21 PENTECOST / PROPER 25 — 25 Oct 2009
Trinity — 7:45, 8:45, & 11:00
Job 42:1-6,10-17 Ps 34:1-8,[19-22] Hebrews 7:23-28 Mark 10:46-52
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
You may have noticed — or you may not have noticed, and that’s okay too! — that for the past few weeks we have been taking our first reading from the Book of Job. Four Sundays. Not a lot for a book that is 42 chapters long, but it’s more than we had before. And I think Job is worth some attention.
How many of you have actually read all the way through the Book of Job? [A number of hands raised.] That’s good — but those of you who haven’t, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty about it. It starts out fairly easily but then gets a little harder. I do encourage you to give it a try.
The Book of Job addresses the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” You may be familiar with a book from a few years ago, with pretty much that same title, written by Rabbi Harold Kushner. It’s a very good book, and I commend it, although he doesn’t really solve the problem; but then, neither do any of the rest of us. (Including the Book of Job itself!)
Job is apparently based upon a middle-eastern folk tale, which we see reflected in the first two chapters (three weeks ago) and then the last part of the 42nd chapter (which we hear this morning). In the story, Job is a man of great wealth but also of great virtue and faithfulness to God. Well, one day the heavenly host comes before God, and the Satan — in Hebrew ha-satan, which means “the accuser” or “the adversary,” sort of “the Devil’s advocate,” but he isn’t to be identified with “the Devil” yet — the Satan says to God, “Well, yes, this Job fellow is very faithful to you, but why shouldn’t he be? Look at all the stuff he’s got! Let’s take it all away from him, and see how faithful he stays!”
And God says, “Okay.”
(Yeah, I know. Just go with me on this, we’ll come back to this later.)
So the Satan sets it up that Job loses all his flocks and herds and camels to rustlers and to lightning storms, and all his hired hands are killed, and then his seven sons and three daughters are all killed by a tornado, and finally Job himself is struck by loathsome sores all over his body and he is left sitting in the ashes, and his wife tells him, "Curse God and die!" But “in all this Job did not sin with his lips,” it says — Job remained faithful to God.
Along come Job’s three friends to console him. And they have a great dispute in superb Hebrew poetry for the next 29 chapters, in which the friends argue, “Admit it! You are guilty of some great sin, that’s why God has done this to you!” And Job says, “No I’m not! I'm innocent!” And then a fourth friend pops in, and he chews on Job for six chapters more. Then out of the whirlwind God intervenes and answers Job, “You don’t know what you’re taking about! Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who do you think you are?” And God then goes on in this vein for another four chapters, and it’s really a quite wonderfully impressive celebration of God as Creator. And then today we hear Job’s reply, “Okay, I finally get it! I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you — I now see the mystery of you, I see that you are not to be called into account. Therefore I despise myself and repent, for I am but dust and ashes.”
This first part of today's reading is the conclusion of the poetic discourse that began between Job and his friends, and then continued from God to Job, and ends today with Job’s reply. The rest of the reading today is the final resumption of the old prose folktale with which the book began 42 chapters earlier. God restores Job’s fortunes — twice as many flocks and herds and camels as he had before, and a new family of seven sons and three daughters.
Well. How nice.
Too bad, I guess, about the first set of kids.
So after hearing God blithely let the Satan take all Job’s stuff and kill his children, we’re now supposed to think that it’s all okay because God gives Job a new set of stuff? [*] That’s right, it’s a cop-out. At least on the surface.
Please understand that I am not trying to put down the Book of Job! On the contrary, Job is a very complex and sophisticated reflection on the suffering of the innocent, perhaps the first really sophisticated such reflection in all human literature. And I include, maybe even especially include, the naïve or pseudo-naïve telling of the folktale with which the Book of Job begins and ends. There is significant dissonance between the folktale, and especially its conclusion that we hear today in the second half of the reading, and all that has gone on in the poetic dialogues up through the first part of the reading. And we should not assume that the author of Job just didn’t notice this dissonance! This book wrestles with very hard questions about God, and God’s power, and God’s justice, and God’s love. And to say, as I would say, that the Book of Job does not successfully resolve these hard questions is not to disparage it: we don’t successfully resolve them either. But we can be enriched by sharing in this book’s wrestling with the reality of suffering and evil in the world and the ultimate justice of God.
But we do have one advantage, one that the author of Job did not have (and one that presumably would not have occurred to Rabbi Kushner either): We know the cross of Jesus Christ. (And his resurrection: but first his cross.) God does not manipulate our suffering in the world — God shares it with us.
That doesn’t make it any easier; in fact, it may make it harder for us. There are no easy answers for us. There are no easy answers for God either.
[*] At one of the services a child cried out at this point, "No!" which of course was quite right!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Sermon - 4 October 2009
Proper 22 / 18 Pentecost — 4 October 2009
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 am
Job 1:1; 2:1-10 Ps 26 Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Mark 10:2-16
One of the good, and sometimes exciting, and sometimes challenging things about the Revised Common Lectionary is that it forces Old Guys like me who serve as supply priests in other parishes not to just dive into the sermon barrel and dust off a homily that I’ve preached before. Actually, some years back for this Sunday, I wrote what I thought (and still think) was a pretty good sermon on the Gospel reading for today. In those days the reading was just the first part, about marriage and divorce; it hadn’t had the second part about “Let the little children come to me” added yet. I wrote it for a parish I was supplying, and then three years later I dug it out and preached it again (over at Waterloo, as a matter of fact). But it seemed to me that at this present point in the life of the Episcopal Church, we probably don’t really need another sermon about sex, particularly from a visiting priest!
So then I looked at the Epistle, from the Letter to the Hebrews. But Hebrews is not easy to preach from, since it’s really a fairly complex essay and doesn’t lend itself to reading in short snippets, as the Gospels do (even John, although they are longer snippets!), and even Paul’s letters, although it helps if you are aware of his overall argument. (Don’t rely on quotes from Romans without bearing in mind the whole letter!)
And then I thought, well, it’s St. Francis’ Day, and we’re blessing the animals, so maybe I should talk about the animals, and so there immediately came to mind a thing that was on the internet lately. Maybe some of you have seen it — two churches across the street from each other, having a church signs duel. (By the way, this posting was entirely an internet construct, and never occurred in real life. You can create and post a church signs duel like this yourself. Here are the URLs: )
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/dogheaven.asp
http://www.says-it.com/churchsigns/
[In the sermon as given, this posting was described.]
In the past, on Sundays we have never read much from the Book of Job. There was one year when we picked up on the “I know that my redeemer lives” verses, and another Sunday when we heard the part near the end where God tells Job to stop whining, and yet another Sunday when Job gets it, and repents, But these are bits and pieces and the context isn’t very clear, and there’s no attempt to wrestle with what the Book of Job as a whole is about. Now, at least in Track One, we have a four-Sunday sequence (which is still just bits and pieces, but it’s still a sequence) in which we hear the beginning of the story (today), next week we hear a representative sample of Job’s lament, then the week after that the part closer to the end where God says, “Just who the heck do you think you are?” and then finally in 3 weeks the end where Job repents and gets all new stuff. That’s a start, anyway. So let’s go with it.
“Stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to his face.” The Lord said to [the] Satan, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”
How many of you have read the Book of Job (all the way through!)? [A number of hands are raised.] Good! But I’m not trying to make the rest of you feel guilty or ashamed! It really is quite all right, and very understandable, if you never have read Job, or even if you tried you never finished it. (My guess is that some of you have read it more often, and more deeply, than I have!) But let’s face it, five or six chapters in you are very likely to say, “This is heavy going!” But I encourage you to persevere! Take notes — it helps if you can keep track of who is saying what. Chapters 3 through 37 are long poetic dialogues between Job and his friends.
Do not try to read the Book of Job this afternoon while you are also watching the football game.
