August 4, 2024 -- 11th Sunday after Pentecost

                                      Biblical Words                                            [893]

II Samuel 11:26-12:13a;  Psalm 51:1-12;  Ephesians 4:1-16;  John 6:24-35. 

 Human sin has consequences in history, even when profoundly repented, but some hear of a heavenly Bread of Life. 

There are many voices in these readings!  Nathan says, “You are the man”; David says “Mea culpa”; the apostle says, “speaking the truth in love, we must grow up”; and Jesus says, “Work for the food that endures.” 

II Samuel 11:26-12:13a. 

The prophetic reading continues the story of David and Bathsheba. 

We pick up the story after Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband, has been killed in battle as David had arranged it.  Bathsheba performs the mourning rituals incumbent upon the widow of a fallen warrior, then is married to David and moves into his palace to give birth to their son conceived in adultery.  In the transition to the judgment on David, the narrator comments almost dryly, “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” 

We do not hear what God said to Nathan the prophet, but almost as a toll of doom the narrator says simply, “the Lord sent Nathan to David.”  Nathan appears as a kind of Clarence Darrow; when something big is brewing it is enough to know that he is on the case!  But how will Nathan plead the case against David? 

Nathan plays the role of consulting David about an unfortunate case that came up in some province of the empire.  A rich man with many flocks and herds has stolen and butchered the only lamb, a precious little household pet, of a poor neighbor.  The poor man’s love of the lamb is told with touching pathos.  No response to this case is possible except great indignation and the judgment that the rich man be condemned and forced to repay the material loss four times over (verses 5-6).  The indignant David pronounces the judgment on the wicked man. 

The stage is set, and Nathan delivers his bombshell:  You are the man! 

Nathan then delivers, in the form of an oracle from the Lord, the pronouncement of David’s punishment.  After reviewing how God had rescued David from Saul, had given him rule over the houses of Israel and Judah and victory over all his enemies, the specific sin is declared to him:  You have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites (verse 9).  And the punishment:  as you killed your neighbor by the sword, so the sword will not depart from your own house.  As you took your neighbor’s wife, so your wives will be taken and sexually possessed in public by your neighbor. 

Because of God’s judgment, the consequences of David’s sin will reverberate down the history of his dynasty. 

Convicted beyond any doubt, David says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” 

Psalm 51:1-12.  

In the later stages of the collecting of the Psalms, a number of psalms were provided with headings describing moments in David’s history when he might have spoken this psalm (for example, Psalm 7).  The Psalm reading for this Sunday has such a heading, perhaps the most appropriate of all the matching of psalms to stories.  This heading reads, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” 

This is a lament psalm, one in which the speaker argues that God should intervene to relieve distress.  Many lament psalms blame others for the speaker’s trouble, but if the trouble is not caused by others but by oneself – one has sinned! – then the speaker of the psalm must make a profound and moving confession of sin.  The speaker must appeal to God’s mercy and pity, in some cases making a big point of how much the speaker has already suffered – for example, Psalm 38. 

In such a confession the speaker may submit himself or herself in abject contrition. 

For I know my transgressions,

      and my sin is ever before me….

Indeed, I was born guilty,

      a sinner when my mother conceived me. (verses 3, 5, NRSV) 

At some point the petitioner must ask directly and explicitly for God to forgive the sins: 

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

      wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow….

Hide your face from my sins,

      and blot out all my iniquities.

The pleading sinner can then hold out some little hope to God for a renewed, wiser, and more valuable servant: 

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

      and put a new and right spirit within me….

And extending beyond our listed reading,

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

      and sinners will return to you….

O Lord, open my lips,

      and my mouth will declare your praise.

      (verses 13-14)

David, pleading before his High Lord, argues that he may yet be a valuable and faithful servant, chastened but sustained. 

Beyond inescapable consequences of sin there may yet lie forgiveness and the renewal of “a willing spirit.” 

Ephesians 4:1-16.  

The Epistle reading is one of the more famous passages about the unity of the church with its diversity of gifts. 

The oneness is driven home like a liturgical drumbeat:  “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (verses 4-5, NRSV). 

It is clear that an effort is required to actualize this unity.  To sustain it, the writer begs the hearers to act “[1] with all humility and gentleness, [2] with patience, [3] bearing with one another in love, [4] making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (verse 2). 

Within this unity there are “gifts” in the form of offices to which gifted people are called:  apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers (verse 11).  Taken all together, the purpose of these offices is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (the ministry itself obviously being everyone’s job) and thereby to “build up the body of Christ” (the building image, as in Ephesians 2:19-22). 

There is a maturity to which the Body of Christ can be expected to grow, and the passage concludes by exhorting the hearers to attain it.  “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”  No more murmuring like hungry children in the wilderness.  Rather a disciplined body of people, each of whom has mastered a contribution and a gift. 

