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Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23, October 13, 2024: Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

“And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.” Thus the Letter to the Hebrews lays out our vulnerability before God. We cannot hide: we are naked before God, and all our thoughts are visible.

Our reading from Job and the Psalm have a sense of that vulnerability, but also of isolation. Job has given up the patience with which he first bore his sufferings, and is crying out to God. He just wants a chance to place his case before God, certain that if he could, God will justify him. But no such luck: God is nowhere to be found. “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.” Job’s despair is understandable.

A similar sense of abandonment shapes the psalm. You may recognize Psalm 22 from the Good Friday liturgy: it is the psalm that Jesus quotes when he is on the cross. The psalmist acknowledges both their sense of abandonment, but like Job, also their faith in God. “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; by night as well, but I find no rest. / Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel.”

When I have gone through hard times, like Job and the psalmist, I have sometimes not felt the presence of God. In retrospect, I suspect that what is crucial is that God was not present in the way I expected, but was in fact present through those who cared for me. But it can be hard to recognize God in the mix of fear, grief, and anger that tends to overwhelm me in those difficult times.

These readings are not particularly comforting; nor is the Gospel. We start with the story of the rich man, who is told that he has to sell all he has and follow Jesus. As I examine my books especially, that is hard to read. Yet when Francis of Assissi heard this gospel, he did give up his goods and follow Jesus. I can confidently tell you, on my authority as a historian, that Francis is in a very small minority. And yet my monastic friends tell me that there is great freedom in not having things.

Jesus does not stop there. He explains to the disciples that they have to cut themselves off from their families to follow him. To say this is hard is an understatement! Sure, riches are promised in both this world and the next. But thinking about the fates of Jesus’ followers, they got the persecutions Jesus promised in this life. Again, I think we can confidently acknowledge that relatively few Christians over the past two thousand years have followed this.

“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow”. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews. If our readings from the Hebrew scriptures speak to our experiences of feeling abandoned by God, those from the New Testament speak to the choices we need to make when doing our best to follow Jesus. Those choices are not easy.

There is another part to the story. We know that even when God feels furthest away, God is present. And we know that while we will, like the disciples, often fall short of what we should do to follow Jesus, we can be forgiven, we can try again. The love of God is expansive, and Jesus asks us to separate ourselves from those things that stop us from showing that love in the world. We do what we can.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22, October 6, 2024: Job 1:1; 2:1-10;
Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

There are weeks when I wonder what the people who organized our lectionary were thinking, and this is certainly one of them. We start with Job, who will be our companion for the rest of October. This is the beginning of the story, a fable: Once a upon a time, there was a man in the land of Uz. In the section we skipped, we learn that Job was a wealthy man. He had seven sons and three daughters, and “seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants”. One day the “heavenly beings” presented themselves to God, and with them was one called the “Accuser”, also called Satan. His exchange with God is similar to the one we read today: God touts how faithful Job is, the Accuser says, well, sure, he hasn’t suffered, it’s easy to be faithful when things go well. So God gives the Accuser power, but says he can’t physically touch Job.

So suddenly one day, a string of disasters lead to the death of all Job’s livestock, and the death of all his children. Job’s response is to tear his robe, shave his head, and fall on the ground, saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

And then comes the passage we have here. The Accuser suggests to God that Job can still pray because he hasn’t physically suffered, so we get the sores all over his body. And still he does not curse God.

Job is the story we use to talk about the problem of undeserved suffering, if any suffering is ever deserved. Why, in the words of Rabbi Harold Kushner, do “bad things happen to good people”? Kushner points out that we have two choices: we can think of God as a master manipulator who decides who suffers and who doesn’t, or we can think of God as an observer who will accompany us. I can’t imagine a God who spends their time micromanaging the world, so like most Episcopalians, I choose to think of God as one who observes and accompanies us.

This week I read an interview with Munther Isaac, the pastor of a Lutheran church in Bethlehem.* While the West Bank has seen less violence than Gaza, attacks on Palestinians there have grown. When he was asked about hope, he said he didn’t think about hope right now: “We are just trying to survive and live day by day”. And then he said this: “We pray for deliverance, but the Bible doesn’t promise deliverance. It promises that God will be with us.” It is good to remember the difference..

