Living the Word: What We Carry With Us

IN THE LECTIONARY PASSAGES for these weeks following Pentecost, we find God working in and through the ordinary: a shepherd boy, bread, dancing. In each passage God breaks through with incredible revelation; some promise, some challenge, some person unexpected. Not everyone in the passages notices. Paying attention is crucial. We’ll have to be open to being caught off guard, being surprised. The Holy Spirit gives us eyes to see. As we engage in leadership and ministry these weeks, what we are sure to find is Jesus showing up in all the places we might not expect, when we’re washing dishes, driving in the car, eating a meal. And we certainly don’t expect him in the faces of the white poor, in the lives of racially profiled black youth, or in the stories of the undocumented.

We bring into worship our vestments, our commentaries, our manuscripts. God speaks through these—no surprise there. But God grips us in these unexpected places. These are what we should carry with us into worship every Sunday. But we will need more than eyes to make them preach; we’ll need power. The Holy Spirit gives that too. It makes the heart come alive. The gospel artist Fred Hammond said it best: “When the Spirit of the Lord comes upon my heart, I will dance like David danced!” Dancing and singing shape the heart of God’s new community, for joy, for freedom, for hope. May we be open to the Spirit’s vision and boldness!

[ July 5 ]
Shepherd or King?

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

REVERSAL IS CENTRAL to the way God works in the world. “The Lord said to [David]: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel” (2 Samuel 5:2b). David the shepherd boy, the youngest of eight, a social nobody, becomes the king of all of Israel. This is no mere human decision. To call David a shepherd is the Israelite leaders claiming to be making a decision about their new king in line with Yahweh’s intentions from the beginning (see 1 Samuel 16:1-13).

The metaphor of shepherd is crucial. David’s life and leadership is a mix of shepherd and wolf (2 Samuel 5:8; 12:1-4). Israel finds itself aspiring for what only God can provide (Psalm 123), whether that’s a king or a shepherd—and we do the same. And God does provide, in Jesus. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). In David, king replaces shepherd; in Jesus, true shepherd is king.

Jerusalem is domesticated, comfortable, and royal—“the city of David.” Jesus’ hometown is a joke (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46). He is a vagabond, no home, no possessions (Mark 6:6b-11). David is esteemed for his mighty acts and anointed king by “bone and flesh” (2 Samuel 5:1). Jesus is disdained and rejected by his own people and does nothing there worth talking about (Mark 6:1-6). David’s campaign ridicules and excludes the marginalized (2 Samuel 5:8). Jesus’ kingdom makes room for all, especially the outcasts, the sick, the poor, the prisoner, the stranger.

In Jesus we see the ultimate reversal, the fullest embodiment of God’s intentions for David, intentions that so easily escape us. We continue to search for kings with swords and castles and armies. Jesus rides on donkeys, waves olive branches, dies on a cross. He turns the world upside down.

[ July 12 ]
Holy Ghost Dance

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

DANCING, SHOUTING, leaping. Sounds like a party! David and Israel are ecstatic at the recovery of the ark as a sign of Yahweh’s endorsement of Israel’s new monarchical direction. Ritual liturgy and political power kiss (Psalm 85:8-13). David rejoices, shouts, and dances “with all his might” (2 Samuel 6:14). It is a far cry from the monotone echo chambers found in much Western Christian worship.

Behind this liturgical extravagance, however, is discord between David and Michal, tension borne of power negotiations (2 Samuel 6:16-23). What will be the leadership style to represent Yahweh? Will it be Saul’s old rule of strength, positioning, and domination or David’s example of the lowly being exalted? David wins—which means we can all win. That God identifies with and includes the lowly, the nobodies, and the outsiders means we can all be God’s people. Though David himself doesn’t always live up to Yahweh’s rule, the Spirit guarantees this rule by the joining of Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 1:12-14). A joining through the unity and peace made possible through Christ’s breaking of hostile social barriers (Ephesians 2:11-22).