“But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (verses 14-15). 

John 6:24-35.  

The Gospel reading continues the long discourse on Jesus as the Bread of Life in the Gospel According to John. 

We pass beyond the relatively simple presentations of the other Gospels (as seen in the feeding of the five thousand in John 6:1-15) and begin to hear the voice of a transcendent Jesus who is explicitly the heavenly Redeemer come to earth.  (See the Special Note below on the Voice of Jesus.) 

In our reading, what seems to be only a puzzled question from the crowd (“Rabbi, when did you come here?” verse 25, NRSV) prompts an aggressive response from Jesus:  You people are looking for me, not because of the signs of spiritual truth I reveal, but because I gave you bread (verse 26).  (Compare the first temptation of Jesus in Matthew, to turn stones to bread.)  You seek me for economic reasons, not theological (life-and-death) ones. 

And here, by way of contrast, Jesus says about the bread what he had said to the Samaritan woman earlier (4:14) about the living water.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (verse 27). 

It is important to be clear that the whole discussion of the Bread of Life requires a distinction between what perishes and what endures, between bread that only lasts a day and must be replaced by another day’s bread, and bread that lasts because it is God’s nourishment, it is eternal. 

Here are some of the statements in this discourse that point to this great distinction. 

Verse 27.  Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life. 

Verse 33.  For the bread of God is that which [or he who] comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. 

Verse 35.  Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry…” 

Verses 49-50.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 

All of the gospel in this chapter requires that we find for ourselves a distinction between the “here” and the “beyond,” between the worldly and the heavenly, between the passing and the lasting.  (See Special Note below on “The Bread of Life as Teaching.”)

However we understand our own lives in terms of this old (Platonic) distinction, we should apply it here to the bread that people eat every day and the bread that is God’s eternal nourishment – that is, the revelation of the ultimate truth about divine and human relations. 

Special Notes on Reading John 6

The Voice of Jesus.  This Gospel has clearly derived from a circle of believers in which some specially gifted persons could speak in the voice of Jesus.  We may not know exactly how this was achieved in the Christian circles of the mid-to-late first century, but someone, perhaps in an inspired state, could speak to the assembled believers as if Jesus were with them (again) and speaking before them in terms that illuminated their own times and challenges.  (Scholars often think of “the Disciple whom Jesus Loved,” who appears only in John, as this inspired speaker; see 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:20.) 

Eight centuries earlier the same thing had happened with persons who could speak in the voice of Moses – probably itinerant Levite priests who were special guardians of the Moses traditions. 

The entire book of Deuteronomy is spoken in the voice of Moses – even though it speaks about life and challenges the Israelites would face centuries later in the promised land.  This extended exhortation to the Israelites in the voice of Moses was the inspired work of devoted Levites dedicated to the renewal and reform of Israel!    Addressing Israelites in the late kingdoms, such persons could speak in the voice of Moses as if he were telling the Israelites what to do when they would be living in the inherited land. 

The same theological inspiration and similar communal needs sustained those who spoke in Jesus’ voice when there was yet no written authority for Jesus’ revelation. 

The Bread of Life as Teaching (Torah).  The Bread of Life in John 6 is probably informed by Judean teachings about the Wisdom or the Law of God, which sustains and enhances life for the faithful. 

That Mosaic voice in Deuteronomy already taught the larger meaning of the manna in the wilderness.  God “humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna,…in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3, NRSV). 

In the time of Jesus and Paul, the Judean scholar Philo of Alexandria was elaborating the manna story as an allegory of the soul’s nourishment from the word of God.  “You see of what sort the soul’s food is.  It is a word [logos] of God, continuous, resembling dew, embracing all the soul and leaving no portion without part in itself.  But not everywhere does this word show itself, but on the wilderness of passions and wickednesses…” (Philo, Allegorical Interpretation, III, lix [169-70], Loeb ed., Vol. I, p. 415). 

The Gospel According to John has gone even further in making the bread in the wilderness the Logos of God which came to provide life for the world.

 

July 28, 2024 -- 10th Sunday after Pentecost

                                        Biblical Words                                         [892]

II Samuel 11:1-15;  Psalm 14;  Ephesians 3:14-21;  John 6:1-21. 

The powerful may be tempted to great sins, while the hungry are fed  in God’s own way. 

The readings for this Sunday are not an obvious match-up. 

The prophetic reading and the psalm do go together:  they are about human corruption of a kind that produces ruthless crime in high office.  The epistle prays that church people may avoid such things through an inner power from the Spirit.  In the Gospel, on the other hand, Jesus performs mighty works that are nourishing and puzzling. 

II Samuel 11:1-15. 

The prophetic reading is the beginning of the story of David and Bathsheba – the crime.  (The punishment comes in next Sunday’s reading.) 

