Tag Archives: David

“Be angry, but do not sin.” And we do that how? (12th after Pentecost, 8/11/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

Let’s start with today’s Gospel, the middle section of John’s long exploration of the feeding of the five thousand. There are many things we could focus on; today let’s look at Jesus’ citation of the biblical (Old Testament) text “And they shall all be taught by God.” In Jesus’ mind it’s not simply a matter of the people and Jesus. The Father has been teaching the people, and those who’ve listened, who’ve learned, come to Jesus. (The text, in other words, has nothing to do with John Calvin’s nightmare, that God saves or damns us quite apart from anything we’ve thought or done.) Jesus comes at the end of a process: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”

We can take this further in two directions. First, since the way we tell our own stories is always subject to revision, Jesus’ arrival can be the occasion to revisit our own stories: “Oh, so that’s what God was trying to teach me.” If we’re paying attention, Jesus’ arrival brings both the question “What do I make of Jesus?” and “What do I make of myself?”

A second direction: what has the Father been teaching? The answer to that is, of course, not simple. The Old Testament is not a small book. But it’s a question we can use to unpack our reading from 2nd Samuel.

Our 2nd Samuel reading: the lectionary has hit the fast forward button—hard. Last Sunday he prophet Nathan had said “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword…Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.” And that’s been playing out ever. Amnon, David’s firstborn, desires his sister Tamar, and, in a parody of David and Bathsheba, rapes her and then discards her. David hears of it, gets angry, but “he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn” (13:21). Absalom, Tamar’s brother, gets angry, bides his time for two years, and kills Amnon. David and Absalom eventually reconcile—sort of—but Absalom is soon plotting a rebellion whose ending we heard this morning.

Now, probably coincidentally, anger is one of the main themes in our Ephesians reading. “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” The main point, I’d guess, is not to let the anger fester: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” How do we do that? Paul talks about speaking truth, forgiving, imitating God.

What happens if we set Paul’s words next to the story of David and his children? Speaking truth: that’s always risky, also because the truth is rarely as flattering to us as we would like. David tended to run on the principle “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is…not yet mine,” and truth-telling would have involved explaining why Amnon shouldn’t have done likewise. Absalom doesn’t even try truth-telling. We’re told that he “spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad” (13:22).

Forgiving. The prophet Nathan to David: “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless…the child that is born to you shall die” (13:14). Recalling the question prompted by the Gospel reading (what are we supposed to learn from God), David in dealing with Amnon has maybe learned forgiveness, but not the need for truth-telling or (since Amnon is his son) some sort of accountability. David may have thought he was doing Amnon a favor; as it turns out, his inaction signed Amnon’s death warrant.

Imitating God. Recall Paul’s words: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” I suspect that that’s one idea not two: living in love is precisely how we imitate God, and the love involved is a love that increases, not decreases, our vulnerability. Neither David nor Amnon nor Absalom had any interest in increased vulnerability; that was reserved for Tamar.

Back to the question raised by today’s Gospel, whatever else God has been trying to teach, it is that badly managed anger is toxic. If we haven’t learned that, Jesus will probably make little sense to us.

Let’s return to Nathan’s words: “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword…Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house.” As the story unfolds, it’s clearly not a Greek tragedy, in which the implacable Furies wreak havoc on the powerless humans. Rather, David continues to make bad choices—perhaps the best he’s capable of making—and his sons follow what he does, rather than whatever he might be saying. So the sword appears so frequently that we might as well count it as another member of David’s family. (And we haven’t even gotten to Solomon’s use of the sword to make his accession to the throne feel more secure.)

We live in a world in which anger is often the right response. The question—as we’re regularly reminded, also by today’s 2nd Samuel text—is what to do with that anger. I cannot—alas—channel Madison Avenue: here’s this pill, and for the next 10 minutes it’s on sale! What Paul offers: tell the truth, forgive, love like God loves, increasing our vulnerability. That can be messy: we do these things imperfectly, and rarely escape the illusion that we’re the ones wearing the white hats. That’s OK, for our God can do messy, as we’re reminded—as we celebrate—at every Eucharist. “He stretched out his arms upon the cross…” For David, Amnon, and Absalom Jesus chooses to stand with Tamar—and invites us to stand with the two of them.

