Told You So

2 Samuel 11:1-15; John 6:1-21

Every once in a while, the stories we read in the Bible sound to me like God is saying, “See, I told you so!” (accompanied, occasionally, by a head-shaking sigh, “Will they ever learn…?”)

And this is one of those days.

There’s a lot of evidence for the people of Israel that God has chosen and blessed David as their king.  He wins his battles, he’s brought God home to Jerusalem (or at least the ark, the physical symbol of God’s presence), and there are oracles and promises appearing around him that proclaim God’s love for David.

Things are going well.

So well that you couldn’t blame either the people of Israel or David himself for forgetting what God used to say about kings:

They’re dangerous.

A generation or so ago, when the people of Israel got together and demanded that God choose them a king — so that they could keep up with all the other nations — God warned them.

“You know,” God said, “Kings are oppressive, greedy, and power-happy. They take your kids - for soldiers and court servants. Kings take your money, or your produce, the best of what you have, and then still require you to obey them without question. I’m telling you people, kings are dangerous.”

But the people insisted, so God gave them a king.

God chose Saul, and then God chose David, (and then God decided, I’m going to get out of the choosing business; we’ll just run with David and his kids as long as you need a king.)

And now years of civil war have been peacefully settled, David and his army are winning their foreign battles, God’s home is established in David’s city; things seem to be working well.

Which is where today’s story starts: 

In the spring.  The “time when kings go out to war.”

(Hm, ancient Israel, like contemporary America, seems to have gotten pretty used to being at war in foreign countries)

But this time David’s home, wandering his palace, while his army lays siege to Rabbah.

He goes up to his roof which gives him a good view, spots a woman having a bath, and with little further ado he sends for her and takes her.

The text is spare and full of abrupt verbs - smoothed over a bit in our English translation - and it might intentionally echo God’s warning to the last generation of Israel.

David just takes what he sees, takes a woman who belongs to another (who in our contemporary perspective we know should belong only to herself).

He takes what he wants, and then when he realizes he’s about to get caught, he takes an innocent man’s life, which not so incidentally costs David’s army a lot of other lives.

“See?” says God, “I told you so.

Even the best and most lovable of kings are takers.” Dangerous.

There is a whole tangled nest of sin and power and assumptions and harm in this story, a lifetime of guilt, murder, manslaughter, rape.

God condemns all that; eventually punishes David, but seems to look out of this story at the people of Israel, and the rest of us, sighing and saying, “Well, I told you so.”

None of that changes God’s love for us, none of it diminishes God’s love - not even for guilty, messy David. But I’m increasingly sure God wonders, sometimes or often, “Will they ever learn???”

Twenty-first century Americans are no strangers to these habits.

We elect politicians - over and over - who take our children to war, spend our taxes in ways we never wanted or approved, fail our moral standards in mild or spectacular ways, and get caught up in their own power and position.

We defend beloved cultural leaders, often treat charges of rape, drugs, cheating, abuse as negligible. When sports and entertainment heroes have lost their integrity to the seductive corruption of power, we find it easy to act as if this mistake doesn’t really matter, until overwhelming evidence forces us to concede their failure and our own.

None of that changes God’s love for us,

not for Bill Cosby, Tom Brady, Lance Armstrong, Ray Rice, Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich,

nothing diminishes God’s love for them or for you or me.

But I’m sure God wonders, “Will they ever learn?”

Will we only see what we are comfortable seeing,

or will we learn, someday, to see as God invites us to see?

That’s the question John is asking us when he tells the most famous Jesus story of all.

Aside from the crucifixion and the empty tomb, the story of how Jesus fed a multitude until they could eat no more is the only story told in every gospel. It’s the one story about Jesus that everyone knew. 

And when John tells it, you can hear him wondering, will we ever learn?

He tells us that Jesus tests the disciples: setting them up to imagine and dream for a miracle, setting them up to risk extravagant trust in God, 

and then has to work around them when Philip expresses what we all know is true: It’s impossible to feed this many people at once.

So Jesus does it anyway: 

does the impossible, produces extravagant abundance from a couple of fish sandwiches, and feeds everyone.

The crowd is awed and delighted, but you can hear that John is disappointed in them, too. They call Jesus a prophet - they know he’s tight with God - but they’re missing the point of God’s vivid, world-changing presence among them, of God’s miraculous assurance that whatever we have is enough and more.