This whole section of II Samuel (chapters 9-20) is probably the best piece of prose writing in the Hebrew scriptures.  It is remarkably modern in its realism and sophistication about court life and human motivations, and in the way it keeps all the action on the human plane.  God communicates to the prophet Nathan, but otherwise the real presence of God in II Samuel is behind and through the play of human struggles, defeats, and deliverances. 

In his mature years David became suzerain over several surrounding kingdoms and peoples.  He is represented as receiving tribute from the Philistine city-states, the Edomites, the Moabites, the Amalekites, the Ammonites, and Aramean kings in the region of Damascus (II Samuel 8:11-12). 

When David’s vassal, the king of the Ammonites, died and was succeeded by his son, the son insulted David’s ambassadors, thus declaring independence.  This young new monarch counted on the support of a coalition of Aramean states to the north to join him in throwing off David’s power.  However, Joab and the Israelite army defeated the Arameans in open battle and drove the Ammonites back into their capital city Rabbah (= Amman, still the capital of the modern kingdom of Jordan), where they were then besieged.  All this is related in chapter 10. 

As Joab conducts the siege of Rabbah, David resides in Jerusalem.  The city had been his personal domain for some years and, as the center of a considerable empire had become wealthy and bustling. 

As David strolls his roof-top, in what was presumably a usual routine, he views a beautiful woman engaged in her late afternoon bath – obviously out in a patio or yard visible from above.  Realistically, it is not likely that she was there by accident; almost certainly the first move was Bathsheba’s.  The king is attracted to her uncontrollably, and uses his power to possess her, first by bringing her to him for adulterous relations, then, when she becomes pregnant, by getting rid of her husband, Uriah the Hittite. 

The central part of the narrative (verses 6-13) is the poignant loyalty of Uriah to his king and to his military duty:  when invited by the king to enjoy a furlough at home with his wife, Uriah insists on remaining on duty and sleeping in the barracks at the king’s palace, and even when drunk Uriah will not yield to the lure of his wife’s bed.  Thus David is forced to more drastic steps, and has Uriah carry back to Joab the scroll containing orders for his own execution by means of contrived military action. 

The narrator unfolds these things with skill and an amazing coolness.  Only at the end, by way of a transition to the indictment of David (verse 27), does the narrator make the laconic comment, “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” 

(Note:  For those composing the narrative, Bathsheba was the key person.  She belonged to the Jerusalemite aristocracy and would become the Great Lady [mother of the king, a powerful position in the Jerusalem court] when her son Solomon was chosen the next king.  Through her, the Davidic dynasty would be Jerusalemite rather than Judean [the tribal kingship].  See the political struggle in I Kings 1.) 

Psalm 14. 

The psalm expresses the despair and cynicism about “good” people that must be evoked by David’s conduct in the story. 

Everybody is “corrupt; they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good” (verse 1).  This is the meaning of the “fool’s” assertion that “there is no god.”  If there were a god, people couldn’t get away with all this; there would be some good people somewhere. 

As the psalm progresses, there is a gradual transition to the language of the Zion drama, of the enemies who come against God’s sacred place. 

These ruthless but misguided “evildoers” do not know the Lord; they think consuming the poor like bread is a prerogative of power.  “There,” however, in that sacred place, God’s city, the Lord IS a “refuge” (the word Luther translated “mighty fortress”) for the poor.  (This psalm is repeated in Psalm 53, where the threat of the enemies is even clearer, 53:5.) 

This word – that the Lord is the refuge of the besieged poor – is the real punch line of the psalm.  The final verse is a later sigh, desperately wishing for Israel’s salvation. 

Ephesians 3:14-21.  

The Epistle reading is a prayer that those hearing this letter may receive inner strength through the Spirit to become “rooted” and “grounded” in love – that is to be solid and firm in their devotion and mutual love.  The prayer further seeks for the hearers a comprehension of the vastness of the love of Christ, which fills all dimensions and surpasses conventional knowledge. 

It is, in other words, a prayer that the hearers be transformed by the love of Christ.  Then they will not be subject to the universal corruption spoken of by the psalmist.  The prayer is raised by the apostle to that heavenly Father who is the ultimate reality behind all fatherhood/familyhood (patria) on earth and in heaven (verses 14-15). 

John 6:1-21.  

The Gospel readings from the Gospel According to Mark have advanced to the stories of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand out in the countryside and his walking on the water to reach frightened disciples at night.  For these stories, however, the Lectionary switches from Mark to the Gospel According to John. 

(Mark is the shortest of the Gospels and John does not have a separate year in the Lectionary, so portions of John are slipped into Mark’s year.) 

In John’s version, the feeding of the five thousand is accompanied by a long set of dialogues in which Jesus elaborates his own divine reality as the Bread of Life.  For five weeks, the Gospel readings will be taken from this long chapter 6 in John, including most of its 71 verses. 