If Job draws our attention to the problem of suffering, Mark draws our attention to the challenges of faithfulness. Here we have Jesus on divorce, in a passage that has often been weaponized against people, whether those who are divorced, or gay and lesbian Christians. If Job is about suffering, this passage has caused suffering.

But it helps to see it in context: the Pharisees set Jesus up with a question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife”. They want to trip him, to show that he is not faithful to the law. Jesus does his usual thing, of asking them a question in response: What did Moses say? Moses allowed men to get a certificate of divorce and divorce their wives. Jesus then says, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.” Instead, he suggests the spirit of the law is different. He then speaks of the way marriage joins two people together, becoming one, and says “what God has joined together let no one separate”. These are the words we use in the wedding service, words that affirm marriage as a sacred institution.

That’s all well and good, but then Jesus suggests that those who remarry after divorce are committing adultery. This is the logical consequence of his teaching on marriage. And yet, I don’t think we should read it literally. On a certain level, a second marriage is a betrayal of the promises made in the first. But Jesus recognizes that humans sometimes suffer from “hardness of heart”. Divorce represents a failure of the hope and promises which people bring into a marriage. That is true, and we should not pretend otherwise, however right in other ways a divorce might be. We are, Jesus said, people of hard hearts. Yet this is not meant to exclude or punish those who divorce and remarry: we have hope, after all, that our hearts can open. At the center of Jesus’ ministry is a message of love and radical inclusion. We can acknowledge failure and move forward in hope.

And Jesus follows this with an opening, welcoming the children who have pressed around him. He invites the people around him to come to God not as sophisticated adults, but as children, with open hearts. Children approach the world with wonder and excitement. We can try to do so too.

Somehow, covered with sores, Job still praises God. Like a child, his heart is open. Following Jesus requires us to try to soften our hearts, to open them to the love around us. And to remember that while we may not be spared suffering, God is with us.

* “Palestinian and Christian in a Violent Time“, Interview by Elizabeth Palmer. The Christian Century, October 2024, 48-53.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21, September 29, 2024: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

Three years ago this week in the liturgical year, I started writing these reflections. I have missed a few, but almost every Sunday for the past three years I have written something that bounces off the scripture readings for that day. I have now written through the three year lectionary cycle. My reflections are just that, someone sitting with scripture and trying to make sense of it. Some readings speak powerfully to me, others leave me wondering what I could say. I have been reminded repeatedly how much I am fed by the Hebrew scriptures, and not just the gospel. I probably repeat myself, because I have my pet ideas.

My reflections are always shaped by the state of the world. My first was one very much a “just coming out of COVID” one, reflecting on prayer as a way we stay connected. James’s command to “pray for one another” made me think about the previous 18 months of isolation, grief, and fear. We prayed a lot, but what for? If you don’t think that God is sitting there waiting to hear your prayer and answer your requests, what is it it does? I still think the way we are connected to not just God but to each other is the real gift of prayer. The reminder of our relationship to others, to the world, and to God is so important.

I was struck looking back at my first post that I completely ignored the rest of the week’s readings. And yet the story of Esther is a great story, and the reading for today is the basis for the Jewish celebration Purim, where people get dressed up and really party. That is not and obvious response to the story. Esther, a beautiful young Jewish virgin, is selected by King Ahasueris to replace his former queen, Vashti, who had not obeyed his order. Haman, the King’s advisor, has planned to kill all the Jews and seize their money. Esther learns of the plot, and we read here how she tells the King of it, and saves her people. At the same time, Haman is hanged, and the officials who had planned to kill the Jews are themselves killed. So the Jews are saved, but many others die. And the Jews were to remember this forever, as a a time of “feasting and gladness”.

There are many things I love about the story of Esther, which is very much a story of the marginalized turning the world upside down, triumphing over a corrupt official. In the seventeenth century, one of the responses to a misogynist pamphlet is called “Esther hath hanged Haman”. But reading it today, with a war in the middle east that began when one group carried out a brutal attack on Israelis, I am wondering. That war has led to the almost complete destruction of Gaza by the Israeli military, including schools, hospitals, and homes, and now significant damage in Lebanon. Is total destruction necessary to preserve a people? Do you have to destroy one group of people to protect another? Is there a way to get out of this cycle? How do and should our ethical obligations intersect with political and military calculations? These are not questions with one answer, and people of faith will come to different conclusions.

