The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost 2 Samuel 1: 1, 17 – 27
Sunday, July 1, 2012 2 Corinthians 8: 7 – 15
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 5: 21 – 35
Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”
Mark 5: 34
Hope contends with impatience, fear and ridicule this morning in our reading from the gospel of Mark. A Jewish synagogue leader named Jairus is hoping Jesus will heal his young daughter who is gravely ill and a woman plagued by an unremitting flow of blood hopes touching Jesus’ cloak will relieve her distress.
Over against these hopes, the disciples become impatient when Jesus stops to learn who touched him, telling Jesus that in this vast sea of humanity, Jesus will never find out who touched his clothes. The delay proves fatal and when Jesus arrives at Jairus’ home, the little girl has died. And when Jesus tells the mourners “The child is not dead but sleeping,” they laugh, ridiculing this man who refuses to see the obvious.
The disciples want Jesus to forget the woman who touched him and keep focused on the mission at hand – healing Jairus’ daughter. And when friends come to tell Jairus his daughter has died, they urge Jairus not to trouble Jesus any longer for there is nothing Jesus can do now. Jesus does not do what either the disciples or the friends of Jairus would like Jesus to do. And at the end of the day, two women, two daughters, are restored to their family and friends. The advent of the kingdom of God will not be thwarted by either impatience or ridicule.
Acting in hope, this woman who touches Jesus’ cloak does the unthinkable and touches a man in public. Women in first century Palestine did not do that. Moreover, this woman, because of the unremitting flow of blood, is ritually unclean, and has been so for twelve years. For twelve years, her company has been shunned by all those who were ritually clean, allowing them to worship in the Temple. Until this woman is healed, she is not permitted in the Temple nor can anyone who wishes to remain ritually clean, come in contact with her. When this woman touches Jesus’ cloak, she is not only offending social custom but passing on to Jesus her “uncleanness,” which, like measles, was thought to be contagious. In hope, this woman breaks all the laws, and finds she is healed. But not before Jesus searches her out and she approaches “with fear and trembling.”
Hope moves this woman to break with tradition, but her actions cause impatience on the part of the disciples who are on a mission and do not want Jesus to delay. This woman’s hope and Jesus’ response are an unwanted interruption for the disciples who would just as soon press on through the crowds. And not without good reason – a little girl is dying and Jesus can save her. Little do the disciples know that what is about to happen will be far more dramatic than stopping a flow of blood. Jesus is about to raise someone from the dead. But not before the mourners laugh.
Christian hope, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer is “to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.” Our hope is grounded on the promises God made to Abraham when God told Abraham that through Abraham God would bless the whole world, renewing and restoring the glory of God’s creation. Our hope is rooted in the faithfulness of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God whom Sarah laughed at when God told her she would have a child in her old age; the God who told Abraham to sacrifice his only son; the God who gave his blessing to Jacob when the blessing was supposed to go to his older brother Esau; the God of the Exodus, who set a poor and ragtag band of slaves free from the power of Pharoah; and the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
Our hope rests on the faithfulness of God, this God who has not always acted predictably, and not on anything we are able to bring about ourselves. And what we are hoping for is the day when, in the magnificent words of Revelation, “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” What we hoping for is that time when the whole of creation will be made new, when sickness and death will no longer haunt this world, a day when, as in our gospel reading this morning, all are healed and given new life.
This morning the disciples become impatient, Jairus becomes afraid when he learns his daughter has died and the crowd laughs when Jesus tells them the child is not dead. Holding out hope in the midst of a world impatient to make things happen, distrustful of any power other than our own and quick to ridicule what seems impossible, is challenging. Much of the time what we end up hoping for is “the best,” something probable and possible given the circumstances, but not impossible. To put our hope in something impossible seems foolish and we most probably will be disappointed.
Commentating on our text this morning, theologian and minister of the Uniting Church in Australia, William Loader writes: “The ultimate fantasy of hope, earthed in the reality of God, namely, that evil will be overcome and new life emerge, finds its fulfillment already here in Jesus. Mark is celebrating this reality and the hope of its emergence for the eyes that see and the ears that hear.”
Our story this morning is a “fantasy of hope,” about the emergence of new life and all that seeks to keep that new life from emerging.
“Daughter, your faith has made you well;” Jesus says to a woman this morning, “go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” The peace that Jesus desires for this woman is not simply the absence of affliction. Peace – “shalom” in Hebrew – meant wholeness, completeness and well-being for all, not just this woman. To be sent away “in peace” meant returning to take her place within the community, to no longer be separated from others, for her sake as well as for the sake of others. Her healing, in other words, was not an individual affair, not just about her. Her absence from the community made the community less than whole, incomplete.
Growing up, as we all have, in a culture of individualism, this rich Hebraic understanding of peace as wholeness, is often forgotten. Our well-being, we often think, is a private and personal affair; that we are well or ill is nobody’s business but ours. That your well-being might impact my well-being we often fail to consider. We can forget that we are in Saint Paul’s words “the body of Christ” and when one member suffers we all suffer.
