Insights with Seitz: Symphony of Scripture

Trinity Sunday, May 30th, 2021

Trinity Sunday is the one Sunday of the year dedicated to the mature confession, following on from the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that God is three in one, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The collect for the day lines it out: to confess the true faith is to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the divine majesty, to worship the unity. A bit of a mouthful and sounding symmetrically algebraic and not doxology or an act of worship of the Living God, which at its heart it is.

We should stop and ask why lectionary readings might be thought appropriate to our Sunday at all. Are they a kind of two-dimensional curtain at the back of the stage, setting the scene but in front of which the real trinity drama plays out.

Given the non biblical terminology, a real challenge is getting around think of the Trinity as piece of subsequent theological reflection arising from church councils, as the orthodox position defeated bad alternatives on either side. A 4th century idea one would have to back-date into a lectionary context.

If instead we are to think of the confession as arising from the sentences and paragraphs of scripture, which was the orthodox position en route to Nicaea and Chacledon, just how a might a lectionary properly display that. Which OT, Epistle, Psalm and Gospel readings will we hear. If the confession is out beyond the NT in time, then why any readings from it much less the OT at all? Just recite the creed and let that carry the post-biblical weight.

Of course it could be possible to say—as in a debate with Jehovah’s Witnesses—that the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit does indeed have a NT warrant, in at least some kind of germ form, pregnant form, if not more explicitly, and cite the relevant texts – John 1, quotes from Paul’s letters, or the Book of Revelation. Once this argument is nailed down, so it would go, the OT texts would come alongside as warrants in a retrospective sense, working back from a NT base. A search for threesomes in a witness whose literal sense is being manipulated, or recalibrated, though of course for understandable reasons of subsequent development in thinking. Seeing the beginning on the basis of the ending, where the clues have been provided.

Yet in fact the movement was the reverse. Texts like Proverbs 8 and Genesis 1 – which are read in Years A and C—were central to the arguments early Christians made about God as trinity based upon a Bible they shared with Jewish interlocutors, and in time, others. While the NT was itself coming to form. The NT itself testifies to this. What was happening in Jesus and who Jesus was, was in accordance with the scriptures. Jesus opened eyes to the scriptures everywhere about him in his resurrection eye opening time with them.

In His earthly life he defended the first commandment –The Lord, He along, is Lord God–and at the same time said I and the Father are one. These two seemingly distinct things rhymed. David called him Lord. Before Abraham I was. Moses spoke of me.

The use of a Greek gloss kurios, already in place, for the divine name Adonai, Lord, and its application to Jesus himself in confession and in worship makes the point efficiently. And it is the Holy Spirit as Lord that enables our seeing this and confessing it as in act of praise and worship.When we cry Abba! Father! It is the spirit bearing witness with our spirit. So our reading from Romans 8. As Paul puts it elsewhere: No one calls Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit. In the central poem of Philippians, and in our lesson from John a few weeks back: God has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name —The Name of the One God—so that in turn at his name, Lord Jesus, every knee shall bow to the Glory of the Father. This is a Holy Spirit driven congruence itself arising from the promise of Isaiah given to Israel in the Holy Spirit speaking to him. For by myself, by my name, I swear, to me every knee shall bow. So Isaiah 45.

When this central and fairly uncomplicated central fact is in place—one Lord God, one Lord Jesus, one Lord Spirit—one can see that there is no back curtain and main stage but one and the same divine drama across time and scripture both. The lectionary itself – no matter when its sets down—is a testimony every Sunday to this central theological fact at the heart of OT and NT together. The creeds use a different conceptual framework—God of God, light of light—but the same judgments link them both.

A shorthand form of Trinitarian and scriptural alignment is found in the Nicene creed’s brief declaration, that the Holy Spirit “spake by the prophets.” By the prophets is meant the prophetic character of the OT scriptures taken as a whole, through and through. So while certain specific texts were favorites in the history of the church’s exegesis, it is God himself and the way the monotheism of the OT functions to describes his dual majestic and intimate character that is prophetic.

God spoke in creating. His word is his intimate disclosure of himself toward us. In the beginning was the word. And God said. Elohim is the plural, majestic divine self. His voice is himself toward us and toward creation. His voice is upon the waters, is a powerful voice of splendor, it splits flames, makes calves skips and raises up in us a voice in response, as all in the temple cry Glory. His voice is his incarnate Lordship. The Fathers routinely had recourse to this way of conceptualizing, as did the early Jewish tradition as well. Moses did not look on God’s majesty, but by his voice God made himself known. Isaiah knows he is in God’s presence, what he claims to see of God’s self can only create in him a sense of being lost, of being unclean, of needing to have his sin expunged. God’s guarding attendants oblige. Then he can hear God’s voice, the voice of the Lord, in plural reference, “who will go for us.” “Let us make man in our image.” The “spake by the prophets” work of the Holy Spirit, the voice of the Lord, and the Abba Father are the Elohim LORD God of Israel’s experience and through them, by this speaking shared through them to us, our own. And the word became flesh and dwelt among.

The Gospel reading from John 3 focuses on this Holy Spirit disclosing now when it pertains to the voice, word, Lord himself incarnate, and not made known under signs and figures as to the prophets of old. For this disclosing, for this grasping of Jesus as Lord God, one will need to be born from above. The Holy Spirit will act as before he spoke by the prophets, appropriate now to this final disclosing act. Jesus incarnate and standing before Nicodemus is the very Lord God one with his Father, present in him, as Nicodemus confesses, and by that presence able to do signs in his earthly frame. He has descended from above, the veil of signs and figures now giving way to a distinct manner of Lordship in the flesh. This is no easier to grasp, or more proximate in some special metabolic sense, for even as incarnate Lord those around him struggle to comprehend him as Lord God. Descended from heaven and returning in glory. And for the time of his sojourning as this descended Lord, he will be lifted up in his incarnate frame, just as the serpent figure of death and life and healing Moses lifted up in his season, in the wilderness of God’s speaking by the prophets.

The very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit is that spirit speaking by the prophets, bringing new birth from above as promised to Nicodemus, and enabling us by his adopting power to cry out Abba Father, Jesus is Lord, and come Holy Spirit in threefold Holy, holy, holy.

Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 6th, 2021

For the first 22 Sundays of the Christian Year–through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Pentecost and Trinity Sundays—we have followed a consistent lectionary pattern. Easter was an exception given the use of Acts as the first lesson and a roughly continuous reading through 1 John.

That pattern involves a first OT reading and Psalm which have been chosen to complement the Gospel reading for the day, and at times the Epistle as well. “In many and various ways” the OT, Psalm and Gospel selections display important relationships between God’s work in Israel and in Jesus Christ.

With this Sunday we enter a different terrain. The patterns referred to just now continue, but on a Track Two optional path. Track One corresponds to a different conception, one in which the OT readings are not chosen to correlate in a conscious way with the Gospel, but rather are provided to allow the church to follow the narrative line within an OT book. This is not really possible, however, given the size of the OT, so the readings are a sort of ‘greatest hits’ of a book. So for the next 11 Sundays, reaching into the month of August in the long Pentecost Season, or Ordinary Time, we hear portions of 1 and 2 Samuel for the first reading. Yet all told, there are 55 total chapters in the twin books of Samuel so Track 1 can do its job only in this piecemeal sense. (Compare the continuous reading of 2 Corinthians we are also pursuing at the same time, and how it is able to cover the letter given its much shorter length). What it seeks to do is depart from a selection-for-complementarity approach and allow the OT to ‘have its own voice,’ so to say. 

