disclosing new worlds

Esther 7: 1-6; 9-10; 9: 20-22
Psalm 124
James 5: 13-20
Mark 9: 38-50

Phew! Not the easiest set of texts this week, by any means! Commentators seem to struggle as much as the general reader. There’s the whole business of why Esther is in the canon at all (other than because the instigation of the Feast of Purim – thanksgiving for deliverance from Israel’s enemies, which is echoed in Psalm 124). James speaks about healing as a sort of “daily reality” in ways that sit very uncomfortably with our experience. Jesus speaks about extreme measures to avoid hell – and in what context, exactly? What is the meaning and context of the injunctions concerning “causing these little ones to stumble”? The passages are connected as much by their difficulties as by their interrelated themes!

There are connections, of course. There’s the connection between Esther and Psalm 124, and between Esther and the dispute over the exorcist from outside the community of faith in Mark 9: 38-41. James is linked to the gospel passage through a shared context of persecution and questions over how to treat those who have fallen away under its pressure. Yet the difficulties remain – and these are the questions that will probably be uppermost in people’s minds when they read or hear the passages.

Community boundaries: the “Good Outside” (Mark 9: 38-41/Esther 7 & 9)
Jesus has just been attacking the disciples’ concern for power with his example of a child to illustrate the radical status –reversal in the kingdom. In this pericope, Mark goes on to show how little the disciples understand Jesus and the Way of the Cross. The issue is about boundary control. Who’s “in” and who’s “out”? Very particularly, who has the right to patrol those boundaries and create the rules?

Look at what happens. The group of disciples encounters an exorcist and try to stop him. Interestingly ironic, isn’t it – they try to stop him? Does Mark mean that they had as much lack of success in stopping the exorcist as they had had in exorcising the demon from the boy in 9:14ff? What is most interesting, though, is their reason for trying to stop him: “… because he was not following us” (9:38). The exorcist is using Jesus’ name to exorcise the demons (with apparently conspicuously more success than the disciples enjoyed!), but the disciples’ objection is not that he wasn’t a follower of Jesus, but of them! In other words, the disciples have taken upon themselves the role of “owning” Jesus. Their attitude is “To follow Jesus is the same thing as belonging to our group. You can’t follow Jesus unless you do it our way! We make the rules!”

Isn’t this a story repeated daily by the Church? In the minds of so many people, there is no difference between discipleship of Jesus and church membership; between faith in Jesus and belonging to the institutional Church. This is precisely the assumption that Jesus challenges here in the passage. Just as Esther – a “foreign” book about “righteous foreigners” (in which Yahweh doesn’t even get a mention!) is an example of Yahweh working outside the covenant community, so Jesus refuses the disciples’ attempts to draw confessional boundaries around him. It isn’t about “right theology” but about “right practice”! The exorcist who is using Jesus’ name but is not part of the community of disciples is sharing in the liberative, healing and saving power of Jesus’ ministry.

Of course, it is extremely unlikely that these were the exorcist’s motives! In all likelihood, what we have here is the case of a wandering exorcist who made a livelihood out of exorcising demons. The reason he used Jesus’ name was probably because Jesus already had a reputation as a successful exorcist, so that using his name was effectively saying, “I command you by the same power as that bloke Jesus of Nazareth uses to come out …” Jesus’ name worked. It was an effective – and therefore lucrative! – technique. The disciples’ outrage isn’t as self-seeking or obviously wrong as it may sound. They were effectively saying, “Hey! Jesus’ name isn’t some sort of charm! He’s not just a “miracles-for-hire” merchant! He’s the Messiah – and you should be following him!”

This makes Jesus’ response all the more startling: “Do not stop him!” Why not? This is a strange response, made all the more so by the fact that Jesus is in the process of making following him more costly and more difficult! The disciples, as we well know, are battling more and more to “follow Jesus in The Way”. Even their best theological attempts to “get Jesus right” meet only with a stern, “You shut up about this!” This exorcist isn’t even trying to understand Jesus or follow him!

Look at Jesus’ reason for not stopping him: “No one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me”. There is a real irony at work here. We’re in the throes of the narrative of the progressive disintegration of the discipleship narrative. It is precisely John’s “us” who will end up denying and abandoning the person they follow – because he doesn’t conform to their picture of messianic power! They want Jesus’ power, but not on Jesus’ terms. The disciples want to be followed rather than be followers.

That leads to his second reason: “Whoever is not against us is for us”. Elsewhere in the gospel tradition, Jesus says the opposite: “Whoever is not for us is against us”. In Mark’s context of persecution, not to strive actively on behalf of the oppressed Christian community – not to challenge the status quo – is to be instrumental in that oppression. Jesus here makes a different point: to be engaged actively in the same sort of liberative ministry of compassion is to be “for” Jesus. That same compassion will be manifested in instinctive acts of caring and provision for the persecuted community: they will “give you a cup of cold water to drink because you bear the name of the Messiah”. To act compassionately to the disciples is the same thing as acting compassionately towards Jesus. It is to share in God’s character (compassion) and mission.

Interesting, isn’t it, that this is the only time (apart from 1:1) that the term “Messiah” appears on Jesus’ lips outside the context of confessional struggle. Jesus is happy to own the title! It’s significant because he wants to draw the parallel between being Messiah and liberative acts of compassion. “Following”, proper messianic confession and being part of the kingdom have far more to do with being and doing (praxis) than “believing” (theology). Being part of Jesus is about following – but it has less to do with immediate proximity and institutional relatedness to Jesus than it has to do with the shared practice of mission! If the Church could only spend less time and energy making enemies out of those who are not against it, and recognise in a shared practice of liberation a genuine fellowship in Jesus and the kingdom, just imagine how different the landscape would appear. Oh – and there would be the added benefit of being where Jesus is on the matter!

