I want to start today with a little story.  Here’s something from the “sorry if you’ve already heard this one” department.

A woman was leaving a convenience store with her morning coffee.  She noticed a most unusual funeral procession approaching the nearby cemetery.  A long black hearse was followed by a second long black hearse about 50 feet behind.  Behind that hearse was a solitary woman walking a very mean looking dog on a leash.  Behind those two were 200 women walking in single file.  The woman’s curiosity got the best of her.

She respectfully approached the woman walking the dog and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, and I know this is a bad time to disturb you, but I’ve never seen a funeral procession like this.  Whose funeral is it?”

The woman replied, “Well, that first hearse is for my husband.”  “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to him?”  The woman replied, “My dog attacked and killed him.”  She inquired further, “Well, who’s in the second hearse?”  The woman answered, “My mother-in-law.  She was trying to help my husband when the dog turned on her.”

A tender and thoughtful moment of silence passed between the two women.  Then the one with her morning cup of coffee asked, “May I borrow your dog?”  The answer she received: “Get in line.”

And now we have the obligatory light bulb joke.  Question: How many mothers-in-law does it take to change a light bulb?  Answer: One.  She holds it in place, remains completely still, and waits for the world to revolve around her.[1]

(Sincere apologies to all you mothers-in-law!  I can honestly say that my dear departed mother-in-law gave me very little grief.  Of course, the fact that we quite literally did not speak the same language and lived on opposite sides of the globe might have had something to do with it!)

The book of Ruth concerns a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law whose relationship, far from being worthy of jokes, instead becomes an intimate friendship.  The story of Ruth and Naomi is one of both tremendous loss and of tremendous gain.  As we will see, Naomi has a very good influence on Ruth!

[photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash]

I consider the book of Job to be one of the world’s great pieces of literature.  Likewise, it’s been said of the book of Ruth that it’s “a perfect example of the art of telling a story.”[2]  It’s often referred to as a “novella,” a short novel.  Nobody really knows who wrote it or when it was written.

It’s possible it was written before the Jews were driven into exile by the Babylonians, in the 590s and 580s BC.  That might suggest the importance of establishing King David’s ancestry.  If it were written after the exile, the emphasis could be the importance of showing how a non-Israelite could be a devoted worshipper of the Lord.

These aren’t idle speculations.  Both of these ideas figure into the storyline of the book.

Something significant to take from the book is that Ruth rid herself of the shackles of the accepted structure.  She broke the chains.  She went against convention.  The same can be said of Naomi, her mother-in-law, her partner in crime, so to speak.

Besides Ruth and Naomi, there’s one more major figure in our little adventure.  That is Boaz, a wealthy relative of Naomi’s.  He eventually fulfills the law in Deuteronomy 25, which says that a brother (or in this case, a close relative) must take his brother’s wife if she is widowed, as Ruth was, and has no sons.  That way, the dead man’s bloodline can go on.

We are half way through the third month in the biblical year, Sivan.  The book of Ruth is traditionally associated with Sivan, in large part because it is the month with the holiday Shavuot.

Shavuot (or Pentecost) is seen as the day the Lord revealed the Torah to Israel at Mt. Sinai.  Torah is usually translated as “law,” but “instructions” or “teachings” probably better catch the spirit.  I like Naomi Wolf’s comment, that the “Hebrew Bible…is more about love and less about rules.  The rules are the guardrails for the love.”[3]

Here is a summary of the story of Ruth.  (It really is a very short book.  It takes less than fifteen minutes to read.)

A famine forces Naomi and her husband to go to Moab.  There they have two sons, who take Moabite wives, Orpah and Ruth.  Naomi’s husband dies, and soon after, so do her two sons.  The women leave for Judah.  Naomi tells her daughters-in-law to return home.  However, Ruth refuses.

She utters some of the classic lines in the Bible.  “Do not press me to leave you, to turn back from following you!  Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.  May the Lord do thus to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” (1:16-17).

Upon returning to Bethlehem, Naomi utters one of the classic laments in the Bible.  “Call me no longer Naomi [which means “pleasant”]; call me Mara [meaning “bitter”], for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.  I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (1:20-21).

They are impoverished, so Ruth goes out to glean in the barley fields.  In case you didn’t know, gleaning means following the reapers after they have harvested the grain.  They gather whatever scraps have been left behind.  It is hard, tedious work.

Here’s where Boaz enters the picture.  As I said before, he’s a rich guy, but he is also kind.  He is a devoted follower of the Lord.  Ruth catches his eye.  He finds out she is Naomi’s daughter-in-law, and he learns her story.  He looks out for her and makes sure she is well treated.

Ruth tells Naomi about Boaz, and Naomi responds, “Darling, you just struck gold!”  Understand, being widows, they have very few options in their culture.  Naomi hatches a plan.  I admire her ingenuity, so I will quote it at length.

“‘Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working.  See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor.  Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor, but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking.  When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then go and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to do.’  She said to her, ‘All that you say I will do.’

“So she went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her.  When Boaz had eaten and drunk and was in a contented mood, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain.  Then she came stealthily and uncovered his feet and lay down” (3:2-7).  Uncovering his feet could be a sexual expression, but being that Boaz is an honorable man, it might simply mean she’s available for marriage.

Whatever the case, Ruth was being ruthless.  Well, you know, “ruthless” in a good way!

And regarding the “contented mood” Boaz was in after eating and drinking, the Hebrew word[4] has also been translated “he felt at peace with the world.”  One couldn’t ask for a better starting point for Ruth.

As mentioned earlier, Boaz wants to make sure to follow the law in Deuteronomy 25—it is called the “levirate law.”  “Levirate” means “brother-in-law.”  Very often, the wishes of the woman were disregarded.  That makes it all the more important that Naomi’s scheme works!

The story has a happy ending.  Boaz and Ruth are married, and the son they have is named Obed.  His son is Jesse; and his son is David.  Think of the improbable chain of events that have transpired.  A famine results in refugees going to Moab.  Marriage and death lead to a return to Judah.  A chance encounter with a super wealthy man leads to marriage—and that to a foreigner.  David’s bloodline carries this unlikely sequence.  And by the way, Jesus as a descendant of David, has a lineage with even more twists and turns.

Samjung Kang-Hamilton, professor at Abilene Christian University, points out the importance of the book.  “One of the most amazing features of the story is that Ruth is not an Israelite at all, but a Moabite, a convert, an outsider.  But she becomes the model of the outsider who comes into the community and by her commitments, her love and trust and risk-taking, becomes a model for all within the community.”[5]

There are very few instances where a non-Israelite, a Gentile, is held up as an example of ardent faithfulness to the Lord of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel.

She notes something from chapter 4.  “The elders of the people [in Bethlehem] welcome the Moabite woman into the community in an extraordinary way.  They pray that she will resemble the people’s ancestors, Rachel and Leah.  That is, they pray that she will be remembered in her own right as an extraordinary woman.”[6]

They extend their blessing to her.  Kang-Hamilton adds something to that thought.  “They pray that she will be like Tamar.  According to her story in Gen 38, Tamar acted in extremely risky ways to bring about justice and family harmony.  Yet the Bible recognizes that God can make something positive out of the messiest situations, we can be part of that cleaning-up process if we want to be.  Ruth was too.”

Something to be said of Boaz—we don’t know if he is a widower.  Was he ever married?  Yet, here’s this beautiful younger woman.  He no doubt feels a strong attraction, but he sees beyond outward appearances.  I think we all know women can be gorgeous at skin surface, but inside, not so much.  Obviously, the same can be said of the male of the species.

Ruth is the perfect example of the woman of strength [the woman of noble conduct] who is saluted in Proverbs 31 as “far more precious than jewels” (v. 10).

As noted earlier, Ruth rid herself of the shackles of the accepted structure.  She broke the chains.  Going back to the comparison of the word of the Lord being revealed at Sinai, so Ruth also receives the word when it is revealed to her.  That word gives her power.

We must be the same, when wave after wave of lies and desperation and counterfeit lives wash over us.  When we get used to one level of depravity, here comes another.  We need the word which gives us power over all that rot—gives us power over the rot threatening from within.  We need to be ruthless!

So take Ruth as our example of pressing forward and doing so vigorously.  See her, the great-grandmother of David, the one who was fulfilled in the Son of David, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Jesus the Messiah is the one who gives us the power to rid ourselves of the shackles of the accepted structures all around us.  Let us do so in the strength and the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[1] www.motherinlawstories.com/mother-in-law_jokes_page.htm

[2] Dorothea Ward Harvey, “Ruth, Book of,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), 131.

[3] naomiwolf.substack.com/p/do-we-resemble-god

[4] יָטַב (yatab)

[5] Samjung Kang-Hamilton, “A Stranger’s Journey: Lessons from Ruth,” Restoration Quarterly 62:1 (2020), 49.

[6] Kang-Hamilton, 53.

A text in 1 Kings 2 comes from the synagogue Sabbath reading for yesterday the 7th.  It features Jacob’s final words to his sons and David’s final words to his son, Solomon.  As a meditation for the beginning of the new year, deathbed instructions might seem to be an unusual choice, to say the least.

I should add that the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah (that is, “head of the year”) falls at various times in September.  The current year on the Jewish calendar is 5783.

I imagine there were quite a few of us who were happy to pronounce the death sentence on 2020.  Some probably wanted to drive a stake through its heart to make sure the monster had been slain!

Still, taking into consideration the coming of Covid into the world, there is always much to celebrate about God’s good creation, which we’ll hear more about later.

David couches his closing wishes in terms of strength, courage, and faithfulness.  “Hear my words, beloved son, and you will follow the way of the Lord.  In pursuing them, you will guarantee that my lineage will continue through you.”  That’s no big responsibility.

What follows is a list of names and how Solomon is to deal with each of them.  I’m reminded of how certain Roman emperors decided the fate of gladiators.  Thumbs up, and they lived.  Thumbs down, and that’s all she wrote.

(At least, that’s how the story goes!)