Let me say a word further by way of commentary. Since Pentecost Season runs over several months and is the longest sustained lectionary period of the year—with as many as 30 Sundays—it offers the preacher, reader, church in general an opportunity to do some narrative style exposition. For the OT, if Track one is chosen, or of the Epistle. I am not going to pursue that tack here, but mention it just the same. The lectionary is a servant and not master and it offers flexible choices for setting forth the Christian Bible as a whole.

Track one introduces narratives about the prophet Samuel, beginning with his call as a boy in the Temple, and we will hear three episodes in which he plays a role in the run-up to the anointing of David, over the coming Sundays. This is the same reading which was used back at the very beginning of Year B, for Epiphany 2, where it was paired with the call of Nathanael in John’s Gospel. There it played a complementary role, in contrasting the ready obedience of Samuel with the incredulity of Nathanael, and the surprising persistence of God and Christ with them both. There we had Psalm 139, read for this Sunday, as well. “Lord you have searched me out and known me, like the boy Samuel, you know my sitting down in the temple and my rising up to run to Eli, you discern my thoughts from afar.”

The call of Samuel comes to set a new direction, away from the direction of the Book of Judges, and the wickedness of the sons of Eli. And who is this obedient and righteous Samuel but the surprising son of Hannah, whose aged giving birth to him launches the people of Israel onto a fresh new path. So the Books of Samuel open. Her song of joy is the model for the Magnificat sung centuries later at the surprising birth of another Savior, King David’s Greater Son. God is moving in mysterious ways, working past the obstacles on the human plane to bring into being his way. Eli demands to hear about this fresh new direction even if it means judgment over him and his own house. And from that sober request of the young boy spirals forth his important recognition: It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him. And so it will be.

Our Gospel reading for the day takes us back into the early chapters of Mark, where our journey in Year B first began. Chapter One’s “and immediately Jesus” punctuated narrative line hurtles us past the introduction to and baptism by John, wilderness temptation, Galilee preaching, calling of disciples, exorcism and healing in Capernaum, the cleansing of a leper, the healing of a paralytic and calling of the tax collector Levi. And with this last action a new theme emerges which will track right through to the end: earthly hostility and opposition, matching the spiritual opposition in Chapter One. The whirlwind honeymoon of Jesus stunning, “and immediately,” activity in chapter one has come to an end. The Book of Judges and the wicked sons of Eli enter in the form of Jesus’ opponents.

Jesus insists that the Sabbath was not created by God as a means of preventing acts of mercy – the details of which disputed within the Judaisms of the day, for which we here find one harsher Pharisaic version. David himself operated within the parameters of mercy and necessity, Jesus reminds them. The scriptures do not present the picture they are distorting so as to attack him. He then enters the synagogue for round two, this time concerning his response to a man with a withered hand. Their silence before his question shows he has got to the heart of the matter. And he rounds on them in anger. So the battle for the authority of God in the Kingdom Jesus has come to bring is on. His destruction is now a matter of conscious planning – a conspiracy of certain Pharisees with the political party of the Herodians.

The complementary OT reading chosen for the day is from the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy’s chapter version. Here we find the longer grounding logic than in Exodus. Those outside the community—resident aliens and slaves—are also to enjoy the Sabbath. The generosity of God extends to them. In this manner, they are to be put in mind that they were also once slaves and that God had shown compassion to them in delivering them. The Sabbath commandment is intended to teach compassion, by recalling the conditions under which it was given. As such it captures the inner nerve of Jesus response to the Pharisees who would condemn—and plot to destroy him. His actions as those of God himself, as Deuteronomy extrapolates it. 

Psalm 81 helps forge the link, in case we miss it, between Deuteronomy and Jesus in Mark’s depiction on the Sabbath. The statute and the law for Israel, given by the God of Jacob, was a solemn charge laid upon the Israel coming out of Egypt, which in turn lifted off a burden: I eased his shoulder from the burden, his hands were set free from bearing the load. Jesus in the flesh does just this and acts in just this spirit. Deuteronomy reminds Israel that the law, and the Sabbath expressly, was given in order to remember this. I saved you. Listen to me, Jesus says to those Pharisees opposing him, I admonish you. I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt and said in my burden lifting statute: Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.
To conclude our overview for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, we have the Epistle reading shared by tracks one and two. This is part of a semi-continuous reading of the second lesson, a pattern familiar throughout the lectionary year, here in Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians. What is weak and fallible in us—our earthen jar lives in Christ—is precisely so. We proclaim not ourselves nor our capacities, for they are clay, but Jesus Christ himself, the only source of strength and hope. Our weakness is not something to overcome so we might be better, but the way in which we come to understand the glory and power that come from God. We have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power, made manifest in acts of mercy in the synagogue on the Sabbath, comes from God.

Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13th, 2021

Our readings for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost are, for both tracks, a portion of Mark 3—the confrontation between Jesus and certain scribes come down from Jerusalem—the continuous Epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 4, a portion from 1 Samuel paired with Psalm 138, and for the complementary Track 2 a text from Genesis with Psalm 130 chosen to emphasize the satanic character of the confrontation with Jesus we read in the Gospel. 

Let me start by offering a brief summary of the contents of 1 Samuel, the focus of Track One, that is, those portions left out between the Sunday selections, the call of Samuel in chapter 3 and today’s reading about the anointing of the ill-fated Saul in chapter 8. This will help us fill in the blanks and better understand the portions from 1 Samuel Track One is providing according to its “let the OT have its own voice” plot. I can recall, parenthetically, doing a major Track One type walk through the OT and NT organized in a teaching volume called The Story. For my part, I found catching people up on what got left out far more interesting, and why what was chosen, chosen.

What the overall narrative line makes clear is this: Samuel preserves Israel during his faithful tenure. He is a prophet who assures that assaults from enemies do not overwhelm God’s people. His leadership is sound and reliable. The threats are real and sustained, but God uses Samuel to best purpose.

When he becomes old, in time, the people fear the future without him. Their request, however, for a King is not favorable to God; fear is handled by God in his sovereign ways. When grounded as well, “to be like the nations” – that is exactly not what Israel is to be. She is to be a light to the nations. Different. Holy. In relationship with a Saving Lord on their behalf.
God tells Samuel to warn the people about their request and he does. They ignore him and double down. God clarifies it is a rejection of him as King, as Lord of a different idea of nationality and kingship, and not a rejection of Samuel.

In chapters preceding this Samuel is sent to anoint Saul as nagid. Ruler. God has heard the cries of Israel for help. We hear in this nagid a concession to a request but on different terms as a King “so as to be like the nations.”

The people react to this, however, as consistent with their cry for a King. Samuel warns them. Strict obedience is the name of this game they have demanded they will play.
We watch as Saul is strictly obedient vis-a-vis his son Jonathon but not in respect of Samuel. And so this Kingship suffers the fate appropriate to it and those who requested it.
God rejects Saul under the conditions of Kingship as strict obedience to him, in spite of Saul’s stature, good looks, and obvious success as a nagid in battle. It is hard not to view him as caught up in the vortex of wrongly grounded requests and a high bar for compliance.
One usual way of handling the complexity of the narrative unfolding is to assign the bits in tension to sources or different authors. But this only defers the interpretation of the text as it presently stands. I think it is better practice to assume the tensions have been left there precisely to convey the complexity. You want a King, you will have one, but things wrongly predicated run their course in strict ways and not generous ones.

