A reflection in memory of the Passion of John the Baptist
“I want you to give me immediately
on a plate the head of John the Baptist.”
Over the past few months, my husband and I have been working our way through some of the TV series that often appear on “best shows of all time” lists: “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” “Game of Thrones.” They’re great dramas with ensembles of tragic characters and a web of interwoven storylines, but when I watch them, I feel sick at the violence – the utter disregard for human life shown by the drug dealers, cowboys and despots.
It would be one thing if this kind of violence were relegated to fiction, but it isn’t: I watch the shows at night, and I wake up in the morning to news of another downtown shooting, an Instagram feed of bloodied Palestinians holding dead or injured children in the rubble, and the latest on the Trump shooter’s homemade explosive devices. I know I’m lucky to be far away from all this violence and watching it unfold on a screen, but it is real, and the weight of that reality weighs heavily on my chest.
The present monument commemorates the beheading of John the Baptist, which, according to the New Testament, was ordered by King Herod after his wife’s daughter performed a dance that pleased him. In front of all his courtiers, he promised the girl to give him anything she wanted, and at her mother’s command, she demanded John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Herod, the passage says, was “deeply grieved” but ordered the execution anyway so as not to break his promise to the courtiers.
The narrative reads like something out of Game of Thrones: The king, sympathetic to John but more interested in maintaining his strong image, throws away the life of his righteous prisoner, essentially as a party trick. Although the narrative is not confirmed by Josephus, a major historian of the time, it does confirm John’s beheading ordered by Herod. The exact sequence of events of the drama may be disputed, but the violent murder of a man now revered as a prophet in several major world religions is a fact.
The Passion of John, like the Passion of Jesus, holds up a dark mirror to humanity: God sent us an emissary of his love and our reaction was: an axe through the neck, nails through the hands, a head on a platter, a spear in the side.
I don’t understand humanity’s obsession with violence, whether in reality or fiction, in history or today. It seems to be our preferred response when our sense of power is threatened. Its spread underscores how radical and necessary Christ’s message remains: blessed are the poor, the persecuted, the peacemakers, the merciful.
