I’m walking across the moon’s landscape, and suddenly there’s a large quake. The first mate and I have been separated from the rest of the crew. The first mate’s legs are broken, and our air supply is running extremely low.
Stop.
Choose to either: leave the first mate behind and continue walking to the space shuttle, or choose to stay and attempt a reconstruction of the air tanks to be more efficient. Um . . . continue to the shuttle, now turn to page 52. What, I died! Do over, stay and reconstruct the air tanks, now turn to page 42, and the story continues.
This was a common occurrence in my childhood, no I wasn’t physically walking on the moon. In elementary school, I was constantly reading the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Each story was structured the same way, a few pages into the adventure the plot made you choose a particular direction or made you complete a task in order to travel a different path. Many times I wasn’t able to complete the task, thus a path was chosen for me. Other times, I would start down one path and the story would abruptly be considered “over”, but I only read a quarter of the book. So I would go back, chose the other direction, and continue on a totally different path.
What if this were the reality for us? For instance, deciding to order a gigantic stuffed crust supreme pizza consuming the whole thing alone and then suffering from indigestion, but instead we could turn back a few pages take the other option and order the salad instead. We could start down a path, suddenly foresee the issues ahead, turn back and choose the other direction.
Sometimes we can do that, the trouble is some choices, no matter how much we want to take them back, we can’t.
We witness that unfortunate sort of choice in the gospel reading today. Let’s look at the details of making that sort of decision. King Herod was throwing huge banquet for his birthday and of course he only invited the most prestigious political and socially influential figures to attend. These weren’t like Kardashian sort of popular figures, but major influential elite that King Herod desperately wanted to impress.
To complicate the situation, King Herod was becoming more and more interested in the preaching and teachings of John the Baptist. John was a usual guy compared to the rest of society, especially compared to King Herod’s dinner guests. He was living in the wilderness using camel’s hair for clothing, eating locusts for protein, and preaching a message that all should repent because the Messiah, the savior of the world, was coming. His message was totally different from the popular elite figures. King Herod saw that and respected that John was a holy and righteous individual, so he wanted to keep him around.
On the other hand King Herod’s wife/mistress hated John the Baptist, so she was plotting to kill him any way she could. And finally a top priority for King Herod was always the conquest for more power. Now after a few hours into this wild party, all these influences converged. When given the decision to either save John the Baptist or behead him, it was mostly influenced by the pressure of wanting to impress fellow guests, a vindictive wife, the quest for more power, the interesting teachings of John the Baptist, and of course booze. With all these influences weighing on him, no wonder he made a bad choice.
But what if this story was a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story? Let’s imagine turning back the pages of this story, and deciding to go the other path King Herod could have traveled. What would that have looked like? What if King Herod listened more to John the Baptist, and less to the elite?
Perhaps in this day and age, we aren’t presented with the extreme decision to behead anyone, but we are still influenced by those same distractions money, power, society, and more. But we have the choice to see beyond those things, we can choose the other path, when we choose to listen. God was working through John the Baptist to spread the news that the Messiah was coming, but King Herod wasn’t choosing to listen to that message.
In our own lives, we have people or opportunities where God’s voice is clearly influencing us. God is always working within us and around us to walk the other path. Where I come up short is in having to shut out the other distractions and allowing myself the time to listen for it. But the brilliance in all of this is even when we’re not listening hard or I am ignoring God’s works around me, within all of us, God’s grace is working harder than ever.
It’s terrifying to turn the page after making a decision. Not knowing what’s going to happen next in our own “Choose Your Own Adventure” story is tough. The exciting part is knowing God is there through every step of the way, no matter which adventure we choose.