First on the list is Joab, one of David’s mighty commanders.  He retaliated “in time of peace for blood that had been shed in war” (v. 5).  Very briefly: Joab killed Abner and Amasa, two military leaders, and Absalom, David’s rebellious son.  This was despite David’s explicit instructions.  He made it clear that he did not want any of them to be slain.

Joab, known for his violent temperament, was unable to let go of blood vengeance, however justified it might have seemed.  David didn’t want to be seen responsible for “innocent blood.”  The verdict: “do not let his gray head go down to Sheol in peace” (v. 6).  Thumbs down.

However, Barzillai treated David honorably, so permit his sons to live in peace with you.  Thumbs up.

And then there is Shimei, who uttered a curse on David, but later tried to make nice.  David promised he would do no harm to him.  He wouldn’t touch a hair on his head but said nothing about how his offspring would treat Shimei while he visits the beauty parlor.  So, thumbs down.

I just said Joab was unable to let go of blood vengeance.  He dragged what happened in time of war into a time of peace.

Is he the only one who couldn’t let go?  Could not the king have behaved any differently?  Was he truly compelled to settle those scores?  I don’t know; perhaps by the standards of his time, it was to be expected.  Nevertheless, it seems like he could have acted in a nobler manner—perhaps in a spirit of royal largesse?

I doubt any of us have the blood of queens and kings flowing through our veins, but how often do we dwell in the past?  How often are we trapped by the past?

We have now entered 2023.  On every New Year’s Day, I am reminded of the song by that name which was done by the band U2.  Bono sings, “All is quiet on New Year’s Day / A world in white gets underway.  I want to be with you / Be with you night and day.  Nothing changes on New Year’s Day / On New Year’s Day.”

Other people have their own memories or practices when January rolls around.  This year there is the realization of that song being released forty years ago.  Forty years ago!  In 1983, I was a freshman in college.  Tempus fugit.

In his masterpiece, The Sabbath (which reads almost like poetry), the beloved twentieth century rabbi Abraham Heschel suggests, “Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives.”[1]  He isn’t saying time is evil, rather it’s our reaction to it.

“We know what to do with space,” Heschel comments, “but do not know what to do about time, except to make it subservient to space.  Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space.  As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face.”

It’s fascinating.  Genesis has God pronouncing aspects of creation—that is, space—as “good.”  Creation of earth and sea, plants and animals, are pronounced “good.”  “And God saw that it was good.”  Even after the creation of the human race, all is pronounced “very good.”

It is only the Sabbath—time—that is hallowed, pronounced holy.  The word in Hebrew has to do with being sanctified, being set apart.  It is set apart from all we can see.

We so often want to grasp time, as if it were an object.  We want to stop it, or at least slow it down, and just take a breath.  We want that fire-breathing monster consuming every moment to be held at bay.  Time flies, like a dragon.

Are we indeed unwilling to let go?  Do we need to, so to speak, die to the past before we can truly live?

Today is the Baptism of the Lord.  We hear the story of another dying to the past.  We engage with a narrative of one passing through a portal.  The heavens themselves open up like a shower from on high, and there is a powerful proclamation of perpetual passion.

John offers a baptism for the forgiveness of sin.  He offers a baptism of repentance.  He questions Jesus when he comes to him for this ritual.  Wait, we’ve got this totally backward.  I’m supposed to be the forerunner for you.  You should be the one dunking me into the river!

He doesn’t need to do this for his own sake, but Jesus models moving from the death of sin.  He shows the way from the grave of the past to the life of the future.

A couple of decades later, regarding baptism, the apostle Paul establishes the connection, he develops the theology, between the dying of Jesus and his being raised from the grave by God to an indestructible life.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul shares the glorious news, “We were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life” (6:4).

In the letter to the Colossians, he says in similar words, “When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (2:12).

There are two key events of the Christian faith: Christmas and Easter.  Christmas, of course, tells the story of God becoming incarnate.  It is God becoming enfleshed as the baby of Bethlehem.

More to our point here is the story of Easter.  Jesus was dead, with no life whatsoever, dead as a doornail.  His mission had apparently ended in utter and complete failure.  Jesus was right when he spoke the words, “It is finished.”  It’s difficult to do worse than that.  We go from the bitter tears of defeat of Holy Saturday to the inexpressible and impossible euphoria of Easter Sunday.

So again, here we are in 2023.  We have been focused on Covid.  In some ways, we have been focused on death.  We’ve had lockdowns.  Many small businesses have not survived.  So many children held out of school have seemingly fallen hopelessly behind.  Getting close to each other has been forbidden.  We have been told to not shake hands!

(Please note: I do understand the logic expressed here.)

The 20s have indeed gotten off to an alarming start.  One cause for concern is that over the past couple of years or so, we’ve become used to accepting ever increasing levels of control and surveillance from the government and from big tech.

By the grace of God, we are becoming ever more aware of our ability to recognize and challenge the lies.  Banu and I invite you to join us.  By the grace of God, death is being exposed.

In the movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Winona Ryder plays Mina and Gary Oldman plays Dracula.  In Mina, Dracula sees his centuries-dead wife, Elisabeth, as having returned.  In the scene in which Dracula pledges his eternal love for Mina, she pleads with him, “take me away from all this death.”  Of course, she’s putting that request to the wrong fellow!

We all have been so focused on death, I fear we might have forgotten how to live.

That is the meaning of baptism, however.  It is more than an emphasis on space, an emphasis on physicality.  It also deals with time.  It is the movement from a season of death to a season of life.  That is what it means to be saved.  Salvation is not a one-time reality.  Salvation is ongoing.  Salvation is what we look to in the future.

Still, salvation does require the element of choice.  It requires what the baptism of John models for those coming after, that is, repentance.  Repentance isn’t a furious escape from a hammer descending from above.  It is a turning around, an about face.  And it doesn’t happen once and for all time.  It also is a lifestyle—a lifestyle which is based in joy.

Our focus on death requires repentance, salvation.  Joy is the defeat of death.  It is time to repent as a congregation, shake off the dust of death, and enter into a 2023 full of the life that God wants to show us.  Whatever we think is enough, God says I have more.  It is time for the remnant to rise from the dead and share in the promises of the Kingdom here and now.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 5.

Psalm 51 has been called “one of the most moving prayers in the Old Testament.”[1]  It hits all the right notes.  There’s a full admission of guilt, acknowledgment that no pardon is deserved, and loving joy because God does forgive.  There’s an expressed awareness that “unless a radical change is wrought by God, the future will be but a repetition of the past.”  That’s why the psalmist “appeals to God for a clean heart and a new spirit.”[2]

This is the psalm which appears in the liturgy with Ash Wednesday, which by the way probably never makes the list on anyone’s favorite holidays.  There is a cruel and kind revelation about our very existence, who we are, down to the bone.  “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  There can be no pretensions.

A key verse in our psalm is verse 14.  The psalmist seems to be on the precipice of some kind of horror, something to be dreaded.  “Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,” is the cry, “O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.”

Opinions differ as to what “bloodshed” here is all about.  Is it something the psalmist has done—or something feared yet to happen?  Is it a comment about the whole nation, something we frequently see in Old Testament prayers?  I would say there’s room for both.

Still, there is a painful, agonizing note sounded by an individual.  The caption of the psalm refers to it as King David’s plea for pardon after raping Bathsheba.  The prophet Nathan has confronted the king and exposed his guilt.  There’s nothing to say.  He has been caught red-handed, so to speak.

Lest we think we are free of the shedding of blood, reflect on this.  Even with inflation, have you ever thought of how so many items are priced so cheaply?   Consider the overwhelmingly vast number of goods coming from a single country.  We support that country, which commits plenty of bloodshed, both literally and figuratively.

Recall verse 1, how this whole thing gets kicked off: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.”  The Hebrew word for “abundant mercy” (or in the New Jerusalem Bible, “tenderness”) is רַחַם (raham).  It means “womb.”  O God, according to your compassion for your unborn child…

Recalling David’s violation of Bathsheba, the Lord can be seen (or is seen) as a female who has suffered that grievous harm—one who has been violated in that most violent way.

The king can’t undo the past; he knows a radically new way is called for.

As we recite the psalm on Ash Wednesday, we should note not all of the psalm is used.  We stop at verse 17.  Here are verses 16 and 17: “For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.  The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

As we scroll through this poem, time and time again, we see calls for radical openness.  I encourage you to read every verse and then pause and reflect on it.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity…

Against you, you alone, have I sinned…

You desire truth in the inward being…

Create in me a clean heart…

Restore to me the joy of your salvation…  (I think the point is made.)

For that vision, for that reality to come alive, some radical change—as already mentioned—must come to pass.  That sounds great, but then here are verses 18 and 19.  These last two verses are often seen as having been added later, as a sort of appendix.

“Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem; then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.”  We might ask, “Okay, so what’s the point?”  It sounds like a perfectly acceptable and necessary part of repentance.

I would suggest there is a chasm between these two verses and what has gone before.  I know not everyone agrees with me.  They might say I’m overstating the case, pretending I’m looking at the Grand Canyon, as opposed to a babbling brook.  And that’s fine.  But see for yourself.

On the one hand, “For you have no delight in sacrifice…”  And on the other, “Then you will delight in right sacrifices…”

On the one hand, “If I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased…”  And on the other, “You will delight in burnt offerings…”

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit.”

With those last two verses, there is a sense of “but then…  There’s nothing wrong with the way we served God in the past.”

At the Missionaries of Prayer website, there’s a post titled, “Prophetic Word—Why am I Attracted to This?”[3]

Why am I attracted to this?  That’s a question for each of us.

Why am I attracted to this?  Suggestions are offered.  Why am I attracted to this church…  this person…  this place?  What do I really want?

“You need to know the answer to this, for yourself.  Because this will help to make or break you.  Only you know the answer.”