From the perspective of the disciples, Jesus’ concern to know who touched him was an unnecessary interruption; for Jesus, what this woman did demonstrated her faith, and would not go unnoticed. What this woman did was claim for herself God’s promise of well-being, hoping that in spite of the reality that no one had been able to cure her in twelve years and now with no more money to keep trying, touching this man’s cloak would restore her to wellness.
Her healing takes place in front of a distraught father and disciples who are about to witness something even more amazing. Her healing, far from being an interruption, is preparing the disciples for what is to come. And we, as we hear this amazing story, are also being prepared, prepared for a world made new, where no one goes hungry, where justice is done, where, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”
Every now and again we catch glimpses of this brave new world, a world in which everyone has a place at the table and no one is dispensable. Every once in a while, God gives us a taste of the impossible and not just the probable. Consider the impossibility of making someone love you or the impossibility of being forgiven when we have done something to hurt someone else. If you have ever been loved or forgiven, you have tasted the kingdom of God. You have tasted the impossible if you have ever been utterly lost with no hope of finding your way home, and someone comes along with a way, a possibility you had never entertained.
No one of us knows what tomorrow will bring, but in hope we believe tomorrow, like today, is firmly within God’s good purposes. In that hope, we can be confident, as the prayer book says, “in newness and fullness of life.” And with that confidence, we can offer hope to a weary world, not dismissing the reality that awful things happen but confident that whatever befalls us will not have the last word.
Jesus has the last word in our reading this morning. After telling this little girl to “get up!” Jesus then tells those who have been in mourning to give this child something to eat. Jesus has just raised a twelve year old from death to life and Jesus is concerned about her lunch. As with so much of the gospel accounts, the extraordinary sits disconcertingly within the ordinary and mundane, the impossible and the possible dancing together in a way you and I rarely see and often miss.
Jesus has healed one woman when no one else could and brought a dead twelve year old child back to life. Fixing lunch would be the last thing I would be thinking about right then. And maybe that is why Jesus tells this grief stricken family to feed this child, a way of letting them know that life will go on, in spite of all indications to the contrary. Fixing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right about then would be about the craziest and most improbable response I can think of, nothing less than an act of hope.
Sunday, July 1, 2012 2 Corinthians 8: 7 – 15
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 5: 21 – 35
Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”
Mark 5: 34
Hope contends with impatience, fear and ridicule this morning in our reading from the gospel of Mark. A Jewish synagogue leader named Jairus is hoping Jesus will heal his young daughter who is gravely ill and a woman plagued by an unremitting flow of blood hopes touching Jesus’ cloak will relieve her distress.
Over against these hopes, the disciples become impatient when Jesus stops to learn who touched him, telling Jesus that in this vast sea of humanity, Jesus will never find out who touched his clothes. The delay proves fatal and when Jesus arrives at Jairus’ home, the little girl has died. And when Jesus tells the mourners “The child is not dead but sleeping,” they laugh, ridiculing this man who refuses to see the obvious.
The disciples want Jesus to forget the woman who touched him and keep focused on the mission at hand – healing Jairus’ daughter. And when friends come to tell Jairus his daughter has died, they urge Jairus not to trouble Jesus any longer for there is nothing Jesus can do now. Jesus does not do what either the disciples or the friends of Jairus would like Jesus to do. And at the end of the day, two women, two daughters, are restored to their family and friends. The advent of the kingdom of God will not be thwarted by either impatience or ridicule.
Acting in hope, this woman who touches Jesus’ cloak does the unthinkable and touches a man in public. Women in first century Palestine did not do that. Moreover, this woman, because of the unremitting flow of blood, is ritually unclean, and has been so for twelve years. For twelve years, her company has been shunned by all those who were ritually clean, allowing them to worship in the Temple. Until this woman is healed, she is not permitted in the Temple nor can anyone who wishes to remain ritually clean, come in contact with her. When this woman touches Jesus’ cloak, she is not only offending social custom but passing on to Jesus her “uncleanness,” which, like measles, was thought to be contagious. In hope, this woman breaks all the laws, and finds she is healed. But not before Jesus searches her out and she approaches “with fear and trembling.”
Hope moves this woman to break with tradition, but her actions cause impatience on the part of the disciples who are on a mission and do not want Jesus to delay. This woman’s hope and Jesus’ response are an unwanted interruption for the disciples who would just as soon press on through the crowds. And not without good reason – a little girl is dying and Jesus can save her. Little do the disciples know that what is about to happen will be far more dramatic than stopping a flow of blood. Jesus is about to raise someone from the dead. But not before the mourners laugh.
