INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year B - PROPER 14

2 SAMUEL 18:5‑9, 15, 31‑33. Without doubt this is one of the most moving stories from the whole of David’s reign. Essentially, it told about God’s love for Israel in a very personal parable. A palace revolution set Absolam, one of David’s sons, against his father ending in David’s flight and a bloody battle for power. Absolam suffered an accident and was slain by David’s ambitious general, Joab. When told the tragic news, David wept bitterly for his rebellious son, as God weeps for all whom God loves.

PSALM 130. As a prayer of penitence this psalm has few equals. It reflects of an actual situation evoking a desperate cry for God's forgiveness. The need to be reconciled to God has universal application in the patient hope with which the psalm ends.

I KINGS 19:4-8. (Alternate) This is only a brief incident in a life-changing experience of the prophet Elijah. Threatened by Jezebel, he ran for his life. He headed out into the wilderness, a dry and barren place where he fell asleep under a broom tree, one of the few that will grow in such arid conditions. Strengthened for a longer journey by food miraculously provided, he trekked all the way to Horeb (Sinai), the mountain where Yahweh and Israel, led by Moses, had made covenant.

PSALM 34:1-8. (Alternate) This psalm presents one of the clearest statements of God’s redemptive purpose to be found in the Old Testament.

EPHESIANS 4:25‑5:2. Either Paul himself, or one of his disciples who wrote this letter, exhorted his audience to live in a gentle and kindly way rather than angrily venting their frustrations and injustices. Their model was to be God’s loving forgiveness for them so fully expressed in Jesus Christ who died for them.

JOHN 6:35, 41‑51. So different from the other gospels, John adds this discourse to the story of Jesus feeding of the five thousand. It is filled with John’s reflections on who Jesus really is and the meaning of his being the bread of life.

Jesus’ claim to be the complete revelation of God puzzled his Jewish contemporaries. They protested that they knew full well who he was because they knew his parents. Jesus went on to explain that he was not only the successor to the prophets, but the one who makes perfectly plain all that can be known about God and gives eternal, spiritual life to all who believed.

John’s Gospel was written possibly as long as sixty years after the resurrection for the third generation of Christians. He gave the early church’s most profound understanding of what Jesus really means to every generation.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

2 SAMUEL 18:5‑9, 15, 31‑33. The story of Absolam, David’s third son, forms a subplot to the life of David, in particular as a consequence of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. An earlier part of the narrative gave some justification for Absolam’s rebellion. Believing that his father had lost his ability to provide adequate justice, Absolam took matters into his own hands. He arranged the death of Ammon, David’s oldest son, for raping his sister, Tamar (1 Sam. 13:1-29). A palace revolution set Absolam against his father won a considerable following in Israel. No longer sure of the loyalty of his troops, David fled from Jerusalem, raised three battalions, returned to guerilla warfare and engaged Absolam’s forces in a bloody battle for power.

David’s forces won the battle, causing Absolam to flee. But Absolam suffered a silly accident by being caught by the forked branch of a tree as his mule ran through a forest. David’s ambitious general, Joab, found and slew Absolam as he hung there totally vulnerable. When told the tragic news, David wept bitterly for his rebellious son, as God weeps for all whom God loves.

Without doubt this is one of the most moving stories from the whole cycle of narratives about David’s reign. It expresses profoundly human sentiments and contains genuine theological relevance. In a very personal parable it told of David’s love and grief for his both his sons, Ammon and Absolam, both of whom had repulsed him. The story may also be seen as a metaphor of God’s love for recalcitrant Israel. Because of this double intent, it became sacred scripture. Read in an extremely dramatic way, it can bring a deep sense of its pathos to an attentive audience.

Yet at the same time this deep sense of trust in God’s mercy and forgiveness rested on the assurance of Yahweh’s steadfast love. After all, the whole of Israel faith-history of Yahweh’s redemptive love lay behind this fervent prayer.

The psalm was included in a collection known as the “Songs of Ascent,” believed to have been sung by pilgrims as they approached Jerusalem for one of the great festivals. This one appears to fit the mood of those coming for Yom Kippur, the Feast of Atonement. On that holiest of occasions, all individual and national sins were repented and received merciful forgiveness. All the people and the nation received atonement with Yahweh through the designated sacrifices and the entrance of the high priest into the Holy of Holies. The fact that no mention is made of atoning sacrifices in this psalm has caused some scholars to assign it to a late, post-exilic date when Israel’s religious tradition had become more dependent on a spiritual relationship with Yahweh much more like that of the New Testament.

