Year B Proper 14: David, anointed of God

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Saturday August 11th/Sunday August 12th, St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Elyria, OH.

David. We have spent a few good weeks in the company of the great king of Israel, and this is the last living story we will hear of him this summer. He has come a long way, from the young man, ruddy and handsome, the shepherd boy chosen before his elders to be the one anointed by God to shepherd the people of Israel. The David we meet today is not the cocksure lad who challenged the giant and wrestled lions. He is not the dancing fool, drunk on victory, singing the Ark of the Lord into Zion. He is not the selfish monarch who stole another man’s wife, another man’s life.

The David we meet today is a man of humility, of forgiveness and compassion; the humility of a man caught in a grave sin; the compassion of one richly forgiven. This is the David who would rather die at the hand of his son than raise a hand against him.  And he is still the king, the one anointed to shepherd the lost sheep of Israel, and he does it despite grief and pain, loss and guilt.

So how did we get here?

If you go back and read the books of Samuel and fill in the pieces between the pieces of the story that we’ve read on Sunday mornings (and Saturday evenings) through the summer, you’ll meet a lot of characters that you didn’t hear about in church, and you’ll experience some hair-raising episodes which give this story, this portrait of filial betrayal and paternal love and agony more context. I really encourage you to do that. These episodes that we hear week by week should tease you into looking up the rest of the story and finding out more, exploring the characters and the plot-lines to find out where God is speaking to your life, who in our pantheon of religious ancestors has experienced the same kinds of spiritual and physical battles as you have, and how they found God’s saving grace in the midst of sorrow and of joy.

Briefly, though, Absolom is David’s son, and there has been a whole saga of violence and vengeance, of estrangement and attempts at reconciliation, of grief and betrayal.  David is at this point a father wrestling with his own conscience; he is caught in an exhausting web of grief, guilt and love, trying to relate to his son in extreme circumstances of hurt and division. This is David at his most human, perhaps at his most sympathetic. Have you ever watched someone you love destroy their own life and the lives of those around them, and you’ve wanted to help them and wanted to stop them and wanted to hold them? It’s so hard. Maybe it’s as hard as love gets.

Absolom, I think, interprets his father’s love as weakness. Absolom decides that his father is not the king that Absolom could be, and he works to undermine David’s influence and authority with the local tribal leaders, the local warlords, and when we come back into the story today, Absolom has challenged David directly for the kingdom, for Jerusalem, for his life.

And even in the face of this ultimate betrayal by his son, the son with whom his conscience has wrestled, David tells his commanders, “Treat him gently, for my sake.”

And you heard the rest of the story.

David, the anointed one of God, knew what it was to see his child suffer and wish with all his heart that he could take that pain away, take it to himself instead, take it away. If you’ve ever held a sick and crying child, if you’ve watched the heartbreak of someone you love, you know that feeling; that helpless, loving feeling.

It’s the feeling that, if we can ascribe human feelings to God, and let’s face it, as dangerous as that is, they’re all we really have to go on – it’s the feeling that caused God to reach out and die for us, to take our pain and suffering upon God’s self, to reach into our lives to be with us, because it was too painful to watch the people whom God had made and loved go through all of the pain and suffering and trouble that we put ourselves and one another through. It’s that love that reaches so far beyond itself that it roots itself in another’s heart.

There is a next chapter to this story. David is mourning for his son, and his commander, Joab, comes in and tells him to get up and go out, to be the king to his people. He is not to neglect his surrogate sons, his soldiers who have fought for him and been faithful to him, because of his own grief. And David, because he is a faithful and dutiful king, gets up and washes his face and goes out to greet his people, because he loves them, too, and because he borrows strength from God, from God’s promise, God’s presence, to carry on.

And it’s not that David won’t fall again or be hurt again, but that every time he turns back to God he is reminded of God’s promise to him, God’s covenant, God’s love; and he not only draws strength and courage from that love, but he shares it.

So what does this story of David say to us, today? It isn’t like one of Aesop’s fables, with a tidy moral of the tale at the end, a neat lesson to be learned. It is a story to live into, to live with, to pray our way through and discern within it the voice of God speaking to us us, to our people, our times.

