Homily for Evensong, 6th July 2025, by The Rev’d Lucy Newman Cleeve

Genesis 29:1-20
Mark 6:7-29

I’m not sure I should admit this in the company of so many serious musicians… but on Friday night, I took my daughters to see Clueless: The Musical. Actually, it was better than expected - music by KT Tunstall, clever lyrics, lots of fun.

The musical is based on the 1995 film of the same name, which is itself a modern reimagining of Jane Austen’s Emma. Each version centres on a confident young woman who takes it upon herself to manage other people’s lives - usually with mixed results. She reshapes those around her to suit her own ideals of beauty, romance, and social harmony. Behind the comedy is a deeper theme: how easily we fall into the habit of treating people as projects, or pawns - shaping them to fit our needs, our plans, or our status.

That same dynamic is at work in today’s Bible readings. In Genesis, we meet Jacob on a journey. It began in deception - he tricked his older twin brother Esau, first out of his inheritance, and later out of their father Isaac’s blessing. That betrayal shattered the family, and Jacob fled east to escape Esau’s rage.

Now, years later, he arrives in Haran and falls in love with his cousin Rachel. He offers to work seven years to marry her. But on the wedding night, her father Laban tricks him - substituting Leah, the older sister. Jacob wakes up next to the wrong bride.

So he works another seven years for Rachel. That’s fourteen years of labour. And in all of this, Rachel and Leah are silent. Their futures, their marriages, even their bodies are traded like bargaining chips. Rachel is loved but voiceless. Leah is overlooked and used to deceive. Their father profits. Jacob, once the trickster, is now tricked.

This isn’t just a story about one family. It reveals a wider pattern in Scripture and in human life: people being treated not as people, but as tools - means to an end. Relationships reduced to transactions. Women silenced. Love entangled with power. And in that web, everyone loses something - dignity, agency, trust.

We see something similar in today’s Gospel reading from Mark. Herod throws a lavish banquet. The daughter of Herodias dances before his guests, and Herod is so pleased - so publicly flattered - that he makes a rash vow: “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.”

The girl turns to her mother for advice. And Herodias seizes the moment: “The head of John the Baptist.”

Here again, people become pawns in the games of others. And no one in the room speaks up—not the guests, not the courtiers, not even Herod himself, who we're told "liked to listen" to John and was “deeply grieved” by the request. But he grants it anyway. The dance must go on. The promise must be kept. The image must be protected. And so a man dies, a young woman is entangled in violence, and a mother uses her daughter for revenge. Once again, a person’s life is sacrificed to preserve status, power, and reputation.

But Jesus shows a different way. When He sends out the twelve disciples, He entrusts them with real authority. He prepares them for the journey - not with money, or extra clothes, or clever strategies - but with honesty, simplicity, and dignity. He treats them not as pawns in a campaign, but as partners in the work of healing and proclaiming the kingdom of God.

And even Jacob - who once manipulated others to get ahead - begins to change. He works seven years, then seven more, and the text tells us “they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” Something begins to soften in him. Love, not manipulation, transforms him.

These stories - of deception, control, complicity, transformation - ask us searching questions. Where do we, even subtly, shape others to serve our own comfort or image?
Where are we tempted to stay silent in the face of manipulation or harm? And where, like Jacob, have we begun to discover that love, not power, is what truly changes us?

The good news is not that we are safe from being used: Scripture is honest about the ways people get caught in systems and schemes beyond their control. The good news is that God is not like Laban. God is not like Herod. God does not manipulate, coerce, or bargain for loyalty. In Christ, we are not managed. We are met. We are not used. We are known. And we are called, not to grasp for control, or to shape others in our image, but to walk the road with open hands, open hearts, and trust in the One who sends us with dignity and love.

Amen.