Messianic acts of compassion: Healing – a sign of the kingdom (James 5: 13-20)
Let me tell you my own story about this passage. Between the ages of 20 and 21I served as an Assistant Pastor in a small Baptist church in South Africa. The Pastor (a theology professor) was away for a year, lecturing in the US, so I was it. One Sunday morning the phone rang. It was Arthur James. He had been involved in the Wooden Horse breakout during World War II. Arthur is one of the most wonderful, godly people I have ever known. But he was dying. He’d suffered 3 heart attacks in quick succession. The doctor had told him that a fourth was inevitable and imminent. It would also be fatal.

Arthur told me he’d been preparing (to die) and had been reading James 5: 13-20. Having read it, he wanted me to bring the deacons, anoint him with oil, lay hands on him and pray for his healing. I calmly told him I’d be round before the service that morning and replaced the receiver … and panicked! I had no idea what to do. I certainly didn’t think it likely that God would heal him. And I was terrified of failing Arthur – for his own sake. So I rang the oldest, wisest deacon, and told him what Arthur had asked. He panicked! “How do you anoint someone with oil? What do you say in that sort of prayer?” he asked. “I haven’t a clue!” I replied. “Why do you think I’m ringing you?” “Well, I’ve never done it before!” he said. “I suppose we’ll use the oil to make the sign of the cross, and pray! We can all lay hands on Arthur”, I suggested. So that was decided upon. We duly assembled, complete with some cooking oil from the kitchen, all of us pretending we were on top of the situation. I dipped my finger in the oil, made the sign of the cross on Arthur’s forehead, we laid hands on him, and I prayed a prayer for healing with plenty of “Get out of jail free” clauses (“If it be thy will” etc) to cover ourselves when nothing happened.

The doctor was due to see Arthur the next morning. Instead, Arthur drove down to see him. There was nothing wrong with his heart. Arthur went on to live to a ripe old age and eventually died “full of years”.

That was 26 years ago and at least 26 different theories of healing! I’ve had one other similar situation, praying for a friend who was dying of cancer and who was also healed. But I’ve had many, many more experiences of instances where God doesn’t heal. Does God heal people when we anoint them with oil, lay hands on them and pray for their healing in Jesus’ name? Heck yes! Is there healing power in the name of Jesus? Heck yes! Does God do it every time? Heck no! So what’s going on? Whose faith is rewarded? How much faith do we need? Why doesn’t God heal more regularly? I haven’t a clue! But I do know that we ought to do far more anointing, laying on hands and praying for healing – not because there are any guarantees, or to prove something about God, or for any reason other than that it is a sign of the kingdom of salvation, liberation, wholeness, justice and peace proclaimed by Jesus. What happens then is ultimately up to God. At the end of the day, God is God, like it or lump it. The Lord healeth and the Lord healeth not. Blessed be the name of the Lord!

The “Bad Inside”: Stumbling blocks and amputations (Mark 9: 42-49)
Jesus moves from affirming the reality of kingdom things happening outside the messianic community to the reality of non-kingdom things happening inside that group. It seems to me that Mark’s account has two different contexts: what is happening in Jesus’ ministry at the time, and the situation of persecution faced by his own community. The passage says different things in these different contexts, and each is valuable in its own right.

(a) Sexual abuse of children
On the level of Jesus’ ministry, this reads as a passage about the sexual abuse of children. The context, you will remember, is about abusive use of power, and Jesus has stood a child in their midst. The obvious sense of “these little ones”, therefore (9:42) is a reference to children. “Hand”, “foot” and “eye” are traditionally the seat of wrongdoing: “hand” refers to theft, fraud and forgery, “foot” to robbery, persistent theft and runaway slaves, and “eye” to sexual misconduct. Commentators have drawn attention to the fact that the injunction to amputate the offending members of the body are a liberalisation of the laws on capital punishment: rather than put the offender to death, amputate the offending piece of the body! This is how the Islamic laws about cutting off a thief’s hand, for example, were intended.

But Jesus appears to be doing more than making a very general point about legal arrangements within society – however strongly we (or he) might want to draw parallels between the laws of a society and the kingdom. He’s talking here specifically about children. Children were powerless. They were “property”. They could be used by the “owner” for the owner’s benefit without much comment. We ought, therefore, to note the unmistakeable sexual connotations of hand, foot and eye. “Foot” in the bible is frequently used as a euphemism for a penis; hand and eye are far more obviously relevant to a context of sexual abuse. The process of “seeing, coveting, taking and using” is about the exercise of power, and sexual abuse is all about power. It is the power differential in sexual relationships that constitutes abuse: it prevents them being equal and therefore truly consensual. Jesus, then, is talking about an issue that was disturbingly prevalent in his own society – the sexual abuse of children. It would seem that neither Jewish society nor the Church was an abuse-free zone!

