Ever hear of the Wheel of Fate?  Does it turn on the same axle as the Wheel of Fortune?  I’d like to buy an IOU.  Fate, Fortune—something out of our hands, out of anyone’s hands, is running everything, and nothing can be done, because what is running everything is impersonal, uninvolved, and uninterested: you can’t speak with it, reason with it, plead with it.  Fate, Fortune—it’s an it, like a stone or a wave.  We say chance, fate, fortune, luck because we’re reluctant to say God, or because we are still in the habit of speaking and thinking according to the world.  From the Christian perspective, there can be no such thing as luck because there is only the will of God.  More, we don’t like to let our thoughts about God’s power, plans, and purposes go too far, because so many sad things, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching things happen in this life.  We feel like we really don’t have a good answer for any of it, no way to explain it even to ourselves, let alone to others, many of whom don’t see the world the way we do and don’t believe in God revealed for us in Scripture.  Some make luck or fortune their god, as though thereby to avoid Fate, but luck, fortune, and fate are all one, and none are God.

What we claim to believe, what we are called to believe, no matter what happens—and so much happens!—what God calls us to believe and remember is that a larger plan is always at work.  In all things, a much higher purpose is being carried out.  It takes faith to believe this.  That doesn’t mean we have to like it—weep, if it helps: I have, with each horrible headline.

Herodias will have John killed; she is resolved and determined.  Nothing is going to stop her: not her husband, the people, his disciples, no, not even God will stop her, she swears to herself.  She’s patient.  It’s remarkable, how patient wickedness is, how patient, to spring its trap.  If only we were as patient in our faith, as patient when we seem to be in the hands of the wicked, caught in the pitfalls of evil, patient in suffering and sorrow.  This, too, shall pass.  Patient.  Faithful.  Resolved.  Persevering as we hope in and wait for the Lord.  “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope” (Ps 130:5).

Herodias awaited the opportune time; it arrived (6:21).  Herodias was not the only one patiently awaiting an opportune time.  Luke concludes his account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by telling us the devil “left him until an opportune time” (Lk 4:13).  Peter warns us that “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8), presumably awaiting an opportune time.  God counseled Cain: “if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Gen 4:7).  “It desires to have you,” awaiting an opportune time.  “But,” God says, “you must rule over it.”  Meaning, presumably, that there is a way whereby we can.  Perhaps this is part of what it means to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but let us also remember the concluding half of that verse: “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose” (Phil 2:13).  We must rule over the sin that desires to devour us; we have help to do so.  God is at work, through it all, in it all, directing everything towards the fulfillment of His purpose.  His purpose is big; His purpose is holy; His purpose is good.

Much of the time, the working out of God’s purpose may not feel like anything at all.  Sometimes, it feels wonderful.  And sometimes, as we know, it feels horrible.  It’s not so easy, in the depths of the hurt of the moment, the agony of the hour or the lingering sorrow, to affirm God’s purpose is good.  I recently watched The Greatest Story Ever Told—Max von Sydow as Jesus.  I’m still partial to Robert Powell and Jim Caviezel.  If you remember Greatest Story, you may recall Charlton Heston played John the Baptist.  Heston was in animal skins a lot, toward the end of the ‘60s—wild times.  What struck me about his portrayal was John’s readiness to die.  Paul speaks in much the same way in his letters, but we don’t.  Death may just be the most terrifying thing we can imagine, though Jesus tells us there’s something far more terrifying (Mt 10:28).  The ancient philosophers were onto something when they said the aim of life was to die well.  But we focus on good living—of course!

There’s a birthday party for Herod.  Some films make much of it, others touch it lightly.  Herod gave a great banquet, in honor of himself, and “his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee” were all there (6:21).  All men.  A stag party.  Not a party fit for women—well, not gentlewomen, not ladies.  Two women were there: Herodias and her daughter, Salome.  Salome was out in front of all the men—all out, veil by veil, as filmmakers suggest.  And Herodias was there, too, behind the curtains, waiting, patient, feeling her power, enjoying the feeling: nothing was going to stop her from fulfilling her purpose.

