INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year B – Proper 10

2 SAMUEL 6:1‑5, 12b‑19. Many celebrations include experiences of both boundless joy mixed with a measure of sadness. Such was the case too when David brought the ark of the covenant, Israel’s foremost religious symbol, to Jerusalem. In a frenzy of jubilation, David danced among the happy throngs that accompanied the ark on its way. But David’s wife, Michal, was ashamed of her husband’s nearly naked display of religious enthusiasm.

PSALM 24. This psalm celebrates two crucial elements of Israel’s religious tradition: the whole creation as the possession of God alone and the temple as the visible symbol of God’s presence within creation.

AMOS 7:7‑15. (Alternate) Amos, a humble farmer and outspoken prophet, began his ministry about 740 BC at a time when the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah suffered grave internal and external problems. This passage tells how he confronted Amaziah, the priest of the royal sanctuary at Bethel, with the threatening message that God would punish the people for their apostasy and end the reign of King Jereboam.

PSALM 85:8‑13. (Alternate) God’s steadfast love and faithfulness offers hope and rich blessings to God’s people.

EPHESIANS 1:3‑14. While the address of this letter cites Paul as its author, many scholars attribute it to someone who knew his other letters and teaching very well, but also summarized and extended his thought further. It has been suggested that this letter began as a prayer of blessing and a sermon to new converts preparing for baptism at Pentecost.

Jesus Christ is the central figure of this passage, as he was for all of Paul’s teaching. It lifts up Christ’s pre‑existence, his role in God’s plan of salvation, his continuing presence, and the believer’s response to all this through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The story played such a large part in Mark’s narrative because it reflected the king’s guilt and his fear that Jesus and his disciples would start a rebellion threatening his shaky hold on power. The idea that Jesus was John raised from the dead was popular among the common folk of the time.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

2 SAMUEL 6:1‑5, 12b‑19. Many religious celebrations include experiences of both boundless joy mixed with a measure of sadness. This may be particularly evident when a large number of people participate and a charismatic leader is present. A form of mob psychology seems to take over. People behave with excessive enthusiasm and not infrequently run amok. Such was the case when David brought the ark of the covenant, Israel’s foremost religious symbol, to Jerusalem.

This was indeed an occasion for jubilation. The ark of the covenant symbolized Israel’s unique relationship with Yahweh because it held the stones on which, according to the sacred tradition, the Law had been given to Moses. It had also become the symbol of national identity and liberation from the Philistines under the skillful leadership of David, now the popular choice as chieftan of all the tribes of Israel.

All was not well, however, within David’s own household. His wife, Saul’s daughter Michal, did not join the celebration. Perhaps she was jealous of her husband having such fun with the throngs of men and women who joined with him in the happy occasion. One expositor suggested that although formally committed to the state religion, she was actually irreligious. There could have been a simpler cause for her disfavour. Vs. 14 notes that David was wearing “a linen ephod.” This was an undergarment and could have been no more than a loincloth scant enough to make Michael angry and ashamed of her husband. Then too, his ecstatic display of religious fervour in a frenzy of jubilation only exacerbated her negative attitude toward him.

There is another possible explanation for Michal’s attitude, despite her earlier love for David. Her father, Saul, had given her in marriage to David as a political ploy to bring about David’s death (1 Sam. 18:20‑25). While it is exceedingly difficult to sort out the frequent duplications and contradictions in the narrative of 1 Samuel, Saul himself had not been the unanimous choice as king to lead the confederated tribes against the more powerful Philistines. It is known, however, that the religious practices of the Canaanites existed side by side and contended with Yahwism long after the inauguration of the monarchy. Did the Yahwist faction resist Saul’s selection because he was not as faithful to Yahweh as they would have preferred? Was Saul more politically ambitious and jealous about his title than faithful to the covenant?

The ark of the covenant was not a prominent factor in the religious rites observed during Saul’s reign. He also appears to have been deprived of his kingship for disloyalty to Yahweh by usurping the rights of Samuel’s priesthood (1 Sam. 13:8‑15) as in the ancient tradition of a priest‑king. Was Michal also ambivalent toward Yahwism as her father may well have been? These may be adventurous speculations and we shall never be able to sift the historical details from the religious fiction of the narratives.

What can we make of this legendary tale that may be spiritual helpful to our time? A few years ago an eminent Methodist scholar reported that he had made a special trip to Toronto to inquire into the ecstatic displays of religious fervour in the Toronto Blessing. What he found was a fairly typical Christian charismatic renewal movement which demonstrates exaggerated forms of ecstatic behaviour, characterized in particular by what is called “holy laughter.” Those involved interpreted this as evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. For some, it may have been an unusual way of finding relief from the stresses of life.