I mentioned last week the way the Gospel of Mark transitioned from chapter one’s depiction of Jesus confronting spiritual forces of satan to his confrontation with the religious leaders who challenge his fellowship with tax collectors and his conduct on the Sabbath.

Today the two realms merge. The religious leaders seek to claim that Jesus is himself a challenge to them because he is at work for satan. Going out of one’s mind is often a charge of demonic possession. His very success in healing and carving out inroads in the territory of Satan – so much so that he can barely stop for food – ironically occasions their charge of possession.
Jesus makes two responses, the first long and the second a summary statement the actual fact of the matter. To bind up the strong man is to attack the realm of satan at its source, so as to plunder and destroy his house—his earthly domain of death and bondage. That is the reality of what he is up to.

The longer introduction to this succinct point consists of his rebuttal of the leaders’ charge that he is operating at Satan’s behest. That is nonsensical on its face, Jesus replies. Why would Satan dispatch Jesus to defeat his earthly authority. The charge they level is an admission that Jesus has been successful. He drives out demons. Even they get that much. Silencing them has not prevented their being recognized as driven out at his command. Satan would be divided against himself if he allowed such an activity and was the motive force behind it. No, Jesus is plundering the house of the strong man, and anyone who claims he is acting demonically shows themselves to be themselves on Satan’s side as such. The unpardonable sin is to see Jesus acting to defeat sin and death and bondage and attribute that to the Devil. 

The strong rebuke to his mothers and brothers and cousins must be heard in this even stronger context. They seek to restrain him. That is wrong. He must be about his Father’s business, as Luke’s milder version of his push-back goes. It is the people who have wondered about his mental state, and they act on that basis. Presumably out of concern.

As our reading ends they appear as those calling for him to come aside. He refuses and it is to those gathered that he directs his words. You are brothers and sisters and family. In the work I am given to undertake, such will be the charges made about me, and the challenges I must defeat. So it goes. Follow me. Do not try solace or concern, well-motivated though that might be on a human plane or in human families. To be in my family is to allow me to do my Father’s work, who is Your Father.

The rejection of Samuel is a rejection of God himself. A request to have things as seems best to us on the earthly plane—let us have a king like other nations—is a rejection of God’s kingdom and the King he has in view, whose coming is in his timing and purpose. Jesus’ kingdom brings confrontation from those who cannot see how God is working in him to bring about healing and the defeat of all hostile forces. Yet he is creating through this his special family.

The Genesis reading shows us just how deeply the assault on God’s good creation rends the peace he intended. Fear has entered the stage, fear like that of the people requesting a king. Dissembling and accusation. Satan strikes the head of all humanity. It will take the offspring of Eve to strike back in victory, even a victory over death and enmity. And along the way it will be the forgiveness and forbearance of God with his people which demonstrates his love so strong it teaches us fear and reverence. So Psalm 130. The Psalm chosen to come alongside 1 Samuel 8 reminds us that whatever King God does come in time to bring will only be King in praise and in obedience before God’s Kingship, unlike the ways of nations, who must find their own praise before the Lord. This is the safe refuge from enemies the people cry out for, and only this, as Samuel has taught them.

Or in the words of today’s Epistle. 

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 20th, 2021

For the 4th Sunday after Pentecost we continue our 1 Samuel readings, Epistle texts from 2 Corinthians, two short parables from the Gospel of Mark, paired with OT equivalents in the form of Ezekiel’s allegory/parable/riddle concerning the great cedar, and the Psalms of response keyed to the two different OT readings.

For last Sunday we tried to summarize the main story line of the Samuel material. In spite of grave threats from the Philistines and others, during Samuel’s long tenure Israel was faithfully preserved from attack. The people feared his passing and asked for a King. Samuel warned them solemnly against this and they persisted in their request, which God granted. However this would require a very strict obedience on their part and Saul’s. In the passage which precedes ours today we hear that God has withdrawn whatever even reluctant support he sought to give on behalf of Saul and the people’s request. Saul refused to carry out the direct command of God and Samuel, and using his handsome head, spared the most handsome portions of the spoils he had been directed to destroy. Pragmatics are not what God requires, but obedience. When confronted by Samuel, within earshot of the bleating reserves, Saul confesses he feared the people and acted in that spirit. He desired their approval. Following on from a similar occasion of cutting the bed to fit his own best sense of things, this time God’s patience and Samuel’s has run out.

The entire complex of narratives involving Saul and the request of Israel, wrongly predicated—“that we might be like the nations”—offers a chilling tale that nevertheless raises up in us sympathy even as the morale of the story is clear. Watch what you ask for, especially out of fear, for the requirements laid down for this are sometimes worse than patiently waiting upon God. Even Samuel finds it in himself to grieve. But that doesn’t change the reality. God dispatches him, and he goes on what he considers a dangerous mission. Here the coming depiction of Saul is anticipated, wherein he becomes the erratic, unpredictable, dangerous, unstable shadow tracking the Lord’s anointed, David, son of Jesse for the remainder of the books of Samuel.

The outward appearances—strength, stature, the grandeur of nations with their battle machines and kings—these are of no interest to the Lord. He looks inside. The ones we do not think the world will admire, these he puts to service. David is young, untested, not the one we would instinctively choose—so too Samuel’s instincts are off. He thought the eldest son of Jesse the best candidate. But God has in view the one he has in view. Saul anoints him. The spirit comes mightily upon him.

The psalm captures the scene well. “Now I know the LORD gives victory to his anointed. Some put trust in horses and chariots. But we call upon the name of the LORD. O Lord, give victory to the King.”

The other OT reading is not only chosen because it comes alongside the sowing parables of the Gospel lesson from Mark, with its image of a spring which becomes a noble cedar. It is also likely directly influencing the parable of the mustard seed as detailed by Mark. From smallest to greatest, this is the kingdom God is sovereignly bringing to flower. The parable in Ezekiel describes the competition amongst the nations, Babylon and Egypt, and the last of the Davidic rulers, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, one preserved and one blinded and hauled into captivity, caught up in the machinations of warring powers. Yet from the Davidic tree brought down, God will take a sprig. It will grow on a mountaintop, like the mount Zion of Micah chapter 4. And all the birds of the air will find shelter under it. In Ezekiel the reference is to the nations of the earth. The phrase emerges in Mark as “so that the birds of the air can make their nest in its shade,” the shade of the great mustard plant with the tiniest and most improbable of beginnings. In the kingdom Jesus is bringing, and whose inner truth he explains to his disciples, all the nations of the earth will find place in its shade. The first parable speaks of the need for sowing the word, and after that God produces the growth in ways hidden and mysterious. The second speaks of the mystery whereby the seemingly small and insignificant is by design en route to becoming a plant capable of sheltering all nations. In a funny way, the reading from 1 Samuel – the choosing of the boy David – fits here as well. David must be brought into view, for no one bothered to let him pass before Samuel. And yet this is the one who will become King and will portend the coming of the King Jesus.

The Psalm chosen for Track Two speaks of the righteous flourishing like great trees, the palm and cedar, because planted in the house of God’s purposes. They shall be green and succulent.