This is hard.  It is deeply uncomfortable.  I want the safe.  I want the secure.  I want what verses 18 and 19 promise: the tried and true.  I don’t like being dangled over the cliff, held only by spirit, held only by the Spirit.  How badly I want to say, “In with the old, out with the new.”

Last week, we had a dinner in which a young woman invited many of her friends.  Some of them were sharing experiences they had with the Holy Spirit.  I appreciated a comment by another young woman who said she was asking her husband if they should leave.  With these other people uttering such profound insights (my words, not hers), she said she felt “shallow.”  She felt inadequate.  As I just suggested, I have had feelings like that.

The author of the article says, “We need to grow up.  Christianity is not comfortable.  Growth and change are not comfortable so if every now and then your pastor is not preaching a message that stretches you and causes you to think about your life or calls you to repentance, then something is wrong.  It means you’re only hearing the parts of the Bible that makes you feel good but there are large sections not being preached.  And that should bother you.”

And that should bother me.  As the apostle Paul said, “woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!” (1 Co 9:16).  That’s a stark warning.

God forbid I give you easy answers.  God forbid I don’t encourage painful and probing questions.

Adam Neder, professor at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, says, “If our way of talking about God leaves [us] unaware of the threat he poses to our lives, perhaps that is because we no longer perceive the threat he poses to our lives.”[4]  Can we see God as a threat to our lives?  What could that mean?

I would suggest we often—or perhaps always—believe our lives are limited to the way we sleepwalk through life.  We don’t necessarily have to get into some deep philosophical discussion.  A trip to the grocery store can be quite revealing.  We see people rushing around, impatient, not smiling, without joy.  What would happen if we conducted an experiment?  What would happen if we decided to slow down?

The late Thomas Merton wrote, “Our ordinary waking life is a bare existence in which, most of the time, we seem to be absent from ourselves and from reality because we are involved in the vain preoccupations which dog the steps of every living [person].  But there are times when we seem suddenly to awake and discover the full meaning of our own present reality…  In the light of such an experience it is easy to see the futility of all the trifles that occupy our minds.  We recapture something of the calm and balance that ought always to be ours, and we understand that life is far too great a gift to be squandered on anything less than perfection.”[5]

Thank the Lord that God is a threat to that substitute for real life, our life hidden in Christ.  We fear the dangerous and delightful depth expressed by the worship chorus, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. / Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord / and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. / Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, / and renew a right spirit within me.”

At the beginning I used the quote, “unless a radical change is wrought by God, the future will be but a repetition of the past.”  The psalmist ready to move on.  There’s no looking back.  The past has involved David’s being a rapist and a murderer.  The threat God poses is seen and welcomed.  “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice” (v. 8).

To insert a New Testament perspective: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!” (2 Co 5:17).

So, what now?  As the song says, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going, / And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing. / That’s how it is with God’s love once you’ve experienced it; / You spread His love to everyone; You want to pass it on.”  Pass it on.  “I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you” (v. 13).

We aren’t made righteous in the eyes of God just for the fun of it.  If we have truly experienced it, our lives will be changed.  We won’t be able to do otherwise.  We need not feel inadequate, as did the young woman at our dinner.  We are made more than sufficient, more than conquerors.

[1] A. A. Anderson, The Book of Psalms, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1992), 389.

[2] Anderson, 398.

[3] www.missionariesofprayer.org/2022/10/prophetic-word-why-am-i-attracted-to-this/

[4] Adam Neder, “Theology as a Way of Life,” Theology Matters 28:3 (Summer 2022), 4.

[5] Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951), 10.

We are now well into the season of Lent.  The usual question is, “What are you giving up for Lent?”  I like the answer Banu gave.  “We need to dispossess ourselves of the possessions that possess us, so we can be possessed by God.”  As one who is not fond of clutter, I can think of plenty of possessions which, were they to disappear, would please me greatly.

Of course, possessions need not be material.  The most insidious possessions are the ones within.  They grab hold of our minds, emotions, and spirits.  They grab us and we grab them.  We are indeed possessed by our possessions.  We need to be exorcised!

Psalm 142 presents the utterance, the cry, of one who has been dispossessed, though not by choice.  The psalmist laments the loss of security, the loss of freedom, the loss of joy.

According to the title of the psalm, we’re hearing from David when he was in the cave, hiding from King Saul.  Saul had become insanely jealous of David.  The people loved him; his son Jonathan loved him; the Lord blessed David’s actions.  Therefore, David must die!

In the Hebrew Bible, those titles are considered part of the psalm.  That’s why David is traditionally thought of as the author.  Still, whether or not we see David as the poet, the singer of the song, the psalmist gives voice to a grief resounding down through the ages.

A large percentage of the psalms are psalms of lament.  This is one of them.  “With my voice I cry to the Lord; with my voice I make supplication to the Lord / I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him” (vv. 1-2).

This is a psalm suitable for the season of Lent, even though it appears nowhere in the lectionary.  That’s the case with many of these psalms.  They tend to be omitted from the worship of the church.  (I’ll come back to that later.)

Psalm 142 is suitable, not because Lent is all about lamentation, moaning and groaning.  Rather, the Lenten journey focuses on repentance, reflection, and renewal.  And it is indeed a journey.  As we go through the psalm, we find ourselves in process, in transit.  The psalmist is also on a journey.  The psalmist is on the road, and it is a rocky road.  The psalm speaks to these things.

[photo by John Salzarulo on Unsplash]

Our poet is walking the path, and with confidence says to the Lord, “When my spirit is faint, you know my way” (v. 3).  That’s a good thing, because here comes trouble.  “In the path where I walk they have hidden a trap for me.”  The New Jerusalem Bible says, “On the road I have to travel they have hidden a trap for me.”

Who are these would-be captors?  What are these would-be captors?  What traps, what snares, are lying in wait?

Those are good questions for us this season.  I suppose this could be said every year, but it seems like this is a Lent like none other.  We are emerging from a global pandemic, and traps a-plenty have been set.  Destruction and hardship have been left in its wake.

Wrestling with the effects of lockdowns, debates about masks, the wisdom of vaccine mandates, all that and more—it has taken a toll on our well-being.  It’s taken a toll on our sanity!  Families have been divided; they have turned on each other.  It’s sad but true that in too many cases, people who thought of each other as friends have been divided.  Discord has occurred.

I haven’t lost any friends, but I can say there are people I agree with who I didn’t think I would before Covid.  On the flip side, I have found myself disagreeing with those who I couldn’t imagine myself doing so before Covid.

Our psalm continues with David (or the David-like person) crying out, “Look on my right and see—there is no one who recognizes me.  All refuge is denied me, no one cares whether I live or die” (v. 4, NJB).  No one recognizes me.  No one cares whether I live or die.  This is the picture of dejection, the portrait of despair.  Maybe there’s a tiny touch of paranoia?

Have you heard the saying, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”?

The psalmist is encircled by enemies, surrounded by the sinister.  Our friend is nameless, and no one is offering a hand of greeting.

I wonder, could this also be a picture of abandonment by friends?  A question I know we’ve all heard is, “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”  Abandonment by friends was poignantly and heartbreakingly demonstrated on the night we call Maundy Thursday.  The words from the liturgy: “On the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested” are played out.  When the disciples see the gang coming to take Jesus into custody, they make themselves scarce.

Have we ever stood back when a friend needed us?  Have we ever seen an injustice and not lift a finger?  It’s a terrible feeling if we dare allow ourselves to feel it.

Here’s another uncomfortable question.  We easily see those others as persecutors, but how about us?

I don’t if this exactly qualifies as persecution, but in my freshman year of college, I might be described as the “roommate from hell.”  Maybe that’s too strong a term; I never did anything bad to him.  Maybe I was just the roommate from heck!

I never really made an effort to get to know him.  I rarely asked him about himself or his family or anything personal.  He occasionally would offer an olive branch.  One night after he’d been out with his friends, he brought home a tamale for me.  (By the way, he was Mexican American.)  He was a really nice guy.  I’m sure we could have been good friends.

One morning really stands out for me.  It was a Saturday morning, and I was still in bed.  I awoke to the voices of his father, mother, and sister.  They were speaking Spanish, so I didn’t know what they were saying.  I figured if I pretended I was asleep, they would cut their visit short.  That did not happen.  They had to know I was awake.  I imagine they asked him, “What’s the deal with your roommate?”

They were there for about twenty minutes.  After some time had gone by, I was too embarrassed to act like I had just woken up.  All I had to do when I first heard them was to greet them and ask if I could have a minute or two to get dressed.  I must confess there was a bit of racism involved.

The story does have a happy ending.  Decades later, I connected with him on Facebook.  I profusely apologized for being such a complete jerk when we were roommates.  I even let him know that a few years later, I came to faith and the Lord had turned me around.  It turned out he hadn’t thought about very much about it.  He just thought I was quiet.

I said earlier that Lent is not all about lamentation, but it certainly has a large role.  It is okay—even necessary—to lament.

There is a minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church located in Oakland, California named Dominique Gilliard.  He has written on the subject of lament.

“Somewhere along the way,” he says, “we modern Christians got lament wrong: we began thinking of it as optional instead of a required practice of the faith.”[1]  This goes with my earlier comment about lament being overlooked by the church.

He continues, speaking of its benefits, “When we lament, we confess our humanity and concede that we are too weak to combat the world’s powers, principalities and spiritual wickedness on our own.  When we lament, we declare that only God has the power to truly mend the world’s pain and brokenness.”

This is always true, but how much more we see that pain and brokenness today with war in Europe.  At the same time, we too easily disregard wars in Asia and Africa.

Gilliard comments on the power of lament.  “Lamentation prevents us from becoming numb and apathetic to the pain of our world and of those whom we shepherd.  Lamentation begets revelation.  It opens our eyes to death, injustice, and oppression we had not even noticed.  It opens our ears to the sounds of torture, anguish and weeping that are the white noise of our world. To live without lament is to live an unexamined life.”

I like how he credits lament as begetting—as producing—revelation.  It opens our eyes and ears to the pain that is “the white noise of our world.”  It’s difficult for me to sleep without running a fan or something else generating white noise.  I need the white noise to drown other sounds out.