Once a part of the Vineyard Movement attracting thousands of participants every night of the week, the group has been dismissed from that association and has affiliated with the loosely connected Christian Fellowship Churches. The chief emphasis of the Toronto Blessing, now evolved into the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, is on emotional religious experience no matter how manifested. Describing themselves as a family oriented congregation and passionate about worship, they have recently opened three new satellite congregations around the Greater Toronto Area. Opponents regard the movement as heretical because of its scant theological basis and its contacts with similar ecstatic charismatic movements that have occurred outside the mainstream of Christian tradition. (See more here: http://www.tacf.org/)

Having observed the Toronto Blessing in process, the visiting professor asked, “How do we know that we have the Holy Spirit?” There appears to be a similar question of David’s behaviour in this passage. It probably dates from the Deuteronomic redactors of the Davidic cycle of legends in the 6th century BCE. They saw both cause for rejoicing and yet had some serious reservations about his handling of the sacred artifact, the ark of the covenant.

PSALM 24. This psalm celebrates two crucial elements of Israel’s religious tradition: the whole creation as the possession of Yahweh alone and the temple as the visible symbol of God’s presence within creation. Although attributed to David in the superscription, it comes from a much later date as evidenced by the references to the temple (vs. 3). Solomon, not David, was the king who built the temple in Jerusalem. Then too, the cosmology of creation described here is typical of the ancient world‑view which saw the earth set in a three tiered universe with heaven above, the place of the dead below and the earth between.

It would appear that the psalm had liturgical origin and was sung in a procession on some festival occasion. Late Jewish sources regard it as a hymn for the New Year festival when Yahweh’s work of creation was commemorated and the sovereignty of Yahweh over all creation celebrated. There is also a strong element of holiness in vv. 3‑6. Ritual purity had special meaning for entrance into the temple because the sacred precincts were regarded as the place where Yahweh dwelt.

The antiphonal song of vv. 7‑9 again emphasizes the entrance of Yahweh into the holy place. The gates of the temple are personified and responsive to the approaching worshipers represented by the holy people of Yahweh. Yet the identification of Yahweh and the people of Israel is not altogether complete. Hence the question, “Who is the King of glory?” The poetic image used in answering this question (vs. 8) is that of a victorious monarch leading his triumphant army home. One commentator suggested that this may have been the point in the procession where the ark or some other symbol of divine presence moved into the temple.

In Jewish history, the temple was the last stronghold to fall to an invading enemy. Its few remaining stones in the Western Wall still form the centre of Jewish spirituality. In the Scottish Protestant tradition, the antiphonal verses were sung to the tune of St. George’s Edinburgh at the evening service in many churches on Communion Sunday.

It is a pity that the RCL only uses two passages from Amos and these only from the narrative segment of the book (ch.7‑9). Amos deserves more than the sharing of his vision of doom with priest of the royal sanctuary at Bethel. Yet this passage tells us something about this earliest of the great prophets (despite his characterization as one of the twelve “Minor Prophets”).

In his own words, Amos was not a professional prophet or priest, but a farmer (v.14). What is more, he was a Judean from Tekoa, a village about 5 mi. south of Bethlehem, in the Southern Kingdom. By raising his voice against the moral and social corruption of Israel (i.e. the Northern Kingdom), he encountered the opposition of the royal priesthood of that nation. Like most rural people, he was something of a jack‑of‑all‑trades, for in addition to having flocks and a fig orchard, he also knew something about building. A plumb‑line, a simple weight on the end of a string, was an important tool necessary for erecting the wall of any building, especially one built of mud brick as were most houses of that time. The metaphor of the plumb‑line expressed total condemnation of the moral and spiritual leadership of the nation (vv.7‑9).

Due to his impressive sense of Yahweh’s justice and righteousness, Amos foresaw the destruction which awaited Israel (vv.8‑9, 17). The king during this period was Jereboam II (788‑747 BCE). Assyria had reduced Damascus to poverty and powerlessness, but under a series of weak kings did not threaten the Palestinian states. This allowed Israel to prosper and a rich merchant class to develop, but not to the benefit of the common people like himself. A passion for social justice explains the vehement outrage of Amos’ message. It also makes him a very contemporary voice for our own time of global capitalism run amok in immoral, money‑mad enterprise that brought about a destructive recession of terrifying proportions.

PSALM 85. (Alternate) In curious juxtaposition to the dismal prophecy of Amos, this psalm presents a very hopeful attitude. As a lament of the community, it voices sincere humility and pleads for salvation on the basis of Yahweh’s past beneficence. Some unknown historic circumstance lies behind it, but there are no clues to what that event may have been other than that some imminent danger threatened the whole community.

We have no way of knowing when that was, but it seems likely that the psalm is post‑exilic. Some scholars believe that it reflects the conditions in Judah similar to that described by Haggai (ca. 520 BCE) when Judah experienced a severe economic depression and a failure of spiritual enthusiasm (cf. Haggai 1:6‑11; 2:15‑19).

An eschatological element some detect in the closing vv. 8‑13 has given the psalm a wider relevance. A prophetic note like that of Second Isaiah sounds through these lines. An earnest desire for peace and fidelity to Yahweh which will yield prosperity and social justice.

The psalmist looks forward to a time of faithfulness and well‑being throughout the land in his own time period. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer made this the “proper psalm” for Christmas Day. Since the author had in mind an immediate demonstration of Yahweh’s saving power, it seems most appropriate for that Christian celebration.