I have absolutely no idea what a rock-hard fundamentalist Biblical literalist would make of the Book of Job. (Even ordinary conservative evangelicals have pretty much the same problems with it as the rest of us.)
Basically the Book of Job is about “Why does bad stuff happen to good people?” It may represent the first time — at least the earliest instance of religious literature — that seriously tries to deal with this question, or is even aware that the issue exists. Probably — not certainly — Chapters 1 and 2, and the last part of Chapter 42, are, or are derived from, an older middle-eastern folk tale, which in our Bible is in Hebrew prose, and then Chapters 3 through 37 are Job’s poetic dialogue with his friends who come to console him and explain to him why God is letting all this bad stuff happen to him. Job doesn’t buy it. Chapters 38 through 41, also still in Hebrew poetry, is God challenging Job for challenging him. Then in Chapter 42 Job says, “Okay, I give up,” although it’s not entirely clear why he should, and then in the last part of Chapter 42, back to the old prose folk story, God gives back to Job all the family and property and health that Job had lost in Chapters 1 and 2.
No, this is not at all satisfactory, for a whole variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that Job’s original family of sons and daughters are still all dead. But that’s a question that will arise for you in three weeks on Sunday the 25th. And for me, too, since I am scheduled to preach in Iowa City that day!
The reading this morning leaves out most of Chapter 1. That’s where God grants to the Satan (ha-satan, the adversary, the accuser, sort of God’s inspector-general, not yet The Devil) the power to take away all of Job’s flocks and herds and finally even his children. Even so, Job does not blame God for his misfortune. Then in Chapter 2, which we hear most of this morning, the Satan gets permission to ramp up to step two in the testing of Job, and he takes Job’s health away from him. That’s more than Mrs. Job can stand. But Job himself remains faithful to the Lord.
Incidentally, when I was in seminary, we put on a production of Archibald MacLeish’s “J.B.” based on the Book of Job. I played J.B. Typecasting, no doubt. The classmate’s wife who played J.B.’s wife (“Curse God and die!”) gave a very moving performance.
Okay, let's review this story. Job is filthy rich, but he is blameless and upright, and he has seven sons and three daughters, as it goes on to say in the part that gets left out of the reading today. (I don’t see anything nefarious in that omission, it’s just a matter of editing for length.) Well, the “sons of God” as they are called — the heavenly court, the angels, whoever they are — not “Sons of God” in the sense that Jesus is — get together and the Satan says, “Well, sure Job is blameless and upright! Look at all the stuff he has. But take it away and we’ll see how long he stays blameless and upright!” And God says to the Satan, “Okay, take away all his stuff. Just don’t hurt Job himself.” Then a series of disasters follows, and Job loses his 500 oxen and 500 donkeys, and then his 7000 sheep, and then his 3000 camels — together with all the servants who took care of them — and finally all his children who are killed while they are having dinner together when a great storm blows the house down on top of them. (Hmm. Job lives in the "Land of Uz".... Naaahhh….) And in all this Job did not sin. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then we come to the next part, that we hear this morning. Not having been successful in the first round — foiled in his attempt to prove that human beings are faithful to God only as long as God is faithful to them — the Satan gets God’s permission to continue in a second round, and to strike Job’s own body, save only his life. Yet even now Job does not sin; he does not curse God.
Well, I hope we see there are some problems in all this. Do we want to say that God is a God who can pull this kind of stuff on us (or specifically allow this kind of stuff to be pulled on us)? I certainly don’t want to say that. And yet it’s true that Stuff Happens, and God doesn’t seem to stop it. What are we to make of that? We have to admit that we know people — and sometimes we are people — who are God’s fair-weather friends. If God does not take care of us, why should we care about God? If God abandons us, why should we not abandon God?
We do need to remember that the God in whom we believe is not first of all the God of the Bible; first of all we believe in the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And yet this God also let Jesus die on the cross. God raised Jesus from death, but first God let him die. God will raise us from death, but first God will let us die.
This is hard stuff. There are no easy answers, and the Book of Job does not provide any easy answers. It makes an honest effort, perhaps the first honest effort, and it offers us a lot to meditate on and to pray about, but my judgment is that in the end it does not succeed. I think that ultimately Chapter 42 is a copout, though I guess we’ll all see in three weeks what we think about that!
Jesus is not in this story. Not yet. And in our own story, in this story when it has become our story, Jesus is the center, Job is prelude. But it’s still very hard stuff.
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 am
Job 1:1; 2:1-10 Ps 26 Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Mark 10:2-16
One of the good, and sometimes exciting, and sometimes challenging things about the Revised Common Lectionary is that it forces Old Guys like me who serve as supply priests in other parishes not to just dive into the sermon barrel and dust off a homily that I’ve preached before. Actually, some years back for this Sunday, I wrote what I thought (and still think) was a pretty good sermon on the Gospel reading for today. In those days the reading was just the first part, about marriage and divorce; it hadn’t had the second part about “Let the little children come to me” added yet. I wrote it for a parish I was supplying, and then three years later I dug it out and preached it again (over at Waterloo, as a matter of fact). But it seemed to me that at this present point in the life of the Episcopal Church, we probably don’t really need another sermon about sex, particularly from a visiting priest!
So then I looked at the Epistle, from the Letter to the Hebrews. But Hebrews is not easy to preach from, since it’s really a fairly complex essay and doesn’t lend itself to reading in short snippets, as the Gospels do (even John, although they are longer snippets!), and even Paul’s letters, although it helps if you are aware of his overall argument. (Don’t rely on quotes from Romans without bearing in mind the whole letter!)
And then I thought, well, it’s St. Francis’ Day, and we’re blessing the animals, so maybe I should talk about the animals, and so there immediately came to mind a thing that was on the internet lately. Maybe some of you have seen it — two churches across the street from each other, having a church signs duel. (By the way, this posting was entirely an internet construct, and never occurred in real life. You can create and post a church signs duel like this yourself. Here are the URLs: )
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/dogheaven.asp
http://www.says-it.com/churchsigns/
[In the sermon as given, this posting was described.]
In the past, on Sundays we have never read much from the Book of Job. There was one year when we picked up on the “I know that my redeemer lives” verses, and another Sunday when we heard the part near the end where God tells Job to stop whining, and yet another Sunday when Job gets it, and repents, But these are bits and pieces and the context isn’t very clear, and there’s no attempt to wrestle with what the Book of Job as a whole is about. Now, at least in Track One, we have a four-Sunday sequence (which is still just bits and pieces, but it’s still a sequence) in which we hear the beginning of the story (today), next week we hear a representative sample of Job’s lament, then the week after that the part closer to the end where God says, “Just who the heck do you think you are?” and then finally in 3 weeks the end where Job repents and gets all new stuff. That’s a start, anyway. So let’s go with it.
“Stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to his face.” The Lord said to [the] Satan, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”
How many of you have read the Book of Job (all the way through!)? [A number of hands are raised.] Good! But I’m not trying to make the rest of you feel guilty or ashamed! It really is quite all right, and very understandable, if you never have read Job, or even if you tried you never finished it. (My guess is that some of you have read it more often, and more deeply, than I have!) But let’s face it, five or six chapters in you are very likely to say, “This is heavy going!” But I encourage you to persevere! Take notes — it helps if you can keep track of who is saying what. Chapters 3 through 37 are long poetic dialogues between Job and his friends.
Do not try to read the Book of Job this afternoon while you are also watching the football game.
I have absolutely no idea what a rock-hard fundamentalist Biblical literalist would make of the Book of Job. (Even ordinary conservative evangelicals have pretty much the same problems with it as the rest of us.)