Christian hope, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer is “to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.” Our hope is grounded on the promises God made to Abraham when God told Abraham that through Abraham God would bless the whole world, renewing and restoring the glory of God’s creation. Our hope is rooted in the faithfulness of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God whom Sarah laughed at when God told her she would have a child in her old age; the God who told Abraham to sacrifice his only son; the God who gave his blessing to Jacob when the blessing was supposed to go to his older brother Esau; the God of the Exodus, who set a poor and ragtag band of slaves free from the power of Pharoah; and the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
Our hope rests on the faithfulness of God, this God who has not always acted predictably, and not on anything we are able to bring about ourselves. And what we are hoping for is the day when, in the magnificent words of Revelation, “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” What we hoping for is that time when the whole of creation will be made new, when sickness and death will no longer haunt this world, a day when, as in our gospel reading this morning, all are healed and given new life.
This morning the disciples become impatient, Jairus becomes afraid when he learns his daughter has died and the crowd laughs when Jesus tells them the child is not dead. Holding out hope in the midst of a world impatient to make things happen, distrustful of any power other than our own and quick to ridicule what seems impossible, is challenging. Much of the time what we end up hoping for is “the best,” something probable and possible given the circumstances, but not impossible. To put our hope in something impossible seems foolish and we most probably will be disappointed.
Commentating on our text this morning, theologian and minister of the Uniting Church in Australia, William Loader writes: “The ultimate fantasy of hope, earthed in the reality of God, namely, that evil will be overcome and new life emerge, finds its fulfillment already here in Jesus. Mark is celebrating this reality and the hope of its emergence for the eyes that see and the ears that hear.”
Our story this morning is a “fantasy of hope,” about the emergence of new life and all that seeks to keep that new life from emerging.
“Daughter, your faith has made you well;” Jesus says to a woman this morning, “go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” The peace that Jesus desires for this woman is not simply the absence of affliction. Peace – “shalom” in Hebrew – meant wholeness, completeness and well-being for all, not just this woman. To be sent away “in peace” meant returning to take her place within the community, to no longer be separated from others, for her sake as well as for the sake of others. Her healing, in other words, was not an individual affair, not just about her. Her absence from the community made the community less than whole, incomplete.
Growing up, as we all have, in a culture of individualism, this rich Hebraic understanding of peace as wholeness, is often forgotten. Our well-being, we often think, is a private and personal affair; that we are well or ill is nobody’s business but ours. That your well-being might impact my well-being we often fail to consider. We can forget that we are in Saint Paul’s words “the body of Christ” and when one member suffers we all suffer.
From the perspective of the disciples, Jesus’ concern to know who touched him was an unnecessary interruption; for Jesus, what this woman did demonstrated her faith, and would not go unnoticed. What this woman did was claim for herself God’s promise of well-being, hoping that in spite of the reality that no one had been able to cure her in twelve years and now with no more money to keep trying, touching this man’s cloak would restore her to wellness.
Her healing takes place in front of a distraught father and disciples who are about to witness something even more amazing. Her healing, far from being an interruption, is preparing the disciples for what is to come. And we, as we hear this amazing story, are also being prepared, prepared for a world made new, where no one goes hungry, where justice is done, where, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”
Every now and again we catch glimpses of this brave new world, a world in which everyone has a place at the table and no one is dispensable. Every once in a while, God gives us a taste of the impossible and not just the probable. Consider the impossibility of making someone love you or the impossibility of being forgiven when we have done something to hurt someone else. If you have ever been loved or forgiven, you have tasted the kingdom of God. You have tasted the impossible if you have ever been utterly lost with no hope of finding your way home, and someone comes along with a way, a possibility you had never entertained.
No one of us knows what tomorrow will bring, but in hope we believe tomorrow, like today, is firmly within God’s good purposes. In that hope, we can be confident, as the prayer book says, “in newness and fullness of life.” And with that confidence, we can offer hope to a weary world, not dismissing the reality that awful things happen but confident that whatever befalls us will not have the last word.
Jesus has the last word in our reading this morning. After telling this little girl to “get up!” Jesus then tells those who have been in mourning to give this child something to eat. Jesus has just raised a twelve year old from death to life and Jesus is concerned about her lunch. As with so much of the gospel accounts, the extraordinary sits disconcertingly within the ordinary and mundane, the impossible and the possible dancing together in a way you and I rarely see and often miss.
Jesus has healed one woman when no one else could and brought a dead twelve year old child back to life. Fixing lunch would be the last thing I would be thinking about right then. And maybe that is why Jesus tells this grief stricken family to feed this child, a way of letting them know that life will go on, in spite of all indications to the contrary. Fixing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right about then would be about the craziest and most improbable response I can think of, nothing less than an act of hope.
The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost 2 Samuel 6: 1- 5, 12b – 19
Sunday, July 15, 2012 Ephesians 1: 3 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 14 – 29
David danced before the Lord with all his might;
2 Samuel 6: 14a
This morning in our first reading from the Old Testament, we hear a wonderful story about King David, remembered as one of the greatest of the kings of Israel. King David was a young shepherd boy when he is anointed to be the future king of Israel and often comes to our attention as the boy who kills the Philistine Goliath with a sling shot. Through David’s political and military leadership the twelve separate tribes of Israel became a small but united nation whose capital was Jerusalem, otherwise known as the city of David.