Vs. 6 contains a vivid image of watchmen on the eastern walls of Jerusalem watching for dawn to break over the Mount of Olives. From this, one can surmise that the poem may well have been composed by an individual engaged in a long night vigil contemplating two spiritual realities. Or, if he was a pilgrim, he may even have been close to the city itself as he spent the night too moved by his deep feelings to get any rest. In his wakefulness, he longed for morning to come when he could enter the city for the great festival. At the same time he was deeply conscious of his personal sin and had great hopes for the peace of repentance and forgiveness. Repentant Christians as well as Jews have turned to this psalm for the reassuring hope that it brings tot the troubled conscience.

I KINGS 19:4-8. (Alternate) This is only a brief episode in a life-changing experience of the prophet Elijah. Having won a decisive victory, Elijah had been threatened by Jezebel. So he ran for his life. He headed out into the wilderness, a dry and barren place where he fell asleep under a broom tree, one of the few that will grow in such arid conditions. Hunger and fatigue by an angel’s intervention in his plight he received food miraculously provided for a longer journey. So strengthened he trekked all the way to Horeb (Sinai), the mountain where Yahweh and Israel, led by Moses, had made covenant.

Angels as intermediaries between God and the prophets did not appear in Hebrew

religious thought until after the Babylonian exile (639 BCE). The Septuagint (LXX,

in Greek 4^th century BCE) translated this phenomenon as “someone,” likely interpreting the incident as a theophany and the “angel” as a manifestation of God in human form.

The passage depicts the prophet as humanly at the end of his own strength but miraculously receiving divine strength to return to the mount of God where Israel’s religious history began. In the northern tradition known as E (for Elohim) and in later Deuteronomic narrative (D), Horeb was the name given to the sacred mountain, the dwelling place of the God of Israel where the covenant was established. The alternative J tradition from the Southern Kingdom of Judea used the name Sinai for the holy mountain.

In the mid-20th century, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee described twenty-one different civilizations which had risen and fallen during the sweep of human history. One of his significant insights was to posit as a necessary step in the life cycle of any civilization or culture a time of retreat for renewal, then to return as a creative minority to establish a whole new approach to challenges to be faced. Out of the ruins of the old, the new was created. One finds a similar experience in the return of Elijah to Horeb. This becomes clear in the subsequent verses (19:9-18) where the prophet’s epiphany is described in detail.

PSALM 34:1-8. (Alternate) This psalm presents one of the clearest statements of God’s redemptive purpose to be found in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew text it has an acrostic form, each line beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The psalm also is in the wisdom style and so dates from the late Persian or early Greek period. Some scholars believe it may also have been associated with the lament of Ps. 25 as a hymn of thanksgiving.

The main purpose of the psalm is to celebrate with gratitude the saving power of Yahweh. It expresses great confidence and trust in Yahweh’s special care for the righteous.

While the superscription mistakenly attributes the psalm to an incident in David’s flight from his rebellious son Abimilech, no direct reference to that or any other event in David’s reign can be found. Such Davidic references were given to about half of the psalms, probably related to a special collection attributed to David. These titles were added during the compilation process somewhere between the fourth and second centuries BCE.

Viewed from a wider perspective, the psalm points to the constant mercy and love with which Yahweh watched over and delivered Israel from innumerable disasters. At the same time it draws more attention to the individual believer who trusts in Yahweh than to the nation as a whole. This too has been the attitude of devout Christians through many generations.

EPHESIANS 4:25‑5:2. As this continuing analysis of Ephesians has been saying, either Paul himself, wrote this letter, or more probably one of his disciples composed it from his knowledge of Paul’s teaching, possibly after using it as a baptismal sermon. In this brief excerpt he exhorted his audience to live in a gentle and kindly way rather than angrily venting their frustrations and complaining about injustices they may have suffered. Their model was to be God’s loving forgiveness for them so fully expressed in Jesus Christ who died for them.

