All Saints' Day 2021

 

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 25:6-9 and John 11:32-44

From the Introduction to the Season of All Saints to Advent, from Common Worship: Times and Seasons:

‘No Christian is solitary. Through baptism we become members one of another in Christ, members of a company of saints whose mutual belonging transcends death…

‘All Saints’ Day and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed on All Soul’s Day both celebrate this mutual belonging. All Saints’ Day celebrates men and women in whose lives the Church as a whole has seen the grace of God powerfully at work. It is an opportunity to give thanks for that grace, and for the wonderful ends to which it shapes a human life; it is a time to be encouraged by the example of the saints and to recall that sanctity may grow in the ordinary circumstances, as well as the extraordinary crises, of human living. The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed celebrates the saints in a more local and intimate key. It allows us to remember with thanksgiving before God those who we have known more directly: those who gave us life, or who nurtured us in faith…’

(Times and Seasons, p 537)

On All Saint’s Day, we give thanks for the grace of God, and the wonderful ends to which it shapes a human life. And as we do so, our Gospel reading (John 11:32-44) is the account of the raising of Lazarus.

Lazarus’ story is remarkable, and not simply because he is raised from the dead. Here is an adult man who lives with his adult sisters, Martha and Mary, three of Jesus’ dearest friends. And yet, Lazarus never once speaks. Moreover, it is Martha who is the head of the family. This has led some commentators to ponder whether Lazarus might have had some physical and learning disability, causing him to be dependent on his sisters, and this, in turn, negatively impacting upon their own marriage eligibility. In a society where women were far more dependent on men than in our own, theirs truly is a remarkable family arrangement.

In addition, some commentators wonder if Lazarus might be the un-named disciple John refers to as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ (traditionally taken to be John’s way of referring to himself) whom Peter communicates with by use of a simple form of sign-language at the Last Supper, and who asks Jesus a simple, three-word, question; one who, perhaps, is more able to understand what is going on than able to express themselves conventionally. This is, of course, more speculative. Either way, the case for Lazarus having some form of disability is much stronger.

Yet in the lives of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, in the all too ordinary challenges of daily living and the extraordinary crisis of Lazarus’ short illness and untimely death, they experience—and we witness—God’s grace, and the wonderful ways in which it shapes a human life, even lives held in suspicion by others.

I reflect on this story, which culminates in Jesus calling Lazarus, alive, from the tomb, and, taking command of the situation, ordering those standing by to ‘unbind him, and let him go’ in no small part as the father of two (out of three) children on the Autism Spectrum. As the father of a son who will not get up and go to school; a father who, along with his mother, is regularly found in meetings with school staff and a host of other support agencies, some of whom are more helpful than others, all of whom are over-stretched, because the society we live in is not as enabling as it might be. So many tightly bound strips of cloth binding him, binding us.

And yet, the grace of God. The grace of God, and the wonderful ends to which it shapes a human life.

With Martha and Mary, there are times, present moments in the process, where I cry, Lord, if only you had been there, if only you had got here earlier, before it came to this, or if only you would at least raise the dead now, today, not in six months’ time from now.

And yet the grace of God powerfully at work.

And I know that, in the words of Jesus in a vision given the anchoress Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” but for now, Jesus simply asks to watch over him where he is laid, and to weep, with me.

And that is why I need the Season of All Saints to Advent, this year, as every year. To remember, and give thanks, and be encouraged.

 

Twentieth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Lectionary readings: Job 38:1-7 and Hebrews 5:1-10 and Mark 10:35-45

There’s a story concerning Abraham, our father in faith. Abraham, or Abram as he was still known at the time, had left his homeland on the Persian Gulf and migrated northwest following the Tigris and Euphrates until he reached the mountains between modern day Iraq and Turkey, then turning south down through the corridor of land that lies between the Mediterranean Sea and the northernmost end of the Great Rift Valley that runs all the way down through Africa. He travels as a nomad, herding his flocks, and making alliances with more settled communities. He has undertaken this migration with his nephew, Lot; but the place where he has found some degree of rest is unable to support both men’s flocks and servants, and so they part company, Abraham giving Lot first choice on where to settle. And Lot chooses the fertile floor of the Rift Valley.