This chapter, in the most theological of the Gospels, can be seen as a mini-history of New Testament faith. 

It contains (1) samples of gospel tradition ranging from typical Galilean activities of Jesus and his disciples, to (2) controversies between Jesus and Judean religious leaders, to (3) declarations of high sacramental theology, and (4) even anticipates separations among Jesus’ later followers.  As we go through the five weeks of readings from this chapter we will trace several different developments in the shaping of Christian belief in Jesus as the incarnate Lord. 

This first reading from the Fourth Gospel is very similar to the stories of feeding the people in the other Gospels.  The feeding of the five thousand in Galilee is the only major episode reported in all four Gospels, until the last days in Jerusalem are reached.  

(There is a total of 6 stories of feeding the multitudes in the four Gospels, a major topic in the tradition.  The topic is probably related to communal living for Jesus followers in which the disciples were responsible for food and clothing.  See Luke 12:22-31, 41-46 and Acts 2:42-46 and 4:32-37.)  

In assessing these different accounts, most scholars compare John’s version with Mark’s, Mark being the oldest of the other Gospels.  John’s version has many similarities to Mark’s:  in both there is a challenge to the disciples to feed the masses, in all versions there are only five loaves and two fish, Jesus blesses (or gives thanks over) the food and the disciples distribute it (implied in John), and after everyone has eaten fully the disciples gather twelve baskets of leftovers.  So much is common.  

However, there are several features in John not present in Mark’s version:  Jesus has gone up a mountain with the crowds below him, the episode takes place at the time of the Passover, Jesus takes the initiative in identifying the problem presented by the vast crowd, two of the disciples are addressed by name (Philip and Andrew), and the five loaves and two fishes are provided by a boy.  Overall, it seems that the two stories went their own way long before Mark’s version was written as we know it. 

John, however, presents a response of the people to these actions of Jesus. 

He has provided miraculous food to the people out in the wilderness, the very thing that Moses did for the Israelites.  This must mean that Jesus is the one prophesied by Moses:  “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people” (Deut. 18:15, NRSV).  It is obvious to those who have eaten this bread that, “this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world” (verse 14).  The next move is to acclaim Jesus as the Messiah and begin to celebrate the liberation! 

Jesus recognized what was in the wind, that they were “about to come and take him by force to make him king” (verse 15), and he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.  Jesus must thwart the popular movement because it is a distortion and betrayal of the kingship that is truly his.  More will be said in later readings about Jesus and Moses.

The reading concludes with the enigmatic episode of the disciples trying to cross the stormy lake at night.  In the midst of their struggle they see Jesus walking toward them in the turbulence and the dark.  Terror seizes them; Jesus speaks the word of reassurance, “It is I [ego eimi], don’t be afraid” (verse 20), and immediately the boat reaches its destination. 

Those who accompany a Moses-like Jesus on migrations toward a promised land must expect some rough times – though they may also expect to hear that Jesus is present for them in their need! 

July 21, 2024 -- 9th Sunday after Pentecost

                        Biblical Words                                      [891]

II Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56. 

God risks a Covenant with those of worldly power, and remains faithful to those who wait for the promised king.  

II Samuel 7:1-14a.  

The prophetic reading and the Psalm selection are about God’s promise of a perpetual reign for the house of David. 

At other times in the Lectionary cycles these passages are read preparing for Advent, the coming of the Anointed One who fulfills the promise to David given here.  In our current series of readings, however, David’s covenant promise from God is the highpoint in the story of God’s dealing with Israel in the age of the kings.  This is the place where the concrete historical reality of a royal dynasty in the ancient tribal kingdoms of Judah and Israel is claimed to be the working of God in the history of humankind. 

While the history of David’s own time is known only from the Biblical record, the existence of a Davidic dynasty in Jerusalem is attested in Assyrian and Babylonian records in the eighth to sixth centuries BCE.  

After the northern kingdom of Israel had been absorbed in the Assyrian empire (722 BCE), the royal house of David in Jerusalem continued as a rallying point for a restored Israel, especially in the eras of King Hezekiah (about 725 to 700 BCE) and King Josiah (640 to 609 BCE).  It was in this later time that the viewpoint on the whole history of the Age of the Kings was developed in Jerusalem.  This viewpoint (called “Deuteronomistic”) shaped the books of Samuel and Kings as we now have them.  

The promise to David (II Samuel 7) and Solomon’s dedication of the Temple (I Kings 8) are the high-points toward which the stories of Samuel, Saul, and the young David move, and they are the peak from which the stories of the later kings are a staggered decline.  The books of the “former prophets,” Joshua through II Kings, have their organizing center in the promise to David in II Samuel 7. 

Because of this focus on the king and temple in Jerusalem, these books (with the partial exception of Joshua) were later rejected as scripture by the Samaritans, who denied the centrality of David and Jerusalem in God’s plan for true Israel. 