Jerusalem, David, and the stories we tell (8th after Pentecost, 7/14/2024)

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Lessons (but reading all of 2 Samuel 6)

These last two weeks David and Jerusalem have been centerstage as David captures Jerusalem (last Sunday’s reading) and brings the Ark into it (today’s reading). In our days is there a city more contested? So what might these stories of its early history suggest to us?

And in our first reading the Revised Common Lectionary has—probably inadvertently—raised a second question: how do we recount our histories? The difference between the full chapter and the parts selected by the RCL is dramatic. In our days, renewed energy around the questions of what’s in our high school history books, what monuments we keep or tear down, what names we keep on military bases, schools, etc. or not. And again, what might the 2nd Samel texts suggest to us?

David and Jerusalem. Last week narrated David’s taking of Jerusalem. What was that about? Well, why is our capital in Washington D.C.? In our new nation, trust between the states was low enough that the only feasible site for a national capital was a new city unclaimed by any of the states. So Washington was founded in 1791. Tribe is pretty much everything in David’s time; from where will he rule? Jerusalem, centuries after Joshua, was still controlled by the Jebusites. David takes it; it becomes the City of David. That solves that political problem. But it creates a new political problem: what does Jerusalem have to do with Moses, with Israel’s faith? Outside of that strange story about Abram and Melchizedek (Genesis 14), nothing! So now the Ark, a central symbol of that faith, becomes Really Important.

So David organizes an impressive procession, cut brutally short by Uzzah’s death. It’s a divine shot across David’s bow: is David the Lord’s patron or the Lord David’s? It’s hard on Uzzah; subjects often suffer for the sins of their sovereigns. We trust that the Lord has or will make things right with Uzzah. David, the narrator tells us, was afraid of the Lord, and asks the right question: “How can the ark of God come into my care?” We wish that David had asked that question more often.

Anyhow, the procession is put on hold—until David hears that “the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household.” David responds, leaving us wondering whether greed has trumped fear. He organizes an even more elaborate procession. Multiple sacrifices, with David in an ephod (typically a priestly garment) dancing before the Lord “with all his might,” more sacrifices, a blessing on the people, and a meal for all. The narrator has given us a thoroughly ambiguous picture. It’s clearly a high point for David. Equally clearly, that nagging question of whether the Lord is David’s patron or vice versa remains open.

The narrator’s chosen to give us an account that raises as many questions as it answers. And were that not enough, the narrator choses to include Michal’s reaction. Michal, Saul’s daughter, David’s first wife. She’d saved David’s life when Saul sent to have him killed. Saul had later given her to another man. David, now with various additional wives, had demanded her return as the price of peace with Saul’s house. Michal’s response to David may have been fully justified, but it was not smart. Kings are not hard to manipulate—just ask Herodias (today’s Gospel reading)—but you have to be smart about it. In any case, the account ends “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.” Personal tragedy, but also national tragedy. A child of David and Michal might have held the tribes together. Instead, on David’s son Solomon’s death they split into North and South and spend as much time fighting each other as anyone else until they’re swallowed up by the Assyrians and Babylonians. For that matter, had David reciprocated Michal’s love, perhaps the sordid incident with Bathsheba could have been avoided.

So, Jerusalem: chosen by David as a neutral city from which to rule the tribes, new home of the Ark through the convoluted process our text has narrated. And in the middle that haunting question after David collides with the Lord’s holiness: “How can the ark of God come into my care?” Jerusalem, often called the Holy City. Oh that the Jews and Muslims (and we Christians, for that matter) could so recapture a sense of God’s holiness that the arguments about Jerusalem would be: “You take it!” “No, you take it!”

As for David, what the narrator has done with David in this chapter the narrator does throughout Samuel and into the first chapters of Kings. There’s more than enough to celebrate in David, more than enough to mourn, more than enough to wonder about. So that’s one way to tell David’s story—the national story—not highlighting the messiness, but not leaving it out.

In the Gospels—particularly in Matthew—Jesus is addressed as “Son of David.” Thank God for the Books of Samuel that pretty much force Jesus to ask “Son of which David?” The David who faced down Goliath and danced in ecstatic abandon before the Ark or the David who arranged for the death of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, in battle? How we tell our stories can alert us or blind us to the choices facing us.

And when I look at my own life—thank God for the Books of Samuel. Not that I’ve generated the same quantity of headlines, but the messiness is certainly there, and the fact that God didn’t run away screaming from the unedited David gives me hope. In our second reading Paul speaks repeatedly of redemption: our lives are lives that need redemption, and Paul’s talking about more than the occasional failure to make a full stop before turning on a red light.