Basically the Book of Job is about “Why does bad stuff happen to good people?” It may represent the first time — at least the earliest instance of religious literature — that seriously tries to deal with this question, or is even aware that the issue exists. Probably — not certainly — Chapters 1 and 2, and the last part of Chapter 42, are, or are derived from, an older middle-eastern folk tale, which in our Bible is in Hebrew prose, and then Chapters 3 through 37 are Job’s poetic dialogue with his friends who come to console him and explain to him why God is letting all this bad stuff happen to him. Job doesn’t buy it. Chapters 38 through 41, also still in Hebrew poetry, is God challenging Job for challenging him. Then in Chapter 42 Job says, “Okay, I give up,” although it’s not entirely clear why he should, and then in the last part of Chapter 42, back to the old prose folk story, God gives back to Job all the family and property and health that Job had lost in Chapters 1 and 2.
No, this is not at all satisfactory, for a whole variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that Job’s original family of sons and daughters are still all dead. But that’s a question that will arise for you in three weeks on Sunday the 25th. And for me, too, since I am scheduled to preach in Iowa City that day!
The reading this morning leaves out most of Chapter 1. That’s where God grants to the Satan (ha-satan, the adversary, the accuser, sort of God’s inspector-general, not yet The Devil) the power to take away all of Job’s flocks and herds and finally even his children. Even so, Job does not blame God for his misfortune. Then in Chapter 2, which we hear most of this morning, the Satan gets permission to ramp up to step two in the testing of Job, and he takes Job’s health away from him. That’s more than Mrs. Job can stand. But Job himself remains faithful to the Lord.
Incidentally, when I was in seminary, we put on a production of Archibald MacLeish’s “J.B.” based on the Book of Job. I played J.B. Typecasting, no doubt. The classmate’s wife who played J.B.’s wife (“Curse God and die!”) gave a very moving performance.
Okay, let's review this story. Job is filthy rich, but he is blameless and upright, and he has seven sons and three daughters, as it goes on to say in the part that gets left out of the reading today. (I don’t see anything nefarious in that omission, it’s just a matter of editing for length.) Well, the “sons of God” as they are called — the heavenly court, the angels, whoever they are — not “Sons of God” in the sense that Jesus is — get together and the Satan says, “Well, sure Job is blameless and upright! Look at all the stuff he has. But take it away and we’ll see how long he stays blameless and upright!” And God says to the Satan, “Okay, take away all his stuff. Just don’t hurt Job himself.” Then a series of disasters follows, and Job loses his 500 oxen and 500 donkeys, and then his 7000 sheep, and then his 3000 camels — together with all the servants who took care of them — and finally all his children who are killed while they are having dinner together when a great storm blows the house down on top of them. (Hmm. Job lives in the "Land of Uz".... Naaahhh….) And in all this Job did not sin. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then we come to the next part, that we hear this morning. Not having been successful in the first round — foiled in his attempt to prove that human beings are faithful to God only as long as God is faithful to them — the Satan gets God’s permission to continue in a second round, and to strike Job’s own body, save only his life. Yet even now Job does not sin; he does not curse God.
Well, I hope we see there are some problems in all this. Do we want to say that God is a God who can pull this kind of stuff on us (or specifically allow this kind of stuff to be pulled on us)? I certainly don’t want to say that. And yet it’s true that Stuff Happens, and God doesn’t seem to stop it. What are we to make of that? We have to admit that we know people — and sometimes we are people — who are God’s fair-weather friends. If God does not take care of us, why should we care about God? If God abandons us, why should we not abandon God?
We do need to remember that the God in whom we believe is not first of all the God of the Bible; first of all we believe in the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And yet this God also let Jesus die on the cross. God raised Jesus from death, but first God let him die. God will raise us from death, but first God will let us die.
This is hard stuff. There are no easy answers, and the Book of Job does not provide any easy answers. It makes an honest effort, perhaps the first honest effort, and it offers us a lot to meditate on and to pray about, but my judgment is that in the end it does not succeed. I think that ultimately Chapter 42 is a copout, though I guess we’ll all see in three weeks what we think about that!
Jesus is not in this story. Not yet. And in our own story, in this story when it has become our story, Jesus is the center, Job is prelude. But it’s still very hard stuff.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sermon - 13 September 2009
PROPER 19 / 15 PENTECOST — 13 Sept 2009
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 am
Proverbs 1:20-33 Psalm 19 James 3:1-12 Mark 8:27-38
Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”
We call this incident “The Confession of St. Peter” and we also celebrate it every year as a holy day on January 18, as well as on this Sunday every three years and also in August of Year A, in Matthew’s telling. It’s a turning point in the course of Jesus’ ministry. Before this, in Mark’s narrative, Jesus has been puttering about the Galilee in the north of the land of Israel, teaching, healing, gathering his followers, proclaiming the Reign of God. From here on out, things take a more foreboding turn: it’s right after this that Jesus turns south, to Jerusalem, and although the teaching and healing continue, the conflicts with the religious establishment intensify, and more and more Jesus himself becomes the issue, until matters finally reach a crisis in Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover.
But at this point, where we are in the Gospel today, the sun is still shining and the birds are still singing, and trooping about the highways and byways of the Galilean hills is still something of a lark for Jesus’ followers. As we have seen in the Gospel readings this summer, from the early chapters of Mark mostly, Jesus has been proclaiming God’s Reign, and not only proclaiming it but enacting it, performing the signs of the Reign of God, what we might call the signs of the Messiah.
And so now Jesus and his friends are hiking around up north of the Sea of Galilee. (Near where today the borders of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon meet, the area we call the Golan Heights. In Jesus’ time this was not within Galilee, which was ruled by Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great [the Herod who was King of Judaea when Jesus was born]; it was in a district ruled by another son of Herod the Great, Antipas’s brother Philip. Philip had rebuilt a city and renamed it for Tiberius Caesar as a way of currying the Emperor’s favor; the city was renamed “Philip’s Caesartown,” or, as it was actually put in Latin, “Caesarea Philíppi.” As distinguished from Caesarea Maritima, on the Judean Mediterranean coast. And as distinguished from Caesarea of Cappadocia, in the highlands of eastern Anatolia. Actually the Roman Empire had more towns named “Caesarea” than we have “Washington” in the United States. And for much the same reason. But I digress…)
Anyway, Jesus and his friends are walking down the road, and Jesus says, “So. What are they saying about me?” As it happens, people are saying a lot about Jesus, some of it pretty much off the wall. “Well,” say the disciples, I heard one guy saying he thought you were John the Baptist come back to life.” (John the Baptist had recently been arrested and then executed by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, the brother of the Philip who had built Caesarea Philippi. [Are you getting all this? It’s a little like the episode summaries on the websites of the TV dramas — sometimes it’s hard to keep track!] Remember Salome and the dance of the seven veils and John Baptist’s head on a platter? Of course, some of that is in the Gospel and some of it is Richard Strauss. [I’m digressing again, aren’t I?] Anyway, that was still hot news just then, and some people thought Jesus was the Baptist come back to life.)
And, the disciples went on, “Some other people are saying that you’re the prophet Elijah come back from heaven.” Elijah, you recall, was the great prophet of the Kingdom of Israel, and been carried up to heaven in a fiery chariot, and it says in the book of Malachi that Elijah will return before the final Day of the Lord. So. If you’re following the reading sequence in the Daily Office Lectionary, we are currently wading into the Elijah saga.
Anyway, the disciples went on, “Some say you’re one of the other prophets come back to life — or maybe ‘The Prophet Like Moses’” predicted in Deuteronomy — whom many expected the Lord to send to bring in God’s Kingdom.
“Mmm,” says Jesus. “But what about you? You’ve been with me for a while now. You’ve heard what I’ve said. You’ve seen what I’ve done. Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter, as so often the spokesman, answers him, “You are the Messiah.”