Pray for one another, James tells his readers. As we do, we are connected. For almost a year, I have been praying for the Israeli hostages in Gaza, but also for the people of Gaza. For years I have prayed for the hungry and homeless, for refugees and migrants, to remind myself of the needs of the world. I have also prayed for friends, for those who have been very ill or have died. At first I found it strange to pray for those I did not know, but as I have done so, I have felt my heart grow.

We are told often how divided we are in the US right now, and almost everyone feels it. I have read impassioned suggestions about how we heal the divide. One way to start is to seriously pray for one another. Pray for one another, and pray for everyone. It is not always easy, but it is what we are told to do.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20, September 22, 2024: Proverbs 31:10-31; Psalm 1; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

Today’s reading from Proverbs is one of the ones which makes me want to respond with various snarky comments. A “capable wife” is “more precious than jewels”. No kidding, I want to say. As Proverbs continues with a list of all she does, up at dawn and working into the night, buying land, producing goods, I want to take a nap. She is endlessly industrious, for the good of the family. She is generous to the poor. She is working hard so that her husband can be “known in the city gates, taking his seat among the elders of the land”. He can do so because of her work. But then towards the end of all this busy-ness and activity, comes this: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue”. Somewhere in all this activity she finds wisdom and kindness.

We do not often see wisdom linked with kindness: when we talk about wise people they know a great deal, but we do not often reflect on how they treat others, or the values that are part of their wisdom. But James is on the same page as the writer of Proverbs as he admonishes his readers to , “show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom”. James knows that this is counter to wordly wisdom: the conflicts he sees come from “envy and ambition”, from covetousness and greed.

James knows that turning away from such ambitions is a challenge; it was as counter-cultural in the first century as it is in the twenty-first. As if to remind us just how hard it is to get out of that ambition/competition mindset, today we have the account of the disciples arguing with each other as to which of them was the greatest. This, as Jesus is trying to explain that he will be killed and will rise again after three days. Jesus slaps them down, telling them that “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all”. In welcoming a little child, Jesus continues, they will be welcoming him, and welcoming God.

I’ve been puzzling over that: why is welcoming a little child so important? Little children are needy, and can’t care for themselves. Because of their needs, the presence of children makes it difficult to plan, as parents can all attest. So maybe the magic of welcoming children in Jesus name is welcoming the ways we are not fully in control.

If we are honest, it is almost impossible to let go of all the cultural messages we receive about status, money and possessions. I certainly have not done so! But we can work to keep them from governing all our actions. The disciples, after all, ended up traveling long distances to preach the gospel, and faced terrible deaths. We don’t have to be so extreme, but the little children are a big help. By accepting their unpredictable and often immediate needs, we can cultivate wisdom shaped by kindness and gentleness.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19, September 15, 2024: Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

“How much longer, you ignorant people, will you love being ignorant? How much longer, you mockers, will you keep mocking?”

This question that Wisdom asks in Proverbs seems very timely. Wisdom goes on, and reminds her listeners that “you despised knowledge, did not fear Almighty God, and ignored my advice”. Wisdom is promising her readers that if they ignored her, she will not come when they need her. But the first question stays with me: we often wonder “how long”? for all sorts of things. And as a teacher, I lament ignorance. As a citizen, I have become uneasy with our habit (on all sides of the political spectrum) of mocking those we disagree with.

Our Psalm today begins with a gorgeous hymn to creation: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork”. It ends with the prayer often offered before a sermon: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” The unity of creation is visible: we are all God’s creatures. And what we say and think matters, is part of our service to God.

Like the psalm, the letter of James is convinced that speech matters. The tongue may be small, but it has an extraordinary capacity to do evil: “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison”. The same tongue that praises God may use it to curse others. We cannot mean both. James also reminds us that the teachers in our midst will be “called to a stricter account”.

And then we come to the Gospel. Our reading starts with Jesus asking his disciples who people think he is. And then: who do *you* think I am? Peter has recognized him as the Messiah. But when Jesus starts explaining that the Messiah will suffer and be killed, Peter rebukes him. But Jesus reminds Peter, and his followers, to focus not on earthly goals but divine ones. We lose our lives to gain it.

