Bittersweet
Sixth after Pentecost - Year B
July 16, 2006
Sixth after Pentecost - Year B
July 16, 2006
Let us pray: O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable to you and may they tell of your glory. Amen.
I came across a curious statement in one of the resources I was using to prepare for worship this morning. It read this way - If you're brave and want to tackle the gospel in a summer sermon, there is much to work with here. Now I had to admit that I read that with the wrong emphasis the first time. I think the commentator meant the “gospel passage” rather than the more general word “gospel” which I would hope that any preacher would want to tackle - summer, winter, spring or fall. Even so, even after I figured out what was meant, it seemed like a challenge. What is it about a summer sermon that would make one less courageous to take on a difficult text? Is it the expectation of reduced numbers of people at worship? Or the desire to sit back and enjoy something a bit more refreshing and relaxing than a problematic text and accompanying reflection?
One of the characteristics of the common lectionary is that there isn’t a whole lot of choice in when the readings occur in the cycle of seasons. So it is in this season after Pentecost that we have been sampling the story of David and his rise from a shepherd boy to the golden boy King. And so it is also that we have this week that difficult reading from Mark’s gospel which tells the story of the beheading of John the Baptiser.
Other resources I used this week all seemed to focus on the apparent joy that David and others expressed as they processed the Ark of the Covenant - that most holy of symbols of the presence of God for the Hebrew people. As we heard, the story tells of the great chorus of voices and instruments that accompanied the Ark on its journey from Baalah to the so-called City of David. We heard of the wild abandon with which David danced during the procession. Again the commentaries all wanted to highlight the joy and celebration that was a part of this procession, and the sense of jubilation that David wanted to inspire in the people who were part of the procession.
Certainly if you want to avoid the difficult parts of today’s readings, there is more to capture a mood of celebration in the passage from second Samuel than there is in the sombre words from Mark’s gospel, but I could not help a bittersweet feeling from even that story about the procession of the Ark that was only emphasised by the story of the martyrdom of John the Baptiser.
You may have noticed in the printed order of worship that the reading from the Hebrew Bible left out a section. It skipped from verse five to the second half of verse twelve. What we didn’t hear was the story of how the oxen that were carrying the Ark of the Covenant stumbled and Uzzah put out his hand to keep the Ark from falling and right then and there Uzzah was killed because, as the text reads, God’s anger was kindled against Uzzah because he dared to touch the Ark - the holy of holies, and all this simply because Uzzah wanted to keep it from falling. That certainly adds a sombre note to all the celebration that was going on around the procession. In fact, the whole incident freaked David out and he began to question whether he wanted the responsibility of caring for an object that could bring on such life-threatening consequences. He was so freaked out by it that he halted the procession for three months while the ark took up temporary residence at the home of Obed-Edom the Gittite until David could muster enough courage to lead it on the remainder of its’ journey. That’s the part that we didn’t hear - that the lectionary compilers for whatever reason decided to leave out. Maybe they too were thinking about the summer. However, the gospel passage leaves no doubt about the sombreness of this week’s readings and which gives rise to the title of this reflection - a description of my reaction to both of these readings.
Thus the challenge - what is the gospel in these readings? What good news can we draw from these passages which illustrate vengeance - not just on the part of Herod and Herodias, but in the missing verses from second Samuel even the vengeance of God? Is there something positive we can glean from the bleakness that surrounds the stories?
I thought about it a lot this week. I thought about our own understanding of the Holy of Holies - what is the holiest thing we know? Would it engender the same kind of reaction that the Ark of the Covenant created? Is there something so holy that it becomes dangerous for us to touch? Is holiness misplaced in our current age? Are there places we don’t go and things we don’t say because they are too sacred even though they really have nothing to do with divine presence? This week there was a supreme court ruling about whether the amount of severance for dismissed territorial government employees should be a matter of public reporting. It appears that issues of salary, severance and personal wealth are held pretty sacred in our society. We talk about it in hushed tones and protect the information behind locked filing cabinet doors and 128 - bit encryption.
That perhaps is one example, but on the whole, my sense is that we live in an age where holiness is not part of our particular mind set. In this age of post modernism where knowledge and experience are relative and where deconstruction is the name of the game, we want to question holiness more than we want to promote it. I don’t completely disagree with this approach. I remember in my childhood that we were told never to place anything on the bible because it was the holy bible. That was an understanding passed on to me from my mother’s side of the family and which was observed even more strictly in her childhood years. Such a reverence for the book restricted my ability to understand it. It was only when the scales of holiness were washed away from it, most notably when I began my studies at seminary that it began to take on deeper meaning and when I could really explore what it has to say to us about our relationship with God. If I were to describe that process I would have to say that the holiness of the object - the book, was replaced by the holiness of the stories it contained and the importance of the story for our understanding of our relationship with God - whether they were stories which inspired us into deeper understanding of God or stories like today which we want to preach against because they describe a God that does not fit our perception of God, or which describe the basest aspects of human nature. It is the earthiness, the mistakes, the description of the imperfections of the human beings in their struggle to be faithful people that I find to be most compelling and instructive in the scriptural record. Life is bittersweet, the bible describes a bittersweet relationship between God and humanity, and for that reason I value it.
But still, as I said before, I kept searching for the Holy of Holies in this day and age - in this secular time. One answer came to me in the other passage we read today - the psalm. There is hardly a newscast these days where the effects of global warming are not mentioned. So, what does it mean when we say: The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it? The answer can only be to treat this earth, our home, as the holy of holies - this is the sacred gift we’ve been given. The answer of course is not to keep our hands off it - restoring the holiness of the earth we live in is very much ‘hands on’ work, but it is work that requires reverence, caring and thoughtfulness. We’ve done too much of the other kind of work already - that is the work that has threatened the sacredness of this, the only home we have.
Bittersweet was the word I used to describe my reaction to this week’s passages. Yes, there is a sense of celebration there - not in the dance that David did to accompany the ark on its journey. I actually get a creepy kind of feeling about that particular dance, and especially when the deleted verses are added in. And certainly not in the story of the execution of John the Baptiser. That’s just a nasty story of manipulation and vengeance. No, the celebration comes in the psalm and the reminder we have of the holiness of the earth - a gift from God, ours to treat with reverence and care. Even there, of course, there is bittersweet as we consider the peril that confronts the earth due to climate change and environmental threat, but sometimes that’s the purpose scripture can serve. After all John the Baptiser was one who reminded people that their past actions were leading them to present disaster. While it is not always a welcome word - it is sometimes true that the good news comes to us as bad news first.
May God give us courage, caring, and wisdom as we live out our reverence for the earth as God’s gift. Amen.