disclosing new worlds

2 Samuel 11: 1-15
2 Kings 4: 42-44
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3: 14-21
John 6: 1-21

Bread. Feeding. Super-abundance. Exodus. Wilderness. Shepherd-kings. Eucharist. Signs. “Who is this man?” The love of God in Christ. All these themes – and probably several more –link this week’s Lectionary readings. There are anomalies in the selection of the texts. The first is that we leave Mark’s gospel precisely at the point of the feeding narrative for John’s version. This is unfortunate in the sense that we lose the narrative impetus and strategy of Mark if we are to do justice to John’s account. The incident threatens to become simply a discrete focus on “The Feeding of the Five Thousand (men!)” rather than part of Mark’s presentation of Jesus’ “campaign”. It is the case, however, that John takes up and emphasises the major synoptic themes (this is the only miracle he recounts that is common to the synoptic tradition), so that it is legitimate to read it in connection with Mark’s gospel.

The second is the inclusion of the story of David and Bathsheba. It follows the David narrative, but the story of David’s adultery and the plot to kill Uriah has little connection with John’s narrative of the feeding. However, Mark presents Jesus as a shepherd-king in his account (Mark 6: 30-44). In verse 34b, he states that Jesus had compassion on them “because they were like sheep without a shepherd”. John probably deliberately omits this synoptic tradition (I say “omits” because he is clearly aware of the detail of the story) because of his sign/”I am” saying structure. He places the “I am the Good Shepherd” in a different place. His account of the feeding leads on to the “I am the Bread of Life” saying in 6:35. However, he retains the elements of the sheep/shepherd image from the synoptic tradition: the countryside, the isolation, the hunger of the crowds who flock to Jesus. If we include Mark’s account, therefore, we find a helpful link between the feeding and the David and Bathsheba story: the contrast between the first shepherd-king, and Jesus.

The third anomaly is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians. Densely theological, it appears to stand on its own, with little or no connection to the feeding story. However, his phrase in Ephesians 3: 19 is significant: “… so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God”. The feeding narrative is about being filled. Paul uses the sense of being filled with the knowledge of the love of Christ (and the Spirit) in a parallel sense to which John presents Jesus as the Bread of Life: it is Christ who fills and satisfies.

Signs … of what?
John presents Jesus through a series of seven “signs”. They are miracles that reveal Jesus’ identity. This is important to note: the stress is not on the miraculous nature of Jesus’ actions (this is taken for granted) but on their meanings. Look at John’s treatment of this in our passage. In v2, the crowd that “kept following him” did so because “they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick”. Jesus was alleviating suffering. He was someone who could “make life better” – ease the burdens of living. If they were sick, he could heal them; if they were hungry, he could feed them. Yet Jesus did not come just to “make life better” – he came to bring Life in all its abundance (John 10:10). If we see Jesus as “just a miracle worker”, John tells us, we miss out on all that he offers. Jesus does not come only to satisfy hunger for bread: he is the Living Bread that satisfies the deepest human hunger for the Life of God. Those who are fed fail to understand that. They see the sign, but fail to comprehend its meaning (John 6:26). They wasn’t to make him king. Yet Jesus is only king in terms of his crucifixion. They wish merely to survive; they need to be born again.

Eternal life and a new world order
To preach about feeding miracles in the face of global hunger and poverty runs the risk of obscenity. Those of us who have plenty to eat instinctively read Jesus’ rebuke in 6:27 in spiritualised terms: “Don’t bother about food that perishes (we don’t bother in the sense of being distressed about whether or not we’re going to be able to eat!) but instead, focus on “spiritual food” – eternal life!”

Yet, as I have said before, this is to misread John. When John speaks of “eternal life”, he isn’t talking primarily about life after death, and about duration. He’s talking about the quality of life that God intends for human beings. Eternal life is life in this world (and beyond death), lived in proximity to God. It is God’s presence within life that makes life “eternal” – or “life in all its abundance”.