Psalm 89:20-37. 

This psalm uses the language of “covenant” about God’s promise to David several times (for example, verses 28 and 34).  But the beginning of the psalm is even more emphatic:    

            I have made a covenant with my chosen one,

                  I have sworn to my servant David: 

            ‘I will establish your descendants forever,

                  and build your throne for all generations’ (89:3-4). 

This covenant promise is like the one made to Abraham in that it is unconditioned.  It does not say, “if you carefully obey my laws I will maintain your dynasty forever.”  It simply says, I will do this.  I will discipline your sons as needed (Psalm 89:30-32), but “I will not violate my covenant” (verse 34).  The fulfillment of the promise depends only on God; therefore, in some way or another, God will see it carried out, even if humans cannot discern the divine faithfulness -- and therefore feel betrayed. 

And, outside our readings, betrayal is asserted!  If we look at the whole of Psalm 89, we read also a long passage in which the speakers assert that God has betrayed the promise to David (Psalm 89:38-51).  “But now you have spurned and rejected him; you are full of wrath against your anointed” (verse 38). 

This latter part of Psalm 89 brings the divine promise into the troublesome uncertainties of reality.  The Davidic kings could be defeated.  The kingdom could be overrun by conquerors, as it was by the Assyrians and Babylonians.  How, under those conditions, can the faithfulness of God be understood? 

The pressures of historical reality drove the Judean people to reshape their own understanding of their place in history, even though – and precisely because – they never gave up faith in God’s promises.

Ephesians 2:11-22.  

The Epistle reading continues the current selections from the thick-textured letter called “To the Ephesians,” though it was written to all the churches of (the Roman province of) Asia. 

This rhetorically rich passage begins with the recognition of a great division among believers, the division between the “circumcision” and the “uncircumcision,” between those who have scrupulously lived by the Judean law and those who have been strangers to the keeping of that law. 

The passage affirms that this great division between the circumcised and the uncircumcised has been broken down in the reign of Christ.  The Anointed One has abolished the law that divides, “that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace” (2:15, NRSV). 

While this joyful vision of a new humanity is the primary emphasis, there is also a destructive aspect to this work.  The old is being abolished, the “wall” (about which some care a lot) is broken down, “hostility” is put to death (verses 14-16). 

In the real world, the old traditions and deep family practices do not easily drop away, and the great majority of Judeans who survived the Roman wars did not give up their distinctive practices for the sake of Christian ones.  There is a major cutting away of old ways that must be achieved, sustained by the joy and ecstasy of the new union in Christ and in the new life of the common body of believers. 

Paul did not view it as switching from Judean to Christian; he viewed it as everybody giving up old ways and genuinely becoming newly accultured in a way made possible “in Christ.” 

Thus there is the backward-looking aspect, the destruction of the old, and the forward-looking aspect – the unity, the peace, the citizenship of the saints.  This unity is imaged at the conclusion of our passage by the building of the temple of God, a structure which contains various complementary parts.  Such a building is blessed because it is “a dwelling place for God” (verse 22). 

Out of diversity and exclusiveness comes inclusiveness in Christ, a harmony and wholeness resulting from Christ’s rule – kingship – over all authorities, powers, and dominions that till now have controlled the world (verses 20-22). 

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.  

The Gospel reading presents the return of the apostles from their missions (on which they were sent in 6:7-13).  After this great effort on their part, Jesus says it is time for a retreat for rest and renewal (verse 31).  Thus they take off by boat and succeed in reaching “a deserted place.”  

The people on shore are able to track them, however, and whatever rest they got was short.  The desperate need of the people ultimately takes priority, as the latter part of our reading emphasizes.  Out in the retreat area, Jesus “saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (verse 34). 

The Gospel writer emphasizes that the people recognize their shepherd, their king!  They stream to Jesus because they recognize in him the power and goodness that the great anointed one of old symbolized for them – the David to whom God promised an unending reign.  They followed this shepherd seeking a yet-to-come source of relief and fulfillment.  Jesus came for the simple as well as the complicated-but-faithful-people who yearned for the promise of old to come true – even that ancient promise to David. 

Our reading skips over some major actions of Jesus, including the miraculous feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:35-44).  We will hear about that feeding, and its aftermath, during the next several Sundays, as told in the Gospel According to John. 

 

July 14, 2024 -- 8th Sunday after Pentecost

                          Biblical Words                                       [890]

II Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29.

When the Lord comes there is ecstasy before a holy mystery – though wicked kings blunder on in evil ways.  

II Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19.  

Our reading from the history of kingship in Israel presents, with fabulous awe and exaltation, the entrance of Yahweh of Hosts into the future City of God for the first time! 

Yahweh of Hosts did not always reside on Zion.  Through the victories over his enemies, Yahweh led David to a triumphant possession of that holy place. 

