“And she went forth and said unto her mother,
‘What shall I ask?’ And she said, ‘The head of John the Baptist.’”

(Mark 6:24)

The importance of giving the right answer to the right question in the few seconds allowed is impressed on us by the television “Big Money Giveaway” programs. This Bible story about Herod’s family and John the Baptist spotlights the same lesson: the importance of coming up with the right answer, and the humiliation, loss and tragedy that attends wrong answers on life’s crucial questions.

When we get down to cases, it is easy to see that the sorry spectacle of John the Baptist’s severed head served up on a platter to Salome and Herodias, those social arbiters of the gay set in old Galilee, is really nothing more than the inevitable outcome of that same little game of cross questions and crooked answers that all of us are always playing.

There are three big questions raised in this story — three questions that are not strange to us, but even a part of our life today. Can we handle those questions any better than did Herod, Herodias and Salome?

First there is the moral questions: “Is it lawful?” This question was raised in the life situation of Herod and Herodias. These two were living together as husband and wife in Palestine of Jesus’ day. Herod ruled over the Roman provinces of Galilee and Samaria by appointment of the Emperor at Rome. But Herodias’ real husband was Herod’s brother, Philip, by whom she had her daughter, Salome. And Herod Antipas’ real wife was the daughter of Aretas the Arabian king, whom Antipas divorced when after a visit to the home of his brother, Philip, he had become infatuated with Philip’s wife.

This incestuous union of Herod and Herodias was denounced publicly by the prophet, John the Baptizer: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife,” John told Herod to his face.

So it was the preacher of righteousness who raised the moral question for Herod and Herodias. Whenever the pulpit is true to its calling, it is ever raising the moral questions for men and institutions, and cultures and civilizations to answer. But the pulpit cannot raise the right moral questions at the right times if the pulpit is in slavery to or is silenced by the customs and conventions of men. The pulpit belongs to God and God alone. The General Assembly of our Church in its meeting at Charlotte last month adopted a strong statement on the “Freedom of the Pulpit” calling on the whole church to defend this sacred freedom in order that the moral question might never cease to be raised in the lives of men and women of every age: “This thing that you do, is it lawful in God’s sight?”

But it is given not just to the preacher of righteousness to raise the moral question. Sometimes it is a friend, a trusted counselor, a dear relation, a dread enemy who confronts us with the solemn judgment of God. “This thing you do is not lawful.” Sometimes it is outraged public opinion which raises the moral question. H.V. Morton suggests this was the case with Herod and Herodias. John the Baptist was therefore, not only the spokesman for God, but for the indignant decent people who all deplored the shameful conduct of their ruling family. Sometimes we don’t have to hear the question from anyone else — it just rises mysteriously within the silent chambers of conscience and smites us.

When the moral question is asked, however or by whomever, how do we answer? Can we come up with the right answer? See the way Herod and Herodias answer. The record says that Herod gets scared when John says: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife,” and Herodias gets mad. Are either of these the right answer to the moral question? They are both wrong answers. See how wrong. Herod is afraid and in his indecision of what to do, does nothing, but shuts John up in prison till he can make up his mind. But Herodias gets mad and feeds her soul on resentment, biding her time for a convenient day of vengeance.

“Why the very idea,” storms Herodias as she stomps her dainty golden slippered feet and clenches her diamond ring circled fingers. “That impertinent up-start! Who is this crude backwoodsman to criticize the conduct of his king and queen. I’ll show him.”

But is not every woman a queen and every man a king when the kingdom of one’s personal conduct is called in question? How haughtily we draw ourselves up in disdain. Let no man living dare to confront us with the moral question.

Yes, Herodias is an example of a very common reaction to moral reproof. She reacted with anger, which when held on to, smoldered in resentment and eventually burst into a flame of violence. Then off comes John’s head. Nothing makes us so mad as to be told we are wrong.

But the right answer to the moral question is never anger, resentment, and retaliation, but rather the right answer is repentance. The response of the common people to the preaching of John the Baptist shows us the way. St. Luke tells us that when John proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God and called on people to get ready, they asked: “What must we do?” Then John showed them the way. He called on everyone to repent of his own particular wrong-doing. The tax collectors must stop dishonest collections; the soldiers must treat all men with justice, and the private citizens who have two coats must share one of them with those who have no coat at all.  Repentance is the right answer, the only right answer to the moral question when it is raised in our lives; and repentance means acknowledging our guilt, saying we are truly sorry, and then turning round in that path of transgression we have been traveling and go off in the opposite direction straight toward the Father’s house along the trail of glad obedience.

There is a second question in this saga of Herod, Herodias and Salome, and it is significant not by the right or the wrong answer that is given to it, but rather by the virtue of the fact that the question itself which is asked is so wrong.