Mark’s double parable—the seed growing secretly and the mustard seed’s grand outcome—belongs in a longer section, which begins at the start of chapter 4 with the parable of the soils, rocky, thorny and good. Quick growth is not sustainable, and thorny growth is hampered from the outset. But good soil produces good growth, and it happens according to the mystery of God’s designing, just as the soil all by itself produces by stages stalk, head and full grain. The parables have the effect of closing ears, Jesus tells the disciples gathered around him. Isaiah and Ezekiel precede him in this truth. But to those close to him, the true meaning is given so that comprehension is possible, and so growth in good soil will occur. Even if mustard sized, the way ahead is prepared. Mark puts the readers in a position to come alongside the disciples, in the good soil it is our privilege, close to Jesus, to inhabit.

In our epistle reading we see one of those remarkable places where, though a serial reading crossing the main terrain of 2 Corinthians, we nevertheless have a remarkable symphonic fit with 1 Samuel and the Gospel and even Ezekiel 17. We walk by faith and not by sight. We regard no one from a human point of view. God looks on the heart. God is taking care of the smallest of our comprehension, and seeing to its growth according to his purposes. This way of walking in faith means much is hidden from our view. But this is not a hindrance but belongs to a new way of thinking and living. We are no longer living for ourselves but have been transported into a new soil where God is bringing about growth. We have a king who is not our heart’s desire, nor our fear’s longing, but is the one God’s has called forth from the baggage where his eye alone sees. This is not seeing from a human point of view, but can only be described with the language of new creation. Old and familiar patterns—let us be like the nations—are passing away. The kingdoms of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah have been brought low. But a sprig no larger than a mustard seed is all that God needs to produce the noble cedar of his kingdom. We are given the secrets of the kingdom that his parables otherwise veil, by sitting at his feet. There the good soil is, there the secret growth goes from stalk to head to full grain, and there the cedar capable of sheltering all the nations makes its way into the heavens. Jesus is himself the sprig, the mustard seed, the ruddy David behind the baggage, the first stalk. And he is at the same time the noble cedar in which is room for all the nations on earth to find shelter, who look to him as Lord and King.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 27th, 2021

On the face of it the transition from the parable instruction of Jesus to the crowds, with private tutorials for the disciples, to the stilling of the sea in today’s reading seems abrupt. The address of Jesus as “teacher” offers some help but still makes for a very different classroom in a boat at sea. Nothing parabolic but indeed quite real in a squall. There may be a bit of transition, though subtly conveyed, in his announcement that they are leaving the crowds behind to go to the other side. If the implication of “to the other side of the sea” means where the gentile populations are prominent, then the reference to giving shelter to the birds of the air, as the previous mustard seed teaching described it, would be pertinent. In Ezekiel’s use of the phrase, recycled in Mark, the great cedar sheltered the nations, described as birds, and so too the amazing mustard plant with the same depiction of national safety.

But equally, we can see in both the instruction in parables and in the stormy sea God at work behind the scenes, as it were. Seed growing secretly. Surprising tiny seed growing to grandeur. Jesus asleep but fully in charge. A kind of anti-Jonah, obedient and all in, surprised at the fear but competent to make the seas obey him. The sea is that unruly force that seems to challenge God’s dominion, but over which he rules, from the moment of creation, through the great flood, and as the psalms describe it, a powerful voice over the waters day by day, sitting enthroned above the flood. As is Jesus arising from his sleep enthroned on the waters. “Peace, be still.”
Any number of Old Testament texts might be called upon to reinforce the point, but our selection from Job is a very good one. We find ourselves at the opening of the divine speech from the whirlwind, in God’s response to Job in chapter 38. For Job though the speech is a fearsome thing, it is also a response to him that silences his friends and moves past the subtle wisdom of Elihu, if that is the correct appraisal of the young man’s contribution. Job will be converted in this encounter and enabled to return to his famous intercessory prayer role, prior to being healed of his bodily afflictions. In this manner we see Satan defeated, who had said that no one would serve God for naught, for nothing but God’s own sake. Job does just that. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees you.” 

Or in our NT version, “Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?”

God speaks from inside the windstorm. Job is being girded up in his being addressed and being made privy to things God alone has seen. At the moment of creation where no man was, there Job is made to glimpse, through the eyes of God, to see as God sees, through God’s sharing of those memories to our persevering hero. As when he said to the waves of chaos, “Thus far you shall come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped.”

As God spoke and brought creation into orderly, obedient form, and as he shares that moment with Job who was not there anymore than anyone of us was, so in Jesus God acts in like manner. “Peace, be still.” Like Job, the disciples stand in awe. He who neither slumbers nor sleeps is sovereign over land and sea, over soil and over proud waves. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” I am here, and even in crashing storms, and taking my rest, I am in charge. He rebukes the waves and shows that it is so. Faith is that endowment hard to summon up that is assured of secret growth, or deep roots in good soil, of tiny seeds being enough when God in Christ is the Lord of the Kingdom.

The Psalm, 107, with its glimpse at life for sailors on the seas, brings in dramatic chords to accompany Job and Mark. The psalm gives eloquent testimony to palpable fear. The God who brings the terrifying storms is the same Lord to whom appeal can be made, with the power and authority to still those storms. 

Then he spoke, and a stormy wind arose, *
which tossed high the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to the heavens and fell back to the depths; *
their hearts melted because of their peril.
They reeled and staggered like drunkards *
and were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper *
and quieted the waves of the sea.
Then were they glad because of the calm, *

What a perfect accompaniment to the Gospel reading and God’s divine word to Job provided for this Sunday.

Paul’s litany of hardships borne for the sake of the Corinthians also comes nicely alongside the hardships at sea. But for Paul these testify to what empowerment in Christ has enabled in him and in the way of his service. “…through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. We are treated as dying – and see we are alive. Poor but having everything, as having nothing yet possessing all things.” What comes to mind is the promise of the parables of sure growth and deep roots. The disciples get a taste of the power of God in the midst of hardship, and of captaining their boat. Paul gives witness to just how strong this captaining is and what it allows in his ministry through all manner of hardship. And by this means he seeks to offer shelter to the birds of the air in Corinth. “Open wide your hearts also.” Join us in this rich soil with strong roots able to withstand storms and thorns and affliction. 

Finally then, Track One continues the walk through 1 Samuel, here offering two choices for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost. The well-known David and Goliath encounter. Talk about a battle for survival and a fearsome encounter with the world’s mightiest and most dedicated warrior! And what does David say, brushing off the warnings and armor of Saul. “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand.”

The bravado and fearlessness come across as unthinkable and a bridge too far, but in many ways they find their absolute fulfillment and accordance in the posture of Jesus himself before a deadly storm. “Where is your faith? Peace. Be still.” “Goliath, you are through.” The young David’s victory is fully plausible—striking the giant with his sling—since it is simply not what the giant thought fighting entailed. So he is doomed with one stone hurled from out of hand-to-hand fighting range. “You never forsake those who fear you, O Lord,” our Psalm 9 reads. “The ungodly have fallen into the pit they dug. The wicked are trapped in the works of their own hands. Rise up O Lord, let them be judged before you.”

The alternative reading from later in the same chapter 17 is provided for this Sunday without any explanation. Is the Goliath story too well known? Too violent? Does Track One admit of choices and variations, given that it has too much good material to work with? 