In this sense, John is very close indeed to the synoptic tradition. When Jesus rebukes the crowds, he is not talking about the satisfaction of less than physical hunger, but of more than that! For those of us who live affluent lives and never have to face the struggle for daily subsistence, John’s theologising can easily run the risk of obscuring Jesus’ engagement with the material conditions of his hearers. Yet Jesus was concerned with them! The gospel of Jesus in John (as opposed to the gospel of the kingdom in the synoptic tradition) is no less the promise of transformed reality. John’s is not Good News of some sort of Great Escape from worldly reality, but the Good News of the God who comes to dwell with us – to share our lives and to transform them with God’s presence.

This takes us back to Mark’s presentation of Jesus in his account of the feeding. The “crowds” are the poor people of the region; the economically helpless. They are the ones for whom life is fragile, and who live constantly on the edge of extinction. These are the people for whom a bad harvest signals disaster, and for whom daily bread literally means the difference between life and death. The inclusion of 2 Kings 2: 42-44 is not only because of the obvious parallels of feeding crowds with a few loaves of barley (it seems clear that the gospel writers consciously evoke parallels between Jesus and Elijah/Elisha), but also because of the context. In the story, all this takes place in Gilgal during a famine. This is what makes the first-fruits offering so precious and costly: in a time of famine, every grain is vital! The man from Baal-shalishah nonetheless offers the first-fruits to Yahweh, and as a result, Yahweh feeds far, far more people than expected!

Mark’s Jesus consciously evokes the Elisha story. The point, though, is to stress that one greater than Elisha is here. Whereas Elisha fed a hundred men, Jesus feeds five thousand. Whereas Elisha is confirmed as a prophet of Yahweh by providing food in the midst of famine, Jesus ushers in a new economic order. The feast of bread and fish in Mark’s telling do more than just evoke Yahweh’s provision in the wilderness. This is a Jewish feeding, and Mark will go on to describe the Gentile feeding of the four thousand. Whereas scholars have concentrated on whether or not the second feeding is simply a re-run of the first, they have missed the political point that Mark makes. The parallels with the Exodus mean that this is the new messianic community – the new Israel. By including the Gentile feeding, Mark stresses that this is a new world order – an order in which the poor are fed with daily bread. And it is an order based on sharing. The food is provided by a young boy, who offers his packed lunch. The generosity of the donor (as in the Elisha story) is matched by God’s super-abundant provision. There is enough for all – more than enough!

There is a fundamental truth here about global poverty and starvation. There is enough to go round! God has created a fruitful world, in which there is more than enough for everyone – provided we are prepared to share equally! The problem is that our global economy creates widespread starvation on the one hand, and problems with obesity on the other. The problem is extraordinarily simple. It is an absence of compassion. What motivates Jesus is compassion for the crowds. The disciples place a monetary value on the food required. It is economically too expensive even to consider feeding such a crowd. The hard-heartedness of the disciples is contrasted with the open generosity of the boy who shares his food freely. This is the new messianic world – a world in which Jesus’ prayer for daily bread for all is answered. The challenge for us is to recognise the failure of compassion that traps the world in deadly cycles of starvation and eating disorders. On the one hand, sharing will eradicate poverty. But equal sharing will mean an end to excessive consumerism, and so eradicate the problems with food common in our bloated, capitalist First World.

Eucharist and mission
The Eucharistic shaping of John’s narrative is unmistakeable. In v11 he takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks and gives. The five Eucharistic actions, described in detail in Jesus’ treatment of the bread, demand that we link this feeding miracle symbolically with the Eucharist. We are drawn into the nexus of relationships between Eucharist and the promise of the kingdom; between Eucharist and mission.

The community that eats the bread is called to struggle for a world in which all shall eat. I shall never forget hearing Malusi Mpumulwana from South Africa, a friend of Steve Biko’s, Black Consciousness leader and bishop, telling us of an experience he had had conducting the Eucharist in one of the so-called “Independent Homelands” during the Apartheid era. He was some 15 miles from Cape Town, a city in which the white population enjoyed fantastic wealth. However, in the homelands, starvation was rife. A mother brought her baby to the altar and made to take a communion wafer for the baby. “No my daughter!” said Malusi. “You know our tradition. I will bless your baby for you.” “Father,” said the woman, “this piece of bread will be the only food my child eats this weekend. Yet you refuse it, and then you tell us that Jesus is the Bread of Life! For shame!” It was a conversion experience for Malusi. How could a community celebrate the Eucharist – a symbol of life and plenty – if it bore no relation to the starvation around it? To be part of the messianic, Eucharistic community called Church is to be called to struggle for a world in which all shall eat and live, because Jesus is the Bread of Life.