I’m not sure our English Bibles always catch the full flavor of that reply. Oh, the translation is word for word — Su ei ho Christos — “You are the Christ.” But what does Peter mean by that?—when he actually said it, not in Greek but in Aramaic? “Christ” (Christos) is a Greek word, meaning “the anointed one,” and it translates the Hebrew Mashiah or Aramaic Meshikha, “Messiah,” “anointed one.” But for us Christians almost two thousand years later, “Christ” has simply become the common title for Jesus, almost his surname; for Peter to say “You are the Christ” seems perfectly obvious to us. It wasn’t obvious for Peter. What did Peter think he was saying when he said “You are the Messiah”? And why does Jesus seem not exactly tickled to death about it? Why did he tell them not to talk about it?
For Peter, “Messiah” means “savior-king.” The Messiah is the one whom God is going to send to rally the people, purge the sinners, expel the imperial Roman occupation army, and restore the nation of Israel to its glory. The Messiah is the one who is going to come and fix everything for us.
And, in effect, Jesus says, “Not me.”
Jesus goes on to explain that he will be rejected, and finally put to death; and Peter says, “No way! Not God’s Messiah!” And Jesus says, “‘No way!’ to you, Peter—you’re the one who is opposed to God. What you mean by ‘Messiah’ is not who I am. That isn’t what I’m doing here. I am not the one who is going to come and fix everything. You’re going to have to learn a whole new definition of what God’s Messiah is, because I have come to die on a Roman cross.”
Much of the Church, through much of our history, and probably most of us at least much of the time, range ourselves on the side of Peter; and thus we are not on the side of God but of corrupt self-seeking humanity. Because we expect that God is a God who is supposed to come and fix everything for us. We demand that of God. And the plain truth is, God doesn’t do that. Oh, in the ultimate end, in the fulfillment of the Reign of God, all will be well. But in the meantime, God doesn’t come and fix everything. We still lose, we still suffer, we still die.
But winning, and power, and having everything fixed for us, is not what life is about. We live by giving our lives away. That’s the Gospel. Listen to what Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” That’s God’s truth. That’s the kind of Messiah Jesus is, one who gives it all away. And what God gives us in this life is not any promise of success, or prosperity, or health, or satisfaction, but limitless opportunities to give our lives away to each other. What God gives us is limitless opportunities to give our lives away to each other, because that’s what it’s really all about.
And it is really — almost — just as simple, and just as difficult, as that.
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 am
Proverbs 1:20-33 Psalm 19 James 3:1-12 Mark 8:27-38
Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”
We call this incident “The Confession of St. Peter” and we also celebrate it every year as a holy day on January 18, as well as on this Sunday every three years and also in August of Year A, in Matthew’s telling. It’s a turning point in the course of Jesus’ ministry. Before this, in Mark’s narrative, Jesus has been puttering about the Galilee in the north of the land of Israel, teaching, healing, gathering his followers, proclaiming the Reign of God. From here on out, things take a more foreboding turn: it’s right after this that Jesus turns south, to Jerusalem, and although the teaching and healing continue, the conflicts with the religious establishment intensify, and more and more Jesus himself becomes the issue, until matters finally reach a crisis in Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover.
But at this point, where we are in the Gospel today, the sun is still shining and the birds are still singing, and trooping about the highways and byways of the Galilean hills is still something of a lark for Jesus’ followers. As we have seen in the Gospel readings this summer, from the early chapters of Mark mostly, Jesus has been proclaiming God’s Reign, and not only proclaiming it but enacting it, performing the signs of the Reign of God, what we might call the signs of the Messiah.
And so now Jesus and his friends are hiking around up north of the Sea of Galilee. (Near where today the borders of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon meet, the area we call the Golan Heights. In Jesus’ time this was not within Galilee, which was ruled by Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great [the Herod who was King of Judaea when Jesus was born]; it was in a district ruled by another son of Herod the Great, Antipas’s brother Philip. Philip had rebuilt a city and renamed it for Tiberius Caesar as a way of currying the Emperor’s favor; the city was renamed “Philip’s Caesartown,” or, as it was actually put in Latin, “Caesarea Philíppi.” As distinguished from Caesarea Maritima, on the Judean Mediterranean coast. And as distinguished from Caesarea of Cappadocia, in the highlands of eastern Anatolia. Actually the Roman Empire had more towns named “Caesarea” than we have “Washington” in the United States. And for much the same reason. But I digress…)
Anyway, Jesus and his friends are walking down the road, and Jesus says, “So. What are they saying about me?” As it happens, people are saying a lot about Jesus, some of it pretty much off the wall. “Well,” say the disciples, I heard one guy saying he thought you were John the Baptist come back to life.” (John the Baptist had recently been arrested and then executed by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, the brother of the Philip who had built Caesarea Philippi. [Are you getting all this? It’s a little like the episode summaries on the websites of the TV dramas — sometimes it’s hard to keep track!] Remember Salome and the dance of the seven veils and John Baptist’s head on a platter? Of course, some of that is in the Gospel and some of it is Richard Strauss. [I’m digressing again, aren’t I?] Anyway, that was still hot news just then, and some people thought Jesus was the Baptist come back to life.)
And, the disciples went on, “Some other people are saying that you’re the prophet Elijah come back from heaven.” Elijah, you recall, was the great prophet of the Kingdom of Israel, and been carried up to heaven in a fiery chariot, and it says in the book of Malachi that Elijah will return before the final Day of the Lord. So. If you’re following the reading sequence in the Daily Office Lectionary, we are currently wading into the Elijah saga.
Anyway, the disciples went on, “Some say you’re one of the other prophets come back to life — or maybe ‘The Prophet Like Moses’” predicted in Deuteronomy — whom many expected the Lord to send to bring in God’s Kingdom.
“Mmm,” says Jesus. “But what about you? You’ve been with me for a while now. You’ve heard what I’ve said. You’ve seen what I’ve done. Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter, as so often the spokesman, answers him, “You are the Messiah.”
I’m not sure our English Bibles always catch the full flavor of that reply. Oh, the translation is word for word — Su ei ho Christos — “You are the Christ.” But what does Peter mean by that?—when he actually said it, not in Greek but in Aramaic? “Christ” (Christos) is a Greek word, meaning “the anointed one,” and it translates the Hebrew Mashiah or Aramaic Meshikha, “Messiah,” “anointed one.” But for us Christians almost two thousand years later, “Christ” has simply become the common title for Jesus, almost his surname; for Peter to say “You are the Christ” seems perfectly obvious to us. It wasn’t obvious for Peter. What did Peter think he was saying when he said “You are the Messiah”? And why does Jesus seem not exactly tickled to death about it? Why did he tell them not to talk about it?
For Peter, “Messiah” means “savior-king.” The Messiah is the one whom God is going to send to rally the people, purge the sinners, expel the imperial Roman occupation army, and restore the nation of Israel to its glory. The Messiah is the one who is going to come and fix everything for us.
And, in effect, Jesus says, “Not me.”
Jesus goes on to explain that he will be rejected, and finally put to death; and Peter says, “No way! Not God’s Messiah!” And Jesus says, “‘No way!’ to you, Peter—you’re the one who is opposed to God. What you mean by ‘Messiah’ is not who I am. That isn’t what I’m doing here. I am not the one who is going to come and fix everything. You’re going to have to learn a whole new definition of what God’s Messiah is, because I have come to die on a Roman cross.”
Much of the Church, through much of our history, and probably most of us at least much of the time, range ourselves on the side of Peter; and thus we are not on the side of God but of corrupt self-seeking humanity. Because we expect that God is a God who is supposed to come and fix everything for us. We demand that of God. And the plain truth is, God doesn’t do that. Oh, in the ultimate end, in the fulfillment of the Reign of God, all will be well. But in the meantime, God doesn’t come and fix everything. We still lose, we still suffer, we still die.
But winning, and power, and having everything fixed for us, is not what life is about. We live by giving our lives away. That’s the Gospel. Listen to what Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” That’s God’s truth. That’s the kind of Messiah Jesus is, one who gives it all away. And what God gives us in this life is not any promise of success, or prosperity, or health, or satisfaction, but limitless opportunities to give our lives away to each other. What God gives us is limitless opportunities to give our lives away to each other, because that’s what it’s really all about.