Before the twelve tribes of Israel were united under David, these tribes shared a common ancestry – these were the people God had freed from slavery in Egypt and with whom God’s presence dwelt in the ark of God. The ark of God was a portable shrine that moved from place to place, symbolizing God’s presence with these people. This morning, King David brings the ark of God to Jerusalem where this ark of God will become the holy center of the great Temple that David’s successor Solomon will build.
The story we hear this morning is a story of great celebration as David and thirty thousand Israelites sing and dance their way into Jerusalem with the ark of God. “David,” we hear, “and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might , with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” Thirty thousand people singing and dancing must have been a sight to behold!
And David abandons all social custom in his joy, forsaking his royal robes, and is clad only in a linen ephod, a little like going out in your pajamas. And his wife Michal is aghast at his reckless abandon and unseemly behavior. But David is unfazed, so overcome as he is with joy - the Israelites and their God are establishing a home, a place where God and the people of God can be together for all time.
That is the first story we hear this morning but not the last. The last story we hear this morning comes from the gospel of Mark and is the story of a birthday celebration of another Israelite king, centuries later, named Herod. King Herod, according to our evangelist Mark, is intrigued by John the Baptist who has accused Herod of adultery, but seems to be “a righteous and holy man.” Herod’s wife Herodias is not so disposed and wants John the Baptist gone permanently. And the opportunity comes when Herod makes a vow to Herodias’ daughter, after she dances before him, to give her anything she desires. “And what do I want?” this young girl asks her mother who, without hesitation, tells her: “The head of John the Baptizer.” And John is beheaded and his head is placed on a platter and given to the girl who gives it to her mother.
This whole story is sickening. A holy and righteous man is killed for no other reason than an adulterous woman bears a grudge against him. A young girl presents a severed head on a platter to her mother. And a king regards the keeping of an oath more highly than the life of a man he admires. This story is tragic, a horrible inversion of the story about King David and the joyous celebration that takes place when the ark of God is brought to Jerusalem. The kingdom of Herod is a kingdom of violence and revenge, a kingdom in which a young girl holds a man’s severed head on a platter.
The kingdom of David, on the other hand, was long remembered as a time of great glory for Israel, a time when Israel was most fully the people God desired Israel to be. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes David as a “ruler who both gave and inspired deep affection, not least through the magnanimity which he frequently showed to his personal enemies. The narrative reports, with striking honesty, his lapses into sin…, but also gives a moving picture of his repentance.”
King David was as different from King Herod as day is from night. King Herod was a puppet ruler, appointed by Rome to govern the Jews. Herod’s job was to keep the peace, not preserve the identity of the Jewish people and their way of life. And Herod’s authority over the Jews was compromised by Herod’s willingness to ignore the Jewish law, a law that clearly forbade Herod from marrying his brother’s wife while his brother was still living. Herod was a sham and the people knew Herod was a sham.
The difference between David and Herod was not that one was a saint and one was a sinner. David, like Herod, did some pretty horrible things as when David had a man named Uriah killed on the battlefield so that David could marry his wife Bathsheba. The difference between Herod and David was that David, after killing Uriah and confronted by the prophet Nathan, repented. When John the Baptist confronts Herod, Herod throws him into prison.
David knows he is accountable before God, whereas Herod’s accountability is to Rome to keep the peace and to his courtiers and officers who must not perceive him as a man who breaks his word. David’s heart belongs to God; Herod’s heart is divided between keeping his job and maintaining his social prestige. The death of John the Baptist, while grievous to Herod, does not seem to be enough to move Herod to change, to turn around, to see that a divided heart, like a divided house, cannot stand. Herod, although he feared John and knew John to be a holy and righteous man, seems to have feared more the wrath of Rome, of his wife Herodias, and the disdain of his entourage. Herod is a man to be pitied.
David’s ultimate loyalty was to God, the God before whom he dances this day “with all his might,” in reckless abandon, in spite of the ridicule of his wife Michal who watches King David “leaping and dancing” before the ark of God from a window “despising him in her heart.” And David carries on, bringing the ark to rest in a tent, blessing the people in the name of the Lord and giving “the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins.” I suspect Michal never came out of her room.
David’s joy as he brings the ark of God into Jerusalem contrasts sharply with Herod’s grief when he realizes he has killed a holy and righteous man. Herod has honored his oath but lost himself, pleasing Herodias and saving face with his entourage but not doing the one thing he wanted to do – protect John the Baptist. Herod has been loyal to everyone but himself.
This Sunday in our post communion prayer we will ask God to “send us out into the world in peace” granting us “strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.” Such “gladness and singleness of heart” is what we see in King David this morning as he dances “with all his might” before the ark of God with a reckless abandon. King Herod’s heart, on the other hand, is divided, split between competing loyalties that leave him trapped.
Such singleness of heart is what we see in Christ, the son of David, whose desire was always to do the will of his Father. And divided hearts will nail Jesus to the cross – hearts torn between following Jesus and keeping the peace, between maintaining the status quo and trusting God to do a new thing, hearts torn between hope and fear.