I don’t know what you believe about hell. To be honest, I’m not sure what I believe about it, either! That isn’t quite the point here, though. Jesus refers to the valley of Hinnon – the rubbish heap outside Jerusalem where the rubbish continually smouldered. Traditionally, it had been the place of child sacrifices (Hmmm! Accidental in this context, or not???) and was used as a metaphor for God exacting a fitting sort of revenge against the terrible suffering inflicted upon the Jewish people through the ages. It was an affirmation that God cared! The sufferings of people at the hands of the powerful – sufferings that couldn’t possibly be put right or “made better” – were of concern to God. It was the promise that God was just – that, in the end, the last word belonged to God, and not to the torturers and murderers. Those whose lives were made living hell were not abandoned by God. And just as sexual abuse is frequently, for its victims, a life sentence to emotional and psychological destruction, so God’s vigilance on behalf of the victims is eternal. God’s memory will not be dimmed by the passing of time. God will not forget!

If we instinctively shy away from reading this passage as a reference to the sexual abuse of children, we do only what has been done for generations. In the information age, we have become only too painfully aware of the extent and frequency of child abuse within religious institutions, and the ways in which institutions like the Church move instinctively to close ranks and protect reputation. Folks, it happens! It happens time and again. And because it is so horrible, we find ourselves continually shocked and ill-prepared for it when it emerges. That’s when we make all the wrong moves – moves that only perpetuate the awful damage that has been done to the victims. The book, Time for Action – a new dawn for the survivors of sexual abuse is a timely publication. It’s something that should command instant welcome and application within churches, and yet it is proving disturbingly controversial. Christian – human! – realism demands that we actually expect it to happen, rather than treating it as an inexplicable and unimaginable horror. The Church is no less a part of society than the wider context is. Christians are no more immune to the seduction of power than other human beings are – at least, according both to Jesus and experience! And when you put together a cocktail of sex and vulnerability, you have a potent brew!

It isn’t that we ought to become paranoid about the issue. We simply need a gritty, unflinching realism about it. It happens. People will do it because they want to and have the power to do so. They will go to extraordinary lengths to keep it hidden. We know both its nature and its power. The power of the servant – “power-on-behalf-of” – is the power to face its reality and deal openly and wisely with it. Pray God we find that power!

(b) People who mess up
If we take the passage at the level of the persecution of Mark’s community, a different emphasis comes into play. The issue for the Church then was how to deal with people who “fell away” – who renounced faith in Christ under torture and threat of death. Even more importantly, there was the question of how to deal with informers within the communities – the Judases who sold out their brothers and sisters to the authorities.

In this context, we ought probably to read “hand”, “foot” and “eye” within the metaphor of the Church as a body (as Paul does). Jesus, on this reading, is saying that people who are apostate and who betray the covenant community ought to be “cut off” (excommunicated) for the sake of the whole body. This will better enable the community to keep the faith under persecution (the “fire”). The fire of persecution is the proving ground for the Church (9:49: “Everyone will be salted with fire”). The community will need to be ruthless about “amputating” offending parts of the body if it is to survive.

Church discipline is not in vogue much anymore! Many mourn its passing. On the other hand, Amish communities practise “shunning” – the casting out of offending members, and point to this and other passages in support of what appears to be an extraordinarily heartless way of treating even close family members. It’s important to note that this is not some sort of general rule about our treatment of people in the Church who mess up. It is very specifically about the context of persecution and two categories of people who damage the community by a sort of creeping poison that threatens to infect everyone: apostates and traitors. The point is that these people were deemed worthy of capital punishment for these crimes. Jesus is saying (at the very least) “No, don’t kill them. Cast them out – for the sake of the body – but don’t kill them”. It is difficult to find contemporary parallels in the situations of most churches. Most are at threat of ridicule and irrelevance, rather than persecution and death. This isn’t a mandate to excommunicate or shun those who mess up.

In fact, the opposite is true, for those of us whose very existence is not under constant threat from persecuting authorities. For us, the challenge is to take the image of “body” more seriously! Note that Jesus talks of “amputation”. Amputation leaves the body disabled and mangled. This is a very different image from casting people out as though they were never part of the community in the first place! If we took seriously our deep, intrinsic connectedness in Christ; our inability to be whole without one another and one another’s ministries, then we would be looking for every reason to keep fellowship with one another. That is why the Church ought to be a place of peace (v49) – not because we’ve got rid of the awkward squad, but because we’re a living sign of forgiveness, restored relationships and peacemaking.

Indeed, the much-disputed v49 can be read as Jesus saying, “… but in spite of all the damage that people do, you ought always to be looking out for every opportunity to make peace and restore fellowship!” That was a hot potato in the New Testament Church. It isn’t ours. Our hot potato is more the fact that we (unofficially) shun people who mess up; that the word on the street is that it is easier to mess up and be forgiven in the pub than it in the Church!

Boundaries of in and out. We love ‘em! They keep us safe. They make sure that following Jesus also means following us! They give us chance to flex our muscles – to be the kingdom’s gate-keepers. And history is littered with the corpses of the millions who have died at the hands of the Church in an effort to patrol those boundaries in the conviction that people who didn’t play “our” way deserved to die! How tragic. How obscene! And how far from the Jesus who meets us in today’s gospel!

Amen.

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a NRSV text
Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-16 NRSV text
Psalm 51:1-12 NRSV text
Ephesians 4: 1-16 NRSV text
John 6: 24-35 NRSV text

“I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty!” This is what John has been working towards telling us. This is why John has picked the feeding miracle out of all the synoptic miracle stories to relate. Yet it is more than just a summary of the feeding miracle: it also includes the story of the woman of Samaria in 4: 1-42. If you re-read that story, you’ll see some obvious markers. Most notably, the conversation between Jesus and the woman and Jesus and the crowd follows a similar track. Both the woman and the crowd ask the wrong question, and Jesus ignores it, going instead to the heart of what they need to learn. Both are looking for the wrong sort of provision from Jesus: the woman wants water daily to save her going to the well (4:15) and the crowd asks, “Sir, give us this bread always” (6:34). Both their expectations are too low. The gift that Jesus offers is himself – salvation (cf 6:51).