They want God’s miracles more than they want God’s presence or God’s truth, so they decide to try to make Jesus the king - even though we should all know by now that kings are dangerous.

It’s not only politically stupid — since it makes them rebels against the current government (which isn’t at all fond of freedom of expression or of protest movements) — but it’s a massive theological blunder, a big spiritual mistake, to try to turn God’s promise to us; God’s personal care for us into an ordinary government function that we find easier to understand, to imagine that promise and care are under human control.

It can’t diminish God’s love for us, but I have no doubt that God sometimes looks at us, sighing,  and says, “Oh, will you ever learn?”

We can.

Taken historically and as a group, we don’t have a terrific track record when it comes to trusting God to lead us, shape us, feed us.

Individually we have our grace-filled moments, but generally and predictably, humans like a government, an identity, an economy, that we’ve shaped for ourselves, run by other human beings, and sort of under human control.

But we can learn.

We can use the betrayals of David and our own politicians, the all-too-human failings of cultural heroes, to remind us by contrast of God’s unpredictable but never-failing grace, God’s care for the marginalized, God’s insistence that we, too, love as God loves and reject the glossy sheen of human success.

Or when the news you follow mentions new accusations or admissions from Bill Cosby; another tragic proclamation of official helplessness in the face of gun violence, or the airwaves fill with political candidates promising to run everything the right way, let our human failings and ambitions remind you that God already feeds us better than we could ever feed ourselves, that God wants to be the one we trust with our most basic needs, not just our spiritual fulfillment.

And if you, too, suspect that sometimes God is looking at our world and saying, “Well, I told you so,” then just imagine - and believe! - God’s joy and satisfaction when we do take God’s good advice; when we receive God’s gifts with trust, when we learn to look for God’s promise instead of making our own plans.

Believe we’ll learn, someday.

But know that God’s ready for us to start today.

God has already told us so!

Empathy

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Are you planning a vacation this summer? Do you want one? A chance to “get away” from the busyness - or just the sameness - of work and daily life?  Looking for refreshment and renewal?

I am.

I’m going to the beach in August.

And so are the disciples.

Not going to the beach, but looking forward to vacation.

They’ve been very busy roaming the countryside: calling for repentance, healing people, evicting demons, and teaching about Jesus’ good news.  

Now they’re back reporting to Jesus, so successful that they don’t even have a chance to eat - too many people are responding to their work and clamoring to know Jesus, to hear more, to be part of this fabulous thing that God is doing in the world.

That’s great for the gospel, but the disciples are stressed, so Jesus tells them all it’s time for vacation. “Come with me,” he says, “to get away from it all.”

But when they get to their retreat, what do they find?

Crowds.

You’d think they’d gone to Disney World. Or the O’Hare pickup circle on a holiday weekend.

The crowd heard they were going away and rushed to get ahead of them.

They want more good news, more inspiration, or healing, or a personal moment with the chance to say I got to talk to the famous rabbi (if they’d had selfies in those days, you know everyone in that crowd would be angling for one with Jesus).

Maybe you actually love crowds, but if your mind is on getting away, the most human reaction would be some kind of cranky: annoyance, frustration, even turning around and walking away.

Mark doesn’t tell us how the disciples reacted to the crowd, but Mark does tell us what Jesus felt. “He was moved with compassion, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
His gut and his heart respond: it’s empathy.

You’ve felt empathy before, right?

You hear about a child’s illness, and your heart twists for the child and her parents. A friend is unfairly fired, and your gut fires up with anger and sympathy on his behalf.

Or you’ve rejoiced with someone, sharing elation and a feeling of success: when the Hawks win the Stanley Cup, when a friend gets engaged, when your child triumphs in a game or lands that fabulous new job.

It seems to happen to Jesus a lot in the gospels, and all the time when he’s confronted with crowds, but for most of us, empathy’s less likely, less automatic  when we’re faced with a crowd in need, instead of one friend or even one stranger.

Last weekend the New York Times ran an article about that.  Studies show that when the people in danger or need are not like us, our empathy doesn’t trigger as readily. When it might cost us more — when we might need to spend money or use more of our time, our skill — empathy is harder to trigger, and we’re less likely to try to feel it.