Yahweh’s own movements were told in the Ark Narrative (I Samuel 4-6 + II Samuel 6), of which our reading is the climax. 

Marked by the presence of the Ark – God’s mobile throne – the mighty Lord had moved from the old Israelite sanctuary of Shiloh (because of the sins of its priests), and then had embarrassed and manipulated the victorious Philistines.  After the defeat of the Philistines, the Ark had situated itself on the Philistine-Israelite border to wait for David to take Jerusalem and make it ready for the Holy One. 

Tracing these movements of Yahweh became important in later times when the idea became fixed among the “true” worshipers that Yahweh could be found at only ONE holy place, instead of the many Yahweh places like Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba, and – heaven forbid – Samaria!  (This narrative, like all the Old Testament, is controlled by a Jerusalemite viewpoint.)

Our narrative emphasizes three things: 

1) Yahweh was a holy power, deadly to improper contact (verses 6-11, omitted from the reading), though the holiness is also expressed in the mass of people coming to this event (verse 1) and the multitude of sacrifices offered during the deity’s transit (verse 13). 

2) It is important that All Israel was active and enthusiastic in this transit of Yahweh of Hosts to Jerusalem – 30,000 “chosen” men of Israel were involved, summarized as the action of “David and all the house of Israel” (verse 15, NRSV). 

3) Finally, this was a marvelously exciting event, with lots of instrumental music, singing, and uninhibited dancing. 

Our reading includes the brief description of Michal watching David cavort before the Ark (verse 16).  The narrative tells us that Michal was Saul’s daughter, but it assumes that we remember that she was also David’s (first) wife. 

Michal did not approve of the ecstatic styles of sacred dance in which David indulged.  But because this dancing was in honor of Yahweh, we are to understand that it was OK, even if it was an innovation from the viewpoint of old-time Yahweh people.  Thus, off-stage, as it were (that is, verses 20-23, omitted from our reading), Michal is punished by Yahweh by having no children – thus denying to her the status of queen-mother (ultimately occupied by Bathsheba). 

Psalm 24.  

The psalm reading is a ritual and a liturgy for Yahweh’s entry into the Jerusalem temple as that action was repeated periodically in the ceremonies of Zion. 

There is a declaration of Yahweh as owner of all the world (verses 1-2), followed by two things:  qualification tests for humans who would worship Yahweh in person (verses 3-6), and an exuberant proclamation of Yahweh’s entrance into the temple gates (verses 7-10). 

Who can enter Yahweh’s holy place?  The qualities required have nothing to do with ritual purity – such as freedom from contact with the dead or menstrual women.  They are “clean hands” (meaning no murders or assassinations) and “pure heart” (no deceit), no swearing to lies.  Also, one who acknowledges that blessing comes from Yahweh, the God of Jacob. 

After the entrance exam comes the real glory of this psalm:  the triumphal entry through the gates of the temple: 

Lift up your heads, O gates!

      and be lifted up, O ancient doors! 

      that the King of glory may come in. 

Who is the King of glory?

      The Lord [Yahweh], strong and mighty,

      the Lord [Yahweh], mighty in battle.  (verses 7-8, NRSV)

And in case you missed that the first time, the whole full-throated throng will repeat it for you again – as any good climactic hallelujah chorus should do (verses 9-10).  

Ephesians 1:3-14.  

The Common Revised Lectionary now begins a selection of readings from the Letter to the Ephesians.  Probably not addressed to Ephesians only, this writing was originally a circular letter, intended for several churches in the province of Asia (of which Ephesus was the capital). 

Ephesians is a challenge to one reading Paul’s writings.  (1) It is relatively unique in both style and thought (only Colossians is close to it among the other letters).  (2) It presents us with some magnificent phrases, which invite extended pondering.  (3) However, its thought sometimes gets lost in its exuberant rhetoric, and (4) it is pervaded by a heavenly aura second only to the Book of Revelation. 

(Its treatment of the ekklēsia, the church, and “the heavenlies” [1:3, etc.] have made it a favorite of Protestant dispensationalists, who emphasize the “rapture” of believers to those heavenlies.  The term “dispensation” actually occurs in the King James translation of 1:10.)  

This first reading from the Epistle is an outpouring of language that overwhelms sense with eloquence. 

An early 20^th century commentator wrote of this passage, “The twelve verses which follow [that is, verses 3-14] baffle our analysis.  They are a kaleidoscope of dazzling lights and shifting colours:  at first we fail to find a trace of order or method.  They are like the preliminary flight of the eagle, rising and wheeling around, as though for a while uncertain what direction in his boundless freedom he shall take.”  (J. Armitage Robinson, 1904). 

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that what are six complex sentences in the NRSV translation is a single sentence in Greek (Westcott and Hort edition). 