Something that gets drowned out by white noise are school shootings.  To be honest, I lose track of them.  It seems like there’s one every week somewhere in the country.

“To live without lament is to live an unexamined life.”  Before I read that in his article, I hadn’t thought of it that way.  (Maybe I need help in examining my life!)  Lament helps to make us fully human.  It puts us in touch with realities that deserve our attention.  It puts us in touch with people who deserve our attention.  The apostle Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Ro 12:15).

The psalmist begs for attention when calling upon God.  “Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low.  Save me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me” (v. 6).  Here’s the final request: “Bring me out of prison, so that I may give thanks to your name” (v. 7).

So, as we’ve been on the road we have to travel, what is our prison?  What holds us?  What prevents us from giving and living in gratitude to God?  Dare to look deep within; I promise you will find something.  Going back to the beginning, that is the often-maddening question of Lent.  What will we give up?

I’ll repeat my original quote from Banu: “We need to dispossess ourselves of the possessions that possess us, so we can be possessed by God.”

The psalm ends on a powerful note of praise.  “The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.”  As we progress through Lent on the road we have to travel, if we yearn for freedom, the Lord will burst the bars of our self-constructed prisons.

[1] www.faithandleadership.com/dominique-d-gilliard-reclaiming-power-lament

On Thanksgiving (while watching my beloved Dallas Cowboys put in another lackluster performance—this time against the Bills!), a Target commercial was aired several times with the wonderful news that Black Friday would start at 5pm.  Mind you, this was on Thanksgiving.  Banu and I were surmising how lucky those employees were to have the privilege of working on a holiday in order to make their corporate overlords a few more dollars.  (Well, in all honesty, she said nothing about “corporate overlords.”)

But then there was more good news: twelve hours later, many employees had the privilege of opening their doors at 5am.  Banu wondered who would get up that early just to go shopping!

Of course, that’s not the worst of it.  Maybe you saw some advertisements proclaiming Black Friday sales running throughout the entire month of November?  We invented a holiday dedicated purely to the acquisition of money (going from “in the red” to “in the black”), and predictably as these things go, it metastasized.

(Still, Black Friday has darker meanings.  For example, there were the crazed crowds in 1950s Philadelphia who came into the city for the Army-Navy game on Saturday and did some shopping the day before.  Many of them took advantage of the commotion and helped themselves to a “five finger discount,” to the extreme annoyance of the Philly cops.)

I asked Banu about her first reaction to Black Friday, and she described it as “suffocating” and “a black hole.”

Why do I start with Black Friday, since it has come and gone?  It seems to me that it symbolizes the way we think of Advent—if we think of it at all.  We too often fill our lives with that which really isn’t very important.  Indeed, the very mention of Advent often elicits yawns and sometimes, actual irritation.

(There have been times in our ministry when, in the context of worship and other events, Banu and I have had—I’ll say—“snarky” questions posed to us, such as, “Is this Advent-y enough?”)

Here’s something from A Child in Winter, a book of devotionals by Caryll Houselander.  It covers Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.  Houselander was an English artist, writer, and mystic who, as the introduction to the book puts it, “comforted and challenged the English-speaking world through the ravages of World War II and the London Blitz.”[1]

She speaks of those who fill up their lives with “trivial details.”[2]  She says, “They dread space, for they want material things crowded together, so that there will always be something to lean on for support.  They dread silence, because they do not want to hear their own pulses beating out the seconds of their life, and to know that each beat is another knock on the door of death.”  (Yikes!  There’s a pleasant thought.)

I wonder how often we fit that description.  We too often dread the things that make for peace.  We run hither and thither (if not with our bodies, then at least with our minds).  With all of our scurrying, we ignore—we are unaware of—the luminous holiness all around.  Trust me; I am directing this to myself more than to anyone else.

The prophet Isaiah knows a little something about people scurrying around, turning from the things that make for peace.  He is active during the last part of the 8th century BC.  At this time, the Assyrian Empire is gobbling up much of the Middle East.  The northern kingdom of Israel gets gobbled; the folks in the southern kingdom of Judah are nervous.  They don’t want to be gobbled!

The way chapter 11 begins doesn’t seem to let us know of these things, that is, Assyria and its ambitions.  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (v. 1).  This business of stumps and branches and trees goes back to chapter 10, where God tells his people, “do not be afraid of the Assyrians when they beat you with a rod” (v. 24).

The chapter ends on this note: “Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low.  He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall” (vv. 33-34).  So there’s part of the background with Isaiah and the Assyrians.

Why get into this stuff about a shoot, a tiny little stalk, emerging from a seemingly dead hunk of wood?

When I was a teenager, my dad chopped down a tree in our yard.  It was a hedge apple tree.  If you’re familiar with those trees, you know the hedge apples they produce wind up being the size of softballs.  You don’t want someone throwing them at you!

Anyway, I thought the stump that was left would behave like most stumps—just sit there and do nothing.  However, within a couple of weeks, I noticed a little green sprig appearing just inside the bark.  Soon, there were other sprigs, and they continued to grow.  Eventually they became stalks, and in time, the stalks developed into little bushes.  In a matter of months, the bushes had intertwined and kept reaching skyward, well over my twice my height by then.

If I was surprised by the way new life emerged from that stump, imagine the surprise generated by Isaiah’s poem.  The biggest part of the surprise is that the shoot comes from the stump of Jesse.  That is Jesse, mind you, the father of David—the David who would be king.

In the following verses, we see that this shoot, this branch, will be a ruler like none other.  This ruler will possess and exercise wisdom like none other.  Here’s a thumbnail sketch of this leader’s qualities (vv. 2-5): “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him…  His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord…  with righteousness he shall judge the poor…  Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist.”  All of that sounds like expectations of a David-ish nature!

So what’s all this with Jesse?

Walter Brueggemann talks about this.  “David’s family and dynasty run out in failure, no king, no future, no royal possibility, only a stump.  But, says the poet [and prophet Isaiah], the stump will produce a shoot, a shoot of new life that was not expected… the new David, the new possibility of shalom,” a new kingdom, a peaceable kingdom.[3]

Basically, the Davidic line has all but died.  The lofty goals have not materialized.  So let’s start from scratch, so to speak.  Let’s go back to Jesse.  And for the sake of fairness, let’s include David’s mother, who unfortunately, the scriptures leave unnamed.  However, Jewish tradition says her name was Nitzevet.[4]

This new David, this new sovereign, will reign in an era of harmony and serenity.  What does it look like, this peaceable kingdom?

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”  Everything in creation “will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (vv. 6, 9).

Here’s Brueggemann again: “The old enmities, the old appetites of the food chain, the old assumptions of the survival of the meanest, all of that is subverted.  The wild will not stay vicious, because the coming one, marked by righteousness and justice, will overrule raw power in the interest of new possibility.”[5]

As Christians, we see the coming one as the true messianic figure, the ultimate Son of David, Jesus the Christ.  That’s what the Advent season is all about.  Advent means “coming,” and so we celebrate the one who has come, the one yet to come, and the one who is always coming, who is always arriving, in our lives right now.

As for Isaiah, his message is one of assuring the people.  But it is an assurance that will cost.  “We must repent,” he says, “to turn around, and to hold on.  The Assyrians are threatening.  But stand fast.  The peaceable kingdom is on the way.  We will have to wait in the darkness before the light arrives.”

[“Holy Darkness: Formless and Void”]

We have a similar message during Advent.  Our enemies might not be an invading empire, but we do have enemies, nonetheless.  Perhaps it’s largely true that our enemies are within, the struggles we face—the struggles in which we engage.  As noted before, we don’t like that uncomfortable space, that uncomfortable silence.  We want to jump right over it, to get it in our rear-view mirror.  But that’s not what Advent is about!

“This is the intention of Advent,” says Jonas Ellison.  “It’s a sacred stillness in the darkness before the triumphant joy of Christmas.  It’s where we sit in the ‘blueness’ apparent in this oft broken world and human experience.  When we grow up, we become more attuned with the suffering in the world—and in our own lives.  We can’t override this.  When we do, it festers.  Advent is the season [in which] we sit calmly in the darkness as we await the light.”[6]

He mentions growing up.  (“When we grow up.”)  That fits with the title of his article, “Advent Makes Christmas Something that Kids Can Mature Into.”  Ellison wonders about an idea I imagine we’ve all heard, that “Christmas is for kids.”  He reflects on the surface-level and theologically shallow way we so often celebrate the season.  Please don’t get the wrong idea—he treasures and finds joy in the festivities and gifts and mistletoe.  (Okay, I added the “mistletoe”!)

Yet, he dreams for his daughter.  “I hope to give my daughter a meaning of Christmas that she can mature into as she grows older and experiences the weight, depth, and density of life.”  (I’m intrigued by that term “density of life.”)  He continues, “I pray that Christmas isn’t an extended time of consumerism in order to attempt to cover up her wounds wrought from this oft broken human experience.  I pray she can sit in the darkness with herself knowing she’s not alone.  Knowing that others are sitting in that very same place and God is embracing us all even before the ‘light’ comes.”

We don’t like to wait—especially waiting in the darkness, even if it is holy darkness.  The massive weight of our society and economy shout, “Why wait?”  It’s hard for Advent to compete with that.  There’s a tidal wave that would prevent us from pausing long enough to do the “Advent” thing of reflecting, and as Isaiah would hope for, of repenting.  That means to stop, to look around, and to set ourselves on the path of active expectation.  (Or perhaps more to the point, to allow ourselves to be set on the path of active expectation.)  “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Mt 25:13).