Now the Rift Valley itself, and the rolling hills rising to its east, are populated with settlements, each with its own king, or chieftain. And these chieftains form alliances, to secure trade and a measure of peace. The most powerful of these was Chedorlaomer, who lorded over eight other vassal kings. Now, after twelve years of this, five of the kings formed an alliance and rebelled, including the king of Sodom, under whose patronage Lot lived. After a stand-off of over a year, Chedorlaomer and three kings who kept faith with him went to war, four kings against five, and they prevailed over the rebels, carrying off goods and people, including the household and goods of Lot.

When Abram heard of this, he gathered his own trained men, and those of three allies, and set off to bring Lot home. He defeated Chedorlaomer and his allies, liberating Lot and bringing back the goods belonging to the king of Sodom. And as he returns, another king enters the story: Melchizedek, king of Salem, later Jerusalem. ‘Melchizedek, king of Salem’ means ‘King of Righteousness, King of Peace.’ This king is also a priest, priest of God Most High. Not of the later line of Aaron, a priesthood that made sacrifices for sin, but a priest whose ministry existed completely outside of such systems. And what Melchizedek does is to serve Abram. Literally, to serve a meal. Melchizedek brings out bread and wine and sets them before Abraham, saying: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” It is, in other words, a Eucharist, a thanksgiving. An act of service that enables Abram to see and respond to God’s act of salvation, even if Abram lives with unanswered questions, even if Abram still lives with the unanswered prayer for an heir to inherit all that God has blessed him with, and to carry on the alliance between them.

This is what we might call a foundational story. Foundational to the world that God has ordered, and foundational to the identity of Jesus the Son, and foundational therefore to the vocation of the Church, the Melchizedekian priesthood of all believers.

What Melchizedek does for Abram, as he serves him, is create the conditions for righteousness and peace to flourish. Peace is not merely the cessation of hostility—which Abram has already accomplished—but the transformation of relationships, enemies becoming friends over food, the establishing of right relationship, of righteousness. And this transformation is as fundamental and profound as the transformation of grain into bread and grapes into wine. And of course, such transformation is irreversible: bread cannot become grain, nor wine be turned into grapes; though bread can go moldy, and wine turn to vinegar, if they are left, if the meal, the commitment to serve one another, is abandoned.

Abram is active in his faith, stepping out to bring Lot home. But he must also learn to be attentively passive, to receive the gift of Melchizedek’s service and to encounter God in it. Likewise, Jesus learned through his suffering—that is, through those things done to him by others, for good as well as for ill—to hear and respond to his heavenly Father. Not least, Jesus learned how to serve by reflecting on his experience of being served, both lovingly and lacking love. For ultimately, he comes to serve, to offer up his life that others may more fully live; but he can only do what he sees the Father doing, only give what he has first received.

Because of Jesus, our high priest in the order of Melchizedek, we are called to this vocation: to be those who through our lives and our service promote righteousness and peace. That being so, come to the table, on which is set out bread and wine, and with it, receive the life of Christ afresh. May it bring clarity to your days and empower you to praise God’s holy name.

Come, those who have migrated to this place and met hostility as well as welcome.

Come, those who have put their hope in God, only to carry the pain of unanswered prayer.

Come, those who want to do great things for God, and those who believe you never could.

Come, those who have been trodden underfoot, and those confessing their own tyranny.

The table is set.

Come, let us eat together.

 

Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Lectionary readings: Esther 7:1-6, 9, 10; 9:20-22 and James 5:13-20 and Mark 9:38-50

Our Old Testament reading today is taken from the Book of Esther. After the people of Jerusalem were carried off into the Babylonian exile, and had lived as exiles for some seventy years, they began to return home, in successive waves. However, some chose not to uproot and return. The story of Esther concerns the Jewish population that had made its home in Susa. It is a story that Jewish congregations listen to, in one sitting, each year, as a kind of pantomime, complete with a spoilt king; not one but two brave queens; a poor but wise uncle; and a wicked villain who is booed each time he appears. It is a story of a people saved from genocide; and it invites us to sit with the tension that not every genocide is averted…

Our New Testament reading today is taken from the Letter of James. In it, we are exhorted to pray, at all times. When things are tough, pray. When things are going well, pray. When someone among us is sick, pray. Because prayer, at least the prayer of a righteous community, is powerful and effective. But not every prayer is answered in the way that we hope for. And so, again, we are invited to sit with tension, to accept complexity, to embrace and allow ourselves to be embraced by mystery. To wrestle with the fact that every person in the Gospels who asks Jesus for healing is healed; the fact that there is only one occasion when the disciples were unable to deliver a boy from demonization, and even then Jesus instructs them where they went wrong. Our understanding of unanswered prayer must lie on the far side of this presentation of the gospel, not fall short of it.