Nevertheless, so much is clear:  the whole passage is a blessing, a benediction (“Blessed be the God and Father…”).  It is common to find the center of the thought in the phrase “the mystery of his [God’s] will” (verse 9). 

It is also possible to see (as do the notes in The New Jerusalem Bible) this topic developed in a sequence of blessings, things for which God is blessed, running through the whole as follows: 

1) we were elected, verse 4 (“he chose” NRSV);

2) we were predestined for adoption, verses 5-6; 

3) we were redeemed from our sins, verses 7-8;

4) we received revelation of the mystery of God’s will, verses 9-10;

5) we received hope, “inheritance,” a promised future, verses 11 and 14;

both for us Judeans, verse 12;

and for you non-Judeans, who have been sealed by the Holy Spirit, verse 13. 

The overall sense of the passage is that there is a vast work of God underway throughout the cosmos and the ages, and we are the blessed recipients of its benefits, without any reference to our works or merits. 

Mark 6:14-29.  

The Gospel reading is an interlude in Jesus’ works in Galilee, filling the time while the disciples are out on their missions (6:7-13). 

The main story here (6:17-29) – of John the Baptist’s criticism of Herod, of the dance of Herodias’s daughter (elsewhere called Salome), and of Herod reluctantly serving John’s head on a platter – all this is a flashback.  What happens in the present time of the narrative is that Herod says, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised” (verse 16, NRSV). 

Herod Antipas is haunted by John the Baptist. 

This son of Herod the Great is a coulda, woulda, shoulda kind of ruler.  He holds grand events for his friends, but he is a deeply fearful man.  His conscience is troubled about his permitting the execution of John, enough so that the rumors about Jesus revive his conviction that he did not in fact get rid of John.  (Herod eventually became too ambitious and died in exile in Spain, with his wife Herodias.  So Josephus, Jewish War, 2.9.) 

The story of Herod Antipas in his luxurious court is set ironically against the activity of the disciples, who are passing on their itinerant journeys among the poor in Galilee.  Those folks in Herod’s court have no ears for the good news that is moving quietly through the countryside, the good news ultimately about the blessed mystery of God’s will for the salvation of all (Ephesians). 

 

July 7, 2024 -- 7th Sunday after Pentecost

                                Biblical Words                                      [889]

II Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Psalm 48; II Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13. 

The great City may have a humble beginning, and God’s servants may be denied by their own. 

II Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10.  

(An under-stated report.  This passage is not a narrative, it is a report.  A narrative has some kind of tension and a release at its climax.  A report simply states incidents and conditions.) 

The reading from the Prophets is a plain, not to say flat-footed, statement of David’s becoming king of all Israel after being king of the “house” of Judah for a few years (5:1-5; on Judah see 2:1-4).  It continues with the barest report that David captured and expanded the city-state of Jerusalem, making it his personal property, the City of David (5:9-10).  

The passage immediately following our reading tells that David built a cedar-decorated royal palace and installed his wives and children (5:11-16).  As later times looked back, they saw David, in his new capital city, as a substantial king and a power to be reckoned with among the nations. 

In that later viewpoint, however, the City was as important as the Anointed King.  This is the point in God’s history with Israel at which the long-term destiny of the people begins to be focused on the City of God.  Toward this city much devotion, exaltation, and yearning hope would be directed.    

[See more at About ancient Jerusalem below.]

As the Samuel narrative continues (in next week’s reading), David will take steps to make Jerusalem the glorious dwelling place of the God of Israel by bringing the Ark of God into the city (2 Samuel 6) and planning a great temple of cedar for God there (7:1-3). 

However, the real glory of God’s dwelling in Zion is not in these historical books, but in the Psalms. 

Psalm 48.  

The simplicity and unpretentiousness of the Samuel account contrasts sharply with the presentation of Zion, the glorious mountain and city of God, in the Psalm reading.  

Together with psalms 46 and 76, this psalm alludes to and gives glimpses of a grand liturgical drama that was celebrated and enacted within the holy city over the centuries. 

In this drama, the city of God is assaulted by an assembly of many nations, who come against it from the north and threaten to overwhelm it.  At the critical moment, God displays God’s power in some traumatizing fashion, and the nations are shattered and dispersed.  The city is saved and magnified to the heights for all the world to see. 

Then the kings assembled,

      they came on together.

As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;

      they were in panic, they took to flight. (Psalm 48:4-5)

The prophets used this liturgical drama to portray the looming judgment of a righteous God on God’s own corrupt city (Isaiah 5:26-30 and 10:5-11).  The early prophecies of Jeremiah portray this drama becoming reality in the land: 

Blow the trumpet through the land;

      shout aloud and say,

“Gather together, and let us go

      into the fortified cities!”

Raise a standard toward Zion,

      flee for safety, do not delay,

for I am bringing evil from the north,

      and a great destruction.

