Empire destroys the little children
Empire destroys the little children.
A Pentecost reflection on Mark 6:7-29 and the feeding which follows.
In order to live the good life, Herod destroys the child he adores. He has help, of course; the little girl doesn't know what to ask for, and going to her mother, she is inducted into the rivalries and violence of the adults.
Herod understood John had something he wanted but, outmanoeuvred by Herodias, also understood that he could not keep the good life and heed John. In Mark’s, telling of the story, this is the moment of Herod's final corruption. The result is that the feast of the year, the peak of the good life, is a failure. It is a degustation of death. It lays out, course by course, the destruction of human beings, and at the end, John is murdered.
Immediately, John's body is taken to its tomb, Jesus’ disciples gather around him (Mk 7:30) and tell him all they have done and taught, laying out the menu, as it were, of an alternative good life: a proclamation of repentance and enacting the gospel, with the casting out of demons and the healing of people. (Cf Mark 6:7-13)
The people glimpse something good. So many are coming to see Jesus that life is overwhelmed. Even the wilderness place is crowded.
Here we see the genius of the story. At one level: success. Everyone comes to Jesus. And he feeds the people of God in the wilderness. The allusions to the Exodus and manna, to the foundational meetings with God and the liberation of the people of Israel, and also the allusions to the longed for consummation of all things at the end, are plain. Jesus acts out the shepherd in the wild places and in the valley of the shadow of death with a feasting that promises we "shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." (Psalm 23:4,6)
These same allusions are a pacific exercise in crowd control. The massive crowd is brought to order, sat in groups, no longer a crowd. There is no peace by sacrifice—no exclusion of the different. The feeding is indiscriminate; all are fed. There is no competition for the best seats higher up the table. In the wilderness, people recline. This is a banquet and feast, not some mere feeding. There is a surfeit of food. And no one is killed… yet.
But the good life, the desire for peace and safety at the root of all empire, cannot come here. It cannot reconcile its sense of what safety and security are with trust in a wandering prophet. Those who have gained the good life sense that Jesus will undercut all the "good" empire has gained. "Sell all you have and give it to the poor and follow me," says Lukan Jesus.
The murder of John is the prefiguring of the murder of Jesus. The good life always kills because it is founded in death. Despite all our striving for peace and civility, all our love of our children, all our horror at the violence of the world, the currency of our current peace is underwritten by death. To see this is to begin the long and difficult conversion to life in the wilderness. It is begin to step out of the safe anonymity of the crowd of us and choose Christ. It is to rejoice in the innocent children playing in our church basement whilst knowing this same hallowing building—our building—is built upon privilege, and stolen land, and genocide. It is to see that aside from the quantitative results of chance and place, there is no qualitative difference between Trump and Netanyahu, and the killing of the children, and... me.
But I will return to the church this Pentecost morning, because here we re-enact the feast. Here, there is a glimpse of the Basileia, of wilderness, and of the completion of all things. And here, in some small way, I can face death and submission to Christ and begin to live again.
Andrea Prior (July 2026)
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