It is this rule, this order, this social possibility that is worthy of our praise (Ephesians 1:14b). Worship and politics are not conveniently divided. The Holy Spirit’s boundary-transgressing love brings a community into existence that represents something altogether different from what the world can imagine: a family of radical love and welcome that relativizes the social distinctions determinative for this world (Ephesians 1:3-14). A different world is possible, built on something other than pride-motivated rules of exclusion and contempt (Ephesians 2:11-12; 2 Samuel 6:16). Dancing and singing in God’s new community demonstrate a different way to belong, a new way of doing politics. This is a public faith not unlike that of my African-American ancestors whose feet danced in the streets—not just in church—to a cappella singing of “We Shall Overcome.” Not just to the Hammond B-3 behind the hymnody, but to tunes of dissent. Return to this Holy Ghost dance—more Selma than shoutin’, more Ferguson than “fallin’ out”! Cornel West’s famous quote applies: “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

[ July 19 ]
Home With God

2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

IN 2 SAMUEL, the Lord asks a pointed question: “Are you the one to build me a house to live in?” (7:5). One of the most fundamental of human mistakes is to think we can do God a favor. David thinks he can. So does the prophet Nathan. Our determinations to domesticate God are feeble attempts at control. “Our arms are too short to box with God,” so to speak. Yet still we try, with religious piety even. “‘Look,’” David said, “‘I am living in a beautiful cedar palace, but the Ark of God is out there in a tent!’” (2 Samuel 7:2, New Living Translation). God sees right through our power plays even when they’re cleverly disguised behind a veneer of religiosity. God cannot be domesticated. God will not be bound. Not by us, at least.

Because God doesn’t need a home: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Chosen One has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). God is free to choose to be bound. And God does choose. God makes a home for us (2 Samuel 7:11), for God’s own dwelling place (Psalm 23:6) is in our hearts (Ephesians 3:17). But only a heart that is free from ego, from the compulsion to control, can be at home with this God. A controlling heart is one that hides from self and neighbor, one that creates barriers to strangers and enemies, one that is distanced from God. God is determined to break such separations in the human heart.

In Open Mind, Open Heart, Father Thomas Keating puts it this way: “The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from [God] ... We fail to believe that we are always with God and that [God] is part of every reality. ... The interior experience of God’s presence activates our capacity to perceive [God] in everything else—in people, in events, in nature.” God chooses to be bound to us, nailed to us even, as together we are “members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:19-20). In the words of a poem for Archbishop Oscar Romero, “we are workers, not master builders.” God builds the only home suitable for God and all of creation. The old saying rings true: “Home is where the heart is.”

[ July 26 ]
Bread or Junk Food?

2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 145:10-18; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

WALTER BRUEGGEMAN writes that “when the disciples, charged with feeding the hungry crowd, found a child with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread. These are the four decisive verbs of our sacramental existence. Jesus conducted a Eucharist, a gratitude. He demonstrated that the world is filled with abundance and freighted with generosity. If bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all. Jesus is engaged in the sacramental, subversive reordering of public reality.”

The myth of scarcity is the belief that there is not enough to go around. The rich stay rich; the poor stay poor. It’s just the way it is. Right? The vast majority of the world’s resources continue to disproportionately belong to an incrementally smaller percentage of the world’s population. The gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is worse than during the Great Depression. It’s easy to believe that resources are scarce, unless you have some sense of justice; unless you see budgets and economics as moral discourse.

Abundance is the way God has always operated (Genesis 1-2). Creation came into existence through the generosity of a self-giving, Trinitarian love. All of creation mirrors God’s own capacity for generosity, to give, to share. The capacity to share is made possible by a heart of gratitude, by a discerning mind that understands the notion of “enough.” The capacity for good, however, means there’s also capacity for evil. These are times when we are too short-sighted to see God’s provision, when we take what doesn’t belong to us, when we take violently, causing death—social and physical (2 Samuel 11:1-15).

This is all the more reason to pray. The Holy Spirit wants to pour out abundant gifts to satisfy our needs (Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 4:19). What we need most to sustain a capacity for generosity is that fuel that makes it go: the power of love. Brueggemann is relevant again: “When people forget that Jesus is the bread of the world, they start eating junk food—the food of ... Herod, the bread of moralism and of power.” If we avoid the junk food and eat the bread of love, then we’ll have food for all, so that none go hungry. That’s good news!