Our Gospel reading today is concerned with scandals in the Church—Greek, skandalizó, to cause to stumble—and how to deal with them. The scandal that precipitates Jesus’ teaching is that John informs Jesus that he saw a man driving out demons in Jesus’ name and told him to stop, because he was not one of the Twelve. John is clearly anticipating a reward but receives a rebuke instead. Jesus declares, anyone who is not against us is for us. The scandal in question here is that John was determined to exercise a simplistic understanding; to rule on who was in and who was out—in such a way that maintained his own position and place of influence. But Jesus will have none of it. Better for John and for the Church that he be cut off than that he continue cutting others off.

The Eastern Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware wrote, “…it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”

Our readings this morning are given not to provide easy answers but in order to inform our awareness of a mystery. To encounter the God who is with us, in every circumstance, whether joyful or sorrowful, often hidden from our sight by our determination to be satisfied with the limits of what we can know or understand. And, encountering this God, to find ourselves caught up in wonder, lost in worship. Amen.

 

Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Mark 7:24-37

We’re driving (well, Jo is doing the driving part) back Up North from Down South, where we have been celebrating my uncle S & aunt P’s golden wedding anniversary. And once again I’m writing a sermon on my phone (another uncle asked, can’t you stay another night and do your sermon by Zoom?).

S & P are the most gracious of hosts, and were in their element welcoming their guests, family and friends from far and wide, after so many months of restrictions. Their garden was set out with chairs around small tables, each one furnished with an assortment of glasses and bottles of wine. Between them, aunt P and my cousins H and B laid on the most amazing spread, a buffet table to return to again and again, and somehow never running out.

It was a lovely, relaxed gathering, and we so appreciated both seeing relatives we don’t get to see often enough and meeting others for the first time, including cousins’ children and my cousin’s dog, Megan, an adorable springador (springer spaniel - black labrador cross) who sat under a chair and occasionally risked a sneaky inching forward towards a discarded plate. “She’s very good, so long as you keep an eye on her.” “Your dog, or your daughter?” “Hah! Both.”

In our Gospel reading this Sunday, from Mark chapter 7, we hear an account of Jesus in conversation with a culturally Greek, ethnically Syrophoenician, woman. Her daughter is afflicted by a demon, and she asks Jesus to help her. Jesus responds, it is not fair to take the children’s food before they have eaten their fill, and throw it to the dogs. The woman replies, yes Lord, but even the dogs beneath the table get to eat the crumbs that fall from it. For this, Jesus does as she asks. When she returns home, she finds the demon gone.

It is an exchange that centres on the imagery of food shared, of children and dogs, against a background of undeserved, unwelcome pain.

In the culture of the time, dogs were not pets, like Megan, but scavengers. There’s a verse in the Law of Moses that instructs that any meat come upon in a field mauled by wild animals should not be taken up for human consumption but given to the dogs. What the lion leaves behind, the dogs clean up. That scenario, however, is in almost every detail the opposite of Jesus’ scenario. But there is a book in the Hebrew Bible, one that would be familiar to Greeks, that includes a memorable image of dogs and shared food.

Ecclesiastes chapter 9 opens by observing that time and chance impact upon the righteous and the unrighteous, the clean and the unclean, without distinction. This is vexing (evil, though not in a moral sense). The end of all is death. ‘But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.’ (9:4) This being so, the best advice is ‘Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do.’ (9:7)

Time and chance impact us all. That was clear as we gathered together, to celebrate fifty years of marriage, the joys of having girls and raising them to become strong and compassionate women, the joy of grandchildren. But alongside that, coming out in conversations around the garden and across the afternoon, the weight of time and chance. The impact of a pandemic on our children. The impact of Brexit and the pandemic on the provision of care support for the elderly. Memories of relationships that had broken down; and affirmations of new beginnings, second chances. Family members in hospital, under investigation, awaiting a diagnosis that itself may be unwelcome. Time and chance.

And in the face of all that, how precious to join together, to attend to the making and mending of connection with all the living; for whoever is connected to all the living has hope. Some days—months, years—you’re living a dog’s life, scavenging what you can get. Living off the memories of the last time I saw uncle S and aunt P, at my parents’ golden wedding anniversary, the weekend before the first lockdown. But a living dog is better than a dead lion. Because, hope. We come through the ravages of time and chance, not unscathed, but carried by hope. By the knowledge that life goes on, fleeting but good, so much gift, so much worthy of celebration. Yes, there we acknowledged the challenges of life, but we shared warmth and laughter, so much laughter.