Kings and kingdoms
The issue of power is not far below the surface in this narrative. Jesus is portrayed as the shepherd-king, and the crowd’s response is to want to make him king. By including 2 Samuel 11: 1-15, the compilers of the Lectionary invite us into the whole vexed question of kingship in the Old Testament. When Israel asks for a king, Samuel (on Yahweh’s authority) tells them exactly what it is going to be like. Israel’s demand to “make us like the other nations” is faithless. The nation brought into being at Sinaii and constituted by the Law was never meant to be a monarchy. There is an unresolved tension throughout the Old Testament about kingship. Basically, Yahweh gives them what they want, but the promise of monarchy is never realised.

David is presented as the ideal monarch. He is the shepherd-king. Everything, as I have noted before, starts so well! And then it goes spectacularly wrong. No more so than over Bathsheba. What we ought to note in the context of the feeding narrative is how utterly David fails. It isn’t just that he letches over Uriah’s wife, abuses his power to seduce her and then murders his loyal subject, Uriah: the king is Yahweh’s regent. The king has to uphold Yahweh’s Law. And here, Israel’s shepherd-king breaks virtually every one of the laws that constitute Israel! He covets Bathsheba, steals her, commits adultery and murder.

Yet, if the institution of monarchy is bound always to fail, consider Jesus, the shepherd-king. Here is a king to be trusted. Here is a king who rules with the power of Yahweh’s compassion. In Jesus’ message and practice, the eschatological hope for provision for the poorest and most helpless is realised. The crowd’s reaction is to do what the Israelites of old did: they try to force God to grant them a king – Jesus – who will look after the “new Israel” and make sure there’ll never be a hungry belly in the kingdom! But, as we have noted, Jesus is on a bigger mission than this. This is the one through whom all things were created, and in whom all things will be summed up. This is a king whose compassion will take him to the cross, where he will be crowned and will draw all people to himself! The Bread that he gives – himself – will be nothing less than salvation for the world (John 3: 17).

Filled to overflowing (Ephesians 4: 14-21)
Paul wants his readers to be as filled to overflowing as the recipients of bread and fish were. He wants them to be “strengthened in their inner beings with power through the Spirit”, “have their hearts filled with Christ through faith”, “be filled with the love of Christ” and with “all the fullness of God”. Mark portrays the bread as a symbol of the gospel. John takes that further, and portrays Jesus himself as the Living Bread. Paul similarly reflects on just how astounding the grace of God in Jesus is. It is “more than we can possibly imagine” (v20). Yet for all Paul’s use of cognitive categories – of “knowing” – he is, in fact, talking about experiencing. To “know” in his sense is live by and out of Christ. Christian faith isn’t believing things about Jesus: it is knowing Jesus, being filled with Jesus. When we reflect on just how much God loves us in Christ, we are awestruck. Typically, Paul is never one to be stunned into silence! He waxes lyrically eloquent. This is a beautiful prayer. It needs to be read slowly; to be tasted; ingested; fed upon, until we are overflowing with the same sense of wonder, praise and worship.

Amen.

Sorry, folks, but I’m just not going to be able to post this week. We’ve had the Kids for Hope group at the Windermere Centre (still do until Monday) and it’s been days of 8.30am to midnight all week. It’s been wonderful and worthwhile, though, watching the children being to “unfold” and blossom. They’ve found the freedoma nd beauty startling and both positive and negative. Positively, they’ve discovered that it’s both possible and safe to say what they really think and feel. Negatively, they’ve ahd to cope with guilt and worry: they’ve been enjoying themselves, they’re safe and they’ve been given a huge privilege at real cost to their families (for example, the $100 each had to pay to cross the bridge into Jordan to catch the plane will feed their families – most of whom are unemployed because of the situation – for a month). Meanwhile, they’re aware of their families suffering and being in danger. That hasn’t been easy to deal with.