So I think it’s a fair bet that a bunch of hard-working, exhausted disciples who have spent themselves taking care of people’s needs for healing and inspiration to the point that they didn’t even eat didn’t feel like they had a lot of empathy to give.

Jesus had taken them away for Sabbath, for rest,

and then actually plunges them right into more need, more work.

Perhaps he wanted to teach them something the authors of that New York Times piece say they’ve just started to learn: that we can actually grow our empathy, our compassion, that we can feel and care more, or more deeply just by wanting to.

Even just by knowing that we should.

That we can genuinely feel more, open our hearts more, build up all the benefits of trust and health and understanding and unity that empathy provides, just by wanting to, just by knowing that we should.

And it’s possible that this - this growing empathy - is the kind of Sabbath rest we sometimes need the most.

I know that when I’m worn out, when I’m ready for vacation or just busy busy busy, I feel my heart contract, withdraw, and get grumpy when I turn on the news and it’s full of shootings, economic crisis, arson, environmental mess, and all those other needs or sorrows.

I want to put off until later the needs of my family and friends, or just not worry about everyone’s feelings.

But when my heart does open when I’m tired and busy; when my gut is moved with your pain or joy, with the needs of whole nations struggling to survive, or strangers fighting prejudice or ignorance or hate, I’m actually happier.

I feel my relationships deepen and grow, and know I can make enough difference; that I can - and we can - change the world, even just a little bit at a time.

We promise this at baptism, actually.

You promised, or your godparents promised for you (or you’ll promise today, when we renew our baptismal covenant) to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

We’ve actually promised to keep on growing our empathy,

to seek the image of God in people who are nothing like us, and to love them as ourselves.

So I tried it out this week.

I listened to the news, and actually felt more optimistic about all that debt and austerity chaos in Europe, because feeling for the pain of the pensioners and the politicians caught up in that mess actually helped restore my faith in humanity.

I read - instead of skimmed - Facebook posts and comments from the many friends or acquaintances who are dealing with illness and family crisis and loss, and was surprised to realize that I felt more whole, even refreshed, when I responded — even if I was clumsy or cliched — than when I passed on by because I was tired or just don’t know what to say.

I can’t promise that it will work for you, but both the New York Times and Jesus seem to think it will, so for Jesus’ sake I think it’s worth a try.

Take one of these cards and put it in your wallet, or on your TV remote or computer keyboard. Slip it in next to one of the ways you interact with the world.

It’s the words of Jesus that we heard today, the invitation to “come away, and rest awhile;”

and on the other side, the words of our baptismal promise:

to seek and serve Christ in all, loving my neighbor as myself.

Use this as a lens to look at others, and into your own heart.

Because I think that Jesus is telling us that in the end these two things are one and the same:

that we’ll find rest in giving love,

that love lasts longer and renews us better than any vacation.

And that’s good news, now and always.

Fault Lines

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19; Mark 6:14-29

If I’ve learned one thing from the scripture we hear this morning, it’s that partying too hard can be dangerous. That’s a story I heard a lot in high school, when we had presentations from Mothers Against Drunk Driving; but the Bible isn’t warning us against drinking and driving, 

but rather about what we find in ourselves when we let it all out.

Take Herod.

He’s having a great time at his birthday party.  The feasting is fabulous, and when his daughter starts dancing, Herod’s so happy he can’t contain his delight - he offers her half his kingdom, anything she can imagine.

(Don’t get wound up in interpretations of the story that focus on incest and lust - the context is just as suggestive as a proud papa watching his daughter kick the most important goal in a soccer match as anything else. “Great job, honey! I’m going to buy you a new car!”)

The party has gone to his head and Herod has lost his sense of perspective.

And he suffers for it.

Daughter consults mother on how best to use this blank check; mother seizes the opportunity for revenge; and now Herod is on the hook for murder. Required to kill the prophet he kind of likes and respects - his best connection to God, however uncomfortable - and give the bloody head of John the Baptist to the women in his life. 

He can’t go back on his word in front of his guests, so he gives up John to satisfy his wife’s desire to avenge her humiliation. An insult to her that was really earned by Herod in the first place. In first-century context, it’s definitely Herod who is at fault for breaking Torah and marrying his sister-in-law, though when John the Baptist calls him on it,  her reputation gets tarnished even more than his.