This weekend, I have eaten bread—and salads and quiche and vegetarian coronation and lemon and lime cheesecake and banoffee pie—with enjoyment; and drunk wine—and Pimms and vintage port—with a merry heart. And today, simpler fare, bread and wine. Both occasions, a celebration of life; a grateful participation in the sheer gift of life; a renewing of hope, empowering us to face time and chance. Even the crumbs, communion wafers, are enough, bringing us from our scattered and at times troubled lives, back to wholeness.

I’m thankful for the sermons of scripture, and the sermons of life. Thankful for the sacrament of Communion, and for the sacrament of Marriage, for how they gather lives together and refuse to distinguish between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ spaces, between churches and gardens. Between the religious, and those who aren’t. This is the wisdom of God, who from long ago approves of you.

  

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14, 15, 21-23

This Sunday’s Gospel is a passage from the Gospel According to Mark. At face value, it appears to recount a confrontation between the Pharisees, who are hung up on rules, and Jesus, who advocates personal choice. But if we take a second glance, look beneath the surface, that might not be what is going on after all.

It is worth noting that the Pharisees have not come looking for a fight. They have come, a distance, to see Jesus, exploring the idea that this might be one sent by God. And when they witness Jesus’ disciples doing something that causes them cognitive dissonance—if this man is from God, why are his disciples flouting the rules?—they ask Jesus for clarification. On all counts, we would do well to learn from them.

Jesus responds by calling them hypocrites. Literally, people who wear masks, face masks. Actors, playing a part. But not a word that necessarily carries the negative value judgement that it has come to convey since.

The conversation centres on the idea of ‘defilement’—koine, literally making something common, stripping it of its specialness, its sacredness. And here it is worth noting that the entire of the New Testament was written in defiled Greek, koine Greek, as opposed to high, classical Greek. Written in the common tongue, of Gentiles and Jews, of the common people.

The Pharisees ask, why do your disciples eat in the way that is common of all the surrounding peoples, and not in the way that marks us Jews as set apart? The Jewish laws concerning hygiene were inspired, and deeply practical. Centuries later, when bubonic plague swept through Europe, Jewish hygiene observance kept them safe—set apart—from the devastating loss of lives suffered by their Gentile neighbours. Why forsake that kind of literally life-saving practice?

That’s when Jesus calls them hypocrites—mask-wearers—not because of the rules they kept, but because the outward observance or appearance was not aligned with their inward attitude. Though their actions were aligned with the wisdom of God, as shared with humanity, their hearts were not aligned with the heart of God towards humanity.

Jesus goes on to make it clear that nothing that goes into a person can defile them, can strip them of their specialness, their sacredness. But what comes out of them can.

Nothing that goes into a person can strip them of their God-given specialness. Not even a virus. This weekend, I stepped in to cover a wedding that was supposed to have been taken by another vicar in the deanery, who, the day before, had discovered that he had Covid. He is presently unable to do the things he is set apart to do; but Covid does not negate his vocation. And even if, in the most extreme of instances, Covid should kill us, it cannot separate us from the love of God.

That said, what comes out of us can defile us. The belief that we are more important than others, that we can act with impunity, exercising our rights in our self-interest, without concern for our neighbours.

Until recently here in the UK, it was legally mandatory to wear a mask in public, for the common good, in a pandemic. Since then, the rules have changed. The law has been stripped of its special status, its sacredness. Now it is down to the individual to exercise their own judgement, their freedom of conscience, to wear a mask or not according to their own personal choice. Under such circumstances, what ought we to do? At the wedding I took, for my friend who had Covid, not one of the sixty + guests chose to wear a mask.

It should be clear by now that we cannot simply read off what to do by how we read a particular passage from the Bible. What such a passage might do, however, is help us to navigate complex and confusing circumstances, from a faith perspective.

We continue, for now, to wear masks when we gather, out of love for our neighbour. But masks are not enough. The outward expression must be in line with our heart, which in turn must seek to be in line with God’s heart. If we wear a mask, but despise those who don’t, we miss the mark. We might protect them from Covid, but not from the virus of our hatred. We wear a mask, and sanitise our hands, and keep our distance, for the common (koine) good of a defiled (koine) people.