Despite what many commentators seem to think, it isn’t because this is a particularly spectacular miracle. John doesn’t present us with “Jesus-the-super-magician”; John presents us with “Jesus: heaven come down to earth”, or “eternal life incarnate”. For all the apparent heightened emphasis on the miraculous in John, there is a corresponding de-emphasis happening at the same time. Look at Jesus’ statement in 6:26. It’s prefaced by the solemn “Amen, amen, lego humin” – “Truly, truly, I tell you …” This isn’t just a colloquialism of Jesus’, or of John’s writing either (as though he has his Jesus always begin statements like that!). It’s a sign that Jesus is cutting to the chase – speaking with divine insight. He’s saying, “Listen to me. Let me tell you the deepest truth about what’s actually going on here. Don’t misunderstand me or yourselves! You’re seeing the sign – but you’re not reading it properly. You look at me and see a miracle worker. That’s not who I am. I am the stuff of life, sent you from God! Don’t have your minds on your stomachs – look more deeply and face the hunger and thirst for Life that is there at the core of you. Then look at me, and you’ll understand!”

Bread and manna: salvation and provision (cf Exodus 16: 2-4; 9-16)
I made the point last week (and assume the content), but it’s one that bears repetition in a world where two thirds of its inhabitants are starving and the remaining third has problems associated with overeating: when Jesus speaks of being the Bread of Life in John’s gospel, and criticises his hearers for being concerned with full stomachs, he is not spiritualising hunger, nor is he advocating some sort of aesthetic focus on the “spiritual” rather than the “physical”. John’s Jesus is, more explicitly than in any other part of the New Testament, God incarnate. Incarnation is about God’s entry into the human condition, not some sort of flight from it! John has had bad press as a “theological gospel” – by which is meant a “pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die” sort of understanding of God and salvation that leaves human misery and need largely untouched, or so de-emphasised at the expense of “eternal life” that it may as well be untouched! It is the gospel that can be read (illegitimately!) as the least challenging gospel to the rich, the well-fed, the powerful and the “haves”. If Mark’s Jesus can be read as the Liberator of the world, John’s can be read as the Saviour from the world, with Jesus’ constant emphasis “on above”. It’s a bourgeois-friendly gospel, in other words.

That this is illegitimate is clear from v33: Jesus is the Living Bread who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world! “Ah,” you might respond, “but what sort of life? Is it the life that comes from giving bread to the hungry?” Duh! Isn’t that to miss the point that this is a miracle about feeding hungry people – people who have no means of feeding themselves? There is no way in which John presents the feeding as the “stunt from the front” – the trick to hook people in order to get to the really important bit (ie the sermon)! Provision and salvation belong together.

Now, while John clearly sets up the reference to eating manna in the wilderness as “bread from heaven” in order to allow Jesus to make his point, the point Jesus makes is that the true Bread from Heaven is more than temporary alleviation of hunger, not less! In today’s reading from Exodus, we see a parallel: the Israelites are complaining because they are hungry. Note their complaint: “It would have been better to have died in Egypt, where at least we ate our fill of bread!” (Exodus 16:9) It appears to them as though Yahweh has “brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger”!

We ought not to be too quick to condemn the Israelites. Behind their complaint is the experience and terror of a slow, lingering death by starvation. We need to have in our heads the pictures we see of malnourished people in Ethiopia and other places: stick-thin bodies, swollen bellies, and hands too weak with hunger to brush the flies from the eyes and sores. Famine was something real and never far away. This isn’t some sort of pathetic whinge by a group of malcontents: an “I’m sick of this! I want to go home!” It’s a hard calculation: “Exodus is all well and good, and slavery killed. But at least we died with full bellies! And given a choice between salvation (with death by starvation) and slavery with whips, brutality and bread, we opt for slavery!”

Nor ought we to condemn them for hoarding the manna against instruction (16:20). It is hard for people on the brink of extinction to trust that, if they ate today at Yahweh’s hand, they will eat tomorrow too. The hard fact of human life in many parts of the world is that we may bless God for the harvest, but that doesn’t stop God sometimes failing spectacularly to ensure that a harvest happens regularly enough to prevent widespread and terrible suffering and starvation.

The wonder of the provision of quails and manna is seen in 16:18b: “They gathered as much as each of them needed”. Here’s the point, then: Exodus (salvation) includes the provision of what is needed to sustain life. When the hungry are fed and the naked clothed; when the poor are given enough and the thirsty given a cup of cold water, this is part of salvation! It is not some sort of “preparatory spadework” for evangelism. And when Jesus feeds the crowd, they do not only have enough, but far, far more than enough. There is “something more”.

It is this “something more” that Jesus goes on to stress. Pay attention to the hunger and thirst of the soul. In a materialistic age, this is an important point. And for those of us who are exquisitely alive to the sense in which the gospel is the Good News of a transformed world order of justice and provision for all, it is important not to neglect the dimension of human existence that is about more than eating, being clothed and having clean water.