I suppose the image of King David leaping and dancing and shouting for joy is not an image we associate very often with life in the church. Such whole hearted joy in God is probably a bit foolish in a world awash with problems and concerns, where worries abound and our fears keep us awake at night. Abandoning ourselves to the love of God hardly seems to be the answer to the many questions we all face.
And yet, over and over again Jesus tells the disciples that only as we lose our lives will we save them. To lose our lives means to hand ourselves over, to abandon ourselves into God’s hand, to revel in the joy of God with all of our might, to trust that loving God with all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our strength, is indeed, the first and greatest commandment.
And maybe the hardest. Can you imagine what a sight we would make if we all danced and shouted our way down Main Street on a Sunday morning, blowing trumpets and shaking tambourines, following a young acolyte carrying the cross, the choir helping us to make a joyful noise in the stillness of a Sunday morning? Can you imagine the stir we would make, the curiosity we would arouse, and I suspect, the ridicule we would incur? What would people think?
People would think we had lost our minds. Funny, people thought the same thing about Jesus.
Sunday, July 15, 2012 Ephesians 1: 3 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 14 – 29
David danced before the Lord with all his might;
2 Samuel 6: 14a
This morning in our first reading from the Old Testament, we hear a wonderful story about King David, remembered as one of the greatest of the kings of Israel. King David was a young shepherd boy when he is anointed to be the future king of Israel and often comes to our attention as the boy who kills the Philistine Goliath with a sling shot. Through David’s political and military leadership the twelve separate tribes of Israel became a small but united nation whose capital was Jerusalem, otherwise known as the city of David.
Before the twelve tribes of Israel were united under David, these tribes shared a common ancestry – these were the people God had freed from slavery in Egypt and with whom God’s presence dwelt in the ark of God. The ark of God was a portable shrine that moved from place to place, symbolizing God’s presence with these people. This morning, King David brings the ark of God to Jerusalem where this ark of God will become the holy center of the great Temple that David’s successor Solomon will build.
The story we hear this morning is a story of great celebration as David and thirty thousand Israelites sing and dance their way into Jerusalem with the ark of God. “David,” we hear, “and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might , with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” Thirty thousand people singing and dancing must have been a sight to behold!
And David abandons all social custom in his joy, forsaking his royal robes, and is clad only in a linen ephod, a little like going out in your pajamas. And his wife Michal is aghast at his reckless abandon and unseemly behavior. But David is unfazed, so overcome as he is with joy - the Israelites and their God are establishing a home, a place where God and the people of God can be together for all time.
That is the first story we hear this morning but not the last. The last story we hear this morning comes from the gospel of Mark and is the story of a birthday celebration of another Israelite king, centuries later, named Herod. King Herod, according to our evangelist Mark, is intrigued by John the Baptist who has accused Herod of adultery, but seems to be “a righteous and holy man.” Herod’s wife Herodias is not so disposed and wants John the Baptist gone permanently. And the opportunity comes when Herod makes a vow to Herodias’ daughter, after she dances before him, to give her anything she desires. “And what do I want?” this young girl asks her mother who, without hesitation, tells her: “The head of John the Baptizer.” And John is beheaded and his head is placed on a platter and given to the girl who gives it to her mother.
This whole story is sickening. A holy and righteous man is killed for no other reason than an adulterous woman bears a grudge against him. A young girl presents a severed head on a platter to her mother. And a king regards the keeping of an oath more highly than the life of a man he admires. This story is tragic, a horrible inversion of the story about King David and the joyous celebration that takes place when the ark of God is brought to Jerusalem. The kingdom of Herod is a kingdom of violence and revenge, a kingdom in which a young girl holds a man’s severed head on a platter.
The kingdom of David, on the other hand, was long remembered as a time of great glory for Israel, a time when Israel was most fully the people God desired Israel to be. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes David as a “ruler who both gave and inspired deep affection, not least through the magnanimity which he frequently showed to his personal enemies. The narrative reports, with striking honesty, his lapses into sin…, but also gives a moving picture of his repentance.”
King David was as different from King Herod as day is from night. King Herod was a puppet ruler, appointed by Rome to govern the Jews. Herod’s job was to keep the peace, not preserve the identity of the Jewish people and their way of life. And Herod’s authority over the Jews was compromised by Herod’s willingness to ignore the Jewish law, a law that clearly forbade Herod from marrying his brother’s wife while his brother was still living. Herod was a sham and the people knew Herod was a sham.
The difference between David and Herod was not that one was a saint and one was a sinner. David, like Herod, did some pretty horrible things as when David had a man named Uriah killed on the battlefield so that David could marry his wife Bathsheba. The difference between Herod and David was that David, after killing Uriah and confronted by the prophet Nathan, repented. When John the Baptist confronts Herod, Herod throws him into prison.
