The readings are (to read them, go HERE):
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29
You may have heard me say that Kirk and I have been reading through the Bible since the beginning of January. We have been using a system that will get us through the entire Bible in a year. So, with half the year gone, by now we have read a whole lot of Bible stories.
One thing I have been reminded of, from reading this much, is that whenever someone in the Bible makes a promise, they must stick to it. In fact, there have been a few stories where I start cringing as Kirk is reading it aloud, because I can tell that a person is making a promise that could come out very badly.
The Gospel reading is one of these. We start off hearing that King Herod, for all his faults, liked listening to John the Baptist. Two totally different people: John, who lived mostly in the wilderness and wore camel’s hair and ate locusts and wild honey, and who preached repentance, and King Herod, who lived in a palace and surrounded himself with luxuries and had married his brother’s wife, which was against Jewish law. John had spoken out against Herod marrying her, and so she, Herodias, was out to get John. But Herod realised that John the Baptist “was a righteous and holy man,” and he liked listening to John, and so he protected him.
But then Herod, caught up in the pleasure of a big birthday banquet, makes the mistake of telling his stepdaughter, who is dancing for the guests, that he will give her anything she wants. He’s likely drunk, and he makes this promise, this oath, not just to her but also in front of all the guests. He swears it. Prompted by her mother, she asks for the head of John.
So what is Herod to do? We might say that the right thing to do would be to refuse, to tell the stepdaughter to be reasonable and ask for something else (Herod had offered her half his kingdom, after all — what more could she want?). But Herod had made the oath, the promise that he would give her whatever she asked for, and everyone had heard him make this promise, so he had to keep it.
I remember as a child in school it was a big thing to make a promise. One tried not to do it lightly, one tried to be careful what promises one made, because one would have to keep them. Most of us by now have probably made a few promises, and have probably broken a few too, but maybe the breaking of promises just helps us realise how important they are.
Recently with our parishes I have been talking with people about confirmation. We didn’t have a confirmation class last year, because of Covid, and we have lots of students who just graduated from sixth class, so there is the possibility of a big confirmation class. In our religious tradition, confirmation is the time when a person chooses to make a promise to follow Christ. Assuming the person was baptised as a baby, they had parents and godparents who had promised to teach this child the Christian faith and to help them live a Christian life. But at some point the parents and godparents cannot do this anymore — the person has grown old enough that he or she has to make that promise personally.
This is why I emphasise to parents — and to the students — that confirmation is not a matter of being a particular age, and you don’t get confirmed just because all your friends and classmates are doing it. You put yourself forward for confirmation because you want to make a promise to believe in Christ and to live a Christian life. It doesn’t mean you won’t sometimes have doubts, or you won’t sometimes mess up. But one of the promises made at baptism is that whenever we fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord. I was confirmed at the age of 37, and it was a joyful day for me because I really, really wanted to be confirmed. I felt like I was saying to God that yes, I believed in Christ, and I had felt the power of his presence in my life, and I wanted to follow him and be part of his church.
But there is another promise made at baptism and at confirmation, and that is God’s promise to us. In the letter we heard from Paul to the Ephesians, we heard of it. Now I’ll tell you: Ephesians has come to be probably my favourite book in all the Bible. I can’t say exactly why. The book seems kind of mystical and hard to explain, but when I read it, I sense God’s truth.
In the passage today, Paul says that when you believe in Christ, you are “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” As one translation says next, “The Spirit is the guarantee that we shall receive what God has promised his people, and this assures us that God will give complete freedom to those who are his” [Good News Translation].
To put it in other words, God promises us an inheritance in Christ — that through Christ we inherit goodness and grace and forgiveness and redemption — being made new. Through Christ, we are set free. And God promises us the Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee that we will receive all these good things from Christ promised to us.
These promises are reflected in our confirmation service itself. At the beginning of the service, the bishop (who is the one who confirms) says that two things happen in the service. First, the confirmands profess their faith in Christ. Then the bishop lays hands on them and prays “that God’s Spirit will confirm, strengthen and guide them as they strive, each day of their lives, to live up to the solemn commitment they make that day.”
I started out today by saying that in the Bible, when people make promises, they have to keep them. The biggest promise made in the Bible is from God: God promises to love us constantly and steadfastly, and shows us this love in Christ. And through Christ, God promises to give us the Holy Spirit, who is God’s presence with us throughout our lives. When we are baptised, we are given the Holy Spirit. In confirmation, this promise is reaffirmed, to each of us, personally, as we promise to follow Christ.
God’s promises are real and true. May God’s Spirit strengthen and guide each of us, each day, that our faith might be strengthened, in word and in deed.