And it is really — almost — just as simple, and just as difficult, as that.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sermon - 23 August 2009
PROPER 16 / 12 PENTECOST — 23 August 2009
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 a.m.
1Kgs 8:1,6,10-11,22-30,41,43 Ps 84 Eph 6:10-20 John 6:56-69
For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” an old French proverb runs. History is a fascinating tension of change and identity, of continuity and discontinuity. I myself think that people are pretty much the same as we have always been — human nature as such isn’t a lot different now from what it was a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago, or two thousand years ago. But the world has changed, in important ways. It really has. And the world has changed in two senses. First, the actual conditions of the world have changed. The world itself is a different place from what it was just a few generations ago. This is largely the result of the building of the infrastructures of human society. Much that was formerly wilderness is now under cultivation. (Some real problems arise from this, but I’m certainly not suggesting that in itself this is a Bad Thing!) Communications with virtually any place in the world are instantaneous, and very difficult to impede. Still new to many of us is the notion that from your own telephone — in your own home or in your pocket! — you can call directly to almost any other telephone in the world. And travel to anywhere in the world isn’t that much more difficult (only somewhat more expensive!). (I’m still not quite used to all the ordinary folks I run into who want to tell me about their trip to China or Russia or West Africa. It used to be a big deal just to go to Chicago!)
And as a direct result of all this (what we might call the “infrastructural change” of the world), the second sense in which the world has changed is that we perceive the world in a different way. Our technology has brought the world largely (not completely! but largely) under our control, and we assume that things will continue in this direction. The world is the venue of human action, the object of human manipulation, configured by human infrastructures.
In the world when the New Testament was being written, and in fact in the world in any pre-modern period, people had a much clearer sense of their world, their universe, as a personal living environment — not a dead impersonal thing to be used, and manipulated, and exploited. Even the stars of the heavens were seen as gods, or powers, or angels. Nature around us was often (not always, but often) seen as the habitat of spirits, and of demons. The world was enchanted.
The “modern” view of the world, which began to be operative somewhere along about the sixteenth century — in part because of the foundational scientific work of people like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and others who demonstrated that we are not at the center of the universe, that nature obeys discoverable rational laws and not just the whims of the gods, or even God, and (more arguably) that human consciousness is the measure of reality — this “modern” view dis-enchanted, de-divinized, de-spiritualized, de-demonized, de-personalized the world. Now, that’s not all bad! Sometimes we get very romantic about (for instance) Native American, or African, or Aboriginal Australian perspectives on our relation to the natural world, and indeed there is much wisdom among these peoples. But the enchanted, personalized, divinized world of pre-modern societies can also be a place of fear and terror, where human beings are at the mercy of famine and flood, ravaged by disease, tossed to and fro by the whims of gods and demons over whom they have no control and whom they can only desperately try to placate by magic or sacrifice. (Well, we’re still at the mercy of famine and flood, but at least we now understand that in large part it’s our own fault.) For our forebears, the world was different than it is for us, and not always for the better. The “modern,” scientific, technological view of the world brings with it (or should bring with it; it certainly demands) a maturity, a sense of responsibility, which is appropriate and necessary to our full stature as human beings created in God’s image. Superstition is not a fitting stance or behavior pattern for the children of God redeemed by the blood of God’s Christ! But clearly also there is a very real danger of overemphasizing and overestimating our own competence and our own degree of control over the world, and we very easily assume that the evils of the world just need a little more applied technology, a bit of sociological adjustment, one more Federal program, and everything will be made well again.
St. Paul is telling us this morning — for our purposes I’m assuming Paul wrote the Letter to the Ephesians; there’s a fair amount of serious and legitimate dispute about that, but for the moment let’s just go with it — St. Paul is telling us that the enemies of the Kingdom of God are not just private evils and personal sins; something much more is at stake. (And thus Christian faith is not, cannot be, must not be concerned just with personal morality and private spirituality.) (Bishop Katharine said this a few weeks ago and a bunch of people beat up on her about it. But of course she was right. She reads Paul.) Paul talks about “the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” — within his own world framework what he’s talking about are demonic spirits, and that’s probably not the way we’d put it; nor should it be the way for us to put it, I don’t think. But the truth is that there are powers of evil which are bigger than private hearts; the evil of the world is greater than the sum of its parts. Technologies, ideologies, “isms,” political and economic structures, vested interests, communications media, public opinion polls, the infamous “They” (as in, “They say that...”) — all of these can be “evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”
Against all this we as Christians are called to stand.
And as the evil against which we must stand and struggle is larger than our own personal petty sinfulnesses, even, apparently, larger than all our own personal petty sinfulnesses put together, so we cannot rely simply upon our own strength, our own wisdom, our own virtue. They aren’t enough. They are too easily corrupted. No, St Paul calls us to rely on “the whole armor of God.”
But let us note carefully what that armor is (listen to St Paul again): “Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Here are God’s weapons: truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, salvation, the Word of God. Not our own swords, but only the “Sword of the Spirit.” We cannot use evil’s own weapons against it. In this realm of what ultimately matters, we cannot fight fire with fire. We don’t need any more Crusades, no more wars of religion, no more inquisitions, no more persecutions. God’s Kingdom is served not by power and force and craft, but by humility and patience and love. And always, in all things, by constancy in prayer, through which the powers of evil within ourselves are vanquished by God’s grace, and we, ever more closely conformed to the Reign of God, are strengthened as faithful soldiers of the Cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 a.m.
1Kgs 8:1,6,10-11,22-30,41,43 Ps 84 Eph 6:10-20 John 6:56-69
For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” an old French proverb runs. History is a fascinating tension of change and identity, of continuity and discontinuity. I myself think that people are pretty much the same as we have always been — human nature as such isn’t a lot different now from what it was a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago, or two thousand years ago. But the world has changed, in important ways. It really has. And the world has changed in two senses. First, the actual conditions of the world have changed. The world itself is a different place from what it was just a few generations ago. This is largely the result of the building of the infrastructures of human society. Much that was formerly wilderness is now under cultivation. (Some real problems arise from this, but I’m certainly not suggesting that in itself this is a Bad Thing!) Communications with virtually any place in the world are instantaneous, and very difficult to impede. Still new to many of us is the notion that from your own telephone — in your own home or in your pocket! — you can call directly to almost any other telephone in the world. And travel to anywhere in the world isn’t that much more difficult (only somewhat more expensive!). (I’m still not quite used to all the ordinary folks I run into who want to tell me about their trip to China or Russia or West Africa. It used to be a big deal just to go to Chicago!)
And as a direct result of all this (what we might call the “infrastructural change” of the world), the second sense in which the world has changed is that we perceive the world in a different way. Our technology has brought the world largely (not completely! but largely) under our control, and we assume that things will continue in this direction. The world is the venue of human action, the object of human manipulation, configured by human infrastructures.
In the world when the New Testament was being written, and in fact in the world in any pre-modern period, people had a much clearer sense of their world, their universe, as a personal living environment — not a dead impersonal thing to be used, and manipulated, and exploited. Even the stars of the heavens were seen as gods, or powers, or angels. Nature around us was often (not always, but often) seen as the habitat of spirits, and of demons. The world was enchanted.