Here we have a David accepting the vesture of Jonathan, Saul’s son, where Saul’s armor he left to the erstwhile King. David will not find in Jonathan an obvious rival, as claimant to the throne, but a comrade and ally. We begin to see the paranoia and mood swings of Saul as he realizes here is his replacement, and not his son Jonathan. Evil spirit, fear, envy, awe begin to invade by strokes our rejected and yet still king Saul. Now we will have to see how David chooses to react. His loyalty to Jonathan gives us a clue. It will not be his instinct to retaliate in kind but will call forth from him the challenge of patience and respect. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. And how very hard. It must come as a gift from God and responded to with psalms of thanksgiving. 

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 4th, 2021

For our Pentecost readings in Track I over the past weeks, we have been supplied with four key episodes from the first 17 chapters of that book: the Call of Samuel, the Request for a King, the Selection and Anointing of David, and David and Goliath. Today we cross over the entire remaining chapters—14 all told—to the account of the death of Saul and Jonathan and David’s elegy over them.

One of the main challenges of the narration is the overshadowing fact that Saul remains King even as David has been anointed by Samuel as his replacement. Saul is not an old man. How will this play out, for David is successful, winsome, and indeed in position to replace him. What these 14 chapters convey is the extreme patience and care David exercises toward Saul, to the degree that in saner moments Saul refers to him as his son and successor, instead of Jonathan, David’s close comrade and Saul’s real son and successor. It makes for an impossible quandry. Saul remains King and David not only defers to that but believes himself divinely constrained to do so. And he is faithful to that constraint to the point of risking his own life, needing to take cover in difficult circumstances, encountering threats in consequence, negotiating his friendship with Jonathan and evading the ensuing attacks from an increasing demented Saul – conjuring up Samuel from the dead being one of the more painful episodes in his decline.

Why 14 chapters and not just a simple summary. At one level the answer is, such is life. There is no early retirement home for rejected but functioning Kings. The dilemma is equally David’s. And so we cover that terrain in the second half of 1 Samuel, in part I believe to make sure we sense something of the balance in David’s long term time on the stage. To recall and place in the record these moments of difficulty and challenge, for any one, much less the one who God has personally and prospectively and providentially placed on that stage, was important for the narrator. David, warrior and success-at-all-things, is David the patient and deferential.

We come then to today’s reading. Saul and Jonathan die in battle, as the final chapter of 1 Samuel relates it. Along with his two other sons, at the hands of the Philistines, on Mt Gilboa. Saul does not die outright but is gravely wounded by an archer’s arrow. The request for his armor-bearer to finish him off is refused, so Saul dies at his own hand, rather than be made sport of by the victors. Yet that fate is still in store for him anyway as we read on. In the end, the men of Jabesh Gilead are able to rescue the bodies, such as they are, and give them burial and proper mourning.

David’s moving tribute today comes after a man’s report to him that such has transpired. More than this, he claims to have finished Saul off. This is one of those places where sources have been posited to account for the divergence. Yet equally it creates a scene in contrast to all David has himself endured and borne, and through which he has faithfully stayed his hand. We have an opportunist eager to lie to gain favor, not realizing he claims to have done precisely what David refused to do, with far more reason to have done so.

The elegy speaks for itself, given all this. The full 14 chapter full journey of David, vis-a-vis Saul and his family, over rough terrain for them all here tragically ends. Verse 21’s reference to ‘not anointed’ with oil is unlikely an effort to claim Saul was never truly king, but rather refers to his shield; so too the implication of Hebrew poetry, where A and B lines repeat and reinforce. And this is the point of all that has ensued since the day of his anointing, the painful cry for a king and the painful burden placed on him for whom it was so, and his own son, and indeed David himself. Elegy indeed.

When last we left Jesus he was crossing to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to the predominantly Gentile Decapolis. This Sunday he is returning to the side where he had previously been met by opposition from the Jewish officials. He didn’t arrive, touch the shore, and return immediately. Rather, we are passing over the healing of the Gerasene demoniac, after which Mark says he published widely throughout the Decapolis the great things Jesus had done for him. “And all were amazed.”

This time the reception on the Jewish side of the sea is favorable. One of the leaders of the synagogue, whose name, Jairus, Mark supplies, falls at Jesus’ feet and begs him come and heal his sick and dying daughter. This is the first of a series of healings on behalf of those who cannot ask for themselves, and so means Jesus must “cross over” to meet them on the other side. Sick and dying she is unclean. Off Jesus goes with Jairus and the crowd.

En route however we have an unexpected urgency of its own. A woman with a chronic flow of blood, making her ritually unclean as well, who has dumped a savings on false physicians for years, summons up the courage to touch the healer as he passes through the crowd en route to Jairus’s home. The touch, that will do it, just as Jairus has requested for his daughter. She senses in her familiar flesh of distress and chronic isolation instant electric healing. Jesus senses this as well. Mark’s Jesus is authoritative and virtually clairvoyant, but he demands a personal exchange for a personal crossing over to his side by this poor woman trapped in disease and chronic spiral. In fear and trembling—so the disciples in the boat—she responds to his demand and like Jairus falls at his feet. Now he crosses over. Your faith is a solid compass and it brought you home to me. Be at peace. This was not a one-time fluke. Your scourge is gone.

Now this delay along the way, while doubtless encouraging Jairus in what he has witnessed, yet like in the story of Lazarus, has meant the passing of precious time. Flowing from his house is the bad news. Death got here first. Jesus turns to Jairus and says “keep believing.” He takes the big three with him, Peter, James and John, entering the house where the professional mourners are underway. He sends them packing, leaving him alone with the four, and now joined by the distraught mother. Her sleep is no more final than was the deeper sleep of Lazarus, but it was death just the same. He takes her little hand in his own. Arise. She does, and like a good mother Jesus moves things back into the daily rounds. “Get her something to eat.”
Amazement ensues. And it will continue. There is no one like this man. He is an unstoppable force of healing, life from death, release from demons, power over waves and seas of doubt. The three are there to bear testimony, and what they do there with amazement they will do later with bold speech. After the forgiving Jesus reroutes them by His Risen presence. But not until his final assault on death, his own, is done. Here is the key to the call for secrecy of course. His hour is not come, but come it will.

Our accompanying poetic texts allow us a choice between Lamentations, which captures the plight of the woman with a flow of blood, or Psalm 30, which speaks of life from death. Lamentations 3 is the central of five panels of lament, confession, and a sitting inside sin and loss. It is the first-person poem, daughter Zion, Everyman, Israel – all can claim this speech. Jesus enters it and does not erase it but forgives and new-creates out of it. It is possible to imagine Jairus telling his daughter how remarkable was that day she came back to life, and later as a young woman hearing this psalm summarize her plight and its life giving reversal.

There is very little internal OT commentary on the story of Adam and Eve, surprisingly. The Wisdom of Solomon’s opening chapter offers the first such reflection. It matches nicely both the healing of the woman afflicted and the young child brought back to life. Death is foreign to God’s good purposes. It came as an alien intrusion. All generative forces made by God are wholesome. Jesus comes to defeat the devil who out of envy sought to distort and kill, scourge and condemn. The woman with the flow of blood touches this time the Tree of Life and the Knowledge of Good and Evil and in that act, Satan’s destructive ploy is brought to an end. Envious not for knowledge but for life, her act is acknowledged by Jesus to be the end of his rule over her.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 11th, 2021

Our readings for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, for 8 July, are in Track One a continuation of our walk through Samuel, paired with Psalm 48. In Track Two a reading from Ezekiel paired with Psalm 123 and the Gospel of Mark Chapter 6. And the Epistle reading for both tracks from the 12th chapter of Second Corinthians.