Incarnation is about bridging the “gap” between heaven and earth. The spatial metaphor (and it is only a metaphor, as Yuri Gagarin discovered when he went into space!) serves to emphasise the way in which we human beings have built our lives and created our world to exclude God. Individually and collectively, we are cut off from God. That fundamental “gap” manifests itself in injustice, oppression, poverty and death. To talk theologically, sin is both a personal and a structural problem. The “gap” is the absence of the Life of God – in John’s terms, “eternal life” or “life in all its abundance”. That is something we experience here and now – it is not only or even primarily a question about “what happens to us when we die”. We are created for fellowship with God, as children of God. Jesus, as the Word made flesh, does not only show us what God is like: he shows us what it is to be truly human! And to be human as Jesus was is to live in the same relationship to God as he did. It is to live in the awareness of being God’s child and of the constant, immediate and transforming presence of God in our lives. In Paul’s words from last week’s reading: it is “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 4:19). That is “eternal life” – in other words, a dimension of life, rather than only a question of duration.

Hungering and thirsting for God
Why is evangelism apparently the exclusive preserve of so-called “evangelicals”? There ought to be no such thing as a “non-evangelical” Christian! I frequently hear evangelicals described as “born again Christians”. What they are wonderfully alive to is the startling difference that a relationship to God in Jesus Christ makes to life. God in Jesus is personal – however embarrassing some of us might find that! Abundant life in Jesus is a life that overflows. We are made for joy, for love, for hope, for laughter, for deep relating. Yet these depth experiences of God in Jesus and through the Spirit are pooh-poohed as “emotionalism” or something equally unimportant and ephemeral. Not so! No wonder so many Christians are uncomfortable with notions of evangelism! Yet if knowing and following Jesus – being “born again” – is genuinely a new birth and transformation of personal life, then evangelism is nothing more sinister than passing on good news. DT Niles said (in a way that is marvellously appropriate to today’s readings) that, in evangelism, “We are nothing more than beggars telling other beggars where to find bread”.

We fail people if we do not recognise the reality of spiritual hunger. Yet the signs of the hunger for the Bread of Life are evident everywhere to any eyes that are open. Look at the current explosion of spirituality. The bookshops are full of self-help books on the subject. Magazines carry stories and accounts. Psychic fairs, seminars on spirituality, meditation centres and classes on eastern mysticism are all flourishing growth industries. Millions of people who have nothing to do with the Church are desperate to make connections with spiritual reality. And yet the Church is failing singularly to help them make any connection between their own deep sense of spiritual hunger and Jesus, the Bread of Life! We stand by in embarrassed silence, while people who have found something of significance in witchcraft, meditation, Buddhism, wicca, yoga, astral travel and reincarnation share their experiences eagerly and find them equally eagerly received. If the reason for our failure is that we do not recognise in it a mirror of our own deep hunger and thirst for God, we ought to examine ourselves, lest we, like the crowd, fail to read the sign correctly.

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice” (2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a)
Jesus told his hearers (in that Sermon) that the yearning for justice is like a gnawing hunger and parching thirst. It is something that consumes one – fills the horizon. The drive to be filled and to slake one’s thirst becomes the most and only important thing worth doing.

There is a deep connection between justice and spirituality. It’s what Nathan exploits to bring home to David the seriousness of what he has done over the murder of Uriah. David is blind to the corruption of his own power, yet still alive to the issue of justice, so that Nathan is able to tell him a story of injustice that has David filled with godly rage – precisely the point that Nathan is trying to make about Uriah and Bathsheba. Yawheh is displeased with David because of David’s abuse of power, and Nathan uses the story of the lamb as a device to get David to feel about his actions in the way that Yahweh does.

Nathan’s parable is actually a strange “fit”, isn’t it? Yes, it’s about greed and the abuse of power to steal something important to someone else. But apart from the instinctive unease we ought to feel today about the implication of women being men’s “property”, it’s difficult to see an obvious correspondence with David’s conduct – other than the fact that this is an example of blatant abuse of power. And that is enough. When Nathan says, “Thou art the man!”, David’s understanding is immediate. He recognises in himself Yahweh’s righteous anger at injustice.

The hunger for justice, in other words, has converting power. Part of what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice” is that it is a hunger that puts us in touch with the heart of God. It gives energy and power in the struggle for a new world. But here, in this story, we see something unusual: the hunger for justice can be the vehicle for the conversion of those whose power is that from which the world needs saving! David is part of “The System”. He is “The System”! While God’s chief concern is for those who are the victims of injustice, God is nevertheless concerned too for those who wield power and who are trapped (albeit differently!) in the cycles of injustice, oppression, despair and death. Here is the story of a powerful tyrant who is converted – because Nathan is able to appeal to a hunger and thirst for justice! And the blessing for David, as the man who wields power abusively, is that he recognises the problem, is repentant, and is restored.

Beyond bread (Ephesians 4: 1-16)
This is a rich passage! There is the theme of unity, which could be followed. Yet, in the context of this week’s readings, I want to make only one point: Paul here talks about the Church as a body which needs “feeding”. In v7, he writes, “To each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift”. That evokes strong echoes of the Exodus passage, where each Israelite gathered manna which, when measured, was exactly enough (even though some gathered much, and some little).

Whether we are talking about bread, manna or spiritual gifts, the point is that they are all gifts of grace. Grace is a measure of God’s love. It is also God’s provision. Grace means that God provides life and that which is necessary to sustain life. Grace further means that God provides the means of growth. Bodies are not just meant to exist: they are meant also to grow and develop.