This all seems remarkably relevant. Though the lectionary is used internationally, and is more interested in the church year than the US political year, it feels as if these readings were designed for us during an election season when people are deeply divided. Words matter. Knowledge matters. And it matters to watch where people are focusing not on worldly goals but heavenly ones. What serves everyone?

May we listen to Wisdom. May we use the scriptures we hear to seek Wisdom, to fear God, and to listen. I take from these readings that we should listen more than we speak, and seek to act for the good of God’s Kingdom, and all God’s creation, not our own earthly success. And that as we look at our leaders and would be leaders, we should ask these things of them as well.

Amen.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, 8 September 2024: Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

Today’s gospel tells the story of the Syrophoenician woman. Jesus has gone to a house where he hopes for some privacy, time away from the crowds. But people find out where he is, and inevitably come seeking healing. The Syrophoenician woman doesn’t have a name, just an identity. She comes for her daughter, who is possessed by “an unclean spirit”. And Jesus’ first response is somewhat shocking: he tells her that his work is for the Jews, and “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Rather than challenging his characterization, the woman accepts it but turns it around: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And Jesus accepts her rebuke, and tells her that he daughter is healed.

I always find the first part of this shocking because I like to think of Jesus as welcoming and inclusive, which he generally was. But this week I’ve been thinking about the second part: that he accepted his first response was wrong, and changed. The rebuke came from a gentile, and a woman: who was she to push back? It is a reminder that Jesus was human: he was challenged, and he accepted it. He changed. Our society often honors those who hold fast to their ideas, but it we should honor those who, when faced with new ideas or experiences, are willing to change.

In today’s epistle, James’ message could almost be a commentary on the gospel. He is not here concerned about ethnic and religious exclusion, but about favoritism based on wealth. He thinks his audience has favored the rich. Favoritism, he points out, is not part of following Jesus. More to the point, the rich, through their actions, hurt others. “Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?”

This is also connected to action: James reminds us that faith is not enough. It does not provide food for the hungry, or shelter for the homeless. And that is what they need, not prayers. “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead”.

These readings remind us that we are all connected: Jesus is distinguishing between Jews and Gentiles, while James sees Christians favoring the rich over the poor. But to make such distinctions runs counter to the core teachings of both the Hebrew scriptures and of Jesus: to love your neighbor as yourself. And together Jesus and James remind us that inclusion is a work in progress.

May we open our hearts to all, and do what we can to serve their bodies as well as their souls.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17, September 1, 2024: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Our readings from Hebrew scriptures today focus on love. This is love deeply rooted in bodies and the senses. We begin with the love poetry of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs. The young woman describes her lover as like a gazelle, gazing in the window, calling her to join him. The winter is over, he says, “The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come,/ and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.”

It’s gorgeous poetry-as is the whole book-but it’s a beautiful bit of erotic love poetry, suffused with the desire of the two young lovers for each other. The Song of Solomon is unique in the Hebrew scriptures to have no reference to God, or to the relationship between God and God’s people. It is often read allegorically. But as it is, it serves as a reminder that love and desire are part of God’s plan.

The psalm also has a sensual charge, focused on the King who has been annointed by the Lord. “My heart is stirring with a noble song”, the psalmist begins. “You are the fairest of men”, he adds. The whole feeling of the court as described is sensuous: the “oil of gladness”, the fragrant garments, the “music of strings from ivory palaces”, and the Queen “adorned with the gold of Ophir”. All of this is a result of the King being blessed by God. The psalmist is living in their body, and responding with all his senses to the world around him.

At first, the movement from the sensual and erotic to the Epistle of James is a shock. James is instructing his readers, “Beloved”, on how they should live. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger”. And, “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves”. True religion, he tells them, is “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” James points to a world not of judgment but of kindness and generosity. Though he doesn’t use the word, it is a world governed by love.

Mark’s gospel points us in the same direction. The pharisees are upset by disciples who do not follow all the ritual practices of the tradition. These practices-much like those we learned during Covid-involved thorough washing of hands before eating, as well as washing food from the market before eating it. Failure to follow these meant you were unclean. Jesus’ response reframes what makes you unclean: it is what comes from within, your emotions, intentions and words, that is the problem, not what comes from outside. The list of evil intentions is comprehensive: “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.”