With the death of Saul, the drama of the final chapters of 1 Samuel stabilizes so far as David’s own health and safety are concerned. But as with aftershocks following an earthquake, the transition to his own secure rule is not yet here. A son of Saul remains and he has sufficient following to be made king as Saul’s successor. And the military retainers for the House of Saul and the House of David remain on violent auto-pilot—Joab and Abner and their respective camp followers. Saul’s son is killed by treachery and the ringleaders receive the same fate as did the opportunist who claimed to have slain Saul, and for the same reason. David did not seek to eliminate all rivalry, but rather avenged those who sought to end the reign of Saul’s house in the hope David would find that cause for their advancement. Only the lame son of Jonathan, mentioned in passing so as to alert us, remains of the House of Saul. The men of Judah and of Israel are now as one, and David is king over them both, and his long reign in the newly named City of David is here chronicled. We will now wait to see the future unfold, with only Mephibosheth left of the lineage of Saul.

Psalm 48 has been chosen to offer praise to Zion, place of God’s dwelling, place of his special choosing, place where he defends his life with his people against earthly threats. And the place where above all kingship, including that of his chosen one David, he is King.

1 Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised; *
in the city of our God is his holy hill.
2 Beautiful and lofty, the joy of all the earth, is the hill of Zion, *
the very center of the world and the city of the great King.

As in the opening Psalm 2, paired with Psalm 1, we are reminded of God’s Holy Hill, and of his promises to his Son, the King, who will be protected from assaults, for assaults there will be, only because of God’s infinite kingship and upholding promise.

Our Gospel reading fast-forwards us to just such an assault, now in the fulness of time. Jesus is manifesting power and authority and wisdom such as only God can give. In this is his kingdom come, and yet offense is taken. He can only be who he is as all others are, son of Mary, here is his family, known by a trade. Where did this man get all this?

Jesus responds as did the prophets of old, who were known as different, as prophets, as men of God, precisely to the degree they were impossible to understand on human terms only. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Zechariah, Hosea and on the list goes. They all had fathers and they all had hometowns yet these remain but footnotes on the depository of testimony they have left to us, which continues to bear witness long after their passing. Isaiah was not heard; he is told his address will shut ears, close eyes, make hearts fat. But his testimony is preserved and opened to a new generation. Ezekiel is given woe and lamentation to eat like Jeremiah, and God yet provides an antacid and fills him with a spirit that sets him on his feet and sends him on his “Thus says the Lord” way. Jesus is provided with a long list of valiant forerunners so that he can be sure his path is well prepared for him to walk in. At another place Ezekiel, anticipating Jesus’s hometown comments here, speaks of having to address his own people, for whom his words are so much foreign babble, unlike the nations who do not know his tongue but who would ironically “get it” by contrast.

Just as there is a lineage of prophets in which Jesus stands, so he now sends forth those who will work in his name and with his authority. They too will encounter push back and refusal to welcome. They could be well equipped with the prayer that is the psalm chosen for the day. To you Lord Jesus I lift my eyes. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, so our eyes look to the Lord our God. When contempt comes, have mercy. Defend us from scorn and derision. And so it is. They cast out many demons, anointed with oil those sick, and cured them. Looking to the Master.

Paul’s description of his thorn in the flesh can come alongside as well. He gets there however by a very specific route. The super apostles in Corinth claim spiritual visions and experiences. Paul can speak of himself in similar terms. But he does so by means of avoiding his first-person and speaking as if of someone else. For 14 long years Paul kept this experience to himself and never used it to boast. The third heaven is an expression of the day, sky, starry night, and the abode of God. Paradise. The experience was both real and also not for publication. For edification. For an example of how not to puff up, even as it served to place Paul in God’s personal presence.

And indeed Paul speaks, not of special revelations or of boasting, but of his affliction and his weakness. A physical, mental and spiritual thorn, from which Paul prayed unceasingly to be released. His apostleship does not lift him into lofty places of peace and boasting, causing envy, but means rather a constant reliance on the strength of God alone. The only answer to his prayer for relief was in fact the answer he received inside his affliction: my power is made perfect in weakness. That says it all. The presence of the power of Christ is such that it cancels out whatever afflicts and whatever condemns us on account of that very shortcoming in our flesh. That is an answer to prayer. That is a cause for real confidence and empowerment.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 18th, 2021

When we left David last week the tribes of all Israel had rallied around him, and his kingship effectively began. Only the lame Mepibosheth from the House of Saul remained alive. This Sunday marks the movement of the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, where there is as yet no temple, but the religious significance of Jerusalem for what will become the Davidic monarchy is being made clear.

When last we left the venerable ark it was in Kireath-Jearim, to the west of the City of David, where it had remained, we are told in the first chapters of 1 Samuel, now twenty years. You will recall it had been taken away by the Philistines, who doubling down to avoid the fate of the destroyed Egyptians of Moses’ generation, routed Israel in battle. Good news, bad news, for the ark’s presence in their victorious midst caused tumors to break out throughout the coastal land. Sending it from one city to another to get rid of the freshly renewed and potent Egyptian-like plagues brought no better results. At Gath it was finally sent by cart, accompanied with sin offerings, on its way, where it promptly headed straight for home territory. A sign the priests had properly anticipated, meaning the judgment in their midst had been no accident. At its last staging point, the men of Beth-Shemesh dared to gaze into the ark and they were ominously slain. But the ark was how back home, back in its proper 20-year resting place in Israel.
It is always intriguing to see what verses our readings may from time to time leave out—this Sunday, vv 6 through 12a, which appears to be a surgical excision from the middle of our chapter 6.

Here is the account of one Uzzah who reached out to steady the ark en route, on its mobile journey to Jerusalem, and was struck down, giving rise to a popular name for the place and event and striking fear in David. The ark can take care of itself as we saw clearly in 1 Samuel, traveling around the hostile Philistine territory. It steadies Israel; it isn’t steadied.

Parenthetically, I often find these “steadying efforts” in the lectionary readings, that is, leaving out the more challenging verses from our readings, a missed opportunity. David’s dancing and rejoicing and shouting, amid trumpet fanfare, happens not in diminishment of the ark’s sacred potency but in the light of it. It is dancing and rejoicing after great fear and respect have been experienced by David. The despising by Saul’s daughter, Michal, of which we read today, elides David’s genuine fear like a concerned lectionary editor, and leaves his leaping and rejoicing without a proper context for interpretation. “With all their might” means an exertion like as in battle, matched by the disciplined offerings of respect as they go. The terror-and-tumor wielding arc must be brought forward with care and exertion, such as David and his chosen men are capable of, after the years of discipline we have closely followed in previous chapters.

The psalm speaks of the founding of the seas and the stabilizing of the deep in the same breath as the ascent to God’s dwelling. Who can ascend, who can stand in his holy place? The generation capable of this must seek him with a pure heart and clean hands, untethered to falsehood. The King of Glory is entering his holy place. The Lord of Hosts, seated upon the cherubim. He is the King of Glory. He steadies, secures, defends, founds the seas and dwells in safety in his holy place.