Grace, in other words, is purposive. God’s intention is to make us Christ-like, just as God’s intention is to make the whole of created reality Christ’s. The gifts of the Spirit are given, not to individuals for their own glory, enjoyment or ownership, but to the whole Church. They are manifested in individuals precisely in order to make us interdependent (hence the image of the body).

Christian life is essentially communal. We make a great deal of “I don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian! I can worship God on a golf-course or up a mountain just as well as at Church!” Well, not according to Paul! This isn’t a point about church membership or attendance: it’s a point about growing. We are all given gifts for the common good. Unless we take an active part in the life of the Christian body of which we are a part, we are amputating part of the body and failing others. Similarly, unless we are part of the body – of the flow of the life-blood of the Spirit (4:16) – we will remain stunted in our own growth. The image of a body growing by means of the grace given through gifts stands as a strong critical counter to the excessive individualism of our present age. One of our challenges is to restore the Church’s “body image” – to discover and make it work.

A rich diet
“Don’t be children, blown about by every wind of doctrine. Grow up, for Christ’s sake!” says Paul. I am astonished at how determinedly and deliberately so many people remain in a state of Christian infancy! Having been “born again”, it’s as though they are content to remain babies. A new baby is a beautiful thing: a 10-year old baby is a tragedy! Yet churches are full of babies.

What Paul is telling the Ephesians is that they need to be theologically sophisticated. Despite the popular anti-theological perception one frequently encounters, theology matters – or good theology does! This isn’t about some sort of “theological league table for churches”! It’s not about a middle-class drive for an educated church population. It’s about discernment and faithful discipleship.

The point is that there is an awful amount of absolute c*^p doing the rounds in church circles. Churches can be hotbeds of all sorts of dodgy practices, emphases and rank superstitions. And the danger is that they distract and prevent proper discipleship of Jesus Christ. They even obscure and “lose” Jesus! Paul’s “corrective recipe” is a sound theology, deeply rooted in the scriptures.

Of course, this begs the question of what theology is! If it is a tick-box list of hard philosophical concepts, people can hardly be blamed for not being remotely interested. Yet if theology has to do with life – the life of faith and the life of the world – then theology and the bible should rightfully be part of the answer to our ongoing hunger and thirst for God. It is interesting – but by no means accidental – that both Paul and John get the most passionate about faith when they are at their most “theological” – which in their cases, means most deeply aware of grace! Because that, at the end of the day, is what this all about: a God who answers hunger and thirst with a gift that is far, far more wonderful and life-giving than we can possibly imagine: the gift of Jesus. This is not dead, dry, academic puzzles: this is Living Bread! And we are invited to come and eat and drink … if, of course, we are hungry and thirsty in the first place!

Amen.

2 Samuel 5: 1-5; 9-10 NRSV text
Psalm 48 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 12: 2-10 NRSV text
Mark 6: 1-13 NRSV text

We’re at a key moment in Mark’s discipleship narrative. Mark doesn’t just have Jesus issue a single “call” at the outset of his ministry; there are three stages to it, and represent both the development of the disciples’ relationship to Jesus and a response to events as they unfold. This is the second of the three moments – the involvement of the disciples in Jesus’ mission. The Jesus story is the story of the beginning of it all – “the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. Disciples are not only followers: they are the ones who receive the Good News as Good News! And if that seems a rather obvious point, just look at the first pericope in today’s gospel reading: Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth. This is Jesus’ home town. The hard fact of the matter is that Jesus’ message of the kingdom – the Good News of liberation from the chains of the Strong Man – doesn’t meet with universal enthusiasm! This is no mere narrative device of Mark’s. The opposition was real. Jesus was crucified. Mark, more starkly than any other of the evangelists, portrays Jesus’ mission ultimately as a failure. Jesus dies in bewildered despair – not only is he abandoned by the disciples, but also by the God whom he calls “Abba Father”.

Rejected at Nazareth
Today’s gospel passage, then, comes at a key point: the close of the initial “campaign” based around the Galilee and including a foray into Gentile territory. Having left the Galilee, Jesus returns to his home town. It’s clearly the first time that he’s gone back since he began his ministry. Now, in the synagogue, he’s in front of the “home crowd”. He teaches on the Sabbath and, as elsewhere, “many who heard him were astounded” (6:2). This is not an English World Cup performance: Jesus does not disappoint – he amazes! His teaching is as powerful as elsewhere. All the things they have heard about him are confirmed. His wisdom is astonishing. And that means that any initial scepticism they must have been feeling about the reports circulating so widely has to be revised.

But look at the reaction in vv 2-3: they’re hardly positive! They come as accusation: “Where did he get all this? Where has he acquired this wisdom from so suddenly? And how on earth can he do these incredible things with his hands?” There’s a wonderful irony, isn’t there, in this last one. They know Jesus as an artisan. He’s “the carpenter”! His hands make things out of wood – they don’t heal and deliver! The point is, they know him – or they think they do. That’s why they rush to “place” him: he’s the son of Mary, brother to James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and he’s got sisters (who of course aren’t important enough to be named!). In other words, they’re saying, “Hey, this guy’s not a mystery! He’s not even particularly special!”