David knows he is accountable before God, whereas Herod’s accountability is to Rome to keep the peace and to his courtiers and officers who must not perceive him as a man who breaks his word. David’s heart belongs to God; Herod’s heart is divided between keeping his job and maintaining his social prestige. The death of John the Baptist, while grievous to Herod, does not seem to be enough to move Herod to change, to turn around, to see that a divided heart, like a divided house, cannot stand. Herod, although he feared John and knew John to be a holy and righteous man, seems to have feared more the wrath of Rome, of his wife Herodias, and the disdain of his entourage. Herod is a man to be pitied.
David’s ultimate loyalty was to God, the God before whom he dances this day “with all his might,” in reckless abandon, in spite of the ridicule of his wife Michal who watches King David “leaping and dancing” before the ark of God from a window “despising him in her heart.” And David carries on, bringing the ark to rest in a tent, blessing the people in the name of the Lord and giving “the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins.” I suspect Michal never came out of her room.
David’s joy as he brings the ark of God into Jerusalem contrasts sharply with Herod’s grief when he realizes he has killed a holy and righteous man. Herod has honored his oath but lost himself, pleasing Herodias and saving face with his entourage but not doing the one thing he wanted to do – protect John the Baptist. Herod has been loyal to everyone but himself.
This Sunday in our post communion prayer we will ask God to “send us out into the world in peace” granting us “strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.” Such “gladness and singleness of heart” is what we see in King David this morning as he dances “with all his might” before the ark of God with a reckless abandon. King Herod’s heart, on the other hand, is divided, split between competing loyalties that leave him trapped.
Such singleness of heart is what we see in Christ, the son of David, whose desire was always to do the will of his Father. And divided hearts will nail Jesus to the cross – hearts torn between following Jesus and keeping the peace, between maintaining the status quo and trusting God to do a new thing, hearts torn between hope and fear.
I suppose the image of King David leaping and dancing and shouting for joy is not an image we associate very often with life in the church. Such whole hearted joy in God is probably a bit foolish in a world awash with problems and concerns, where worries abound and our fears keep us awake at night. Abandoning ourselves to the love of God hardly seems to be the answer to the many questions we all face.
And yet, over and over again Jesus tells the disciples that only as we lose our lives will we save them. To lose our lives means to hand ourselves over, to abandon ourselves into God’s hand, to revel in the joy of God with all of our might, to trust that loving God with all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our strength, is indeed, the first and greatest commandment.
And maybe the hardest. Can you imagine what a sight we would make if we all danced and shouted our way down Main Street on a Sunday morning, blowing trumpets and shaking tambourines, following a young acolyte carrying the cross, the choir helping us to make a joyful noise in the stillness of a Sunday morning? Can you imagine the stir we would make, the curiosity we would arouse, and I suspect, the ridicule we would incur? What would people think?
People would think we had lost our minds. Funny, people thought the same thing about Jesus.
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost 2 Samuel 7: 1 – 14a
Sunday, July 22, 2012 Ephesians 2: 11 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 30 – 34; 53 – 56
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace;
Ephesians 2: 13 – 14a
Our second reading this morning comes from what we usually call “The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians.” Most scholars, however, do not believe that this text is a letter nor that it was written by Saint Paul. What we hear this morning is a sermon most probably written by a follower of Saint Paul, designed to be read to those who have just been baptized, not just at Ephesus but in all churches.
Ephesians is a “celebration of the life of the Church,” in the words of one commentator, a moving and poetic description of who we are as the church. And our reading this morning begins by calling us to remember that we were at one time “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” and “strangers to the covenant of promise.”
The church began life as a sect within Judaism, following the death and resurrection of Jesus who was Jewish. Thanks largely to Paul, the “apostle to the gentiles,” the church quickly took root in areas that were not primarily Jewish. By the time Ephesians was written, the newly baptized were predominately gentiles – non-Jews. Unlike Jews, gentiles were not circumsized in accordance with Jewish law and thus, are addressed in this sermon as people of the “uncircumcision.” The newly baptized are reminded this morning that before their baptism, they were strangers and aliens, “having no hope and without God.”
I daresay, few of us would say that before our baptism we had no hope and were without God. And yet, for the author of Ephesians, the name “God” referred to a very specific divine presence made known to the Jews and whose relationship with the Jewish people is narrated in the Old Testament. The relationship between this God and the Jews was initiated by God and grounded in a covenant – a mutual set of promises in which God promised to be with these people and make of them a great nation which would be a blessing to the world and this people promised to live in accordance with God’s laws.
This God, made known to the Jews through this covenant of promise, is not the generic God often spoken of in our day and age. When the Jews spoke of God, the Jews were speaking of the God who freed them from slavery in Egypt, who gave them the Ten Commandments, who spoke through the prophets, and who led them into and out of exile. This God had acted in history, creating a people from a band of slaves and shepherding them as they sought to live out God’s commandments. The story of their relationship with God is the sacred story contained in the Old Testament.