We are in a tremulous time. We read the news or watch on tv as weapons of death are found in our local movie theatres, where our children go to play and we might go for a rare date night, and we shiver. We hear of people at prayer, at the same time as us, in a city like ours, attacked for their faith, in the midst of their faithful devotions, and we shudder. We see political pundits slinging mud to see what sticks, and we feel a sudden need to take a shower. We worry about the future for ourselves, our country, our families. We grieve over what might have been, how we might have done better, how we might have found ourselves in a better, safer, more respectful and generous place.

And this is where Joab comes in and tells us, “Get up. The people need to see your face. The people look to you for hope, you, the ones anointed of God.”

Because we have been anointed by God, sealed with the sign of the cross at our baptisms with the oil of chrism; we have been appointed by God to break our hearts over the world around us when it falls apart; to tell the people around us that God loves them achingly, eternally, faithfully; to lead them towards justice, mercy, and peace. We have been anointed and appointed to care for God’s people; all of us, together, by our baptism into one God, one Lord Jesus Christ, one faith, one promise. It is we who have been commissioned, as Paul puts it, to “be imitators of God, … and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” “Imitators of God!” God whose heart breaks for God’s people, God who loves us unconditionally, God who saves us, with mercy and justice and steadfastness, God who is active in the world, who touches the hearts of the lonely, whose peace passes understanding. That is the God whom we are to imitate.

The story of the Lord’s anointed is not over. We are the next chapter. We are what happens next, by the grace of God and with the help of God. Our actions will be plot lines in the next episode of the story of the people of God. Our psalms, our cries to God, our songs, our prayers, maybe they will become the prayers of the next generation, as David’s psalms have become our prayers – like this, from Psalm 28:

Blessed is the Lord! for he has heard the voice of my prayer.
The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I have been helped;
Therefore my heart dances for joy, and in my song will I praise him.
The Lord is the strength of his people, a safe refuge for his anointed.
Save your people and bless your inheritance; shepherd them and carry them for ever.
(Psalm 28: 7-11; Book of Common Prayer, p. 619)

May God be our guide, our strength and our shepherd as we write the next chapter of the story of this people of God. Amen.

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Mission Elyria – in action!

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Courtesy of my talented colleague, the Reverend Sahra Harding, of Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, here is some tape of the youth in action at Mission Week Elyria, starting with the closing reflections from the final Sunday.

The text for the first day of the mission in the journals that each participant received was this:

Sunday

From today’s readings:

“You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” (Ephesians 2: 19-22)

No longer strangers and aliens, indeed. Thanks be to God!

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Reading between the lines

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The past few weeks, depending on which Lectionary cycle is used, you may have heard the continuing story of David – or at least, selected highlights.
This week, as David’s son is killed in battle, to David’s distress, the need to read between the weeks’ gripping episodes is greater than ever. Why is David’s army fighting soldiers led by his son? Why do they kill the king’s son, against the king’s direct orders? Why, when his son was hellbent on destroying David and his kingdom, was he so distraught at Absolom’s death?
The last is, perhaps, the simplest to answer. Absolom was David’s son. And he was beloved.
Between the lines read out in church week by week, a whole soap opera (and not a g-rated one) has been written concerning the wives, concubines and children of David (no signs of traditional, “biblical” marriage or family structure here), and the violence done between siblings which has led to the apparently unhealable rift with which we are faced in today’s episode.
Yet David still longs and hopes for healing. He has tried to walk a line which does not condone Absolom’s more bloody behaviours, but which does not disown him. And even in the face of personal, political and total betrayal, David offers his protection to his son, telling his soldiers, “deal gently with him.” And all the people heard him.
When news comes of the king’s victory, his first thought is for his son.
He never thought he would have to do battle against his own beloved boy.
Later, as David fasts and cries for his son, his commanders take him to task for failing to celebrate the return of his surrogate sons, his soldiers, so he washes his face and pulls himself into his kingly demeanour and does his duty by them.
David, the shepherd of his people, no longer the ruddy, handsome youth, is in these days as faithful, as forgiving, as gracious as he knows how to be. He has learnt, from his own grievous errors, the dangers of using other people for his own satisfaction, visiting his lust and violence upon them. His penitence has left him changed: gentler, slower to anger and swifter to offer mercy.
Reading between the lines, we can only guess at the guilt and pain he saw in his own sons’ sins and sudden deaths. Yet his greatness is perhaps reflected, even more than in his political and strategic victories, that the lines of life have left him mostly softer around the edges rather than harder; he has allowed God to cleanse his harrowed heart, and renew a right and royal spirit within him: the spirit of a human, imperfect shepherd, who nonetheless loves each last lamb of his flock.