The “modern” view of the world, which began to be operative somewhere along about the sixteenth century — in part because of the foundational scientific work of people like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and others who demonstrated that we are not at the center of the universe, that nature obeys discoverable rational laws and not just the whims of the gods, or even God, and (more arguably) that human consciousness is the measure of reality — this “modern” view dis-enchanted, de-divinized, de-spiritualized, de-demonized, de-personalized the world. Now, that’s not all bad! Sometimes we get very romantic about (for instance) Native American, or African, or Aboriginal Australian perspectives on our relation to the natural world, and indeed there is much wisdom among these peoples. But the enchanted, personalized, divinized world of pre-modern societies can also be a place of fear and terror, where human beings are at the mercy of famine and flood, ravaged by disease, tossed to and fro by the whims of gods and demons over whom they have no control and whom they can only desperately try to placate by magic or sacrifice. (Well, we’re still at the mercy of famine and flood, but at least we now understand that in large part it’s our own fault.) For our forebears, the world was different than it is for us, and not always for the better. The “modern,” scientific, technological view of the world brings with it (or should bring with it; it certainly demands) a maturity, a sense of responsibility, which is appropriate and necessary to our full stature as human beings created in God’s image. Superstition is not a fitting stance or behavior pattern for the children of God redeemed by the blood of God’s Christ! But clearly also there is a very real danger of overemphasizing and overestimating our own competence and our own degree of control over the world, and we very easily assume that the evils of the world just need a little more applied technology, a bit of sociological adjustment, one more Federal program, and everything will be made well again.
St. Paul is telling us this morning — for our purposes I’m assuming Paul wrote the Letter to the Ephesians; there’s a fair amount of serious and legitimate dispute about that, but for the moment let’s just go with it — St. Paul is telling us that the enemies of the Kingdom of God are not just private evils and personal sins; something much more is at stake. (And thus Christian faith is not, cannot be, must not be concerned just with personal morality and private spirituality.) (Bishop Katharine said this a few weeks ago and a bunch of people beat up on her about it. But of course she was right. She reads Paul.) Paul talks about “the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” — within his own world framework what he’s talking about are demonic spirits, and that’s probably not the way we’d put it; nor should it be the way for us to put it, I don’t think. But the truth is that there are powers of evil which are bigger than private hearts; the evil of the world is greater than the sum of its parts. Technologies, ideologies, “isms,” political and economic structures, vested interests, communications media, public opinion polls, the infamous “They” (as in, “They say that...”) — all of these can be “evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”
Against all this we as Christians are called to stand.
And as the evil against which we must stand and struggle is larger than our own personal petty sinfulnesses, even, apparently, larger than all our own personal petty sinfulnesses put together, so we cannot rely simply upon our own strength, our own wisdom, our own virtue. They aren’t enough. They are too easily corrupted. No, St Paul calls us to rely on “the whole armor of God.”
But let us note carefully what that armor is (listen to St Paul again): “Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Here are God’s weapons: truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, salvation, the Word of God. Not our own swords, but only the “Sword of the Spirit.” We cannot use evil’s own weapons against it. In this realm of what ultimately matters, we cannot fight fire with fire. We don’t need any more Crusades, no more wars of religion, no more inquisitions, no more persecutions. God’s Kingdom is served not by power and force and craft, but by humility and patience and love. And always, in all things, by constancy in prayer, through which the powers of evil within ourselves are vanquished by God’s grace, and we, ever more closely conformed to the Reign of God, are strengthened as faithful soldiers of the Cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
More on Absalom
Here's another -- and much better! -- sermon on David and Absalom from last Sunday. This is by the Very Rev. Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St. Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow.
http://www.thurible.net/20090809/davids-lamentation/
A hat tip to the Mad Priest ("Of course, I could be wrong..." http://revjph.blogspot.com/) who passed this on.
http://www.thurible.net/20090809/davids-lamentation/
A hat tip to the Mad Priest ("Of course, I could be wrong..." http://revjph.blogspot.com/) who passed this on.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Sermon - 9 August 2009
PROPER 14 / 10 PENTECOST — 9 August 2009
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 am
2Sam 18:5-9,15,31-33 Ps 130 Eph 4:25-5:2 John 6:35,41-51
“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!”
I have commented before — I think it was to you last summer, but perhaps it was in another
parish — that one of the great opportunities of the Revised Common Lectionary, and particularly Track One thereof, is that we read great stories from the Hebrew Scriptures at the Sunday Eucharist, stories that in the past never quite fit in with the rest of the Sunday readings. (Well, they still don’t fit in, but we no longer care!) Of course we have always read them if we have some systematic way of reading through the Bible, such as the Divine Office (Morning and Evening Prayer), By the way, the Office Lectionary just this Friday and yesterday caught up with the David and Bathsheba story we read at the Eucharist on the last two Sundays; and for fun I got the old Gregory Peck-Susan Hayward movie from Netflix and watched it last night! Yeah, well… Very Hollywood. An interesting take on the story, though. An imaginative incorporation of some tales from elsewhere in the Books of Samuel. Somewhere there a Strict Rule that Hollywood can never do a story from the Bible straight.)
For the next two weeks the Office Lectionary will be working through the Absalom saga, of
which we get just a little piece today. Which is the downside of Track One of the lectionary. The Absalom story goes on for eight chapters (beginning with Chapter 13 of the Second Book of Samuel), and it is a rich, fascinating, and complex tale. I encourage you to go home today, or this week, asking yourself, “What was that Absalom business all about?” and take your Bibles and start in with 2nd Samuel 13. It’s a story that has inspired other stories — I think of the novel Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner, which I’m sure some of you have read and I suspect others of you have not read (not yet; that would include me!).
The Absalom saga is a story about how we manage to mess up our lives by a series of bad
decisions. And the fact that they may have been well-intentioned at the time really doesn’t help. The roots of it are actually a consequence of the Bathsheba story; you may recall last Sunday we heard the prophet Nathan chew David out about his murder of Uriah the Hittite, and he said, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.…Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house.…” (In the movie the prophet Nathan was played by Raymond Massey, so you know this was serious business!) What goes around comes around, and it starts coming around when David’s son Amnon has the hots for his half-sister Tamar (his half-brother Absalom’s full sister). Well, the Hebrew text says he “loved” her, and that’s how it’s usually translated into English, but “had the hots for” seems to be more to the point, since it quickly becomes clear that “love” is not the issue. This is not a Sunday School Bible story, by the way. So if the kids would like to color on their bulletins for a while now, that might be a good idea. (We might also note that the folks who talk a lot about “the Biblical doctrine of marriage” might want to explain themselves a little more clearly.)
Anyway, Amnon manages to get Tamar up to his room, where he rapes her, and then in disgust throws her out. (The biblical scholar Phyllis Tickle includes this passage as one of the Bible’s “Texts of Terror.” Yes.) When King David finds out about this, he is very angry, but he — does nothing. Amnon is his firstborn and heir-apparent, the “crown prince.” And after all, David is hardly on the moral high ground, as you will recall from the last couple of weeks. Still: Absalom is not only enraged at his brother for having violated his sister, he is also deeply angry with his father for not doing anything about it. Absalom bides his time, but in due course he engineers Amnon’s murder, and then flees into exile. The story goes on; ultimately Absalom comes back to Jerusalem, but he is already plotting rebellion to dethrone and replace his father David. And by the time we get to today’s part of the story, Absalom is leading an open revolution; he declares himself king at Hebron (where David had originally become king in Saul’s place before his conquest of Jerusalem). David flees to the Jordan valley, and Absalom occupies Jerusalem. (There is a whole series of intriguing little subplots in connection with all this. This is not a simple story!)