They move to contain Jesus – to control him. Calling him “the son of Mary” is a calculated insult. It reflects the question mark that clearly hung over Jesus’ parentage. It resurrects all those old rumours: “That Jesus? Well, he’s not Joseph’s son, is he? Wonder who his father is?” Now of course, Mark is probably smiling to himself as he writes – we know who his father is, because Mark told us at the outset! But the main point here is that their astonishment is not awe, but outrage: “They took offence at him” (v3b). Jesus’ pronouncement in v4 is not so much a rhetorical move to gain the advantage in an argument as it is a statement of his own realisation of what is happening in his ministry: the Good News will not be universally accepted. Jesus is marking his own rejection. His mission means that he will be rejected by his own hometown, his own kin, and his own family. It is part of the cost he has to bear, and in 10:28-30, will tell the disciples that following him is equally costly. It will take “leaving house, brothers, sisters, father, mother and fields for the sake of the Good News”.

There is another point we should note here: Jesus is unable to perform any “deed of power” there. Except, that is, to lay hands (those hands again!) on a few sick people and heal them! I love that! Most of us would reckon that was pretty powerful, and that we were doing a mite better than average if we could lay hands on a few sick people and heal them! But that’s because we generally manage to get the whole issue of miracles wrong. Mark isn’t trying to tell us that Jesus was some sort of super-magician. We are like the Pharisees in 8:11-12, who ask for a “sign”. “Show me a miracle that can be proven and we’ll believe!” is the idea behind our thinking. Yet Mark is absolutely clear here: miracles don’t “prove” anything! If you were around Jesus, miracles were clearly ten-a-penny – so much so that healing a few sick people is hardly worth a mention! The problem in Nazareth is that they do not “believe” (v6).

What would they not “believe”? That Jesus could perform miracles? Clearly not, because they’ve already admitted that all the reports of miraculous goings-on were obviously true! They didn’t “believe” in Jesus and they didn’t “believe” in his message, of which the miracles were a sign. They didn’t believe in Jesus in the sense that they wouldn’t let him be the Son of God. That isn’t a doctrinal statement in this context! Mark is not suggesting that there are a set of doctrinal boxes to tick here in order to let Jesus’ power loose. He’s pointing us to their refusal to let Jesus be something other than what they’d like him to be – the hometown boy whom they knew, could explain and who represented neither a threat nor a challenge. They were offended at his strangeness – because it sounded like criticism and made them feel that they were being made fools of.

I remember the outrage among South African white Christians when blacks suggested that Jesus might actually be on the side of the poor and the oppressed in their struggle against Apartheid. This couldn’t possibly be! They knew Jesus! They had him tied up neatly in a box so that he couldn’t jump out and challenge them. Therefore the notion that the gospel could have something to say about freedom and justice could only be communist-inspired treason masquerading as theology. These good, God-fearing people who attended Church twice on Sundays shut themselves off from the liberative power of God and became part of that from which South Africa needed liberation. The point is that we who think we know Jesus best ought to be specially vigilant that we have not “cut him down to (our) size” and domesticated his message and power.

The good citizens of Nazareth did not “believe” in Jesus’ message of the kingdom. They were so busy taking offence that they were deafened to the Good News that Jesus proclaimed. The point is that they were wilfully deaf. They heard Jesus clearly (hence the astonishment), but heard all too clearly the way in which the Good News of the kingdom demanded change. A new community that was radically inclusive threatened the social order. It disturbed the class hierarchy in which everyone knew their place and could be “located” (as they immediately tried to do with Jesus). And they were having none of it!

Nazareth represents the opposition that Jesus has begun to provoke. At present, it is the exception rather than the rule. But the resistance is unmistakeable, and will gather force as Mark’s narrative proceeds. Rejection will have the last, final say in the cross. The pericope begins with the crowds being astounded at Jesus’ teaching, and ends with Jesus being equally amazed at their unbelief.

The mission of the Twelve
The resistance means that Jesus has to regroup and rethink his strategy. His response is to gather the fledgling messianic community even more closely around him.

This is, as I mentioned, the second stage of Jesus’ call. Jesus appoints the Twelve in 3:14, “to be with him, to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons”. To date (the first stage), the disciples have been with Jesus and learned from him. Now, in 6:7, he sends them out to proclaim the message, cast out demons and heal the sick. The third stage will be a result of the increasing opposition: the call to take up the cross.

It is interesting to note that Jesus “gives his disciples authority over the unclean spirits” and appears to have taught them how to cure the sick. Modern western culture has had little truck with the miraculous, regarding it as primitive superstition. One feature of postmodernity has been a revival of interest in the miraculous and a willingness to take these things with far more seriousness. We are a far more spiritual generation than our immediate forebears, far more aware of the interconnectedness of health and spiritual life. This manifests in a renewed emphasis on holistic approaches to health, both in alternative therapies and in conventional medicine. Similarly, there has been a quiet but importance renewal of interest in the ancient ministries of exorcism, as well as willingness among biblical scholars to take the miraculous in Jesus’ ministry with far more seriousness, rather than dismiss it as myth. I note this because it seems to me that we ought to be open to exploring these ministries as a regular part of Church life.

The apostles (as they now are) proclaim “that all should repent”. In doing so, they echo Mark’s summary statement of Jesus in 1:14: “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent, and believe in the Good News!” Repentance is the proper response to the gospel of the kingdom, and is clearly what the people of Nazareth fail to do. But what does “repent” mean? At the outset of the story, the Baptist calls on people to repent and be baptised. This is the classic prophetic call to repentance: “Mend your ways! Turn or burn!” In a covenantal framework, it effectively means “Get back into line!”