EPHESIANS 1:3‑14. Scholarly controversy over the authorship of the Letter to the Ephesians may never be settled. While the address of this letter cites Paul as its author, many scholars attribute it to someone of the next generation who knew Paul’s other letters and teaching very well, and on that basis summarized and extended his thought much further. Several possible authors have been proposed, all of them close associates of Paul: Tychicus, Onesimus, and Timothy.

In an appealing thesis dating from the 1960s, John C. Kirby, of McGill University, Montreal, suggested that this letter began as a prayer of blessing and a sermon to new converts preparing for baptism at Pentecost. At some later date, it was transformed into a letter circulated from the Ephesian church rather than written to the Ephesian community. (Ephesians, Baptism and Pentecost. McGill University Press, 1968)

This opening passage, Kirby asserts, has all the marks of a Jewish berakah. Such a prayer of blessing formed a significant part of the Jewish liturgical tradition in which Paul would have frequently participated. This prayer blessed Yahweh for two special divine acts which caused Israel to wonder and worship: creation and deliverance. The Psalms include numerous examples. Psalm 111 contains both of these themes. So also does the opening passage of this “letter.”

Jesus Christ is the central figure of this poetic blessing, as he was for all of Paul’s teaching. It lifts up Christ’s pre‑existence, his role in God’s plan of salvation from the beginning, his continuing presence, and the believer’s response to all this through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Few if any passages in the Pauline corpus reach the heights of poetic grandeur as do the words of this opening prayer.

Not only have those who believe received redemption through Christ’s blood and the forgiveness of all trespasses (vs. 8). We also have wisdom and insight into the mystery which Christ reveals (vs. 9). This is the vision of the eschaton in which all history will be brought to a conclusion in Christ (v. 10). That too is our inheritance and destiny in Christ (v. 11) to the end that we may “live for the praise of his glory” (v. 12). The gift of the Holy Spirit is the divine pledge we have that all this is true (vv. 13‑14).

Everything that follows in the remainder of the letter depends on this opening liturgy. After this initial awe at what God has done in Christ comes its essential meaning for all who believe. Specific admonitions as to the implications of the awe‑full act of God for every Christian’s daily life are clarified in the later sections of the letter which, according to Kirby, were the admonitions of the baptismal sermon.

Two lively metaphors referring to the Holy Spirit stand out in vv. 13 and 14. The “seal of the promised Holy Spirit” has to do with the mark of ownership placed on shipments of goods to prove that it came from a specific owner and had been delivered intact. We still use such means to designate the safe transmission of valuable goods. Thus the Holy Spirit seals us as belonging to God.

The “pledge of our inheritance” (Greek = arrabon) also came from the Hellenist business world. It represented an advance payment which formed part of the purchase price as a guarantee that the remainder would be paid in due time. Paul uses the word here to say that the gift of the Holy Spirit now is God’s guarantee of future blessedness in eternal fellowship with God. It is the promise that someday we shall enter into a full relationship with God. If we need to know what that will be like, we need only look at how the gospels describe Jesus living from day to day and after his death by crucifixion was raised and, in the words of Acts 1:9, ascended to be with God.

MARK 6:14‑29. The execution of John the Baptist was only one of many acts of extreme violence attributed to Herod Antipas, the Roman’s puppet‑king of Galilee and Petrea. There would appear to be as much legend as fact in the story of Herod’s rash promise to his paramour’s daughter. This tradition may well come from circles closely associated with John himself. Herodias obviously had a grudge against John, but the outcome of the story is not surprising considering the danger John’s movement of repentance had for the profligate Antipas.

We might wonder, however, why Mark makes such an issue of Antipas’ hesitation to execute John. A similar pattern emerged in the narrative of Jesus’ trial before Pilate (Mark 15:6‑15). It is more than likely that Mark told the stories this way not so much as to exonerate the Roman authorities for these executions, but to show how they vacillating in the face of forces they could not control. In both instances, political expedience rather than justice prevailed. The Romans were masters of such machinations long before Machiavelli developed his theories that those with political power are not subject to traditional ethical norms, but only needed to use whatever means were necessary to sustain their control.

Yet the story played such a large part in Mark’s narrative because it reflected the puppet king’s guilt and his fear that Jesus and his disciples would start a rebellion once again threatening his shaky hold on power. The idea was popular among the common folk of the time that Jesus was John raised from the dead, and John in turn was Elijah returned from the dead. In fact, this was one of the answers the disciples gave to Jesus when he asked “Who do people say that I am?” (8:27‑28).

Walter Wink wrote a helpful article on John the Baptist in the supplementary volume of The Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary (5, 488‑9). He made a strong argument that John’s movement was absorbed into the post‑Easter church and that Mark consistently portrayed John as Elijah resurrected. By linking the suffering of Elijah, the execution of John and the crucifixion of Jesus, “Mark succeeds in saying that John’s suffering is not meaningless, any more than is that of the Christians in Rome.” Mark thus attempted to encourage his Roman audience at a time of severe persecution without drawing unnecessary attention from the Roman authorities. As a prelude to the passion narrative, the story of John’s imprisonment and execution set before the church the promise of an end to their suffering and humiliation.

Is there not a message in this passage for the church today as it calls for justice in the face of entrenched political and economic power?

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