PENTECOST XIV

El Greco -- St James

• Song of Solomon 2:8-13 and Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9 •
• Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 and Psalm 15 •
• James 1:17-27 •
• Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

It is relatively rarely in the Lectionary that the connection between the Epistle and the Gospel is quite so clear as it is on this Sunday. The subject of both is the concept of ‘defilement’, what it is and why it matters. ‘Defilement’ is not a term we use easily, nowadays, partly as a result of the fact that we live in a much less religious world than previous generations did. Yet something like this concept is hard to dispense with. How are we to capture the particularly loathsome nature of child pornography or the vandalizing of graves, except with language that goes beyond customary moral concepts of right and wrong, and captures something of the revulsion that the idea of ‘defilement’ expresses?

At the same time, we know that human beings easily create merely conventional taboos. The violation of these is a ‘defilement’ that then licenses contempt and oppression against those who do not, or will not conform to them. It is this conventionalism that Jesus condemns in this week’s Gospel passage. Such people, he says, treat ‘human precepts’ as though they were fundamental ‘doctrines’, and thereby ‘abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition’. They venerate mere codes of action, when what matters is the heart and spirit from which our actions spring.

In the Epistle, James extends the thought to make us more circumspect in this regard. Moral outrage is simply anger; it ‘does not produce God’s righteousness’. Religion ‘pure and undefiled’ requires ‘meekness’  -- which is to say humility in our judgment of others, and a close watch on our own sincerity.

PENTECOST XII

Jesus teaching in the Temple  James Tissot (1836-1902)

• 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 and Psalm 111  • 
• Proverbs 9:1-6 and Psalm 34:9-14  • 
• Ephesians 5:15-20  • 
• John 6:51-58

The Gospel for this week continues the theme of the previous week as it elaborates still further the symbolic image of ‘the bread of life’. In these verses, the image of wine is added. Both symbols figure very prominently in John’s Gospel, and relate unmistakably to the distinctive Christian rite of Holy Communion. This rite seems to have been well established among the followers of Christ at a very early stage, and since it is likely that John’s Gospel was composed somewhere around six decades after the death of Jesus, it is seems certain that it was written in full knowledge of this fact.

What this shows is that the Eucharist did not arise from a new theological doctrine or creed. Rather, its celebration had a power to speak directly to the deep spiritual needs and hopes of people. The struggle to understand its mysterious nature flowed from an immediate acknowledgement of its significance, as it. has always done and continues to.

With unusual literary skill, the fourth Evangelist weaves the teachings of Jesus with their essential Jewish background, and his subsequent Crucifixion and Resurrection, into a remarkably unified narrative. It is one that has provided Christians over two millennia with an indispensible source of insight into and reflection upon the central practice of their faith.

The other Lectionary readings for this week point out a further important connection. References to bread and wine occur in the short passages from Proverbs and Ephesians. Together they alert us to the fact that the Eucharist is not simply a distinctive religious ritual. It is intimately connected with living life wisely.

PENTECOST XI

The Bread Line -- Grigorij Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow (1872)

• 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 and Psalm 130  • 
• 1 Kings 19:4-8 and Psalm 34:1-8  • 
• Ephesians 4:25-5:2  • 
• John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life”. Taken in isolation, and stripped of its familiarity, this seems an exceptionally strange utterance. What can it mean? The Gospel for this Sunday selects a few verses out of a longer passage which really needs to be read as a whole, since it provides the context within which this strange claim is to be understood. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus chastises the people who have been pursuing him. This is the same crowd of “five thousand” that was miraculously fed from a few loaves and fishes. Jesus rebukes them because they had seen this, not as a spiritual sign, but as a marvelous source of free food.

It is against this background that he makes his assertion, and goes on to contrast the “bread” he has to offer, not just with the free bread the crowd was seeking, but with the manna that saved the Israelites from starvation in the wilderness. The key difference, we might say, is between the means to sustain life, and the source of life itself. It is a deep spiritual error to mistake the bread our bodies need with the “bread” that “endures to eternal life”.