Who sent Salome in?  We’re not told that Herod requested her.  What sort of birthday gift was she supposed to be?  In the heat of the moment, the desire, such questions were far from the minds of those men.  Mark tells us, in few but full words, that Salome “pleased Herod and his dinner guests” (6:22), so much so that Herod, feeling . . . generous, powerful and invulnerable, said to the panting young woman, all glistening with the sweat of her dance, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you” (6:22): he could afford to give it, you see.  He was Herod, and who was like him?  It wasn’t just lust at work, though there was that, too.  He wants to display his glory, his ability to confer whatever is asked of him, with the unspoken understanding that for him to offer lavishly doesn’t really cost him anything—he has so much!  No gift Herod gives is truly costly.  He’s like God, you see.  He smiles in the self-satisfaction of his possessions, his power.

We leave him in that happy state of mind as Salome bounds away to her mother; does Herod wonder, then, what Salome is doing, what she’s up to?  Herodias tells Salome the request that cannot be denied, that turns all Herod’s power and glory and magnanimity against him.  Salome glides back into the room, all eyes fixed upon her, tells Herod her desire: he’s aghast at the one thing costly to him.  John’s head, on a platter.  Not a bucket, basket, or box, but a platter, a dish to be served to the queen, served to her by Herod, hapless Herod, recognizing he’s been fooled, trapped, and all his officials and commanders seeing it, too.

Quick thinking wouldn’t help, and Herod maybe was no quick thinker.  His pleasant buzz was gone, replaced by a terrible headache as he gave the order for John to be beheaded.  Poor Herod!  We aren’t being asked to sympathize with him, though, except perhaps to recognize how easily we, also, can be duped by our desires, our lusts, our willingness to believe that what happens to others won’t, can’t happen to us, so intent upon good living that we lose sight of the at least equal importance of dying well.  Even powerful Herod is subject to the powers of this world: greed, lust, hunger for power, prestige, envy, anger, malice, revenge.  It’s a marvel, a miracle, that anything good happens in this world, yet this is what Scripture affirms, over and over.  Out of all this heart-breaking human disaster, continually and constantly, God brings forth good, at work for good: His good, holy, eternal purpose, which no one can thwart, nothing impede or halt.

The harder job is to contemplate how all these events are harnessed to God’s Big Plan.  In the fear and frustration of any moment, we can so easily lose sight of that plan, that promise.  Even catching glimpses of the plan doesn’t always provide much that feels like consolation!  What good is God’s plan if we’re unhappy, lonely, and hurting?

As Charlton Heston portrayed him, John was eager to die, to depart this life for the next.  I like that.  I like even more the thought that, despite every reason for John the Baptist to be feeling unhappy, lonely, and hurting in that dark hole of a prison cell, he was none of those things.  He was not hurting.  He was not unhappy.  He was not lonely.  God was with him, and he was with God, and he was going to be with God.  This glowing, beautiful knowledge was also there, with him, at work through all his physical discomfort, his spiritual struggles: he was living well to die well, to live.

Our lives can seem entirely subject to chance, the winds of fortune, the wheel of fate.  Let’s not lose sight of the holy reality that a larger plan is at work.  God’s plan is making the way, even in circumstances that are terrible, that feel terrifying.  Consider the life of Jesus—was he at the mercy of the powers of this earth?  It looked like it, there on trial before the Jewish religious authorities, on trial there before the Roman civil authorities, there on the cross, there in the tomb.  Darkness, sorrow, pain, confusion, loneliness—heavy!  A heavy weight!  And we can barely believe it can be borne—who can bear it?  As if that was all there was.

It can feel that way, beloved, until we remember.  Until we think.  Until we pray.  Then God reminds us—He’s always reminding us, if we’d only listen, want to listen to Him rather than to ourselves, as though our own heart were our idol.  There is light, there is joy, there is lightness, there is clarity and fellowship—Jesus calls us into all this, calls us to join with him, he who lived to die and died to live, to give life.  When we keep the eyes of our hearts on God’s great purpose, we have strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.  Turn the eyes of your heart to this table.  Remember who is here, who offers this bread and this cup to you.  It isn’t me!  Not by or from my hands is this bread, this cup given to you!  The hands holding out this body and this blood that avail are the hands of God’s Great Purpose, His grace for you.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.