The choice of Amos chapter 7 to come alongside Mark 6 draws our attention to the parallel between Amaziah and King Jeroboam in the northern kingdom of Israel and the Galilean King—better Tetrarch—and Herod. And also between the prophet Amos and John the Baptist, the former banished, the latter tragically beheaded, both prophets strong in word and deed. Lectionary comparisons are also useful for calling attention to kindred features and also to subtle contrasts, so sharpening our eye on what is being depicted.

The plumb-line vision is the third in a series of four vouchsafed to Amos, or five if chapter nine’s later vision is to be included. After each of the first two—locusts and judgment by fire—the prophet begs God to relent. Amos the stern is as well a dedicated prophet of intercession for a wayward people. And God relents due to his plea.

The third vision he receives is just as harsh. The sanctuaries and the royal house will come to an end. Amaziah’s banishing of Amos from the sanctuary tragically means the sole person able to plead successfully with God for Israel, and who has done so, is now silenced. Nothing will stay the judgment because of the priest’s banishing response. So the final vision confirms the reality. An end has come upon Israel. Amos sees qayits, “summer fruit”, God says qets. The end.

The depiction of Herod is more complicated than Amaziah’s. He likes to hear John. There is something compelling about him. “When he heard him he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.” This complexity may be entertaining to him, but his is a view of the matter not shared by his wife. John’s condemnation of Herod’s wrongful marriage to his sister-in-law – did Herod understand its sharp truth? Mark seems say so: Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man. But Herod is clearly a wavering, impetuous, weak ruler. A rash vow to a dancing daughter, his own or his wife’s, seals John’s fate. (Any commentary will disclose how inbred and overly Herod-named was the family tree). Keeping face before his guests, he has the order given and John is slain. A harbinger of the fate awaiting Jesus at the hands of those equally compromised and feckless, as Mark will in time report.

This tragic event is provided in retrospect by Mark, as a means of explaining that—while others had other explanations–Herod believed Jesus’ mighty work was being done in the power and risen presence of this John whom he beheaded. So much for getting rid of him, even by rash vow. Here in Mark’s Gospel we face the question of how to fit this Jesus into some known frame of reference. A prophet come back? Elijah? The carpenter, son of Mary surrounded by relatives?

In the scene that follows we have no report of John’s death such as Matthew supplies, but both have Jesus withdraw to a lonely place. One senses the somber atmosphere. Luke refers to the death but does not report the details. At issue is who Jesus is, and what is that going to mean in the face of this kind of demonic assault.

Our psalm speaks of mercy and truth embracing. The truthfulness of John and the righteousness and mercy of Jesus. The way of prosperity is a way of righteousness even into the jaws of death and demonic cruelty. John has prepared the way yet again, even at his death, and Jesus will follow and lead on, onto a new pathway of peace. Those who turn their hearts to him will know this peace passing all understanding.

Our Epistle reading for today shows the start of a new walk, leaving 2 Corinthians and entering now Ephesians. The big picture is in frame. The plan for the fullness of time is a mystery truly there from eternity, witnessed in the law and prophets, and now shown forth in boldness.
We have been chosen according to this plan, from before the foundations of the earth. His death is part of this plan, it is no John-the-Baptist-tragedy: in Jesus we have redemption in his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. John as well, even in death, is part of this same plan. The riches of God’s grace freely bestowed on us includes John, and is on offer for the sins of the whole world, including a wicked Herod and a dancing Salome. Who is this Jesus? Just this Jesus.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 25th, 2021

Our Gospel reading for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost has clearly omitted a major section in the middle of the sixth chapter of Mark, some 20 verses, so as to let the focus fall on Jesus boat crossing with his disciples/apostles and his compassion on the crowds seeking to be in his healing presence.

Left out here in Mark is the feeding of the five thousand, followed by a terrifying sea crossing where Jesus walks on the water and reassures his closest disciples.

This same sequence is found in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, one of those places where John and Mark have a similar arrangement—feeding of five thousand, and walking on the sea. There, in John, it leads onto fuller discourses about the bread from heaven. 

In Year B, Mark’s year, the lectionary has chosen to let John speak at this point next Sunday, taking over from Mark, since they share the same sequence, and to bring into association as well the rich treasure house of feeding stories from the OT. Manna in the wilderness, Elisha multiplying scarce resources, and so forth. For five Sundays running. I will say more about this next week but note that Mark’s omitted section is not like unto last Sunday’s excision from 2 Samuel 6. Rather it occurs so as to offer space for the 4th Gospel to speak, otherwise not represented in the three-year Matthew, Mark, Luke cycle except on occasions like this. It brings a complementary word and also in this case a much a fuller one.

The transition from the death of John the Baptist, which we heard last Sunday, to today’s scene is only roughly provided in Mark. The disciples of John come and take care of his executed body (v. 29). The apostles of Jesus, as Mark calls them here, return from their successful missionary work and give report (V. 30). Yet the death of John hangs in the air, so to say. Jesus will begin to focus on his chosen twelve, after John’s death and his disciples mourning of him. The apostles go with Jesus into a desert place. The reference to sheep without a shepherd tracks closely the words of Moses in the wilderness, as provided in Numbers 27. Moses is about to die. He will not enter the promise land. God provides Joshua as his replacement, in compassion and in response to Moses’ request, seeing that “the people are like sheep with a shepherd.” Shepherd will become a general term for proper leadership, focused on the Davidic monarchy, but also encompassing the Moses foundational teaching-and-leading role in the wilderness. Moses too provides miraculous food for the sheep he shepherds. Jesus is about to feed five thousand. Jesus ends the retreat with his apostles to come ashore and have compassion. To give instruction, torah. To feed.

We cross over the feeding story that follows and the harrowing boat trip and land with Jesus on the western side of the sea of Galilee. The crowds throng Jesus wherever he goes, here bringing their sick, seeking like the woman with the flow of blood, only to touch his garment. And so be healed. The call for secrecy, a theme in Mark’s Gospel, cannot succeed in anything but slowing down the crowds by a trickle.

This is a Sunday where the Old Testament readings from Tracks 1 and 2 actually both suit the Gospel. Jeremiah speaks of a history of bad shepherds, in his frame of reference meaning the Davidic kings that have ruled over Judah, and for a brief time, the United Kingdom of David and Solomon. We have come to the end. The exile is near. The kings’ negligence over centuries of God’s patience has left the flock scattered. But God’s promises to David are not in vain even as the shepherds have with but rare exception—Hezekiah, Josiah—failed. God will be shepherd for the season of bringing home the scattered flock. This sequence matches the movement of the Psalter as a whole work. Book Three sees the end of the monarchy and the promises to David dashed to the ground. So the end of Psalm 89 whose first section only has been chosen for today’s reading. In Book 4 the Lord is King. And in the final book five psalms of ascent bespeak the ongoing hopes and pledges for David, Zion, God’s people, all nations and a renewed creation of endless alleluia.

In Jeremiah’s words:
“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

The personal gathering, shepherding by God himself undergirds all that he means to pledge to David. To the degree that in coming days, this Son of David will himself be the LORD our righteousness, the good shepherd, the compassionate Jesus the crowds press forward to touch so as to but touch his garment and be healed. 

Psalm 89 underscores the promises to David and all his lineage. I will punish them for all their transgressions. Even to the point of casting them off, as the end of the psalm soberly laments. But Psalm 89 is not the last word of the Psalter. And its “I will not take my love from him” and “his line will endure forever” override his punishing for a season, and indeed point ahead to Jesus Christ himself. The good shepherd. Psalm 23 captures this well. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, because in the Lord my shepherd, the Lord God, the Lord Jesus, I shall not be in want. David’s psalm become out own.