Well, now, comes the great climactic battle. The royal army of David — apparently mostly men of Judah, David’s own tribe — defeat Absalom’s insurgents, apparently mostly Israelites from the northern tribes. (The tension between the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah goes back long before the division of the kingdom following the death of King Solomon.) Absalom himself gets his hair caught in a tree. We learned earlier [14:26] that Absalom had a magnificent head of hair, which he cut annually, and the hair trimmings weighed five pounds; so let this be a lesson for you boys: Get a haircut! (Not a problem for some of us.) But I digress. Absalom gets his hair caught in the branches of an oak tree as he rides under it (Israel in those days was heavily forested, before the loggers and the sheepherders over the centuries turned it into a desert; there’s an environmental lesson in that; but I digress again). Today’s reading leaves out a few verses of plot here; it’s actually David’s general and all-purpose hit-man Joab who first plunges three javelins into Absalom’s heart, before his flunkies finish him off. We might note that Joab has a long history of
being David’s hired gun: it was he who killed King Saul’s general Abner after the death of Saul; it was he who set up the death of Uriah the Hittite at David’s order. Joab was the guy whom David used to keep his own hands clean of blood. Now after the death of Absalom David can mourn the death of his son, in a scene which is well known, and deeply touching, the deep grief of a father who has lost his son — a grief which is, alas, not an unknown experience in any age. But we should also realize that David’s grief should not be taken completely at face value. In the chapter after today’s reading, Joab challenges David about this — he reminds me of Dr. Phil: “David, what were you thinking? We all just risked our lives to save your throne, and you’re whining about that faithless brat of a boy. Get over it!”
I said at the beginning that the Absalom saga is a story about how we manage to mess up our
lives by a series of bad decisions. And the fact that they may have been well-intentioned at the time really doesn’t help. I think this is the appeal of David especially among the figures of Jewish history recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. A great leader, a hero, most certainly, but a very real and deeply flawed human being. Intensely devoted to the Lord God of Israel, and yet over and over he keeps finding ways to mess up — for which he must pay very high and painful prices. Just like us? Well, I hope that we are not just like him. But, alas, we too manage to mess up our lives by bad decisions, if usually, I hope, in less catastrophic ways. But in any case, I hope we understand that God is with us — God is with us even when we abandon him. God will not save us from our own consequences, as he did not save David. But God does not leave us. God stays with us. God weeps for us. God loves us.
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 am
2Sam 18:5-9,15,31-33 Ps 130 Eph 4:25-5:2 John 6:35,41-51
“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!”
I have commented before — I think it was to you last summer, but perhaps it was in another
parish — that one of the great opportunities of the Revised Common Lectionary, and particularly Track One thereof, is that we read great stories from the Hebrew Scriptures at the Sunday Eucharist, stories that in the past never quite fit in with the rest of the Sunday readings. (Well, they still don’t fit in, but we no longer care!) Of course we have always read them if we have some systematic way of reading through the Bible, such as the Divine Office (Morning and Evening Prayer), By the way, the Office Lectionary just this Friday and yesterday caught up with the David and Bathsheba story we read at the Eucharist on the last two Sundays; and for fun I got the old Gregory Peck-Susan Hayward movie from Netflix and watched it last night! Yeah, well… Very Hollywood. An interesting take on the story, though. An imaginative incorporation of some tales from elsewhere in the Books of Samuel. Somewhere there a Strict Rule that Hollywood can never do a story from the Bible straight.)
For the next two weeks the Office Lectionary will be working through the Absalom saga, of
which we get just a little piece today. Which is the downside of Track One of the lectionary. The Absalom story goes on for eight chapters (beginning with Chapter 13 of the Second Book of Samuel), and it is a rich, fascinating, and complex tale. I encourage you to go home today, or this week, asking yourself, “What was that Absalom business all about?” and take your Bibles and start in with 2nd Samuel 13. It’s a story that has inspired other stories — I think of the novel Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner, which I’m sure some of you have read and I suspect others of you have not read (not yet; that would include me!).
The Absalom saga is a story about how we manage to mess up our lives by a series of bad
decisions. And the fact that they may have been well-intentioned at the time really doesn’t help. The roots of it are actually a consequence of the Bathsheba story; you may recall last Sunday we heard the prophet Nathan chew David out about his murder of Uriah the Hittite, and he said, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.…Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house.…” (In the movie the prophet Nathan was played by Raymond Massey, so you know this was serious business!) What goes around comes around, and it starts coming around when David’s son Amnon has the hots for his half-sister Tamar (his half-brother Absalom’s full sister). Well, the Hebrew text says he “loved” her, and that’s how it’s usually translated into English, but “had the hots for” seems to be more to the point, since it quickly becomes clear that “love” is not the issue. This is not a Sunday School Bible story, by the way. So if the kids would like to color on their bulletins for a while now, that might be a good idea. (We might also note that the folks who talk a lot about “the Biblical doctrine of marriage” might want to explain themselves a little more clearly.)
Anyway, Amnon manages to get Tamar up to his room, where he rapes her, and then in disgust throws her out. (The biblical scholar Phyllis Tickle includes this passage as one of the Bible’s “Texts of Terror.” Yes.) When King David finds out about this, he is very angry, but he — does nothing. Amnon is his firstborn and heir-apparent, the “crown prince.” And after all, David is hardly on the moral high ground, as you will recall from the last couple of weeks. Still: Absalom is not only enraged at his brother for having violated his sister, he is also deeply angry with his father for not doing anything about it. Absalom bides his time, but in due course he engineers Amnon’s murder, and then flees into exile. The story goes on; ultimately Absalom comes back to Jerusalem, but he is already plotting rebellion to dethrone and replace his father David. And by the time we get to today’s part of the story, Absalom is leading an open revolution; he declares himself king at Hebron (where David had originally become king in Saul’s place before his conquest of Jerusalem). David flees to the Jordan valley, and Absalom occupies Jerusalem. (There is a whole series of intriguing little subplots in connection with all this. This is not a simple story!)
Well, now, comes the great climactic battle. The royal army of David — apparently mostly men of Judah, David’s own tribe — defeat Absalom’s insurgents, apparently mostly Israelites from the northern tribes. (The tension between the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah goes back long before the division of the kingdom following the death of King Solomon.) Absalom himself gets his hair caught in a tree. We learned earlier [14:26] that Absalom had a magnificent head of hair, which he cut annually, and the hair trimmings weighed five pounds; so let this be a lesson for you boys: Get a haircut! (Not a problem for some of us.) But I digress. Absalom gets his hair caught in the branches of an oak tree as he rides under it (Israel in those days was heavily forested, before the loggers and the sheepherders over the centuries turned it into a desert; there’s an environmental lesson in that; but I digress again). Today’s reading leaves out a few verses of plot here; it’s actually David’s general and all-purpose hit-man Joab who first plunges three javelins into Absalom’s heart, before his flunkies finish him off. We might note that Joab has a long history of
being David’s hired gun: it was he who killed King Saul’s general Abner after the death of Saul; it was he who set up the death of Uriah the Hittite at David’s order. Joab was the guy whom David used to keep his own hands clean of blood. Now after the death of Absalom David can mourn the death of his son, in a scene which is well known, and deeply touching, the deep grief of a father who has lost his son — a grief which is, alas, not an unknown experience in any age. But we should also realize that David’s grief should not be taken completely at face value. In the chapter after today’s reading, Joab challenges David about this — he reminds me of Dr. Phil: “David, what were you thinking? We all just risked our lives to save your throne, and you’re whining about that faithless brat of a boy. Get over it!”
I said at the beginning that the Absalom saga is a story about how we manage to mess up our
lives by a series of bad decisions. And the fact that they may have been well-intentioned at the time really doesn’t help. I think this is the appeal of David especially among the figures of Jewish history recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. A great leader, a hero, most certainly, but a very real and deeply flawed human being. Intensely devoted to the Lord God of Israel, and yet over and over he keeps finding ways to mess up — for which he must pay very high and painful prices. Just like us? Well, I hope that we are not just like him. But, alas, we too manage to mess up our lives by bad decisions, if usually, I hope, in less catastrophic ways. But in any case, I hope we understand that God is with us — God is with us even when we abandon him. God will not save us from our own consequences, as he did not save David. But God does not leave us. God stays with us. God weeps for us. God loves us.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Sermon -- 2 August 2009
PROPER 13 / 9 PENTECOST — 2 August 2009
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 a.m.