We need to keep at the forefront of our minds that the NT, and especially the letters, were written for congregations scattered far and wide across the eastern Roman empire. However obliquely, they referred to real situations within those faith communities. We have few resources to decipher exactly what those circumstances may have been when these letters were composed. It would appear from the context of this passage that there was a considerable amount of bickering and quarreling going on in this congregation. Either that, or the letter was addressed to faith communities in general who were in great conflict over the issue of whether Jews and Gentile could fellowship together. As someone put it in a comment on last week’s lesson, the issue was peace, not unity, although the unity of Christ’s body, the church, is named as one of the main themes of this letter.

Apparently anger and deceit within the fellowship had become serious concerns for “Paul” (vss. 25-27). People also seem to have been taking advantage of one another. Some may have been only partially reformed thieves (vs. 28). When people are riled up about issues, they often criticize and condemn one another mercilessly. That may be what Paul had in mind about “evil talk” in vs. 29. His antidote to that kind of talk is worth noting. An elderly concert musician and teacher once said, “Like good music, life needs to have plenty of grace notes. That’s what gives it colour and flavour.”

Did the anonymous author also have in mind Paul’s “fruits of the Spirit” in vs. 30? He certainly made direct reference to the Spirit as the seal of our future redemption, a phrase that occurs in the Pauline corpus many times. Then he returned to his earlier concern about serious communication issues that had arisen within the church for which there was only one solution: to speak in kindly, gentle words with gracious forgiveness modeled on God’s forgiving grace in Jesus Christ. That, of course, would require considerable change of heart and perhaps some personal sacrifice of pride, especially for those who had been hurt by harshly spoken words. Could the Corinthians with whom Paul had such difficulty have been in the author’s mind here? As Frederick B. Craddock said in a sermon to one of Canada’s most prestigious congregations and a large radio audience, “Only those who have been hurt can be forgiving because they have been wounded and violated.” That is exactly what God did - and does – continually and consistently.

JOHN 6:35, 41‑51. So different from the other gospels, John added this discourse to the story of Jesus feeding of the five thousand as an interpretation of something much more relevant to his own time and audience. The discourse consists of John’s reflections on who Jesus really is and the meaning of his being “the bread of life.”

If as many scholars have concluded, John was writing for the church in Ephesus in the last decade of the 1^st century, what was he saying to them in this metaphor and its elaboration in the discourse? Within the decade before John wrote, the final distinction between the Jewish and the Christian faith traditions had become clear. Having been expelled from all Jewish synagogues, Christians no longer could be considered as a sect of Judaism. This expulsion meant that Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah were alienated from Israel and even their own families. At the same time, Christian communities now had a majority of Gentiles in their ranks. The teaching of the apostles defined more and more the limits of this tradition.

This prompted Christian communities to create radically transformed liturgies from their Jewish antecedents to express their peculiar Christian beliefs. Gospels recording Jesus’ sayings and deeds, the story of his passion, death and resurrection, and especially letters attributed to the apostle Paul, circulated more and more widely among churches. Into this milieu John’s Gospel introduced these reflections about the eucharistic celebration which marked every Christian gathering for worship.

In this passage, Jesus’ claim to be the complete revelation of God greatly puzzled his Jewish contemporaries. They protested that they knew full well who he was because they knew his parents. Mistakenly, they had understood him in an entirely literal way. Jesus had spoken in characteristic metaphors.

Bread had been particularly important in the Jewish religious tradition. Not only was it the staff of life, it held the promise of life itself. The Deuteronomists regarded the gift of eating bread without scarcity in the Promised Land as the promise of life in freedom and prosperity (Deut. 8:9). The sacrificial system included an offering of cereal used in the making of bread. Tabernacle and temple both required a permanent display of bread representing the presence of Yahweh (Exod. 25:30; 1 Chron. 28:16). The Passover festival of unleavened bread formed the central religious rite in remembrance of the Exodus. Like the manna that fed the Israelites in the wilderness, Jesus identified himself with this ancient tradition as the “bread from heaven.” In doing so, he at once acknowledged the significance of this divine gift of bread and reinterpreted its meaning. He explained that he was not only the successor to the prophets, of whom Moses was foremost, but actually represented God in every way. He was the one who makes perfectly plain all that can be known of God and gives God’s eternal, spiritual life to all who believe.

Thus John gave the early church its most profound understanding of what Jesus really meant to his own and still means to every generation. Whenever we participate in the breaking of bread, in the sacred eucharist or in the humblest of meals, we have fellowship with him and with God whom he reveals to us through the working of the Spirit. As the traditional grace at table prays: “Be present at our table, Lord, be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we may feast in Paradise with thee.”