And if you read the Old Testament, as a non-Jew, this story can feel very strange and very alien. The Jews were to be holy people, set apart from other nations, and holiness meant abstaining from eating certain foods, from contact with the dead and with blood, and offering animal sacrifices in the Temple. The laws sound strange to us, leaving us often bewildered by the array of commandments all designed to keep this people holy.
So, we are indeed, “aliens and strangers” to this covenant of promise and perhaps even grateful that we are not obligated to keep kosher if you will. But then, what of the promises of this God to this people? In what way do we, who are not Jewish, share in the promises of God to the Jews?
“By the blood of Christ,” proclaims the author of Ephesians. Christ’s death on the cross was the way God “delivered” us, “rescued” us, and “saved” us. God rescued the Jews by giving them the Law; God rescued us by Christ’s death on the cross. And for the author of Ephesians, this new community we call church is a wondrous community of Jews and gentiles, of those who were “once far off and those who were near.”
Christ is our “peace,” we hear this morning. Peace – shalom in Hebrew – is not referring to a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing Jesus is our friend, but to God’s desire for wholeness, for the world God created, to be one, for enemies and friends to be reconciled, or in the words of an Advent hymn:
O come, desire of nations,
bind in one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid thou our sad divisions cease,
And be thyself our King of peace.
Our reading from Ephesians comes to us this day after a busy week in our common life. On Tuesday, a small group of us gathered for morning prayer and Bible study as we always do on Tuesday mornings. And on Wednesday, in the name of the church, I offered a blessing for a home shared by a family among us. Wednesday afternoon, the undercroft was alive with small children who heard the story of Jonah and the whale, decorated T shirts and fashioned whales out of milk jugs, ending the day eating hotdogs and hamburgers and homemade french fries at our community supper while running through a sprinkler. Thursday morning, the Jackson Field Home for Girls held their annual board meeting here. And yesterday, we buried Alfred Colonel Parker, whose family had worshipped here many years ago.
Not all weeks - thanks be to God! – are as busy as last week. But as I came to our reading from Ephesians this morning, I was recalled to the purpose of the Church. We are to be the peace of God, to show forth in our common life the desire of God that we all might be one, in the words of the gospel of John, to break down the walls that divide us and be ambassadors of reconciliation in the words of Saint Paul. We are to bear glad witness to the world that we, who once were aliens and strangers, now enjoy friendship with God.
The church has sometimes forgotten our Jewish roots and that as gentiles, we are the “come here’s.” Indeed, once the Roman Emperor Constatine converted in the fourth century, and the church became the “official” religion of the Roman Empire, the church assumed a place of power and privilege unknown until then. Sadly, the church’s newfound power was often used to build up dividing walls between people, not take them down. Heretics were drawn and quartered, Jews were maligned and Muslims persecuted.
And today, we in the church continue to be plagued by a spirit of division as some folk are quick to speak their mind, but are slow to listen to the thoughts of others, while others, in the name of “tolerance” dismiss our very real differences as simple misunderstandings. The peace of God continues to elude us.
And yet, this week in the flurry of activity here at St. Asaph’s, I caught a glimpse of the peace of God as exuberant children laughed and sang and enjoyed getting wet on a very hot day; as a family came to the church in their grief, seeking comfort and solace; and as a group met in the undercroft with a desire to offer at-risk adolescent girls a place of safety in the midst of their chaotic lives.
This week was a gift to us from God, and did not unfold in ways we were wholly able to anticipate. Life in the Church is unpredictable, reminding us all that we worship a God who is quite free to do things God’s way, regardless of our druthers. And I would be less than truthful were I to say that I was always glad and grateful this week. Indeed, yesterday morning, remembering I still had a sermon to write, I did a fair amount of grumbling.
Our reading this morning from Ephesians invites us to step back and remember who we were and who we are and all that by the grace of God. God was gracious to us this week, inviting us to be as hospitable to others as God has been to us. May we, who share in the promises of God by grace, be quick to be gracious to others and not for our sakes, but for the sake of the One who died for us.
Sunday, July 22, 2012 Ephesians 2: 11 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis Mark 6: 30 – 34; 53 – 56
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace;
Ephesians 2: 13 – 14a
Our second reading this morning comes from what we usually call “The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians.” Most scholars, however, do not believe that this text is a letter nor that it was written by Saint Paul. What we hear this morning is a sermon most probably written by a follower of Saint Paul, designed to be read to those who have just been baptized, not just at Ephesus but in all churches.
Ephesians is a “celebration of the life of the Church,” in the words of one commentator, a moving and poetic description of who we are as the church. And our reading this morning begins by calling us to remember that we were at one time “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” and “strangers to the covenant of promise.”
The church began life as a sect within Judaism, following the death and resurrection of Jesus who was Jewish. Thanks largely to Paul, the “apostle to the gentiles,” the church quickly took root in areas that were not primarily Jewish. By the time Ephesians was written, the newly baptized were predominately gentiles – non-Jews. Unlike Jews, gentiles were not circumsized in accordance with Jewish law and thus, are addressed in this sermon as people of the “uncircumcision.” The newly baptized are reminded this morning that before their baptism, they were strangers and aliens, “having no hope and without God.”