Our readings from the Hebrew scriptures are written with the fullness of human love, sensual and erotic. Both Jesus and James are focused on the importance of living with love, on the work of the heart. Together these readings highlight a range of ways love plays a role in our lives. The psalmist’s appreciation of the beauty of the court is focused on how it reflects God’s blessing. Our responses to the world around us is a response to human engagement in God’s creation: we can admire beauty and grandeur, or be dismayed by destruction. We can experience God’s creation through nature, but also through art and music. Like the psalmist, we need to acknowledge this as God’s work. But it is not just that we experience these things: it is what we do with that experience. And here, both James and Jesus suggest that the response is active. Love is not a feeling, it’s what we do to and for others.

Bishop Curry has talked about the Jesus movement as the way of love. Love is not just a Hallmark card, though certainly phrases from the Song of Solomon have made their way onto some of them. Love, in all its forms, is sacred. It is something we experience from others, and towards others. It is a response to the beauty of the world, or special experiences. And it guides our response to all those we encounter.

Love is the center, and it is holy. It is our response and our action. We receive love from God, and respond with love, to God and to each other. Love is everything.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16: 1 Kings 8:[1, 6, 10-11], 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

Solomon has built the Temple, and the ark of the covenant has been brought by the priests to “its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim”. And “the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord”. This was by no means a foregone conclusion: after all, the Israelites thought that the Lord was in the ark, and up to this moment, the ark had lived in a tent on a cart, moving from place to place. Suddenly a nomadic God is given a home. Solomon’s speech prays that the Lord will stay in put, so that they can turn to the Temple to pray, so they always know where their Lord is. Solomon acknowledges the many other Gods known at the time, but the Lord God of Israel he says, “there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath”. The Temple gives the people of Israel a fixed place toward which to pray, but they need to make sure their God is there so that their prayers are heard.

In the epistle, Paul is concerned about how we clothe ourselves, in the “whole armor of God”. There is a belt of truth, a breastplate of righteuousness, and whatever shoes allow you to proclaim “the gospel of peace”. As someone who can’t wear all the shoes I would like to wear any more, I appreciate the sense that different people need different shoes! Our clothing is completed by the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, “which is the word of God.” Paul imagines us surrounded by the tools of faith, to protect us from evil and from temptation. The tools of faith are imagined in terms of the uniforms of Roman soldiers.

Paul’s image of our being wrapped in tools of faith helps us think about today’s gospel. Jesus begins by saying that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” You can’t blame the disciples for talking among themselves, and saying “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” Even if you leave out the macabre imagery of eating flesh and drinking blood, it’s hard. What does Jesus mean when he says that he abides in us, and we in him? Is it as literal as what Solomon imagines for the Lord in the Temple? Or not? And how do we abide in someone who abides in us? I am confused; this is a mystery.

But is an important one mystery. Jesus is talking about where we place ourselves, how we locate ourselves with him. Just as Solomon is anxious that they know that the Lord will stay in the Temple, Jesus wants us to stay with him, and he with us. Paul suggests it is easier if we wear “the whole armor of God”. Where are you? Can we own that we abide in Jesus?

Thirteenth Sunday of Pentecost, August 18, 2024 (Proper 15): 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

After all the adventures, David has died, and is succeeded by his son Solomon, the second child Bathsheba bore him. Solomon is very pious, and goes to the high places to sacrifice to the Lord. When he went to Gibeon, the “principal high place”, he had a dream. God asked what he should give him. Solomon recounts his fathers long and good leadership, but says he is “only a little child”. He asks for an understanding mind.

Those of us who grew up on fairy tales know that those offers-“I’ll give you your wish”-are often tricks. But Solomon has aced the test, asking for something that will serve others more than him. The Lord promises that he will have “a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.” But, Solomon gets extra, the promise of riches and honor throughout his life. We speak even today of “the wisdom of Solomon”: this is how he is remembered.

Paul also asks his readers in Ephesus to distinguish between wisdom and foolishness. But in a surprising move, Paul contrasts the foolish way of drinking wine (debauchery) with singing: psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. To do this is to give thanks to God. I quite like the idea that singing in community is born of wisdom.