(Jeremiah 4:5-6.  All of Jeremiah 4:5-31 is shaped by this drama.) 

Psalm 48 glories in the deliverance of Zion from this danger and celebrates the beauty and earthly glory of the royal city of God. 

The latter part of the psalm verges on idolatry by equating a specific historic structure with God’s own holiness. 

Walk around Zion, go all around it,

      count its towers, …

that you may tell the next generation

      that this is God,

our God forever and ever. 

The “this” of this statement probably refers not to the walls and towers only, but to
the event of God’s deliverance as the sole basis for security and peace.  Still, the temptation to “idolize” the city of masonry and cedar would eventually bring the divine judgment of destruction and exile.  (See, for example, Jeremiah’s “Temple Sermon,” Jeremiah 7:1-15.) 

II Corinthians 12:2-10.  

The Epistle reading for this Sunday is one of the most remarkable personal revelations of the apostle Paul in the New Testament. 

In his ongoing hassle to get the Corinthians to recognize the true nature of his apostleship, he is led to “boast” of his spiritual “adventures,” as it were – to contrast his own experiences with those of some self-important “apostles” with glowing credentials who are trying to set up as leaders of the Corinthian church. 

In this passage he speaks of himself in the third person – “I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows” (verse 2, NRSV).  On behalf of this “person” Paul will boast of experiences in Paradise and heavenly things heard. 

Though these marvelous heavenly things are impressive, still they are not what the true service of God is about.  To keep him ever mindful of that, God gave Paul a “thorn in the flesh” – some physical or nervous disability that repeatedly humbled him.  Three times Paul asked that this tormenting burden be removed, but, like Jesus in Gethsemane, it was God’s will that the servant bear the burden and suffer among the people in God’s service (verses 7-9). 

“So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. …for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”   This is Paul’s statement of the great contrast between the prosaic everyday conditions of life and the glory of God’s reign behind it. 

Mark 6:1-13.  

In the Gospel reading Jesus goes home again, and, as in the title of Thomas Wolfe’s novel (“You Can’t Go Home Again”), it doesn’t work. 

The folks in Nazareth knew Jesus back when.  He is a nice boy and all that, but he has taken to putting on airs.  What is this about deeds of power done with his hands, about wisdom from divine sources?  His hands are good at carpentry, but for divine acts …?? 

The people of Nazareth know the everyday reality, the ordinary world of a boy and young man growing into a tradesman with peculiar religious intensities.  The wonders that came to Capernaum and to places on the other shores of the Galilean lake are not available to them.  Not available, because… “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (verse 4, RSV, not NRSV).  Since they lacked faith in the healer, there was little healing experienced in Nazareth, “and he was amazed at their unbelief” (verse 6, NRSV). 

But our reading does not stop with the failure in Nazareth.  Jesus now begins to mobilize his movement through “the twelve” – who are not called disciples or apostles here (verses 6b-13).  They go out two by two, traveling lightly, taking what is given them, moving on when rejected.  They summon people to repentance, presumably with the corollary that the reign of God is at hand (Mark 1:15), and, as Jesus had done from the beginning, they struggle with people’s demons and work to heal the sick. 

The power and reign of God is moving secretly through the countryside, whether the people of Nazareth, and even Jesus’ own family, know it or not. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About ancient Jerusalem.

The earliest traces of Jerusalem by name are on Egyptian Execration Texts.  The Egyptians had rituals in which they wrote the names of their enemies on clay jars, uttered curses over them, and then shattered the jars in ritual actions.  The fragments of such broken jars have been recovered and some contain the name “urushalim.”  This was around the 1800’s BCE. 

In the 1300’s, the “king” of Jerusalem wrote letters to Pharaoh in Egypt, six of which have survived in “the Amarna Letters.”  These were diplomatic archives, written in the international cuneiform script, found in Egypt.  The king, Abdu-Heba, declares his faithfulness to the Pharaoh and denounces the treachery of his neighboring city-state kings. 

The next king of Jerusalem we hear about is Adoni-zedek, who appears in Joshua 10, leading a coalition of Canaanite city-state kings against Joshua – unsuccessfully, needless to say. 

Archeologically, there is evidence of settlement in Jerusalem in the Early Bronze age (3300-2200 BCE) and also in the Middle Bronze Age (1800-1600) before the time of Abdu-Heba. 

One writer, commenting about the extensive fortifications of early Jerusalem, says: 

Why anyone would covet Jerusalem…remains a mystery.  It had nothing to offer.  It’s natural resources (sheep, olives, fruit) were shared by every other hill town.  It was dominated by higher hills on three sides.  The water supply was poor.  It did not lie on any trade route in antiquity. 

[Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Jerusalem,” The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Abingdon, 2008, Vol. 3, pp. 246-259, the quote on p. 247.] 

The Lord [Yahweh] – and David – must have found something to like!