Herod asks Salome: “What will you have? Whatever you ask even unto half of my kingdom shall be given you. What will you have?” Herod was asking a very foolish question, one which he had no right to ask. Herod and Herodias had not come up with the right answer to the moral question which hung over their lives, hence it is not surprising to discover them in the murky immoral darkness of that debauching banquet scene. It was Herod’s birthday. He had invited all his friends and sycophants to come to the feast. Historians tell us you can always tell the level of depravity or high moral excellence of a civilization by the parties it throws.  The most delicious dish of all had been secretly concocted by that siren of his heart, Herodias. Alas, she knew what pleased him. At the highest pitch of the revelry she did an unprecedented thing, sent her own daughter into that stag banquet to dance a sensuous whirl. The drunken feasters were delighted and amid the loud applause Herod cried out: “What will you have, Salome? Ask unto the half of my kingdom and it shall be given unto you.”

Herod was in a state of intoxicated expansion. In his pleasure his judgment was impaired, his sense of values was distorted. He had no real kingdom to divide, he could not have given any of it away. That moment of deceptive exhilaration was the open door to tragedy.

“Not every case of intoxicated expansion is due to alcohol. There are many sad instances in which distorted values have led to tragedy. Multitudes of persons have been pleased, have been carried away by one desire which blotted out everything else in a befuddled mind. They have said to wealth, ‘What will you have? Ask anything you wish and I will give it to you. You are what I want. Ask anything, integrity, peace of mind, all the other interests which life might develop, I’ll give it for wealth.’ And they have carried out as Herod did, the sorry bargain. Men have said the same to pleasure, to fame, offering everything. They have said it even to such a god as comfort. There is truth in the adage: ‘The trouble with money is that it costs so much.’ When we say to anything, ‘What do you want? Ask whatever you wish and I will give it to you,’ it costs too much.” (H. Luccock — Interpreter’s Bible on Text)

The third question is the one Salome asks her mother when Herod promises to give her up to half of his kingdom. And the daughter comes and asks Herodias: “What shall I ask?” Breathless from the banquet hall, the scantily clad girl rushes to her mother, to the one whom life has placed closest beside her, to the one she looked to for the final answer in all things: “Mother, what shall I ask?”

And that woman who comes in all of scripture closest to Jezebel for infamy, hissed: “Ask for the head of John the Baptist.” What a horrible, unspeakable thing to say. What a damnably wrong answer to come up with. “Thank God,” we say, “that men and women too, are more civilized today.” But are we?

Here is a grim and gruesome story, utterly removed from common experience; yet this question put by the girl to her mother is, in a real though different sense, a vital part of every mother and daughter relationship. Every daughter somehow, sometime says: “What shall I ask of life? What is it you want me most to do and to be? I’ll take my cue from you.” And she does.

Herodias had no concern for her daughter. Her daughter was not an end in herself, just a means, an instrument for gratifying her own hatred. Apparently without flicking an eyelid, she made her daughter into a guilty accessory to murder.

Many a mother has played a part scarcely less criminal. When the whole growing mind and personality of the daughter asks: ‘What do you want me to be and do?’ the mother often has answered with a callousness resembling that of Herodias: ‘Why, I want you to be a social success, my dear. What else is there to be. I want you to minister to my own pride and prestige. I don’t care about what you really are. I want you to be rich, to be complimented, to be envied.’ So the daughter takes the fatal cue, and one more life is mangled. The translation of such an ambition into plain, bald, ugly language would run: ‘I want you to be selfish, cold-hearted, snobbish, acquisitive person,’ Herodias did not do much worse.

Of course, these things are rarely said in so many words. But children have terribly penetrating ears and eyes. No matter how fair or pious the disguise, they see what a parent really cares for most. They know when dancing lessons are more important than spiritual climate of the home; when position is more important than character; when the food on the dining room table is more important than the symbols on the communion table; when the right hairdo is more important than the thoughts that go on under the permanent wave.

So perversely and emphatically, it was Mother’s Day at the Fortress of Machaerus. There is high tragedy in the concluding line of this narrative of Salome. A soldier brought the head of John the Baptist, ‘and the girl gave it to her mother.’ She is saying: ‘Here, Mother, is a present for you. This is what you wanted most of all.’ It is not hard to imagine a daughter who might well have been a great personality, rich in sympathy, generous in spirit, strong in Christian character, bringing to her mother a stunted life and saying: ‘This is what you wanted Mother.’ It is a critical hour when another looks to us and says, ‘What shall I ask?’ That is really the $64,000 challenge. Pray God for mercy and grace in that hour.” (Ibid.)

Life is a gigantic quizz program. The stakes are even higher than on TV giveaways. There is no way to exaggerate the importance of coming up with the right answers or even the right questions at the right time.

“What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”