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Storm

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

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Sometimes, the light that breaks the darkness is a lightning bolt …

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How to choose a church: post-Sunday update

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

So, I went on Sunday to the church with the less smiley website, because I believe in second chances, because it does me good to step out of my natural comfort zone (though this place was hardly a stretch), and mostly because it was half the distance from where I’m staying than the smiley one.

I’ve been to a few different churches through the years, and it still makes me slightly nervous to go cold into a new one. Is that silly? I have to think that it’s probably not entirely unusual. After all, each community has its own ethos and culture, however much else it shares with the place down the road. Dress codes may be subtly different. The pace of prayer alters. The expectations of neighbourly involvement versus individual pew-perching.

I was late – yes, I know, it’s terrible, but I took a wrong turn and the rental bike was a bear to ride. It’s not as though I’d planned a dramatic entrance to draw attention to the fact that I was a visitor (interesting: my blog app just tried to auto-correct “visitor” to “idiot.”)

It was reassuring on arrival to find an usher still standing at the open door, and to notice at least two more regular congregants arrive after me. Late arrival as a gesture of hospitality to the stranger? Could catch on?

The usher asked, hesitantly, if I was a – visitor ( there goes the auto-correct once more), and had me sign the book and pick up a sticker which spelt out my status before going in (although I needn’t have put it on, I did, because it was there.) She also commented with some concern that i seemed quite warm. Yes, I’d cycled. I wondered if she was concerned for me or if her face was in fact expressing distaste for me slightly glowing state.

The sound system pumped the opening of the sermon into the narthex, and the wall between us was glass, so it was easy to spy out where in the service to slip in and where to sit and fret about arriving late, hot and perspirant.

The rest was quite straightforward. Visitors were acknowledged in the announcements but not asked publicly to identify themselves. They were asked once more to give away their life story in a pew card to be added to the offering plate.

At the Communion, it turned out that everyone but everyone intincts the wafer at that church, except unobservant “visitors.” The chalice bearer had a visible moment of confusion bordering on panic at the sight of my empty hands, but we got through it together.

The preacher (but not the celebrant) strode swiftly to the back during the response to the Dismissal to be able to see everyone on their way individually at the door. Visitors were greeted kindly and incuriously. There was even one pleasant motorist who let the odd cyclist depart through the line of cars waiting to exit the lot so that I didn’t leave last.

It was a smilier parish than its website promised, with handshakes in all the right places and a prayerful demeanour. Yes, I came away feeling like a crazy lady for being the only one who didn’t arrive fresh from an air-conditioned car, the only one who sipped from the chalice at Communion, the only one who crossed herself at the Absolution and the Blessing, but I’m not sure what they could have done about that; it’s probably just me. If hospitality is about welcoming, especially strangers, visitors, and auto-corrected visitors, they did that pretty well.

Perhaps the best lesson I learned was the frisson of worry that accompanies that first step over a new church threshold, the inevitable missteps which will accompany a journey into unfamiliar territory. It’s worth remembering, so that the handshake offered to our next visitor is extra warm.

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Please, pray for peace

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I am running out of things to say. I am running out of words to pray: God knows, we need some peace, some sanity, some way to curb the violence.

I grew up in Britain, where turbans are a commonplace sight, although recognized as set apart, and best understood as sacred (not everyone got the memo, of course). My son’s first grade class visited a Sikh temple and sampled the curries that were offered daily for the welfare and well being of the surrounding community, to feed the multitudes. A fellow Christian asked, “do you think it’s ok to let our children go? Food offered to idols, and all that.” I answered, to her dissatisfaction, there is one God. We just worship in different languages. It’s not Paul, but frankly, it works for me, and God can take care of the translation.