I daresay, few of us would say that before our baptism we had no hope and were without God. And yet, for the author of Ephesians, the name “God” referred to a very specific divine presence made known to the Jews and whose relationship with the Jewish people is narrated in the Old Testament. The relationship between this God and the Jews was initiated by God and grounded in a covenant – a mutual set of promises in which God promised to be with these people and make of them a great nation which would be a blessing to the world and this people promised to live in accordance with God’s laws.
This God, made known to the Jews through this covenant of promise, is not the generic God often spoken of in our day and age. When the Jews spoke of God, the Jews were speaking of the God who freed them from slavery in Egypt, who gave them the Ten Commandments, who spoke through the prophets, and who led them into and out of exile. This God had acted in history, creating a people from a band of slaves and shepherding them as they sought to live out God’s commandments. The story of their relationship with God is the sacred story contained in the Old Testament.
And if you read the Old Testament, as a non-Jew, this story can feel very strange and very alien. The Jews were to be holy people, set apart from other nations, and holiness meant abstaining from eating certain foods, from contact with the dead and with blood, and offering animal sacrifices in the Temple. The laws sound strange to us, leaving us often bewildered by the array of commandments all designed to keep this people holy.
So, we are indeed, “aliens and strangers” to this covenant of promise and perhaps even grateful that we are not obligated to keep kosher if you will. But then, what of the promises of this God to this people? In what way do we, who are not Jewish, share in the promises of God to the Jews?
“By the blood of Christ,” proclaims the author of Ephesians. Christ’s death on the cross was the way God “delivered” us, “rescued” us, and “saved” us. God rescued the Jews by giving them the Law; God rescued us by Christ’s death on the cross. And for the author of Ephesians, this new community we call church is a wondrous community of Jews and gentiles, of those who were “once far off and those who were near.”
Christ is our “peace,” we hear this morning. Peace – shalom in Hebrew – is not referring to a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing Jesus is our friend, but to God’s desire for wholeness, for the world God created, to be one, for enemies and friends to be reconciled, or in the words of an Advent hymn:
O come, desire of nations,
bind in one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid thou our sad divisions cease,
And be thyself our King of peace.
Our reading from Ephesians comes to us this day after a busy week in our common life. On Tuesday, a small group of us gathered for morning prayer and Bible study as we always do on Tuesday mornings. And on Wednesday, in the name of the church, I offered a blessing for a home shared by a family among us. Wednesday afternoon, the undercroft was alive with small children who heard the story of Jonah and the whale, decorated T shirts and fashioned whales out of milk jugs, ending the day eating hotdogs and hamburgers and homemade french fries at our community supper while running through a sprinkler. Thursday morning, the Jackson Field Home for Girls held their annual board meeting here. And yesterday, we buried Alfred Colonel Parker, whose family had worshipped here many years ago.
Not all weeks - thanks be to God! – are as busy as last week. But as I came to our reading from Ephesians this morning, I was recalled to the purpose of the Church. We are to be the peace of God, to show forth in our common life the desire of God that we all might be one, in the words of the gospel of John, to break down the walls that divide us and be ambassadors of reconciliation in the words of Saint Paul. We are to bear glad witness to the world that we, who once were aliens and strangers, now enjoy friendship with God.
The church has sometimes forgotten our Jewish roots and that as gentiles, we are the “come here’s.” Indeed, once the Roman Emperor Constatine converted in the fourth century, and the church became the “official” religion of the Roman Empire, the church assumed a place of power and privilege unknown until then. Sadly, the church’s newfound power was often used to build up dividing walls between people, not take them down. Heretics were drawn and quartered, Jews were maligned and Muslims persecuted.
And today, we in the church continue to be plagued by a spirit of division as some folk are quick to speak their mind, but are slow to listen to the thoughts of others, while others, in the name of “tolerance” dismiss our very real differences as simple misunderstandings. The peace of God continues to elude us.
And yet, this week in the flurry of activity here at St. Asaph’s, I caught a glimpse of the peace of God as exuberant children laughed and sang and enjoyed getting wet on a very hot day; as a family came to the church in their grief, seeking comfort and solace; and as a group met in the undercroft with a desire to offer at-risk adolescent girls a place of safety in the midst of their chaotic lives.
This week was a gift to us from God, and did not unfold in ways we were wholly able to anticipate. Life in the Church is unpredictable, reminding us all that we worship a God who is quite free to do things God’s way, regardless of our druthers. And I would be less than truthful were I to say that I was always glad and grateful this week. Indeed, yesterday morning, remembering I still had a sermon to write, I did a fair amount of grumbling.
Our reading this morning from Ephesians invites us to step back and remember who we were and who we are and all that by the grace of God. God was gracious to us this week, inviting us to be as hospitable to others as God has been to us. May we, who share in the promises of God by grace, be quick to be gracious to others and not for our sakes, but for the sake of the One who died for us.