One thing that is worth reporting: I did a Bible Study on the Prodigal Son with them, and got them into groups, identifying with each of the main characters. The comments and insights were astounding! It has been exciting and humbling to be part of the programme.
Please pray for them as they travel back on Monday night. Pray for them as they are determined to take what they’ve learned and experienced back to their communities and make a positive difference.

I’ll post Monday next week. Sorry to ahve let you down.

2 Samuel 6: 1-5; 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1: 3-14
Mark 6: 14-29

“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it”. Really? Since when? That sounds like pious claptrap. It seems pretty obvious to me that the earth belongs to the Herods, the George Bushes, the Israeli governments and the multinationals of this world, rather than to God! These are the people who get to play God with the lives of others. It’s the ordinary people – and particularly the little people – who get sacrificed at the whims of these powerbrokers. And of course, what is often of paramount importance is that these people do not, under any circumstances, lose face! So better to go to war with Iraq than admit that intelligence about WMD is faulty. Better to try and justify Israel’s bombing the hell out of Lebanon as part of the “war on terror” than totally unwarranted and disproportionate violence against an innocent civilian population. Better to give Herodias the head of a godly man on a plate than to have to back down from a drunken, stupid promise made in public.

I write these reflections this week with the Windermere Centre full of Palestinian children from the West Bank towns. These are children who live their lives as virtual prisoners, walled into their villages. They are children who literally spend half their young lives waiting at Israeli checkpoints. Most of them have lost a parent in the current Intafada. They are traumatised and angry. Some of them are hungry, because food is scarce. All of them were refused travel permits at the last minute by the Israeli Intelligence Services – simply in order to harass, bully and intimidate them. As a result, they have had to fly out of Jordan – but that means that each ticket has cost $200 more. And in the West Bank, where security-induced poverty and hunger is the daily reality, $200 will feed a family for two weeks. What I find most unforgivable, though, is that the light of childhood has been stolen from the eyes of these kids.

This means that the promises of the kingdom hover on the edge of sounding like utopian pipe-dreams and dangerous fantasies that sap attention and energy from the struggle for a world in which peace and justice kiss. We can campaign and march, yet poverty is still a present reality rather than history. We can preach and protest, yet the constant news is of John’s murder rather than Herod’s fall from power. Yet our texts this week make the audacious promise that it is God who will have the Last Word, and that this is a Word of Life and resurrection.

Murder as political farce: Mark 6: 14-29
Into the discipleship narrative whose second phase has just begun, Mark (apparently curiously) interjects the story of John the Baptist’s beheading. Yet Mark is quite deliberately structuring his story to focus on the opposition that Jesus’ mission provokes.

Note how Mark emphasises that the mission is Jesus’, not the apostles’ (v14). The apostles minister in Jesus’ name and power, and that fact is recognised. There is no confusion here: the apostles’ authority is a derived authority. It is Jesus who is recognised. We might ask questions about our own ministry and mission: does it make Jesus, the Church or ourselves most recognisable?

The recognition of Jesus provokes the question, “Who is this man?” His uniqueness is evident in the fact that people reach for the range of explanatory categories available (but which are inadequate): John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets (significantly one of the prophets of old – ie one of the prophets alive and ministering when Yahweh was doing something new and enormously significant). In other words, it is clear to the people that Jesus is no ordinary man of God. Mark is telling us something here about Jesus’ uniqueness: Jesus is like nothing that has gone before. What God is doing through Jesus is of a different order of magnitude and significance. These are eschatological categories – especially Elijah and a resurrected John the Baptist. Jesus’ mission, in other words, has to do with the end times – the consummation of God’s actions and promises. Jesus will have the disciples repeat the speculation in 8: 27ff, a conversation that provokes Peter’s declaration, “You are the Messiah!” (8:29) Here, though, the speculation that Jesus might be the resurrected John is the jumping off point for Mark to recount John’s murder.

The important point to note here is the sense in which John’s fate prefigures Jesus. John, like Jesus, is a “prophet without honour”. Like Jesus, John dies as an innocent man – a man whose sole crime has been to proclaim a truth about kingdoms and power and God that is unacceptably uncomfortable to the powerful. Like Jesus, John is a victim of injustice, and ostensibly of a ruler who knows what ought to be done and wants to do right but is ultimately too weak to do so.