Our first two readings focus on wisdom, being focused on both God and the good of those around you. The Gospel takes us to mystery: Jesus tells his audience that he is “living bread”, and those who eat it will live forever. When there are questions, Jesus doubles down: he tells his listeners that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” He repeats this with slightly different words. And then he says, “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.”

You cannot blame Jesus’ listeners for their questions. What does “living bread” mean? And honestly, the whole idea of eating someone’s body and drinking their blood is not very attractive, aside from being counter to Jewish dietary rules. We live in different planes: we need the literal bread, but we also need to be fed spiritually. But his words point to mystery, the central mystery of the Eucharist. That has, after all, been the subject of debate for centuries.

I struggle a great deal with the apparent exclusiveness of Jesus’ promise: I know many people doing God’s work in this world who would not say they do it in Jesus name. I read Jesus’ promise of life to be about being spiritually alive: being open to the goodness of God’s creation, to give thanks for it, and to engage with it in a spirit of compassion and kindness. This is not a flat experience: there are good days and bad days, periods of time when joy and thanksgiving are a long way away. Some days we just put one foot in front of the other. But if we are spiritually alive, even in those times, we still try to live with compassion and kindness, and we seek to connect to the goodness of creation.

I am just as confused by Jesus’ words today as were those who listened to him 2000 years ago. They are a mystery. But we might follow Solomon and hope for wisdom. Or we can take Paul’s advice, and take pleasure in singing. In doing those things, we keep ourselves spiritually alive. Wisdom may not solve a mystery, but it can help us live with it.

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14, August 11, 2024: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

Last Sunday in our reading from 2 Samuel, we heard Nathan predict to David that “the sword will never depart from your house”. And this week we see it. We have skipped a lot of the story. In the intervening years, David’s first son with Bathsheba has died; he has another son with her, Solomon. Meanwhile, his oldest son has raped one of his daughters, and his son Absalom killed the rapist. Absalom was banished for a time, was restored, but then set himself up against David, having himself proclaimed King in Hebron. He has rebelled against his father.

Our reading picks the story up just before the decisive battle is to be fought between David and those supporting him, and Absalom and his followers. David does not want Absalom killed, telling them to “deal gently” with him. Absalom’s army is defeated. Absalom is killed: he is caught by a tree while riding a mule, and then killed by soldiers while hanging from the tree. David’s lament, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!” cries out across the centuries, the lament of the parent who has lost a child. In the battle, the soldiers did not care that Absalom was David’s son: they had no mercy on the rebels.

One of the things I love in the Hebrew scriptures is the humanity that shines forth: we may know that the violence in David’s family is the result of David’s actions, but we are asked also to see David as a grieving father. Sin does not render him outside humanity.

Our epistle seems to acknowledge the heavy lessons David has had to learn, and to focus on the positive: what should we do? Paul, in his letter to the Christians at Ephesus, is concerned with the consequences of sin. He offers advice to the congregation. Some of this is obvious: tell the truth, turn from theft to honest labor. Then there is his concern about anger: we can be angry, he says, but we should not sin. Somehow anger can lead to sin. And we should not let the sun set on our anger. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander”, Paul advises. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted.” Paul tells us that sin leads to division and discord, and we should turn from it. Division and discord, the bitterness and wrath that Paul names, become sinful.

It seems to me that the combination of David’s story and Paul’s message speak to us profoundly in the present moment. Both in different ways remind us that our behavior and attitudes, whether in the family, at work, or in the community, have consequences that do not stop with us. It is easy to be righteous about our positions, our views on the world, or what we do on a daily basis. We all want to be right. The newspapers are full of discussions of how divided we are as a nation, and part of that is the certainty of so many of us that we are right; at the same time, those who disagree with us do not just have different ideas, but are bad people.

How do we put away “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander”? How do we learn to be kind to one another, even tenderhearted? This can be a challenge in families, and in workplaces; it certainly has operated in the church. It is most publicly acknowledged in politics, but politics grows out of everything else. We need to put aside our certainty, and live in some humility: there’s always a possibility that we are not right.

Kindness is an underappreciated virtue. But it is one greatly needed right now.