But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised." (Mark 6:16)

Since I was about seven, when I was in hospital and my Mum brought me a copies of Fantastic Four and X-Men, I have been a fan of superhero comics and, more latterly, superhero movies. Every so often they would kill off one of the superheroes or supervillains - usually in sudden heroic gesture or at the end of a huge story-arc. The thing is, though, they tended not to stay dead. A while would pass and somehow they would re-appear. Superheroes are hard to kill.

The same, unfortunately, isn’t true of people - especially when they get on the wrong side of powerful people like Herod. People in those situations can seem very, very fragile. John the Baptist is banged up in prison because he’s been bad-mouthing Herod’s marriage to Herodias. Herod doesn’t want to kill him - probably for political reasons - but along comes Salome, who does a pretty dance and asks for John’s head. Herod doesn’t struggle with his conscience for long, des he. “This is a human life we’re talking about here. But hey - it was a nice dance. OK. Whatever”. And John’s toast.

Yet, here in Mark’s gospel, you have Herod worried that maybe John’s come back. Maybe he’s harder to kill than Herod had imagined. John is actually dead, but his ministry isn’t. That’s the point, I think, that Mark is getting at here. Jesus, in a sense, takes up the ministry of John - calling people to repentance - but takes it to places John could never have taken it: taking it to the whole world across twice a thousand years.

There are some things you cannot kill. One of them is God. Sure, you’ll hear plenty of people parroting the philosopher Nietzsche and saying that “God is dead” - that there is no place for God in the modern world; that he will be consigned to the junk heap of history along with superstition. The thing is, though, Nietzsche  wasn’t the first with that phrase. You can trace it back to the latter part of the seventeenth century. Folk have been saying it for heading on for four hundred years and it shows no more sign of being true now than it did then. 

For as long as there has been humanity human beings have reached for that something -that something we feel is just beyond our senses, just beyond our grasp: an identity, a being that offers us purpose and meaning in the few years we live on this planet; an “other” that seems to call us, to whisper to our hearts and souls and inspire us to be more than consumers, or selfish hoarders of wealth. We call that something “God”. Humanity has been listening and reaching for him for about as long as we’ve been around, and I don’t think we’re going to be stopping any time soon.

There are some things you cannot kill. One of them is Jesus. I have my doubts that Herod actually said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised!” I imagine he said something less than appropriate for a biblical text. What John is doing here is laying down a marker. Just as Jesus took up the ministry of John and took it to places John never could, Jesus would also suffer the kind of fate that John suffered. he was executed because he got on the wrong side of powerful people. Unlike John, though, he was raised from the dead.

The thing about the Resurrection is that the work Christ did here on Earth isn’t limited to the time and place he lived. It’s for all time. The message that Christ brought humanity - that we are beloved children of God; that each and every one of us is a precious son or daughter that God longs to bring home to him - that message is as much for here and now as it was for the people who first heard it in First Century Palestine. The message that every rotten thing we have done in our lives - every hurtful word, every mean-spirited thought - is forgiven through the Cross; that message is as important now as it ever was, because it offers hope that lives can be turned around, new beginnings can be made and we are not bound to the past but can face each new tomorrow with hope.

There are some things you cannot kill. One of them is your soul. That’s another thing about the Resurrection. It’s a reminder that there is a part of us - a part of each of us - that is offered eternal life in the presence of God. That’s an idea that’s as important today as it was two thousand years ago. If that something were not there, then what are we as human beings? Just a bag of chemicals driven by desires encoded in our genes; driven to get as much as we can for ourselves and the devil take the hindmost; ultimately of no importance. When society starts to think that life has no value, trust me, bad things start to happen.

But you do have an immortal soul and nothing can snatch it from the love of God. So what if, in this world, people mock you for rolling up to church on a Sunday morning? What if there are people who deride us, insult us, laugh at us for our faith. So what? Is that the worst they can do? The worst things that can happen in this world are pain and death and there have been plenty gone before us and endured them because of that something - that spark within us that cannot die.

There are some things you cannot kill. You can’t kill an idea. Praise be. There is an idea that we have been passing down for twice a thousand years, since the days when Herod lopped off John’s head because he had the power to do so; since the days when Pilate ordered Christ crucified because he had the power to do so. It is an idea that is as relevant to this time when we seem obsessed by celebrity and the cult of wealth and status as it was way back then. It is an idea that is as relevant to these times of food banks and the top 1% as it was in First Century Palestine.

It is the idea that everyone matters. It is the idea that the weakest, poorest, hungriest child on the most forgotten back street is as precious in the eyes of God as the wealthiest plutocrat in the finest mansion on Earth. It is the idea that the nameless, faceless men, women and children setting out to cross the waters of the Mediterranean on little more than a glorified paddling pool because they’re scared or hungry are as important in the eyes of God as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. 

It’s easy to feel that that idea is dead. But there are some things you cannot kill. I was watching an episode  Doctor Who about a year ago set in Victorian London. A poor beggar child had died on the ice when the Thames froze over and the Doctor confronted the industrialist responsible. These were the words he said: “Human progress isn’t measured by industry. It’s measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege. The boy who died on the river, that boy’s value is your value. That’s what defines an age, that’s… what defines a species.”

There are some things you cannot kill. The idea that everyone matters is out there in our culture. Let’s keep passing it on and remind folk where it comes from.

Lord we have heard the word that does not die. We are followers of your Son who died but was raised. We are children of your love. May we carry that love out into the world and spread your word to those who need to hear it

Preached at Gretna:St. Andrews Parish church