“On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”

“Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

[Here is the artist’s description of his work, “Holy Darkness: Formless and Void”]

This sculpture is number 1 of 3 in the חשך קדוש series and is based off of the phrase תהו ובהו (prounounced tōhū vābōhū) - which is translated as "formless and void" in Genesis 1.  "תהו ובהו" is written on both side walls of the drawing in a mixture of acrylic paint and gel medium, with the name יהוה (the Divine Name of God in the Hebrew Bible generally vocalized as Adonai or HaShem) written in blue on the back wall.  The very simple statement that the sculpture makes is "Even in the formless and void places of life, God is still there." The sculpture is meant to give the sense of being under water, with a bit of light coming through the surface of the 'water' from above.

[1] Caryll Houselander, A Child in Winter, ed. Thomas Hoffman (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2000), 1.

[2] Houselander, 9.

[3] Walter Brueggemann, “The Poem: Subversion and Summons,” Journal for Preachers 35:1 (Advent 2011), 33.

[4] www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/280331/jewish/Nitzevet-Mother-of-David.htm

[5] Brueggemann, 34.

[6] medium.com/graceincarnate/advent-makes-christmas-something-that-kids-can-mature-into-cd5b5503687e

I want to begin by talking about mammals.  “The story of mammals is one of self-destruction.  They first arose roughly 200 million years ago, and after eons spent scurrying in the shadow of the dinosaurs, they finally cut loose and evolved into a breathtaking variety of shapes and sizes, including the largest creatures to ever exist.  And after all that, it took barely 100,000 years for one relatively young member of the group—us—to bring everything crashing down.”[1]

That’s how Ed Yong’s article in last month’s The Atlantic begins.  From the time of the early proto-humans, we have hunted, invaded habitat, and polluted the environment.  One key point in the article is how we have affected evolutionary history.  Taking into account the mammals we’ve eradicated, and those nearing extinction, it is estimated it would take 3 to 7 million years of evolution for their replacement.  Evolution is very slow; destruction is pretty quick!

I jokingly made a comment about the article when I posted it on Facebook.  I said, “If human beings vanished from the face of the earth, it would a good thing for our fellow animals!”

Fortunately, there’s one group doing their best to make sure that doesn’t happen.

There are some folks in what’s known as the Quiverfull movement.  In a nutshell, they don’t believe in contraception.  Some are even opposed to the rhythm method.  On the contrary, they believe God wants us to procreate as much as possible.  It’s like the TV show from a few years ago, 19 and Counting.

So why do I mention the Quiverfull movement and their determination to propagate the species?  It just so happens that their inspiration is Psalm 127.  Speaking of children, in particular sons, we read, “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.  Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them” (vv. 4-5).  Thus the name!  This is taken as, if not exactly a command from God, then at least a very firm recommendation.

Whether or not you agree with the Quiverfull philosophy, I would say their talk of arrows misses the mark.

Verse 1 establishes the context of the psalm; it sets the stage.  “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.  Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.”

Backing up for just a moment, Psalm 127 is part of a group of psalms called “The Songs of Ascents.”  They run from Psalm 120 to 134.  It’s commonly thought these were songs sung by pilgrims making their way up to Jerusalem.  (I’ve never been to Jerusalem, but those who have can probably attest to the higher elevation the city occupies—thus the idea of “ascent.”)

Unless the Lord builds…  Unless the Lord guards…

The dearly-departed Eugene Peterson, author of the paraphrase of the Bible, The Message (and about a thousand other books), in 1980 wrote A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.  It deals with the Songs of Ascents.  Perhaps those who are familiar with Peterson’s work can agree with me that, whatever he wrote, he spoke with the heart and soul of a poet.

Unless the Lord builds…  Unless the Lord guards…

In his chapter on Psalm 127, he begins with his own take on building and guarding.  He says, “The greatest work project of the ancient world is a story of disaster.  The unexcelled organization and enormous energy that were concentrated in building the Tower of Babel resulted in such shattered community and garbled communication that civilization is still trying to recover.  Effort, even if the effort is religious (perhaps especially when the effort is religious), does not in itself justify anything.”[2]

The story in Genesis 11 is one of frantic anxiety.  It’s one of human desperation and despair.  It’s one of human arrogance and hubris.  “The whole world” as the story goes, said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (vv. 1, 4).  They thought their technology would save them.  They wanted to build a city; they wanted to guard their culture from ruin.

That’s not the only time we humans have done that.  Today is the 100th anniversary of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.  In 1918, the armistice was signed, ceasing the fighting of what came to be called World War 1.  It was, as our call to worship puts it, the “day when the guns once fell silent.”

Human knowledge and technology during the late nineteenth century had reached new heights.  However, as it was sadly discovered, knowledge and wisdom often progress at different rates.  The so-called “civilized” nations were plunged into what Harry Emerson Fosdick called “the most terrific war men ever waged, when faith is sorely tried and deeply needed.”[3]

This was yet another time of human hubris, when we engaged in “the war to end all wars.”  In the midst of it, he quoted Walter Rauschenbusch, “O God, we pray Thee for those who come after us, for our children, and the children of our friends, and for all the young lives that are marching up from the gates of birth…  We remember with a pang that these will live in the world we are making for them…  We are poisoning the air of our land by our lies and our uncleanness, and they will breathe it…

“Grant us grace to leave the earth fairer than we found it; to build upon it cities of God in which the cry of needless pain shall cease; and to put the yoke of Christ upon our business life that it may serve and not destroy.”[4]

He takes note of our building cities, “building the house,” building the earth, so to speak, but it must have the blessing of God.  When we build the earth while ignoring God, it leaves a horrible legacy to our children, those young ones we looked at earlier.  “We are poisoning the air of our land by our lies and our uncleanness, and they will breathe it.”

We can knock ourselves out in doing this building.  Verse 2 says, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.”  “In vain”: that’s the third time we’ve heard that!  So many are sleep-deprived, working anxiously.  I don’t imagine this is a big surprise, but America is the most sleep-deprived nation in the world—Japan is a close second.  Roughly one-third of us get less than 7 hours of sleep each night.  It takes its toll on our health.

When I was a kid, my parents used to listen to country music.  I was never a fan.  But I remember a song by Hoyt Axton: “Boney Fingers.”  Here’s the chorus: “Work your fingers to the bone, What do you get? / Boney fingers, boney fingers.”  And we lose that sleep I was just talking about.

Remember the last line of verse 2: “he gives sleep to his beloved.”  There’s an alternate reading which says, “he provides for his beloved during sleep.”

With all this talk of sleep, some might say, “Why bother with work—and certainly working hard?”  God will take care of it.  However, the psalm isn’t advocating being lazy.  St. Paul had an argument with some of the Thessalonians, complaining that “we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work” (3:11).

And so we come to verse 3.  “Sons [children] are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.”  Children are a gift from God.  They are created without working our fingers to the bone.  Building the house isn’t simply about a physical structure.  Building the house also means family, lineage.  For example, the house of David figures greatly in the Old Testament.

Rickie Dale Moore says, “How deeply the world view of this psalm makes this connection can be seen in the fact that the Hebrew words for ‘build’ (banah), ‘house’ (bayith), ‘daughters’ (banoth), and ‘sons’ (banim), all come from the same Hebrew root (bnh).”[5]

This brings us to the final line of the psalm.  We already saw the first part of verse 5: “Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them” (that is, sons).  Here’s how it ends: “He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”  “The gate” represents a place where justice is meted out, a tribunal.  If someone has many sons to back him up—well, let’s say there’s a better chance of being treated fairly!

Our psalm begins with the “threat of a cursed life of vanity.”  By the time we get to the end, there’s “the promise of a blessed life.”  Our friend Rickie Dale says, “The blessed life, here, finally consists in nothing other than the plenitude of one’s children, and what’s more, the blessedness is secured and protected by nothing other than the children themselves!”[6]

That might sound like someone without children is cursed.  (If so, then my wife and I are in that category!)  Translating that into the understanding most of us share, it doesn’t have to be our own children.  It’s the children of our society, the children of our world.

There was a movie starring Clive Owen called Children of Men.  It’s set about twenty years into the future.  For some unknown reason, women all over the planet have become infertile; nobody’s having babies.  The youngest person in the world is 18 years old.  A notable line of one of the characters goes, “As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in.  Very odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices.”  Eventually, a young woman does get pregnant, so all is not lost!

In a very real way, it is the hope of children that saves us.  They are how we build the house; they are how we build the earth.  So, to rephrase as Moore does, “Unless the Lord builds the world; Then for its builders, all is vanity.”[7]

What goes into building the house?  What goes into building our culture, building our lives?

In Mark 12:38-44, the high and mighty are giving donations in a prideful way.  It’s a reaffirmation of the respect they believe they deserve.  They have plenty of money in the bank; their investments have paid off well.  The poor widow isn’t trying to impress anyone.  She can’t impress anyone.  She gives—not for show—but from a heart of love.  She gives her all, and Jesus commends her to his disciples.

We are called to build with love.  We are called to build the earth with love.  Part of that means not wiping out hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of evolution of our companions—whether they stride, soar, or swim.

Unless the Lord builds…  Unless the Lord guards…

We are called, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone, to be joined together—to be built—into a holy temple in the Lord (Ep 2:20-21).

[1] www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/mammals-will-need-millions-years-recover-us/573031

[2] Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 20th anniversary ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 105.

[3] Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Faith (New York:  Association Press, 1917), vii.

[4] Fosdick, 60.

[5] Moore, Rickie Dale, “Futile Labor vs Fertile Labor: Observing the Sabbath in Psalm 127,” The Living Pulpit, (April-June) 1998: 24.

[6] Moore, 25.

[7] Moore, 25.

This scripture passage appears in the lectionary, but it’s in Year C during the Christmas season.  As you notice, once again, I have cause to point out the exclusion of verses we all can see.  The lectionary routinely omits the “troublesome” verses.  That’s what happens in Colossians 3.

The rest of the chapter has verses as troublesome as anything in the New Testament.  “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (v. 18).  Oh, boy!  And then there’s the part that starts off, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything” (v. 22).

You know, maybe one reason the lectionary editors left that out is to avoid the awkward moment after reading it.  That is, when we say, “This is the word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God!”