This is a mistake that can be made with the best of intentions. The reference to Jesus as the bread of life is sometimes invoked in connection with Christian action for the alleviation of poverty and destitution -- as it is with the inclusion of Mjassojedow's picture of 'The Bread Line' in the Vanderbilt Library page for this week of the Lectionary. This is an indisputably worthy cause. Yet, the spiritual life that Jesus offers is needed by, and available to the poor no less than the prosperous. Wealth is no guarantee of salvation, everyone agrees. But conversely, being on the breadline is no insurmountable obstacle to it. Everyone needs to remember the Mosaic injunction with which Jesus repels the devil – “Man does not live by bread alone”.

John’s Gospel takes the thought further. There is a quite different kind of bread for which we ought to hunger, and it is to be found supremely, and uniquely, in Christ Jesus. Prosperity matters, but not as much as 'the riches of his grace'.

PENTECOST VIII

Landscape with Shepherd and Sheep   Anton Mauve, (1838-1888)

• 2 Samuel 7:1-14a and Psalm 89:20-37  • 
• Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Psalm 23  • 
• Ephesians 2:11-22  • 
• Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Once again the agricultural world in which Jesus lived and taught provides a central image for the Sunday readings – sheep and shepherds. In the thematic Old Testament lessons, the passage from Jeremiah (reinforced by Psalm 23) uses the image to lament the extent to which the leaders of the Israelites have abandoned their God-given role to be ‘shepherds’ of the people. In the Gospel, Jesus abandons his desire to retreat from the constant pressures of the crowds who seek his help, because he suddenly sees them ‘sheep without a shepherd’.

In the interpretation of this image and its applications in Scripture, we must not suppose that sheep are useless without a shepherd. On the contrary, they know how to cope with basic survival and everyday life. They can secure grass to graze on and water to drink; they can breed successfully and succor their young. It is vital needs beyond the everyday that surpass their natural abilities -- distant sources of ‘living’ (i.e. fresh) water, and protection against climatic hazards and natural predators. These are the deficiencies that the good shepherd supplies.

By analogy, then, we should not think of the crowd upon which Jesus has compassion as a bunch of helpless children. These are adults with homes, families, skills and occupations. Yet they crowd around Jesus because the larger context within which this everyday life is set leaves them at a loss. They know how to cope with ‘things temporal’, but flounder when it comes to ‘things eternal’ – the kind of life in which ultimately ‘true’ joys are to be found.

In short, they (like us) need ‘revealed’ as well as ‘discovered’ truth. It is a contention that the ‘religions of the book’ – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – hold in common. For Christians, though, the essential revelation comes not only through the Word of God, but through the Person of Christ – ‘the Word made Flesh’.

PENTECOST VII

Salome and the Beheading of John the Baptist -- Caravaggio

• 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 and Psalm 24  • 
• Amos 7:7-15 and Psalm 85:8-13  • 
• Ephesians 1:3-14  • 
• Mark 6:14-29

The Gospel passage for this Sunday records a grotesque and remarkably gruesome episode – the decapitation of John the Baptist, and the appearance of his severed head on a platter in the middle of a party! Mark manages to convey some compelling images in just a few verses – the brutality of absolute power, the terrible consequences of adolescent vanity, the viciousness of revenge, and the necessary acceptance of these realities by simple followers.

The episode is recounted in a context that characterizes the whole of Mark’s Gospel – the question of Jesus’ identity. What are we to make of him? Is he the Messiah? Is he another prophet like John? The fate of the Baptist is a ghastly catastrophe, yet even those who first read this passage, and wrestled with this question, could not have failed to know that Jesus himself had died a death scarcely less brutal. The difference, of course, is to be found in the Resurrection.