Mark presents Herod as a weak, vain man. He is in hock to his wife’s whims. She is the power behind the throne. He fears his wife, but also fears John (v20). Like any weak man, Herod is aware of the sniggers behind his back, and the contempt in which he is held. He knows that he is tolerated and feted because of his position, but that he is neither respected nor loved. And so, more than anything else, he cannot afford to lose face. Thus, when his drunken, thoughtless promise to Herodias’ daughter blows up in his face, he cannot save John. However much he may fear John as godly and righteous, he fears ridicule more. He has John murdered – and spends the rest of his rule in terror that the dead John has returned to haunt him!

Mark is concerned here to show how casually people die at the hands of those in power. Life and death decisions are made on a whim, rather than for any remotely justifiable reason of state. Look how cavalierly Herod treats his kingdom – he promises up to half of it because of a salacious dance! If the tradition of the Dance of the Seven Veils is remotely close to reality, Mark presents us with a king who certainly doesn’t think with his brain!

Note, too, the inappropriateness of his promise: this is an oath that he solemnly swears. Mark’s point is that Herod chooses to swear about the wrong things! Solemn oaths – binding oaths – belong to the realm of state and faith. The whole picture is of a corrupt court.

The point, though, is that this is a picture of “the kingdoms”. Jesus’ kingdom is not proclaimed in a vacuum. It is a contrast to this one! Mark uses Herod’s court to symbolise all kingdoms that are not God’s. We see with absolute clarity just why it is that Jesus’ message will provoke opposition. Jesus is not preaching reformation and repair – tinkering with bits and pieces of Herod’s kingdom. The kingdom of God cannot be mapped on to Herod’s kingdom. The kingdom of God is a kingdom where justice and peace kiss. It is a kingdom built on compassion, where the least is first so that there can be no possibility of people being used as instruments or cannon fodder or as a means to some (alleged) “greater good”. In a climate where Israel and George Bush are telling us that “security” justifies killing and making war on the people, we are confronted with Jesus who is murdered for “reasons of state security”.

While Mark uses farce and satire (this is not the historical reason for John’s death at the hand of Herod), he does so to make a sobering point. For all its corruption, sleaze and weakness, this is the seat of power. Herod is a man with the power of life and death. The realm of the political is one of the strongholds of the Strong Man in Mark. Mark’s gripe here is not with the weakness of Herod’s power, but its strength and success! Herod has power to kill John, as Pilate will to have Jesus. They represent serious, effective and deadly opposition to the kingdom of God. Mark is engaged here in political farce and caricature, but the power that Herod represents is not cartoon violence! It is the same evil and deadly opposition that will be unleashed against Jesus – because Jesus’ message is heard by Herod as a threat to his kingdom! Never make the mistake of underestimating just how radically political Jesus’ message is. Those who think it is simply about private, inner spirituality that does not touch on the political, social and economic just don’t “get it”! As Desmond Tutu said, “I am puzzled about which bible people are reading when they say that politics and religion do not mix!” He’s right. If you don’t believe me, just ask Herod – or George W – or the Palestinians and Israelis!

The challenge of a different kingdom (2 Samuel 6: 1-5; 12b-19)
The ark comes to Jerusalem. This is an intensely politically loaded story. Within the David cycle, the elements of the Davidic covenant are falling into place: the Davidic monarchy, Jerusalem and the (prefigured) temple, with Yahweh’s enduring presence. Interestingly, the lectionary bottles out of including one of the most disturbing passages in the Old Testament: the death of poor Uzzah, who reaches out his hand to steady the ark as it sways and threatens to topple from the cart, and invokes Yahweh’s anger and a death sentence for doing so! David’s anger mirrors our own. Yahweh here behaves more like the drunken Herod than the God whose kingdom Jesus proclaims. Put it this way: I don’t fancy that sort of God in charge of the world, thank you very much! And neither does David, particularly – because he is quite sensibly reluctant to have the ark too close and “entrusts” this rather poisoned chalice into the care of Obed-edom the Gittite (who fortunately thrives as a result!).