I won’t go into great detail about this passage.  It’s been a headache for centuries.  It has been rightly criticized as being a tool supportive of the patriarchal mindset.  Of course, it can also be seen as a remnant of very specific cultural references­­­­—not at all applicable to us today.  Still, there are those who like all of the “submission of women” stuff.  And our nation’s history has been dreadfully warped by the appalling misuse of the scriptures regarding slaves.

So let’s move on.  We can think of the preceding comments as a preface, or introduction, to the sermon.

It doesn’t take very much for me to get hot.  On a warm summer day, or even during a meeting in a warm room, I might start sweating in no time.  Sometimes it happens when I’m standing in the pulpit!  I am a self-admitted wimp when it comes to hot weather.  That’s why I try to avoid going south during the summer.  That’s one reason why I love winter.

In any event, when it comes to clothing, in particular when it comes to T-shirts, I prefer the all-cotton heavy ones.  It might seem counter-intuitive, but I consider them to be cooler than the thin ones.  Unfortunately, they are difficult to find.  I have had three of them for many years, and they are getting a bit ragged.

In our scripture reading, St. Paul talks about some clothing he likes.  It is abundant, though sometimes it doesn’t fit very well.  We usually have to grow into it.  It can be itchy and scratchy.  We have to be encouraged to put it on.  These clothes are made of material like none other: “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (v. 12).

Paul talks about clothing just a few verses earlier.  He says to get rid of “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language,” since we have “clothed [ourselves] with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (vv. 8, 10).  That’s a pretty good fashion design, better than anything modeled on a Paris catwalk!

There’s a fine thread count which makes abundant use of forgiveness.  We’re told, “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (v. 14).

That bit about “perfect harmony” brought to mind the song Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney did in the 80s, “Ebony and Ivory.”  You know how it goes.  “Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony / Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don’t we?”

That’s not a gratuitous, unnecessary mention of music.  Beginning with the end of verse 15, “And be thankful,” we follow a path that leads to singing.  “With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” (v. 16).

There’s a saying, “One who sings, prays twice.”  That’s been attributed to St. Augustine.  I love singing, even if as I’ve said many times, no one wants to hear it.  But God really is the audience, as the apostle says—and God is a forgiving audience!

On a related topic when it comes to music, here’s something about King David.  Well known lover of music and poetry he is, the book of 1 Chronicles includes something about his reign as king.

In chapter 25, we see David setting apart some musicians “who should prophesy with lyres, harps, and cymbals” (v. 1).  They are to speak the message of the Lord with their music.  I really like that.  We know that songs are able to convey the word of God, but so can music.

Staying with the apostles’ theme, we can clothe ourselves; we can envelop ourselves in the sound of music; we can dress ourselves in joy.

Paul tells the Colossians to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”  He adds, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (vv. 15-16).  We can indeed look good on the outside—with the clothing we show the world, covering up the clothing of virtues we saw earlier.

So what does it mean for the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts?  It’s not just to live there, but to rule.  The peace of Christ rules!  What does rule our hearts?  To what do we give our hearts?

The apostle says the word of Christ is to dwell in us richly.  Again, not simply to dwell, to take up residence, but to really take over the place.  The word of Christ is to adorn our very being.  It is to shine like precious gemstones.

I’m forced to ask myself, “How richly does that word dwell in me?”  Do I sometimes let it walk around in raggedy, sweaty clothing?

The word of Christ.  The word of the Messiah.  “Word” in Greek is λογος (logos).  Usually it just means an ordinary word.  Applied to God, it can also carry a sense of something elemental or eternal.  The “word of Christ” is like that.

In chapter 1, the word logos appears twice.  In verse 5, it is “the word of the truth” where it refers to the gospel.  In verses 25 and 26, it’s “the word of God,” which is, as the scripture reads, “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations.”  We’re told by Marcus Barth and Helmut Blanke that the word of Christ, the word of the Messiah “is the word which proclaims the Messiah (the revealed secret) and by which the Messiah himself is received as Lord.”[1]  St. Paul says the word of Christ is the secret revealed within us.

If we look ahead to chapter 4, he asks the Colossians to pray for he and his friends so “that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ” (v. 3).  The apostle longs to “reveal it clearly” (v. 4).  We also are called to reveal the mystery, to make it manifest in our lives.

With what do we clothe ourselves?  Hopefully something other than those heavy T-shirts I like!

Our wardrobe is mystery, what confounds the world.  (Maybe confounding ourselves!)  Remember the material: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Putting on those virtues seems a sure-fire way of being branded “a loser.”  They might seem a bit strange in our society, which too often is marked by selfishness and even cynicism.  But like I suggested earlier, what a joy it is to don that apparel.

The world indeed needs to see us as people of joy.  We need to see that in each other.  Please note, joy is not the same thing as happiness.  It is not an emotion.  Joy can be present even in times of sorrow.  That might be the surest test of it.  It is a deep awareness of being held and loved.  It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Ga 5:22).

When we open ourselves to everything we’ve heard: clothing ourselves with these joyful qualities, especially love; bearing with and forgiving one another; letting the peace of Christ rule in our hearts; allowing the word of Christ to dwell in us richly; teaching and admonishing each other in wisdom; being grateful and singing to God—then we are fulfilling verse 17.

“Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”  It is our lifestyle.  It simply is who we are.  It’s not something artificial.  It is a sign that Jesus Christ, through the power of the Spirit, has transformed, and continues to transform us.  (And by the way, all of that crazy nonsense at the end of the chapter is also transformed and seen to be a relic to be relegated to the past.)

We are to clothe ourselves with joyful mystery.  We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.  Thanks be to God!

[1] Marcus Barth and Helmut Blanke, trans. Astrid B. Beck, Colossians: The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 426.

As I suggested in what might be called chapter 1 of the story of King David and Bathsheba, if the “me too” movement had existed during David’s time, he would have qualified as one of its poster boys.  But now we come to chapter 2, which could have the dramatic title, “The Reckoning.”

With a theme we’ll look at later, Nathan, who plays the role of prophet and “he who speaks truth to power,” calls David to account.

There’s an idea I’ve heard and I imagine most, if not all of you, have also heard.  Maybe you’ve tried it, or it’s been tried on you!  One good way to convince someone, or to make a point, is to let them think it was their idea.  This might require a bit of craftiness.  Maybe simply knowing when it’s time to shut up can figure into it.  You don’t want to come out swinging or insult someone’s intelligence.

There have been times during a group discussion when I’ve tossed an idea into the mix and then said nothing else.  I didn’t belabor the point.  And on many occasions, someone else would say the same thing, and then finding approval.  Sometimes, you just got to let someone else take the credit!

One good way to implement this method is to tell a story—something the other person can identify with.  That’s what Nathan does.

Let’s review to see why he is prompted to tell his story.  After David impregnates Bathsheba, he is finally “forced” to have her husband, Uriah, killed in a deliberately ill-conceived military move.  You know—accidentally on purpose.  When word about the fiasco is brought to David, he isn’t furious, as would normally be expected.  Kings don’t usually welcome such news in a good mood.  Instead he blows it off and assures his general Joab, “Don’t worry, that’s what happens in the fog of war.”  And there’s an understood “wink wink.”

Speaking of “wink wink,” roughly three centuries after the writing of 1 and 2 Samuel, we have the two books of the Chronicles.  One of the writer’s concerns was to emphasize the key role of David’s dynasty.  Unfortunately, Bathsheba never figures into the story.

Here’s how chapter 20 begins: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, Joab led out the army, ravaged the country of the Ammonites, and came and besieged Rabbah.  But David remained at Jerusalem.  Joab attacked Rabbah, and overthrew it” (v. 1).  Wait a minute!  Didn’t something else happen at the time?

If I didn’t know better, I would swear someone wants to sanitize history.

And so we come to today’s reading.  When Bathsheba heard of her husband’s death, “she made lamentation for him.  When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son” (2 Sm 11:26-27).

So there we go.  David’s plan finally works.  Uriah is out of the way, and as far as the world is concerned, he is the father.  Bathsheba is now David’s wife.  He’s taken her into his home.  To the unsuspecting, it might appear he’s extending royal protection to a woman who is a widow and is about to be a single mother.  Things are going fine.  “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world!”

Well, let’s not jump the gun.  Here’s verse 1: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”  “Be sure your sin will find you out,” as Moses told the people (Nu 32:23).  The king is about to find out that warning also applies to him.  He has been found out.

As we saw at the beginning, Nathan the prophet realizes he has an unwelcome message for David.  He tells the story of a rich man who had an abundance of sheep and a poor man who “had nothing but one little ewe lamb.”  Notice how he describes the little critter.  “He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him” (v. 3).  I’m about to cry just reading that!

But then—oh yes, but then!  The rich man has a visitor.  Hospitality requires he welcome his guest with a meal.  However, this member of the top one-percent decides he can’t bear to part with one of his vast horde of animals.  Instead, he sends his boys to grab the poor man’s lamb, slaughter it, and prepare it for the dinner plate.  Delicious.

At this point, David begins quaking and shaking with fury.  He sees red, and he explodes, “That evil so-and-so needs to be slain!  But not before making restitution to the poor fellow whose heart he crushed.”

I wonder how long Nathan takes with his response.  Does he wait until David calms down?  Or does he strike while the iron is still hot?  Whatever the case, Nathan lets loose with something to knock David back on his heels—metaphorically and maybe even literally.  To David’s cry for the man’s blood, Nathan comes back, “You are the man!” (v. 7).

The prophet launches into a litany of what God has done for him: making him king, rescuing him from Saul, giving him Saul’s wives, “and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more” (v. 8).  But, unfortunately, that’s not all.  There will be turmoil in his family, bloodshed, and rebellion.

David does repent, but there is one more heartbreaking consequence of his actions.  As Nathan says, “because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die” (v. 14).  Afterwards, David fasts and prays to God that the child should live, but to no avail.