Jesus’ call is different: “Repent and believe in the Good News!” The Good News is the drawing near of the kingdom of God in Jesus. But the kingdom comes not as judgement so much as promise: “Here is the possibility of a new world! Repent – leave behind the old ways and ties; the old shackles that bind you to death and despair. Become part of the new world!” It’s a call not to grovel but to reach out and embrace God’s gift – a gift which is entirely gracious. It’s not about “getting back into line” but rather a call to become something new. It’s a summons to God’s new future, rather than a recall to a more blameless past. It’s sign isn’t baptism, but healing and liberation.

I find this a welcome and challenging emphasis in light of so much “worthless worm” theology that churches excel in. Jesus’ call is life-giving and freeing, while so much Christian preaching seems to bind people in shackles of guilt and unworthiness – particularly in our own Reformed tradition. That, at least, is the popular perception, and if it’s wrong, it’s because we haven’t communicated the Good News! Here is a message of repentance that is positive. It necessarily means changing and leaving old ways behind – but for positive reasons, rather than beating people over the head with how bad they are. We seem far more scared of being seen to be “soft on sin” than “strong on Life”! Jesus was astoundingly different – and wise!

“It started out so nice” (2 Samuel 5: 1-5; 9-10/Pslam 48)
“It started out so nice” is the title of a song by Rodriguez, which I heard as a teenager and haven’t been able to find since (if you know where to get it, please let me know!). What struck me listening to it was a Dylanesque sarcasm and irony about a relationship that had begun so well and had gone so horribly wrong. That is the dynamic in the gospel passage today and is echoed in the story of David uniting the tribes of Israel and conquering Jerusalem.

David’s kingdom was good news, full of promise. It begins with a momentous event: the uniting of the tribes. They recognise David as a man anointed by Yahweh. He is the “shepherd of Israel” and so they make him the “ruler of Israel”. After seven and a half years as king, ruling from Hebron, David marches against Jerusalem and takes it against the odds. At the time of its capture, Jerusalem was a “stronghold” – a tiny, fortified village. Under David, the city spreads (2 Samuel 5:9) as David’s own fame spreads. The stronghold taken in war becomes the city of Peace.

Davidic kingship and the city of Jerusalem will become part of a covenant (chapter 7). David the shepherd king and Jerusalem the city of God will become symbols of Yahweh’s salvation and grace. This is what is celebrated in Psalm 48. Jerusalem will become the symbolic and theological centre of the world – the place where Yahweh’s presence and salvation will shine like a light and eventually draw all nations in homage to Yahweh. Then the peace will spread throughout the world under the messianic king, the son of David. Yet David’s reign will end in tears, and later Jerusalem will be destroyed and its people taken into exile. Exile is the second great pole (the first is Exodus) around which Judaism will develop and the people’s understanding of who Yahweh is will be hammered out. Its New Testament counterpart is, if you like, incarnation and crucifixion. What starts out so well ends in tragedy – because of resistance. Human opposition will bring Yahweh’s purposes for Life to a halt in the barren wastes of desolation and exile. It will take “resurrection” in the form of the return from exile to give birth to a new, transformed faith and understanding of Israel’s God.

The persistence of opposition (2 Corinthians 12: 2-10)
The bible does not allow us to retreat into some sort of naïve optimism. The hard fact of human sinfulness – determined opposition to the most gracious and wonderful actions of God to save us – is powerful, intractable and often appears to have the final word. Paul discovered that at firsthand in the Corinthians! This chapter is Paul’s “boast” – a boast begun at 11:16.

Like Jesus in today’s gospel passage, Paul is realistic about opposition. Like Jesus, he regroups and works out a strategy to deal with it. Just as Jesus does not waste his time trying to fight battles he can’t win (at Nazareth, and in telling the disciples to “shake the dust off their feet” when villages respond as Nazareth did), so Paul measures the opposition and acts strategically. Paul defends his ministry against ridicule and denigration. Other “super-apostles” have accused him of being inferior. He is less eloquent, they say; less effective, and less spiritual.

There are two ways of reading Paul’s defence, and it all seems to boil down to how charitably you view him! For many, his is the response of outraged dignity and a piqued ego. Certainly, for all Paul’s protestations of weakness and foolishness, we need to recognise a skilled rhetorician employing powerful arguments that drip with rhetorical irony! Yet that is to do him an injustice. There is a winsome humility in his obvious embarrassment at being forced to lay out his “spiritual credentials”. This is evident in his use of the third person (“I know a person in Christ …”) to talk about himself, and in his honest confession of the “thorn in the flesh” that troubled him so, but kept him humble! Most significantly, though, is the way in which he uses christological and theological arguments (as we have seen previously) to talk about what really counts in these matters. And, in his constant reiteration of his “compassion” for the Corinthians, we ought to understand him as a man who is “boasting”, not because he wants to for his own sake, but because he knows that God has called him and he needs to be allowed space to be who he is in order to exercise his ministry faithfully.

How do we deal with opposition? It can be incredibly powerful and destructive. Of course, the constant temptation is to see honest criticism as the sort of “opposition” that simply affirms that we are right and all opinions to the contrary as sinful resistance to God! Yet here in the passages, this week, we are reminded – and encouraged – to recognise that effective, faithful mission will breed opposition, misunderstanding and incredibly destructive responses. Human resistance to God – sin – is deeply, deeply part of what has become “human nature”. Yet here is the Good News: the God whom we meet in Jesus is infinitely compassionate and determined to save. This is the God of resurrection. And, to use Paul’s phrase, “wherever sin abounds, God’s grace abounds even more!” Hallelujah!

Amen.