2 Sam 11:26-12:13a Ps 51:1-13 Eph 4:1-16 John 6:24-35
The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
A few Sundays ago over at Trinity in Iowa City I was observing that one of the features of the Revised Common Lectionary that we are now following is that it takes the Old Testament readings seriously as stories, indeed our stories, not just as some kind of prophecy of the Gospel reading for the day. That’s fine. The downside of that is that sometimes the stories themselves are fairly long, and so we don’t always get the full picture in any one Sunday. The selection from Second Samuel this morning assumes we remember last Sunday’s reading. We have to recall that the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s generals in the Israelite army, was named Bathsheba? Remember Bathsheba? Well, David had an affair with Bathsheba and got her pregnant, and then arranged to have her husband Uriah killed in battle against the Ammonites. But at the end of today’s reading the lectionary gnomes leave out the final part, another ten verses or so, after David confesses his sin: the Lord still punishes David by striking his and Bathsheba’s baby with a fatal illness. How just of God! (I’m not at all sure what the fundamentalists make of this story. I suspect that those who interpret the Bible strictly literally probably haven’t actually read it.) The story of David and Bathsheba was made into a fairly awful movie with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward back when even I was very young. I’ve put it in my Netflix queue. So we’ll see!
I have absolutely no idea how to link this story with the Gospel today. But it’s an important story for its own sake.
In the Gospel we have been hearing about the feeding of the five thousand. The folks got fed last week, you recall, as we switched from St. Mark’s Gospel to the sixth chapter of St. John to hear his account of the feeding. (The feeding of the multitude is the only story, apart from the Passion narrative, that occurs in all four Gospels. Actually, it occurs six times in four Gospels. But I digress.) This Sunday we continue working through John’s sixth chapter, and we will keep that on for a few weeks yet, hearing Jesus' discourse about the Bread of Life, before going back to St. Mark at the end of the month.
So today the folks catch up with Jesus again after the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus tells them, "You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." (Not because you put your faith in the in-breaking Reign of God, but because you got your own perceived needs met.) "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." God does not always agree with us about what is really important, or about what we really need.
Well, then, the folks go on, "what must we do to perform the works of God?" And Jesus replies, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."
Believe in Jesus. What's this about? I've come to the conclusion that "believing in Jesus" is one of the most misunderstood notions in the Bible. "Believing in Jesus" is not the same thing as assenting to certain doctrines about Jesus. I don't mean that doctrines about Jesus aren't important, or that what the Church teaches about Jesus isn't true, or that we shouldn't believe them. I just don't think that's what Jesus was talking about when he said, "Believe in me." I also don't think Jesus meant anything very much like, "Accept me as your personal savior." I don't mean that personal commitment to Jesus isn't vitally important, I just mean that I don't think Jesus intended to present himself as an object of religion. Being doctrinally correct, and having a personal relationship with a savior, however important they may be, can still be ways that we satisfy our own perceived needs rather than commit ourselves to God's cause. When Jesus says, "Believe in me," I think he means, "Believe in the message I am telling you, believe in the word I speak to you as God's Word, believe in the Kingdom of God which I am proclaiming and enacting among you, believe in me as the one who embodies God's Reign." To believe that Jesus is the true bread which gives life to the world - not just that "Jesus is the True Bread," but that the bread which gives real life to the world is indeed precisely that which Jesus proclaims and enacts and embodies, the loving sovereignty of the living God — to believe that Jesus is the true bread which gives life to the world is to commit ourselves to his pattern of life as true human life, to commit ourselves to his values, to his cause, to his vision, as the values and cause and vision of God, to commit ourselves to him precisely as the Way and the Truth and the Life.
Specifically how does all this play out? Well, that's what we're given this life to work out. I don't think there are any cheap or easy answers. I certainly think we need to question all those assumptions which self-servingly try to turn God into the provider for our own perceived needs. I am convinced that when God is really providing for us, God is giving us what we really need in order to share with our Lord in giving life to the world.
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00 a.m.
2 Sam 11:26-12:13a Ps 51:1-13 Eph 4:1-16 John 6:24-35
The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
A few Sundays ago over at Trinity in Iowa City I was observing that one of the features of the Revised Common Lectionary that we are now following is that it takes the Old Testament readings seriously as stories, indeed our stories, not just as some kind of prophecy of the Gospel reading for the day. That’s fine. The downside of that is that sometimes the stories themselves are fairly long, and so we don’t always get the full picture in any one Sunday. The selection from Second Samuel this morning assumes we remember last Sunday’s reading. We have to recall that the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s generals in the Israelite army, was named Bathsheba? Remember Bathsheba? Well, David had an affair with Bathsheba and got her pregnant, and then arranged to have her husband Uriah killed in battle against the Ammonites. But at the end of today’s reading the lectionary gnomes leave out the final part, another ten verses or so, after David confesses his sin: the Lord still punishes David by striking his and Bathsheba’s baby with a fatal illness. How just of God! (I’m not at all sure what the fundamentalists make of this story. I suspect that those who interpret the Bible strictly literally probably haven’t actually read it.) The story of David and Bathsheba was made into a fairly awful movie with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward back when even I was very young. I’ve put it in my Netflix queue. So we’ll see!
I have absolutely no idea how to link this story with the Gospel today. But it’s an important story for its own sake.
In the Gospel we have been hearing about the feeding of the five thousand. The folks got fed last week, you recall, as we switched from St. Mark’s Gospel to the sixth chapter of St. John to hear his account of the feeding. (The feeding of the multitude is the only story, apart from the Passion narrative, that occurs in all four Gospels. Actually, it occurs six times in four Gospels. But I digress.) This Sunday we continue working through John’s sixth chapter, and we will keep that on for a few weeks yet, hearing Jesus' discourse about the Bread of Life, before going back to St. Mark at the end of the month.
So today the folks catch up with Jesus again after the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus tells them, "You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." (Not because you put your faith in the in-breaking Reign of God, but because you got your own perceived needs met.) "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." God does not always agree with us about what is really important, or about what we really need.
Well, then, the folks go on, "what must we do to perform the works of God?" And Jesus replies, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."
Believe in Jesus. What's this about? I've come to the conclusion that "believing in Jesus" is one of the most misunderstood notions in the Bible. "Believing in Jesus" is not the same thing as assenting to certain doctrines about Jesus. I don't mean that doctrines about Jesus aren't important, or that what the Church teaches about Jesus isn't true, or that we shouldn't believe them. I just don't think that's what Jesus was talking about when he said, "Believe in me." I also don't think Jesus meant anything very much like, "Accept me as your personal savior." I don't mean that personal commitment to Jesus isn't vitally important, I just mean that I don't think Jesus intended to present himself as an object of religion. Being doctrinally correct, and having a personal relationship with a savior, however important they may be, can still be ways that we satisfy our own perceived needs rather than commit ourselves to God's cause. When Jesus says, "Believe in me," I think he means, "Believe in the message I am telling you, believe in the word I speak to you as God's Word, believe in the Kingdom of God which I am proclaiming and enacting among you, believe in me as the one who embodies God's Reign." To believe that Jesus is the true bread which gives life to the world - not just that "Jesus is the True Bread," but that the bread which gives real life to the world is indeed precisely that which Jesus proclaims and enacts and embodies, the loving sovereignty of the living God — to believe that Jesus is the true bread which gives life to the world is to commit ourselves to his pattern of life as true human life, to commit ourselves to his values, to his cause, to his vision, as the values and cause and vision of God, to commit ourselves to him precisely as the Way and the Truth and the Life.
Specifically how does all this play out? Well, that's what we're given this life to work out. I don't think there are any cheap or easy answers. I certainly think we need to question all those assumptions which self-servingly try to turn God into the provider for our own perceived needs. I am convinced that when God is really providing for us, God is giving us what we really need in order to share with our Lord in giving life to the world.
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