The reading from Ephesians moves us to chapter two and one of the most important asides in all the New Testament. Here Paul raises his eyes to speak directly to one group only: those previously outside the covenants of promise, strangers, without Christ and without God in the world. All those of us who listen in on God’s life with Israel, in the promises of 2 Samuel, in Psalm 23, Psalm 89, Jeremiah, and in Jesus with his chosen fellow Israelites. Whatever reconciling work God was doing in Jesus Christ, he did with one cross, not two. And in that one cross, God redeemed his people, and brought near those of us far off. Whatever dividing line existed by which God elected and promised and planned the future of good shepherds for his people Israel, involved equally the creating of new citizens, the issuing of library cards so we outsiders might read and see ourselves within the life and promises of Israel. The Holy Spirit makes this so. One new humanity made of two formerly, elected and adopted, with Jesus Christ the cornerstone.

The lectionary brings us into range and inclusion of all God has been saying to his people. A foundation of apostles and prophets, a symphony of prophetic witness, the OT, and an according testament now to be called New. Elder and Younger. Enduring and according. Promise and fulfillment. One Lord Good Shepherd in whom mercy and truth have embraced.
The table spread before us, arcing over the valley of the shadow of death itself, is this Lord in whom all want is turned into praise and thanksgiving. Wherever he went, those in need had only to touch the hem of his garment to be healed. In him is our peace. For in his flesh he has made us into one new humanity. A new temple, the church, built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. 

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 1st, 2021

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle recorded by all four Gospels. Our year B Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John share as well the account of a fearsome sea crossing, which follows it, and in which Jesus comes to the disciples walking on the water. In John, this mysterious boat-less night crossing of the Sea of Galilee by Jesus leads the well-fed crowds to believe he is still at Tiberias. Searching for him and finding him instead at Capernaum, Jesus launches into a long discourse about spiritual food and the true bread from heaven, which runs the length of the 70 plus verse chapter six. The lectionary has therefore decided to depart from Mark here and thus allow a five Sunday long walk through the sixth chapter of John, which begins as did Mark and then moves into more extended address.

Many of the details, moreover, are the same and shared by the two Gospels. Five loaves and two fish, the command to sit down on the grass, the eucharistic-like blessing and breaking and distributing, 12 baskets of leftovers, fear from the disciples at Jesus approach on the water. In John the reference to Passover likely underscores the eucharistic overtone, especially as the Fourth Gospel provides no Last Supper scene alongside the other synoptic witnesses.

In the continuous reading through the books of Samuel, which Track One presents, we land on the terrible chapter of David’s affair with Bathsheba, the wife of his stalwart mercenary warrior Uriah the Hittite. The heretofore flattering and salutary portrayal of David suddenly shifts to its shocking nadir, with the men in the field defending Israel and David prowling the rooftop in indolent free time. In one episode we witness coveting, adultery and false witness, as well as the first commandments of the Decalogue, in breach. The Psalm summarizes David in this wretched loss of integrity, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” But God looks down from heaven all the same, high above David on his rooftop, with the same clear-eyed truthfulness as our narrator. David contriving to cover up his misdeeds and Uriah holding fast to his integrity, frustrating David’s scheme and leading to his own death, left alone on the front lines at David’s command, in the end. In the Annals of the Assyrian Kings there is never a misstep, only flattery and victory without ceasing. Israel’s record of its self allows the horrible light of truth to shine, even on God’s anointed and sustained David, because it is a sacred record guided by the God of Holy Truth, Righteousness, and Mercy.

If read as the OT lesson for this Sunday it is hard to imagine a greater, more stunning contrast with the Davidic King Jesus. Stingy, self-indulgent, conniving, a spiral into Godlessness, where in Jesus is healing, feeding, multiplying, compassionate service. God himself. “O that deliverance would come out of Zion,” our Psalmist cries, restoring the fortunes of a broken people. And there he is come.

Over the coming weeks we will stay with the storyline of David and then Solomon. David’s confession before the prophet Nathan comes next week and alongside it the penitent psalm 51. “Against you, you only have I sinned. And done what is evil in your sight. Create in me a clean heart O God.”

The OT lesson chosen to come alongside the NT’s feeding of the 5000 is the brief account of Elisha’s multiplication of twenty barley loaves and ears of grain. It has likely influenced the multiplication stories in the NT, if not also Jesus own sense of his mission, in showing Jesus to be a prophet greater in spirit than Elijah or Elisha, his predecessors. Elisha is well on the way to becoming a powerful wonder worker. It is a time of famine in the northern kingdom. In the section just preceding ours he has turned a pot of lethal food into healthy and sustaining soup.

Now a man arrives with a sack of food for the man of God. Elisha insists that it will suffice for his hundred fellow prophets and commands it be set before them. His servant, like the disciples, objects that it will only be enough for a few. They eat and as Elisha had promised, there is bread left over after the filling meal. The way is being prepared for the Bread of Life, present there in Israel’s manna and twenty loaves, and present in the flesh feeding 5000 with five barley loaves and two fish, 12 basketfuls left over.

As the grace we said at my parents’ table put it, from the 145th psalm read in response to 2 Kings 4 today. “The eyes of all wait upon Thee O Lord, and Thou giveth them their meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand and fillest all things living with plenteousness.” The LORD is near to those who call on him faithfully, in Jesus and in his prophetic forerunners.

Our Ephesians reading is the soaring pray of Paul for the church, which points to a kind of doxological excess and overflowing, equivalent to twelve baskets left over after starting with but five loaves and two fish; and feeding multitudes. There is a richness untapped and fully on offer, that God the Father is ready to give, due to the work of Jesus Christ, there for the saints living and those gone before. Paul strains to find adequate spatial terms to describe this richness of glory God wants to impart, and thus he must pray and bow his knee. “That you may have the power, Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith, to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ surpassing knowledge,” and be filled with the loaves of God’s very life and spirit to basketfuls of overflowing.

As indicated, over the coming four Sundays of August the Gospel reading remains in the sixth chapter of John, and the various discourses on the true bread from heaven found there. I am the bread of life. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. Eucharistic teaching in the manner of the fourth Gospel. Track I takes us from the revolt of Absalom—part of the temporal punishment for David’s sin—and into the reign of Solomon. The next four Sundays will bring us to the end of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. And the OT paired readings focus on feeding and new life as the OT dwells on the theme – manna in the wilderness, the desert feeding of Elijah, the feast of wisdom in Proverbs and the final chapter of Joshua where new life in the LORD is chosen.

In our little village here in France, next to the parish church where you can sometimes hear the bells ring in these podcasts, the long days of August are here. The lovers of holidays, the French, are ensconced in their vacation time in earnest. So too where you are in Canada and the US and elsewhere, during the summer dog days. I, too, will take the month off and return for Pentecost 15, the first Sunday in September.

We have been moving along for 30 episodes now. Do you have suggestions? I will stay with the basic format, which is intended to stay close to the lessons, in their entirety, so as to get you started in your weekly reflections and sermon preparation, or for worshipping with these texts on Sunday. If you have feedback, send it along to our Wycliffe hosts. My thanks to Terry Spratt and Steve Hewko for their excellent studio help and encouragement.
Until September then, Godspeed.