On the other hand, to refuse to wear a mask, and take other simple and reasonable precautions for the common good, because we see these things as a taking away of our liberty, is to abandon the law of God, which is summed up in the command to love our neighbour as ourselves.

As we navigate a season where we will wear a mask on some occasions, and not others; where we will wash our hands, perhaps more often than before Covid but not as often as we have become accustomed to; whether we choose observance or not to observe certain practices, our guide should be the law of love. May we continue to grow as such disciples. May we, like the Pharisees, continue to seek Jesus, to see him more clearly, to love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly, day by day.

Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2021

 

Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2021

Lectionary readings: Galatians 4:4-7 and Luke 1:46-55

 

Today we hear again Mary’s song declared before us, perhaps declared over us. The words may be familiar, especially if it is your habitual practice to say or to sing Evening Prayer. And yet the words are rooted in a particular time and place in history, quite alien to our own. These are not, primarily, personal words in response to a personal salvation. Nor do they, primarily, reveal a universal principle of God’s nature, siding with the oppressed against the oppressor. Rather, these words, in the mouth of a young Jewish woman living under Roman occupation in first-century Palestine are a prophetic utterance addressed to the people of Israel at a moment when God steps in to act decisively.

This people, the descendants of Abraham, were called to be a priestly people living among the nations, through whom all the other families on earth would be blessed. Yet they had repeatedly turned away from that calling; had chosen to live in such a way that brought the Lord’s name, his reputation among the surrounding nations, into disrepute. Again and again, their God had sent the prophets to them. Again and again, he had handed them over to the consequences of their unfaithfulness, bringing down defeat and exile and foreign occupation upon themselves. Again and again, the Lord had preserved a faithful remnant; had heard the cry of his people in their oppression and moved to rescue them, to restore them. And now, God was about to act once again, in judgement. The corrupt religious and political elite would be thrown down, and a faithful remnant restored, through whom Israel would be restored as a priestly people.

The fulfilment of Mary’s song would look like the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, when Herod’s palace is burned down (the Herodian ruler of the day actually siding with the Romans in besieging the city) and the Temple destroyed, its stone walls thrown down into the valley below. A literal throwing down. And in the aftermath of judgement, the emergence of a remnant, of the Jesus community, that would grow and spread across the Roman empire, holding out such a light that the pagan peoples were drawn to it, drawn to worship this Jewish God, until the entire Roman Empire would bend the knee and bring their tribute before him. What flows from these words is Christendom, nations shaped, however imperfectly, by a philosophy of the human condition under the sovereignty of God conveyed in the story that unfolds in the Bible, now opened to more fully include the Gentiles; a society within which the Church served as priests, invoking God’s blessing.

That is what is going on in Mary’s song. A prophetic word that looks out over the following thousand years. But it is not our song. Oh, we still sing it, and we do so in order to be formed by it, but our moment in history is not hers. There was a crisis, a moment of profound judgement, and a glorious new chapter; but we are living on the far side of all of that. We are living in a post-Christendom Europe, among neo-pagan peoples who, folk religion rituals concerning babies and brides and the burial of the dead aside, do not much call on us to serve them as a priestly people. So, what, if anything, might these words mean to us today?

And then, the lectionary has paired Mary’s song with part of Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia, in which he confronts the desire of the Gentile Christians to adopt the Jewish law. Paul insists that the law has been fulfilled in Jesus, Mary’s son: that is, it has served its purpose, as a guardian over the inheritance of God’s children until they come of age; but now, in and with Jesus, we have come into our inheritance. But, says Paul, that freedom is not an opportunity for self-indulgence or promotion, but rather, we ought to use our freedom to freely take on the role of serving one another, for the whole law is summed up in the command to love your neighbour as yourself. Again, what might these words mean to us today?

Theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote, “The dominant script of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.” That is, we are shaped to assume that life may be lived without discomfort or inconvenience; that there is no problem, however complex, we cannot fix by our own ingenuity; that the resources of the world are available to us without regard to our neighbour; and that we will protect and maintain this system at all cost. This week has seen the publication of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which spells out the global crisis facing us, at least some of which is now inevitable; but we aren’t prepared to give up our cheap flights to the Mediterranean, which is burning. This week has seen city after city in Afghanistan fall to the Taliban; but we aren’t prepared to welcome the refugee. No matter how bankrupt the dominant script, we do not want to change it; we believe that we can carry on doing the same things while hoping for a different outcome. Nonetheless, it will fall, and, in the long term, this may prove to be good for the world, but not before suffering for the poor and the hungry as well as the rich and the proud. Mary is no Disney musical princess.