Whatever the “reason” for today’s outrage (and at this point, I have no idea what reasoning is being offered or alleged), it has nothing to do with the worship of God whose peace passes all understanding. It has everything to do with our capacity for violence which passes all understanding. While we are acting beyond understanding, will somebody please take the guns out of our hands before we make things even worse? Please?

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How to choose a church

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

It’s been quite a while since I last needed to make a decision about where to worship this Sunday. It turns out to be an eye-opener.

So, first stop, the website. Is there one? If not, sorry, but I don’t even know you exist. No offence.

Having reached your front page, which might just as well be your front door, does it tell me who you are? When you’re open? When you worship together? How to find you and where to park when I do? What if I need easy access – does your website welcome, warn or reassure me? Can I contact you with questions or concerns about my visit?

Does your website smile at its visitors? Does it pray for them?

I’ve made my choice. See you tomorrow?

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Unsolicited advice

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Because I know that you all love to receive unsolicited advice, and pearls of wisdom from one who has been ordained all of five minutes and just can’t help herself, here it is:

If you are already committed to preaching the chicken this weekend, here are my top tips for relating fried food to the Word of the Lord this Sunday:

1) Preach the Gospel. That is, the Good News of God in Christ; God’s redeeming love; God with us, God’s grace and graciousness and steadfast loving kindness towards us and all whom God has made. Hate rarely sounds like gospel; it just plain doesn’t preach as gospel.

2) If you’re on the David track, it’s possible to worry about upon whom we who “have it all” in the marriage stakes are trampling; whose precious lamb we are prepared to sacrifice at no cost to ourselves. And what even would it cost us to share what we already have in abundance?

3) Jesus is the bread of life, and satiates our deepest hunger. Fried chicken, as far as I know, does not claim to do that, at least not permanently (falling quail from Exodus notwithstanding). Know the difference; live the difference. Examine appetites, determine the healthy diet for long-term, eternal wellness, wholeness, godliness. Have we fooled ourselves this week into substituting chicken for conversation, fast food for long, slow engagement with one another and with God?

4) Ephesians is trying its utmost to make peace this week: bear with one another in love, live up to your calling with patience, gentleness and humility: speak the truth in love. Whether you speak in words or in dollars withheld or spent or donated to a cause, do so because of what and whom you love, not because of what or whom you hate.

5) Hate is not a family value, and it really doesn’t work well as a vehicle of the gospel. Speak your truth knowing that the person to whom you are speaking is also a child of God, beloved of God, however misguided, bigoted, lost, hellbound, sinful, beyond the pale you might believe her to be. God can love me through all of that and out the other side. God can do that for you, too. That’s gospel.

6) Don’t be blown around by every wind of doctrine and every trickery and deceit, every soundbite and every political advert. Stand firm in the gospel. Let Jesus feed you; let the Spirit of God cleanse your heart and renew a right spirit within you. Don’t be hating. Speak the truth. Speak it in love.

7) As a billboard of my diocese proclaims: Love God. Love your neighbour (whomever he loves. Change the world.

Go in peace.

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Playing chicken

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I’m not generally a big fan of fast food. I understand the appeal, but I don’t find it that appealing. I appreciate flavours that have had time to develop, to marinate their way through my food, to marry themselves into something new and wonderful.

But I get it.

There was a time when I ate more fast food, when something quick, easy, inexpensive, which hit the high notes of salty and sweet and went down in a mouthful fit the bill for me.

There was also a time when I didn’t appreciate, or understand, or even consider the idea that my childhood fantasy of marriage – the boy, the girl, Prince Charming and the Disney princess of choice – was not the only model available or viable.

It took time for my ideas to change, to develop, to marinate and marry with those of some of the best friends that I encountered in my early adult life. It took falling into lifelong friendship with a gay man who was undoubtedly made by God for love and a faithful relationship; falling into friendship with a woman who stood patiently by me while I too slowly worked out who she was, who I was, and how we were related to one another as women together, friends, colleagues, regardless of sex and sexuality.

It took time; more than I’d like. I’ll admit that.

But the wait was worth it, for me (and I apologize to everyone else for my tardiness and thank you for your patience), to be introduced and welcomed into a variety of families of love and faith which I value at least as much as the next family-values aficionado. Family values, to me, means valuing families, whether or not they look just like my own (and God help them if they do).