Let me go back to something I mentioned at the beginning, which is Nathan holding David accountable.  By the way, he does this, not without a degree of danger.  Who knows how the king will react?  Nathan might find himself in prison, or maybe David’s wish for the rich man will come true—except Nathan will be on the receiving end!

Having said that, it’s very important we have someone to be accountable to.  It can be easy to say, “I’m accountable to God,” and at the end of the day, it’s certainly true.  Still, without someone (that is, a wise, centered someone) looking us in the eye and saying, “So how are you doing with such-and-such?” we run the risk of not sticking to a path of spiritual growth.

I’ll admit, I haven’t always been faithful in finding such a person.  (We have moved quite a bit over the years—how that for an excuse?  However, I do have a wife who holds me accountable more often than I would like!)

After the confrontation (a stern form of accountability), as we know, David repents.  Is it possible there was at first a thought of self-justification?  There could be numerous ways to do this.  As we saw earlier, he could say he’s been protecting Bathsheba.  As for Uriah the Hittite, he was no child of Israel.  How do we know he wasn’t a spy?

David confesses his sin.  As mentioned earlier, Nathan gets his point across to David by giving him someone to identify with.  In an unexpected, uncomfortable, and even compulsory way, the rich man in the story becomes his idea, an idea he really doesn’t want to have!

Still, it works.  Not every leader admits guilt.  Some say there’s nothing they need to apologize for.  Instead of accepting responsibility, they shift the blame to others.  But then, how often do we do that?  According to the Bible, human beings have been doing that since day one.

We see a David who is calculating, even brutal, but also in pain.  He must go through the fire to be purified.

He emerges on the other side, giving voice to one of the most beloved of the psalms, number 51.  It is the Ash Wednesday psalm.  If you notice the psalm’s title, or superscription, it is forever linked with Nathan’s calling him out regarding his sin against Bathsheba.

Look at verse 4.  “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.”  Understand, this can apply to any of us.  But right now, we’re dealing with it as it applies to David.

I have a question.  Where’s Bathsheba?  Hasn’t she been sinned against?  Need we go back and run through the sorry story again?  Is she being slighted yet again?  Is her voice not being heard?  Does she need to cry out, “Me too”?

O Lord, against you alone have I sinned.

In his book, The End of Memory, Croatian writer Miroslav Volf seems to agree.  He speaks of the months-long interrogation by someone he simply calls “Captain G.”  This was during the time of the former Yugoslavia, and he was under suspicion of being a spy.  He’s reflecting on that experience from more than two decades earlier and imagining a reconciliation between Captain G. and himself.

Captain G., being a loyal communist, is also an atheist, so he would only be interested in forgiveness offered by Volf, not by God.  Our friend Miroslav, being a Christian, thinks differently.

Miroslav Volf

“By wronging me,” he says, “you’ve transgressed the moral law God established to help us, God’s beloved creatures, to flourish; so you have wronged God.  Ultimately, only God has the power and the right to forgive, and only God’s forgiveness can wash you clean of your wrongdoing.  When I forgive you, I mostly just echo God’s forgiving of your sin.”[1]

That has the makings of a pretty good theology of forgiveness!

Of course, when we wrong someone, commit those petty little offenses, we sin against each other.  Still, as the psalmist and Miroslav Volf contend, those sins are simply a reflection of the sin against God, and forgiveness offered is a reflection of God’s forgiveness.

Confession is good for the soul.  We learn it when King David confesses.  We learn it when we confess our sin against each other.  We learn it when we confess our sin against the earth.  We learn it when we confess our sin against the body politic.  That is, if we disagree, we somehow become enemies.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (v. 10).  Confession is good for the soul.  How does that chorus go?

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, / and renew a right spirit within me. / Create in me a clean heart, O God, / and renew a right spirit within me.

“Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord, / and take not Thy holy Spirit from me. / Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, / and renew a right spirit within me.”

[1] Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 225.

When I was in junior high and high school, there was a certain group of people I did not like.  Unfortunately, there were quite a few of them.  I’m talking about boyfriends who treated their girlfriends, or just girls in general, disrespectfully.  They would boss them around; they would insult them.  They would brag about their physical exploits with them.

I will admit, sometimes I fell prey to the practice of blaming the girl.  “Why does she stay with him?  What does she see in him?”  Still, the vast majority of the time, it was the guy’s behavior that really ticked me off.  I guess he thought he was showing what a man he is by mistreating females.  Certainly, we can think of situations in which mistreatment is really serious.

Last year, #MeToo really took off.  I visited the “me too” movement website, which said the movement was started in 2006 by Tarana Burke for women and girls who have survived sexual abuse.[1]  A greater spotlight has been cast on men who oppress women.  Sadly, that nasty business has been with us for quite a while—going back to the dawn of time!  And we see it throughout the scriptures, from start to finish.

In our scripture text from 2 Samuel, we see the ignoble conduct of King David.  He hardly acts in a noble way.  He would be a candidate for the “me too” movement’s rogues’ gallery.

Let’s see what leads to David’s fall from grace.

Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann frames our story with lavish language.  He says, “We are…invited into the presence of delicate, subtle art.  We are at the threshold of deep, aching psychology, and at the same time we are about to witness a most ruthless political performance.  In this narrative we are in the presence of greatness.”[2]

My guess is “the presence of greatness” he mentions doesn’t apply to David’s behavior.  Still, we all know this isn’t the only time a great man has fallen.

He continues, “For David and for Israel, we are at a moment of no return.  Innocence is never to be retrieved.  From now on the life of David is marked, and all Israel must live with that mark.”[3]

That mark is etched when the flowers are blooming, as we see at the beginning of chapter 11: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him” (v. 1).

“In the spring of the year.”  There would be a ceasefire during the winter.  The weather would usually be too harsh to set up camp very easily.  The rain and snow would turn the ground into mud—which can be a difficulty if you want to ride horses or drive chariots!  And besides, there wouldn’t be much to eat if you’re trying to live off the land.

Kings were expected to lead their armies into battle.  Still, notice how the verse ends.  “But David remained at Jerusalem.”  When that sentence begins with “but,” you know something’s up, and it’s probably not good!

David has other plans.  “Let those boys go fight the war for me.  It’s time for me to enjoy being king.”  Power has its privileges.  And so we’re told, “late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful” (v. 2).  David decides he’s got to do something about this.  And that he does.

He finds out her identity.  She is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite.  He doesn’t waste time, as Brueggemann relates: “The action is quick.  The verbs rush as the passion of David rushed.  He sent; he took; he lay (v. 4).  The royal deed of self-indulgence does not take very long.  There is no adornment to the action.  The woman then gets some verbs: she returned, she conceived.  The action is so stark.  There is nothing but action.  There is no conversation.  There is no hint of caring, of affection, of love—only lust.  David does not call her by name, does not even speak to her.  At the end of the encounter she is only ‘the woman’ (v. 5).  The verb that finally counts is ‘conceived.’”[4]

Upon discovering her pregnancy, the wheels start turning in his head.  He comes up with the scheme to have his general, Joab, recall Uriah from the front.  David’s pretext is to get information about the war, but he simply wants Uriah to sleep with his wife.  People will think he’s the father of the baby.  Only Bathsheba will know the truth.  And if she were to recklessly dare say anything, it would be her word against the king’s.

Also, we can’t ignore that this is the ultimate difference in power dynamics.  King David is the leader of his country.

David’s plan fails.  Uriah is too honorable to go to bed with his wife while his fellow soldiers are fighting and dying in the field.  So on to plan B.  David has Joab engage in a foolish military strategy, one that will cost the lives of many men—but he needs to make sure Uriah is one of them!  We’re told, “Joab is the kind of hatchet man every king must have, someone who acts always in the interest of the king without scruple or reservation.”[5]

The Hittite didn’t want to play ball, so he gets taken out.  He won’t be around when David pretends he’s really the father.

In that rapid fire series of verbs we looked at earlier, there’s one in particular that’s especially troubling.  In verse 4 we’re told the messengers are sent “to get her.”  The Hebrew word (לׇקַח, laqach) has the primary meaning of “take.”  It also means “seize.”  Bathsheba receives no invitation.  This is an offer she can’t refuse.  There is no discussion; she is simply taken.

The offense isn’t simply adultery.  It’s rape.  King David could definitely be a poster boy for the “me too” movement.

This isn’t the David we know and love.  This isn’t the man after God’s own heart (Ac 13:22).  This isn’t the man dancing before the Lord (2 Sm 6:14).

This isn’t the man who, when King Saul was out to kill him, had Saul’s life in his hands and then spared him (1 Sm 24).  That was when David was on the run, and he was hiding in a cave—a cave where Saul went to relieve himself.  David snuck over and cut off a piece of Saul’s robe to prove he could have done even worse.  But he was instantly stricken with guilt.  David had raised his hand against the king chosen by God.  (Even if there was more than a little comic relief!)

No, this is David at his worst.  And this isn’t something that just happened out of the blue.  It didn’t just come out of nowhere.  Remember how all of this starts.  David begins to lose himself.  What happens to the boy, and then the man, who’s fired up about the Lord?  He begins to lose his way.  Springtime comes, but he’s staying in the palace, living in the lap of luxury.  We’re told he gets up near sunset when he sees the bathing beauty.  Was he just taking a nap, or has he made it a practice to sleep the day away and prowl around at night—like a vampire?

Whatever the case, there’s been step by step, even baby steps, along the primrose path.

Something like that is true with us.  We can almost imperceptibly move in a direction we know we shouldn’t.  But then it gets easier, and in time, we wonder why we made such a fuss of it before.  Then we go a little further, and pretty soon, we’re like Dante in his work, Inferno:

“Midway along the journey of our life / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / for I had wandered off from the straight path…  How I entered there I cannot truly say, / I had become so sleepy at the moment / when I first strayed, leaving the path of truth.”[6]  Such is the story of King David.

Now, I don’t think it’s a spoiler alert to say that’s not the end of the story.  We know that David repents.  We’re just not there yet.

As for Bathsheba, it takes a while, but things do turn out well for her, more or less.  Again, we’re not there yet.