Despite this chilling and disturbing narrative, the main point of the story is that the ark (and Yahweh) arrives eventually in Jerusalem. This is a story about God’s kingdom. The Davidic kingdom prefigures and represents the kingdom of God that Jesus will proclaim. For all its traditional trappings of power, empire, politics and military might, David’s kingdom is supposed to be different. He has been made king instead of Saul. Yahweh “repents” that Saul was ever made king, because Saul’s kingdom is not what Yahweh intends it to be. David represents a new start. And, as I have remarked before, Yahweh’s intentions are seen in what it is supposed to be and starts out being, and in the contrast between that and what it becomes.

I want to pick up on just one verse that illuminates the difference between Saul’s (“earthly”) kingdom and David’s (Yahweh’s) kingdom. In verse 16, Michal, David’s wife and Saul’s daughter, sees David “leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart”. A curious verse, yet immensely significant. What Michal sees is David dancing in a naked frenzy in the street (cf v20). She’s right – it is vulgar, shameful and embarrassing. Yet David’s response in the ensuing domestic is to state clearly: “It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father …” (v 21). Michal represents royalty. She knows how power works. She knows how it “ought to be done”. Kings don’t behave like that! Yet David does – because of his love for God! Here is a king who will not cling to the trappings of power. What a contrast between David and Herod! Herod clings to his dignity, but David is naked before God – naked and unashamed (now where have we heard that phrase before?)!

David does not behave like a “normal” king because his is not supposed to be a “normal” kingdom! Although he is the king, he reigns as Yahweh’s regent (note that he tells Michal he is to be a prince over Israel, “the people of the Lord” in v 21. Yahweh is king. And Israel is the people of the Lord, not David’s people. David symbolises his joyful submission to Yahweh in his apparent abasement and refusal of royal robes. And Michal, who represents Saul’s kingdom and cannot understand it, can only despise him.

“Herod will not always have the last word!” (Ephesians 1: 3-14)
For all the assertion of the difference between God’s kingdom and “the principalities and powers that govern this world” (to use Paul’s phrase), reality faces us with the very real possibility that all the talk about the kingdom is so much “pie in the sky”. Just as David’s kingdom will prove little different from any of its surrounding neighbours, so the promise of a significantly different world appears equally elusive. Where is the real challenge to Herod’s authority – or, more importantly, where is the power that can defeat Herod?

Paul is clear: we see it in Jesus. There are two promises in his opening verses to the Ephesians that are here to keep people going in times of persecution and in the face of apparent hopelessness. The first is that we are God’s children (v5) and therefore in God’s care. This is not just a piece of theology, fashioned in a vacuum. Paul is saying to people whose experience is that they are godforsaken and abandoned, “No, you’re not! You are God’s beloved children. God is with you. And God has not finished with you yet!” The notion of God “not having finished with us yet” is a counter to any sense that God might have grown careless about the children. Yes, we may well be God’s children, but what if God is the kind of parent who forgets to look out for the welfare of the children? What then? No, says Paul, God isn’t like that. God is at work, making us like Jesus. And remember: Jesus went through similar things. This is the fate of messiahs in this world. We are called to share in Jesus’ mission – and it may well be that we end up sharing Jesus’ fate. Sharing in Jesus’ fate, however, is evidence for Paul that we will share in his inheritance (v11). To be God’s children is to be cared for by God – even in the worst of circumstances.

Secondly, Paul reminds his readers that Jesus is the consummation of world history (v10). God has not abandoned this world to the Herods and the George Ws of this world! It is “abandoned” to Jesus! The kingdom that Jesus proclaims will be the Last Word. Justice and peace will kiss – in the very places where, at present, there is only intractable death and despair.

And how is that different from wish-fulfilment and hopeless, rose-coloured dreaming or obscene optimism? Because God raised Jesus from the dead! Yes, Herod has power. It is the power of gunships and heavy armour. It is remarkably efficient and effective at death-dealing. Herod will resist God’s kingdom. Herod will kill John and Jesus and all who challenge his power. Yet there is a power that can not only challenge, but defeat Herod’s power: the power of resurrection. At the end of the day Herod can kill – but God raises people from the dead! Herod knows that – and fears Jesus as John brought back to life! Herod knows, even as he has John killed, that his power is only short-lived. There is an ultimate power that he cannot stand against. It is the power of Life; of Resurrection! May it be let loose soon!

Amen.