How shall we summarize? Early in our second reading we heard “just as he chose us in Christ…to be holy and blameless before him in love.” Not “because we were holy and blameless before him.” If we take that love seriously we can risk telling our stories not to vindicate ourselves, but to celebrate that love, and position ourselves to face life’s recurrent challenges. “Holy and blameless” is the goal. We’re not in 10th century b.c. Jerusalem or 1st century a.d. Ephesus, but the challenges then and now are often the same.

Walking by faith, anticipating sight (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/16/2024)

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Lessons (Track 1)

“…for we walk by faith, not by sight.” You can get a decent sermon out of that line from Paul. But some care is needed, since it’s vulnerable to misunderstanding and abuse. Misunderstanding: thinking that the invisible per se is more valuable than the visible. Abuse: recall Orwell in 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Bluntly, when we talk about faith, what distinguishes us from the folk who wear aluminum foil hats to keep the aliens from controlling their minds?

It turns out that appeals to the senses show up at some key moments in Scripture. For example:

Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” (Matt. 11:4-6)

[From the beginning of John’s first letter:] We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– (1 Jn. 1:1)

Not to mention the very visible harvest and fully-grown plant in Jesus’ parables. In the middle of the last century the then Archbishop of Canterbury captured it well: “Christianity is the most avowedly materialistic of all the great religions.”

So when does sight or, more broadly, the senses, become problematic?

First, in our lesson from the Book of Samuel, the prophet Samuel anoints David. Working through the line of older brothers we hear:

“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

Appearances can give incomplete information. This is a point the Book of Proverbs, solidly empirical in orientation, makes repeatedly. You see a wealthy person. Wealthy through hard work or through theft? Can’t judge by appearances. You see a poor person. Poor through sloth or oppression? Can’t judge by appearances.

(Paul uses the same outward appearance/heart contrast in v.12. I wonder if he is alluding to the David story, which might align Paul with David and “those who boast in outward appearance” with David’s older—and rejected—brothers.)

Second, we’re in a story, and where we are in the story can determine what’s visible or invisible. That appears to be what’s in play in that line from Paul with which we started. Here it is in context: “So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord–for we walk by faith, not by sight.” In this part of the story the Lord’s out of sight, so, faith.

In the previous chapter, “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” (2 Cor. 4:17-18). The glory is now invisible—but still worth attending to!

And story (time) is central to the logic of both of Jesus’ parables. Someone scatters seed, and for a good stretch nothing seems to be happening. But, oh, the harvest. Again, the proverbial mustard seed. Looking at the seed, we’d write it off. But just wait!

So, reliance on sight can be problematic because it gives incomplete information or because what’s visible depends on where we are in the story. The third reason is more profound—and more challenging. God coming in Jesus’ vulnerable flesh which climaxes in Jesus’ death and resurrection profoundly recasts what it means to see glory. So in the Gospel of John’s vocabulary Jesus being glorified and Jesus being crucified can be synonymous.

Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn. 12:23-24).

And this in turn shapes Paul’s understanding of glory. Recall what we heard earlier:

…always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:10-11)

When I cited this earlier I focused on the “visible” part. Now notice what is visible: a cross-shaped combination of death and life. If the Corinthians aren’t paying attention they’ll conclude that Paul isn’t to be taken seriously because there’s little worldly glory in his ministry. But that’s to miss the point. If the crucified Jesus is the central revelation of God’s glory, then what we look for when we look for glory needs serious readjustment.

Where does this leave us? Briefly:

First, “the Lord looks on the heart.” We do well to remember the limits of our perceptions. And faced with decisions we pray for guidance.

Second, where we are in the story can determine what we can see or not. As often as not I find this very good news. With the problems we face “you can’t get there from here” can haunt me. Jesus’ parable reminds me that there are situations in which I not only don’t need to see—I don’t need to understand. “…and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

Third, Paul’s cross-shaped combination of death and life: the losses, the deaths we experience: united to Jesus’ story these can also make life visible. This isn’t a matter of technique; it can encourage our hope and patience.

Earlier in the letter to the Corinthians the issue of letters of recommendation comes up, and Paul doubles down on the visible: “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all.” Paraphrasing slightly, “We don’t need no stinking letters.” That’s Paul’s hope for Corinth…and for North Lake. “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all.”