 Jumping ahead quite a few centuries, the early church recognizes Bathsheba in the genealogy of Jesus.  In Matthew 1, we have the statement, “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah” (v. 6).  Oh well, she is left nameless!  Bathsheba is joined by three other women from the Old Testament: Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth.

(On a side note, really through no fault of their own, each woman has had some blemish attributed to her character.  Then of course we have Mary, who is the exact opposite of blemished!)

What can we take away from this sorry story of David?  “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!”  David first deceives himself, which leads to a snowball effect of further deception.  He becomes willing to manipulate others, even in a lethal fashion.  He treats them like objects.

That’s something we’re all capable of doing, although we might cry, “Not me too!”  We might not go as far as rape or murder (I would certainly hope not!), but we can still have something like that in our spirit.  It’s easier than we think to go down that path.  The next chapter of our story involves Nathan, someone who is there to hold the king accountable.

So, there are many ways we can stray from the right path, but the central theme of the passage is mistreatment of Bathsheba, mistreatment of females.  Although, it is also true that boys and men can suffer similar mistreatment.  To the men, I urge us to watch our own behavior, and however seems appropriate, call out other men when they cross the line.

To the women, I encourage you, if you feel comfortable, to tell your own story.  But it’s not like you need to hear that from me, with my vast understanding of how that feels!

What a great role model we have in Jesus Christ.  He personified qualities considered both masculine and feminine.  He challenged the biases of his culture.  Jesus welcomed and taught women, right along with his male disciples (Lk 10:38-42).  He intervened on behalf of women unfairly accused by men (Jn 8:3-11).  Women traveled with him, and he accepted their help, including financial assistance (Lk 8:1-3).  He treated and understood them as equals.  (Some would say, being a man, he understood them as his superiors!)

We have been given the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, so we also are called to personify all those qualities.  Where King David trips up, the Son of David triumphs.

Jesus says to the woman who is crippled and unable to stand up straight, “You are set free” (Lk 13:10-17).  He says to all of us—and that also means those who wonder, “And not me too?  Am I not included?”—yes, you are set free.  It really is true: where King David trips up, the Son of David triumphs.

“Woman, You are Freed” by Hanna-Cheriyan Varghese

[1] metoomvmt.org

[2] Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 271-272.

[3] Brueggemann, 272.

[4] Brueggemann, 273.

[5] Brueggemann, 276.

[6] Mark Musa, trans. (New York: Penguin, 1984), 67.

I’ve never heard anyone suggest to new converts that they begin their reading of the Bible with Ecclesiastes.  The last I heard, it’s not very popular in Sunday school.  I guess I can understand why.  It is a strange little book.  Some rabbis of old fought hard to keep it from being called scripture.

http://blog.spu.edu/lectio/files/2013/07/week7-large.jpg

If you’ve read the book, you can probably figure out why.  Starting right off in chapter 1 we get some pretty good clues.  Ecclesiastes says things the rest of the Bible does not say!  Already, in the second verse of the book, we hear this: “Vanity of vanities…  All is vanity.”  That sets the theme for all that follows.  All is vanity![1]  Everything is meaningless!  It’s no use!  What in the world is that doing in the Bible?  Is that something one of God’s people would say?

Hold on to that thought.  We’ll see more examples as we go on as to why folks throughout the centuries have been puzzled about the book.

In the original Hebrew, our narrator is anonymous.  He’s simply referred to as קֹהֶלֶת (qoheleth).  “Ecclesiastes” comes from the Greek translation of that word.  “Qoheleth” comes from the word קׇהַל (qahal), which means “assembly” or “congregation.”  So, “Qoheleth” would be the “convener of the assembly.”  One might say he’s the person who “ca-halls” the people together!

Even though the author calls himself “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” it’s clear from the vocabulary used he lives hundreds of years after Solomon.  But like others who wrote what’s known as wisdom literature, he pays his respects to the king noted for his great wisdom.  Claiming to be Solomon is high praise.

All is vanity!  To those who believe faith is like the nice little graphics you click on Facebook, this might come like a bucket of ice water thrown in the face—and then followed with the empty bucket!  This is some stern, bitter language.  The translations “vanity,” “futility,” “meaningless”: none of them quite capture the sense of deep disappointment Qoheleth expresses.  Those words don’t have enough bite.  What might be necessary is something like: “Everything is b. s.”

In fact, Methodist professor Elsa Tamez has said of Ecclesiastes it is for “times of profound disillusionment.”[2]  It seems she goes along with the saying, “Misery loves company,” because she adds, “a disappointed soul can find solace in reading this work of a frustrated narrator.”  I really like the footnote she puts at the bottom of the page.  “This has happened to me various times after giving a sermon, teaching a Bible study, or conducting a course on Ecclesiastes”!

Just look at our scripture reading.  Look at the list of frustration that Qoheleth goes through.  Generations come and go, the sun rises and sets, the winds blow, the streams flow—but nothing really changes.  “All things are wearisome,” he proclaims, “more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing” (v. 8).

Don’t forget; this is just the opening chapter!  There’s a lot more where that came from!  Maybe we can be excused for dismissing this as the ranting of Qoheleth the curmudgeon.  But then, my sermon title isn’t “Qoheleth, the Curmudgeon.”  It’s “Qoheleth, the Patriot.”

To understand how Qoheleth could be a patriot, we need to look at the world in his day.  It was after the Babylonian exile, possibly after when the Persians came to power in the mid-500s B. C., and before the Greeks took over in the late 300s.  But no one really knows.

In any case, the Jews are but a small part of a big empire, be it Persian or Greek.  And in either case, Qoheleth has witnessed the arrogance of a superpower.  Each in their own way, the Persians, then the Greeks, have dominated the Jews.  They’ve imposed their own cultural values on them.

So when Qoheleth observes, as he does in verse 9, that “there is nothing new under the sun,” in part, it flies in the face of political propaganda—the party line of the government.  The nations who have invaded the Jews have promised them all kinds of innovations, what they see as modernization, so to speak.  To the leaders who say that “everything has changed” and that “we live in a brand new world,” Qoheleth says, “I don’t think so; we’ve seen all this before!  We’ve heard these grand promises before.”

Elsa Tamez

Our author wants to rouse his fellow Jews from their slumber.  In verse 11, he warns, “The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.”  In The Message, Eugene Peterson turns that last line into, “Don’t count on being remembered.”

Dr. Tamez reflects on how “generations come and go without remembering their own history.  Such collective amnesia means the death of a people.”[3]  If we have the attention span of a gnat, we become very easy to manipulate.  We are easy to manipulate if our life’s focus is on bread and circuses.

Being a good citizen, especially the citizen of a democracy, requires effort.  It takes discipline.  On the other hand, to live under an authoritarian requires very little effort.  We need only ignore our responsibility to others—especially to the poorest and weakest—and to the planet.  Without discipline, especially spiritual discipline, freedom slips through our fingers like sand.

The great Jewish writer Abraham Heschel published an article in February 1944.[4]  During World War 2, he speaks of that lack of spiritual discipline that permits dictatorship and war to thrive.  Heschel’s words remain relevant for us today, as they have been presented again in recent years.

“Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience.  [I think we could substitute “terrorism” for “fascism.”  But I think we could also envision fascism once again raising its ugly head.]  We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil.  We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

He goes on, “A tale is told of a band of inexperienced mountain climbers.  Without guides, they struck recklessly into the wilderness.  Suddenly a rocky ledge gave way beneath their feet and they tumbled headlong into a dismal pit.  In the darkness of the pit they recovered from their shock, only to find themselves set upon by a swarm of angry snakes.  Every crevice became alive with fanged, hissing things.  For each snake the desperate men slew, ten more seemed to lash out in its place.  Strangely enough, one man seemed to stand aside from the fight.  When the indignant voices of his struggling companions reproached him for not fighting, he called back: If we remain here, we shall be dead before the snakes.  I am searching for a way of escape from the pit for all of us.”

We can become so focused on the agenda that’s been handed us—or that we’ve chosen for ourselves—that we forget to stop, lift up our heads, look around, and explore other possibilities.  We can emphasize what we reject more than what we accept.  We can emphasize what divides us more than what unites us.  We can attract negative energy rather than positive energy.

“Let future generations not loathe us,” Heschel says, “for having failed to preserve what prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years.  The Fascists have shown that they are great in evil.  Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness.”

In a strange way, Ecclesiastes is valuable for those who often have an uncomfortable and questioning faith.  I don’t know; maybe that’s why I like it!

As we approach our nation’s 242nd birthday, sometimes we have an uncomfortable and questioning patriotism.  I believe that’s in the best spirit of America.  We’re still allowed to ask uncomfortable questions, at least, for now.

Our final hymn today is “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies.”  I love that song.  Most of us know the first verse by heart.  As we continue, Katharine Lee Bates deals with the innate complexity that is America.  Each verse begins, “O beautiful,” and celebrates the promise and the dream of America.  It is a promise not yet fulfilled.  Bates thinks this is reason for celebration: “O beautiful for patriot dream / That sees beyond the years. / Thine alabaster cities gleam, / Undimmed by human tears!”  Friends, we’re not quite there!

Qoheleth asks the uncomfortable questions, and he really doesn’t have the answers.  Vanity of vanity—all is vanity!  It’s all useless!  Fortunately for us, we do have one who asked, and continues to ask, those uncomfortable questions, and he asks them to Caesar.

Jesus the Christ, the son of David, the king, makes the promise to us, even if the dream is not yet fulfilled.  We are freed to ask those uncomfortable questions, and we know at the end of the day, that all is not vanity.  To the contrary, all is bursting with light, something new under the sun.

[1] הֶבֶל (hebel)

[2] Elsa Tamez, “Ecclesiastes: A Reading from the Periphery,” Interpretation 55:3 (July 2001): 250.

[3] Tamez, 252.

[4] mlk50.org/writings/king-heschel/the-meaning-of-this-war-by-abraham-joshual-heschel