Feast or Fiasco

I want you to think about the best feast you ever had. Relive the experience of the best feast ever, what made the experience so great? What was so wonderful?

Now imagine the worst dinner party fiasco ever. What went wrong? Was it a … Christmas occasion???? Ambrose Bierce in “The Devil's Dictionary” defines Christmas in the following way: "A day set apart and consecrated to gluttony, drunkenness, maudlin sentiment, gift-taking, public dullness and domestic behaviour". 

Feast or fiasco – the best feast ever or the worst banquet fiasco. Remembering these two experiences is a key to unlocking Mark 6.14-29.

Herod’s Banquet fiasco contrasts Jesus’ Feast of Equals (Mark 6.14-29 and Mark 6.30-44). Herod’s banquet fiasco is an orgy of gastronomic overindulgence rather than a feast. In Herod’s palace are the elite of his day, fat cats who profit at the expense and pain of others.  

Later, we will encounter a new feast. At Jesus’ feast, the people of God share a meal of elegant simplicity. Bread and fish is given to Jesus. Jesus offers to God gratitude for the gifts of the earth and shares bread with a great multitude. (5000 men the Bible says, not counting women and children). This second feast of bread and fish is a miracle of sharing the fruits of the earth. The sharing of bread and fish echoes the story of Manna in the desert when God’s people taste liberation from oppression. Jesus’ feast is the Good News; but it is not where we are today.

We struggle today with the first “meal” – the banquet fiasco of Herod. According to the historian Josephus, Herod had John the Baptist killed because John was just too good at his job. Josephus writes: “When others joined the crowds about John because they were aroused to the highest degree by his words, Herod became alarmed” (in Meyers 2008:14).  Herod was worried that John was such a good public speaker that he might inspire an uprising.

Mark is not interested in writing an historical textbook. Since Mark’s version differs from the historical facts of which Mark would have been aware, clearly there is a writing strategy that he wants us to understand.

Mark writes a parody of the death of John the Baptist. The word parody is important for us. Parody is satire – how one can criticise the powers that be through humour and the appeal to the ridiculous.  Mark’s interest is in explaining the injustice of Herod’s kingdom through parody.

Mark creates a scene by appealing to the ridiculous. Herod and his friends are overindulging.  On a drunken whim Herod makes a promise to his stepdaughter because she pleases him. There is something unsettling about Herod being pleased by his stepdaughter’s dance and we the reader can sense the underlying incestuous nature of the scene. Given that Herod has married his brother’s wife, there is a problem here. The marriage of Herod and Herodias, his brother Phillip’s wife, is how Herod expands his kingdom and the political alliances he forms through marriage. The incestuous nature of Herod’s relationship and how his family dynamics leak into his political relationships explains Mark’s view of the inner circle of Jewish power. Through parody Mark implies that the structures of power are incestuous.  Military, commerce, and government are in bed together.

Herodias, stepdaughter of Herod, asks for John’s head on a platter. Herod obliges to “keep the oath he made”. The head symbolises honour. Herod trades the prophet’s honour to honour his own stupid drunken oath. What is ridiculous is how Herod honours his oath to Herodias because of the law but honours little else in the law. The ridiculous banquet scene is filled with the bitter pain of what it means to lose a truth teller. The parody is there to empower us with insight.

Herod’s banquet is a parody that empowers us. It equips us to do two things. First, it helps us to see oppression as it really is. It puts “success” under a microscope. Power, money, and influence in Herod’s life does not seem as successful as the illusion would make us believe.

Secondly, the parody of the banquet offers an image of the cost of discipleship. The scene is set during the ministry of the disciples who go out in twos to heal and announce the good news (Mark 6.1-14). For truth tellers who announce an alternative world view, the consequences are that the world and its powers will not like it. In short to follow Jesus, to announce grace and mercy and a new way of life, you will lose your head. Oscar Romero knew that. Steve Biko knew that. Dorothy Day knew that. Andrew Wilkie knows that. 

The parody of Herod’s banquet prepares us also for the death of Jesus who dies similarly. Herod was grieved at the death of John. The word for grieve is used again of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. John died; Jesus will die too. Caiaphas hosting a banquet of his own will call for the death of Jesus.   

In concluding I want to leave you with a gift, a present. The gift is a word. Gasvryheid generally translates as hospitality. But it means more than that. Gasvryheid describes the kindness in welcoming a guest. Gas means guest. Vryheid means freedom. Thus, gasvryheid is the freedom of the guest.

This Good News can surely be the foundation of that beautiful word: Gasvryheid – freedom of the guest. Surely the feast that Jesus creates is precisely freedom; freedom from oppression, freedom from some having too much and others having too little, freedom to share so that there is fair balance where we all have enough.

Picture now in your hands two invitations to different parties, two different meals. One invitation is to Herod’s banquet. A second invitation is the feast of bread and fish with Jesus.  What type of meal do we want? Do we want a meal in Herod’s palace? A meal that is toxic because its indulgence is based on the slavery and exploitation of others? Or do we want to share in the meal that Jesus offers? The meal that Jesus offers is gasvryheid – freedom of the guest.