obligation for himself, he cannot break his word. He must do everything he said.” And Deut 23:21 says “When you make a promise to the Lord your God, don’t put off making good on it, because the Lord your God will certainly be expecting it from you; delaying would make you guilty.”  But Herod used the law, he used the law as an excuse and as a justification to do evil. 

Jesus behaves in great contrast to Herod, to the monk in my story, to the examples I gave from the Help.  Jesus, in contrast, breaks laws, and even the ten commandments, when to follow those laws would be to act unjustly. For example, one of the ten commandments was about not breaking the Sabbath but Jesus broke it, again and again when a relationship, when a human being’s well-being was at stake.  He picked grain on the sabbath, he healed on the Sabbath.  He made it so clear, again and again, where the priorities had to be.  And he commanded us not to do the stupid things that would put us in that bind between fulfilling the law and caring for one another because he knew we were not strong, that we get confused and that it is easier for us to follow laws than to obey the ultimate law of love.  He knew that we would twist the rules and use them to harm others.  As Jesus himself said, “The Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.”  The Law was made as a guide to help us live lives of love.  But we twist is, as we see done again and again. 

               People call Christians Hypocrites.  They do this because they see, clearer than we do in the midst of our bad choices, that we fail to follow the ultimate law of love.  Jesus calls us to love.  But Christians often get so caught up in following the letter of the law that they use it to bully, harm, hurt, kill and destroy other humans. 

               So Jesus tried to explain, again and again, “You have heard it said,” he said and then he would quote a law.  (all in Matthew 5).  Jesus understood our inability to discern when faced with conflicting values and conflicting needs in a situation.  He tried to prevent some of those by increasing the call, the need, for a disciplined observance in these situations. 

“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well.  When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too.  When they force you to go one mile, go with them two.  Give to those who ask, and don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you.”  This is an attempt to stop our revenge actions, our justifications of harm towards others with the excuse that “they started it first”.

 “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?  Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.”  Here, too, Jesus takes a law that was just but has been used to harm and expands it so we will NOT be confused about who we are supposed to care for: ALL people.

And then the one that applies most to today: “Again - you have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago: Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord.  But I say to you that you must not pledge at all. You must not pledge by heaven, because it’s God’s throne.  You must not pledge by the earth, because it’s God’s footstool. You must not pledge by Jerusalem, because it’s the city of the great king.  And you must not pledge by your head, because you can’t turn one hair white or black.  Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one.” 

He challenged the laws written in this book to say that we are called to LOVE, to go beyond the letter of these laws and move into love. 

I think about the musical Les Miserables.  The police officer in the musical was technically right in having no compassion for the man Jean Valjean who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and her son.  He was technically right in following the law when he pursued Jean Valjean after other minor infractions of his parole.  He was technically right, legally right.  But he was  wrong in every way when we come to understand the laws of God.  The LAW, the one and only LAW is the law of love.  And his actions were anything BUT loving.

None of this is easy.  And it is especially hard when it means that we might lose face as Herod would have done in today’s story if he had gone back on his promise.

There is another story: A long ago time ago in the hills of Quong Zu province, there once lived a revered old monk who was a master of Zen Buddhism. One day he decided that he would make a pilgrimage to a neighboring monastery, and not wishing to make the journey alone, he decided to take along one of his young disciples. They started their journey early the next morning and in the true spirit of Zen each walked along engrossed in his own thoughts, and so they journeyed for many hours without speaking. By mid-day they had come to a small stream and it was here that they noticed a young girl dressed in fine silk, obviously contemplating how best to cross the stream without getting her precious clothes wet. Immediately the old monk walked over to the young girl and in one smooth motion, he picked her up in his arms and walked out into the stream, then after carrying her safely to the other side, he gently put her down and walked on without having said a single word.

His disciple having watched this whole incident was in a state of complete shock, for he knew it was strictly forbidden for a monk to come into physical contact with another person. Quickly, he too crossed the stream, and then ran to catch up with his master, and together they once again walked on in silence. Finally at sunset they made camp and settled down for the night.

The next morning after prayers and meditation the old monk and his disciple once again continued their journey, once again in silence. After many miles, and no longer able to contain his curiosity, the disciple called to his master and said,

"Master may I ask you a question" ?

 "Of course, you may" his master replied, "knowledge comes to those who seek it".

 Respectfully his disciple said, "Yesterday I saw you break one of our most sacred vows when you picked up that young girl and carried her across the stream. How could you do such a thing"?

 His master replied, "That is true, and you are right it is something I should not have done, but you are as guilty as I am" .

 "How so" asked his disciple, "for it was you who carried her across the stream not I" ?

 "I know" replied his master, "but at least on the other side I put her down. You, however, are obviously still carrying her".

But again, for me the decision is bigger than this.  It is not just about breaking an oath.  It is about recognizing that the over-arching law is the one of love.  When we see a situation in which we are called to offer care, that care and the law to do whatever it takes to offer that care, must supersede any other law.  That’s the bottom line, always.  We are called to love.  It’s all that easy.  And it’s all that hard.