Now, when I read fast theology, fast-food bites of slogans like “traditional family,” “biblical marriage,” it makes me very uncomfortable; I get indigestion of the soul. I know well enough that “tradition” is not enough; that love, generosity, reaching beyond boundaries, acceptance are essential to my own family’s life together.) And biblical marriage – which marriage? Abraham’s? Jacob’s? Ruth’s? Mary and Joseph’s? David’s? – oh my goodness, have we heard some stories about David’s marital escapades these last few Sundays that would make your hair curl!

These slogans, these short cuts are not short. They are not fast. They do not satisfy, because they do not take the time to explain the developments, the dancing, the delightful diversity which populates the history of God’s own people.

Jesus said that it was easy enough to love those who love us. The challenge with which he left us is to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us.

So I appeal to you, wherever you stand on fast food chicken, to take the time to stop and pray for those you consider to be your enemies, those who would persecute you. Ask for God’s grace to bring the mystery of peace to bear in difficult times; for God’s love to conquer any lingering hatred. Take the time to stop and pray, to savour the Spirit of God as she leads you into the love of God and the peace that passes understanding.

To paraphrase another quick and easy slogan: Consider making love, not fast and furious fries.

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Comfortably numb

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

We all know that feeling. When we’ve been resting on our laurels – or our haunches, more likely – for a little too long, and things – feet, other extremities – have ‘fallen asleep. ‘ Gone numb.

That was the image that offered itself to me as we discussed this week’s readings. Numbness.

The weight can be an excess of luxury, of self-satisfaction, of good things, as for David. Perhaps, in his case, complacency would be the word we might use. He has become so used to receiving everything that he desires, to indulging his every desire, that when he desires that which is forbidden him, he does not even notice. He does not even notice that he is committing half of the ten ultimate crimes – covetousness, adultery, theft, falsehood, murder – until someone else nudges him, pricks his conscience back to life; back to wakefulness.

Then he is sorry.

For the crowd which follows Jesus, it is what? Another complacent response to signs and wonders which have become so regular as to be expected and mundane? Or the numbness which results from persistent need: yes, the thousands were fed, but we still look for Moses. He brought us to the manna in the wilderness, and he led us through the wilderness to the promised land. We have eaten of the manna; but we are still lost in a desert of oppression, occupation, and anxiety. You may feed us with your loaves and fishes; but our hunger exceeds your satisfaction and your baskets of breadcrumbs left over.

Excessive weight creates that numb, sleeping, lifeless feeling; excess of indulgence, excess of need, excess of ecstasy or grief. We all know it. We have all known it.

Even, sometimes, the weight of glory is too much for us comfortably to bear.

G.K. Chesterton – always good for an epigram – said that, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” (www.goodreads.com/quotes)

So what does it take to provoke us back into life, into liveliness, into wonder?

Not, says Jesus, a miracle of breadcrumbs, but the miracle of the Bread of Life, the Incarnate One, the breath of God breathing over the world and sharing our air.

“Create in me a clean heart,” prays David, “and renew a right spirit within me.”

Wonder comes from within, not from signs and wonders without.

When a foot falls asleep, the remedy is two-fold: releasing the weight that has pressed it into numbness, and exercising it to restore the bloodflow and feeling.

When a soul falls asleep, a conscience, a sense of lively wonder, then it might be time to examine our lives to find out where the weight is pressing on our spiritual nerves and creating numbness. Finding creative ways to lessen the pressure – whether it is an excess of good things and good work or an avalanche of anxiety  – to relieve the stress is step one of the remedy. Get help if you need to.

Then exercise. Practising prayer, practising wonder. Borrow the mind of a child, which can find fascination in a drop of dew on a blade of grass and the world that is reflected in it. Listen to the stories of other people’s everyday miracles, and listen to the answering nudges in your heart that wonder where God has been at work in your own life.

Eat Bread, not just bread. Slake your thirst with faith. Prepare to revel in the wonder that God has given us as our joyful response to the wonders of the world, the mystery of our faith, the wonderful knowledge that God is with us, has given God’s self to us, in love, delight and wondrous grace.

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