It’s nasty, all around. It’s stupid, vicious, creepy, and the only gospel story I’ve ever found where half the resource websites suggest you shouldn’t even preach on it.

Parties are dangerous.

You can lose your head.

You don’t even need alcohol to get yourself in trouble.

It can happen when you’re high on God.

That’s what’s up in David’s story this morning.

He’s gone out to bring the ark of the Lord, the physical symbol of God’s presence, to a new home in Jerusalem, where it will bless God’s people and underline the success of David’s reign.

They know it’s dangerous - the ark has already killed a man who merely tried to keep it from crashing to the ground - but it’s also blessed the man who kept the dangerous box safe for David. So he goes off to get it in a joyful procession - a moving party, complete with band and feasting - and he’s dancing along the way because he’s caught up in the exhilarating moment.

He brings it into Jerusalem with music and spectacle, free food and public celebration (think Stanley Cup rally and ticker tape parade) and more dancing in the streets.

And David’s wife sees this, and despises him.

The text implies that he’s been partying in his birthday suit, naked as he was born - just with a sort of liturgical apron wrapped around him - and that it’s the last straw for Michal, who loses her respect for him, calls him on the embarrassing nature of his public display,

and starts the fight that ends their marriage.

You can’t really blame Michal for this.

She was in love with David once, when he was a musician in her father’s court and she was a princess, and David fought a hero’s battle against the Philistines to earn the chance to marry her.

But politics are messy, and God picks David to replace Saul.

So Michal’s father and her husband battle to the death.

And her father uses her as a pawn, marrying her off to someone else, while David’s off risking the life she saved for him when her dad was after him. And when the two are finally reunited, David’s already got six other wives and a bunch of kids, and shows no inclination to stop marrying all the pretty girls in sight.

It was a mess before he went dancing in the street; it’s just so clear to her now.

The parties show up the fault lines in families that were already there.

The parties show up the messiness of our human attempts to have our relationship with God work out comfortably, and according to our own moral judgements.

These parties are dangerous, because they expose us to ourselves and one another.

There’s no simple gospel in these stories

No simple takeaway about abundance and generosity.

No healing; no redemption.

Yes, it’s good for the long arc of Israel’s history to have both God and David reigning together in Jerusalem; good for us to be warned by John the Baptist’s fate about the risks of trying to get other people to follow God’s law, but there’s a reason the online resources told me not to preach this stuff.

It’s not good news.

Yet that might be exactly why we need to hear this.

Because I’m pretty sure that lots of families have fights,

and lots of marriages have problems,

and I’m not the only one who’s ever woken up regretting what happened at a party.

(Right??)

There are fault lines in my life, messy compromises in my relationships, plenty of semi-conscious attempts to make God’s way go my way.

If that’s not true for you, you can stop listening. But if it’s even a little familiar, then it’s worth noting that we’re hearing our own story in the Bible today.

We’re hearing the fault lines that are already there, family history that stresses and strains us, in spite of and even because of love and good intentions.

Seeds of bitterness and danger lurk in our lives, the reality of fragmentation and broken relationships, even death, sometimes.

There’s a lot in our stories that’s like the stories of Herod and David: mess ups that just aren’t redeemed; ugly episodes that aren’t good news.

But the news that’s worth listening for today is that our guilt and grief and hurt and errors are part of God’s story, too. That even if they are not healed, even if the losses are not redeemed,

the rifts that don’t get reconciled are still in the story.

God’s story has the bitter regrets and nasty insults and dumb mistakes that my story has,

and that yours might.

And God’s story doesn’t fix them all, heal everything, or wash it all away.

And that’s what I want you to take from this Sunday into your Monday afternoon, or Thursday morning, or the uncomfortable hours of the Morning After - 

wherever failure and regret and guilt and anger show themselves in your life.

Work to redeem and reconcile, with all your heart, but remember that all that broken mess is in God’s story too.

Not because it’s good news,

not because it’s redemptive,

but because you’re in God’s story.

I’m in that story, we are in it.

And when God doesn’t fix it,

God still tells it like it is.

God isn’t embarrassed by our nakedness or our shame,

doesn’t hide from our faults or help us hide them from ourselves,

doesn’t smooth out the bitter and rush to put the pain behind.

The truth to listen for today is the assurance that even when it’s not good news,

God tells it like it is, and gets on with the story — that powerful, holy story which will never, ever, leave us out.