In the light of a Mary-shaped hope, we are called, as God has always called us, to be a faithful remnant. To offer up prayer for our world, for those in power and those whose lives are impacted by those in power. And to act with prophetic voice, in what we say and what we do, in the choices we make for ourselves and as a community, resisting the temptation to believe that nothing we might do makes any difference. As Paul reminds us, to love our neighbour, not fearing the loss of what we might hoard for ourselves but drawing on the resources of heaven to bless others. Not as mighty rulers, but as children of a loving heavenly Father. And as sons and daughters of Mary—sisters and brothers of Jesus. Though not our song, the Magnificat is our mother’s song. May we so hear her words, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may sing a new script in and for our generation, in keeping with hers. Amen.

 

Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 and John 6:35, 41-51

Our Old Testament reading this morning recounts the remarkable and tragic death of David’s son, the prince Absalom. It comes as the climax of an unravelling that has occurred in the life of David and his family stemming from his sin of shedding the blood of Uriah. His first son born to the wife of Uriah died only days old. David and Bathsheba’s second son, Solomon, would grow up to become David’s heir to the throne in Jerusalem. But among his other children, by his many wives, David would know even more suffering. David’s firstborn son, Amnon, whom he loved, raped his half-sister, Tamar, and, when David failed to bring him to justice, another son, Tamar’s full-brother Absalom, murdered Amnon in revenge. Growing to despise his father, Absalom went on to have very public sexual relations with David’s concubines, before rallying many in Israel in rebellion against David, in order to take the throne from him. As we heard in our reading, Absalom died in the rebellion, despite David’s desire that he be treated with the greatest leniency. David is recorded as weeping for Amnon twice, and for Absalom seven times. Towards the end of David’s life, when he is bedridden, his eldest surviving son, Adonijah, proclaims himself king, before Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan—who had prophesied such consequences as befell—ensured that Solomon was crowned as David’s legitimate, if not natural, heir.

It is a mess, and that mess is not swept under the carpet but brought into the light, for us to learn from. Sexual relationships are a holy thing, and treating them lightly, or in contempt, or as a weapon, results in great pain, for all involved, whether directly or indirectly. Nonetheless, even amid such pain, God is at work to redeem our lives. We would do well to heed David’s call to deal gently with people’s lives, for the sake of a heart after the heart of God. We would do well to lament, with David; to know in our hearts that it would be preferable for us to be cut off from the future of the people of God than to have to bear the loss of a young life from participation in the future of God’s people. We would do well, also, to learn from David’s failure to instruct his household in how they ought to relate to one another and live together in love and faith.

One of the insights of this passage is that God is faithful to his covenant promise to Abraham and his descendants, and to David and his descendants, that those who blessed them, God would bless, and those who cursed them, God would curse. In other words, God’s hand is raised in blessing to and through his people; and raised against those who would attack them. When Absalom persuades God’s own people to rise in rebellion against God’s anointed king in Jerusalem, God’s hand is raised against their plot. In an incredible and sobering verse, ‘and the forest claimed more victims that day that the sword,’ we see that even the very Land of God’s promise revolts against the rebellion.

At the heart of our passage, Absalom, the son whom David loves, is suspended, hanging between heaven and earth, while soldiers stand below, mocking and striking and piercing him with a spear. A beloved son, bridging heaven and earth; and a father lamenting his death. This tragic young man, the product of the consequences of David’s sin but also God’s faithfulness towards sinful David, becomes a window in time and space through which we see Jesus. Jesus come down from heaven and raised up from the earth, suspended between the two, who dies in order that those who receive him in their hands and deal gently with him for his Father’s sake might live. The one in whom all our hungers and thirsts, all our appetites and longings including those relating to identity and relationships and sexuality, are satisfied. The one who redeems our lives from the Pit, raising us up to life in the fullness God desires for us.

It is a mystery indeed, one that sustains us and does not fail. In the words of the Post Communion prayer for this day, according to the Common Worship liturgy,

God of our pilgrimage, you have willed that the gate of mercy should stand open for those who trust in you: look upon us with your favour that we who follow the path of your will may never wander from the way of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.