The disciples of Jesus, just like the disciples of John, ‘came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb’. What happened thereafter, however, changed everything. It did not undo the fact of his execution on a cross, of course, but nevertheless transformed its significance. It is precisely this transformation that the reading from Ephesians means to explicate. In the death of Jesus, God ‘has made known to us the mystery of his will . . . a plan for the fullness of time’. ‘In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance’ we have ‘heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation’.

The death of John is a display of human will at its worst. On the surface, the death of Jesus looks pretty much the same. But the Resurrection shows it to be the mysterious, and saving, will of God.

PENTECOST VI

 

Christ in the Synagogue N N Ge (1831-94)

• 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 and Psalm 48  • 
• Ezekiel 2:1-5 and Psalm 123  • 
• 2 Corinthians 12:2-10  • 
• Mark 6:1-13
    
  The short Epistle for this Sunday is hard to understand, because it appears out of context. It is an excerpt from Paul’s second Letter to the Corinthians, and part of a longer passage in which he is arguing against making personal experience of religious ecstasy the basis of spiritual authority. By speaking of himself in the third person, he writes dismissively of his own such experience, despite ‘the exceptional character of the revelation’ that was given to him on the road to Damascus.
  
  

  This is because he does not want ‘boasting’ about it to make anyone ‘think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me’. It is not his one-off experience, but his life as a living instance of the grace of God, that must prove his faith in Jesus. Indeed, to keep him from ‘being too elated’ he draws explicit attention to ‘a thorn in the flesh’ that constantly reminds him of his real life.

  
  

  We do not know what this ‘thorn’ was, but its role was to keep Paul mindful of this fact: the discipleship to which he was called was not a matter of elevated mystical elation, but ‘weaknesses, insults, hardships’ borne for the sake of Christ. Paradoxically, it is only when we fully acknowledge our own weakness that we are properly aware of the strength of God’s grace within us.

  
  

  The Gospel passage from Mark resonates with this important truth. Even Jesus, in whom the grace of God is brought to perfection, must confront ‘insults’ in his ‘own country’. Those who knew him as a boy dismissively discount his message in the synagogue. They cannot see beyond their assumption, to the prophetic voice he has become. This rejection is a prelude to instructions about discipleship. At their heart, we might say, is a balancing act. True Christian discipleship must avoid the temptation to seek self-affirmation in either persecution or popularity, since both turn the spotlight unto ourselves, and away from Christ.

  
  

   

PENTECOST IV

Rembrandt Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Gallilee

• 1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49 and Psalm 9:9-20 or
• 1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 18:10-16 and Psalm 133  • 
• Job 38:1-11 and Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32  • 
• 2 Corinthians 6:1-13  • 
• Mark 4:35-41

The brief but striking episode recorded in Mark’s Gospel for this Sunday -- in which Jesus appears to control a storm at sea with a simple command -- is usually referred to as a ‘nature’ miracle. But, as so often in the Gospels, this ‘miracle’ should be understood as a ‘sign’ rather than a ‘wonder’. What matters is what it says, not what it accomplishes.

Storms are natural metaphors. They easily transfer from the world of nature to the concerns of human life, and can thus be used to signify, and communicate, a climax in the strains and stresses of human life. This use of the image is common in the Bible – in the Psalms – for example -- and sometimes the metaphor and the literal event are inextricably interwoven – as in the story of Jonah, for instance.

In either case, the natural event of the storm is to be read as a symbol. It reveals something about Jesus and his relationship to God. The punch line of the story, of course, is the stilling of the storm, at which point the terror of the disciples is changed, not into grateful relief, but into ‘awe’ at the person of Jesus – "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?".

But in a way, the key moment is to be found a few verses earlier, when Jesus lies sleeping on a cushion. It is in response to their frightened accusation "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" that he stills the storm. The enormous gap between his relationship to God and theirs, however, is revealed not so much by his extraordinary power over the storm, but his ability to sleep in the midst of it.