St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
August 5, 2018
Year B, Proper 13:
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
An Appetite for God’s Blessings
If
you were in church last Sunday, I bet that you remember our Old Testament
lesson: the juicy, shameful, and ultimately deeply disturbing story of David
and Bathsheba.
“Previously
on ‘David and Bathsheba’”:
We’re
told that King David was lounging at home in his cedar palace while his army
was off fighting the Ammonites.
Taking
a break from lounging, David takes a walk out on his palace roof, from where he
spots the beautiful Bathsheba as she was bathing.
Bathsheba
was married to one of David’s officers – Uriah the Hittite - but that little
detail doesn’t stop the king from simply taking Bathsheba for his own pleasure.
The
ugly story could have ended there – yet another powerful man taking who and
what he wants - but Bathsheba gives David the unwelcome news that she’s
pregnant.
David
calls Uriah the Hittite back from the front, offers him a little “shore leave”
with his wife, but, in solidarity with his fellow soldiers off fighting in the
war, Uriah refuses the comforts of home.
The
frustrated and desperate David sends Uriah back to the front, giving orders
that Uriah should fight in the frontlines, where, sure enough, as David hoped
and expected, Uriah is killed in battle.
We
didn’t hear the next part of the story, but when David receives word of Uriah’s
death, at first he’s sort of philosophical, kind of fatalistic, about it. He
says,
“The
sword always takes its toll.”
David
may be cool about Uriah’s death, but not Bathsheba. We’re told that she
“lamented” him.
But,
we’re told that after her time of mourning was over, David sent for Bathsheba,
making her his wife, and then she bore him a son.
Perhaps
David thought he had gotten away with his terrible sin. But, as we ay at the
start of each service, there are no secrets hidden from God.
Sure
enough, God is displeased with what David has done and so God sends the prophet
Nathan to David to let him know just how unhappy God is with the king.
Nathan
cleverly tells David a parable – a parable about a rich man who had so much –
who had been so abundantly blessed by God – a rich man who, nevertheless, took
for himself the little that belonged to a poor man.
To
his credit, despite his own terrible sin, David does have a moral sense. He
knows right from wrong, and so he insists that this rich man should die.
And
then the Prophet Nathan delivers the terrible news to David:
“That
man is you.”
And,
Nathan goes on to say that God had given David so much and yet David was so
overcome by his appetite for more that he took another man’s wife – and
arranged for that man’s death – and so, therefore, God is going to punish David
and David’s family.
As
David himself had said earlier, “The sword always takes its toll.”
The
story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah is a powerful and disturbing story – and
it’s a story that still speaks to us today all of these thousands of years
later – because, among other things, it points to the enormous and potentially
destructive power of appetite.
David
wanted someone he couldn’t and shouldn’t have, and by letting his appetite
get the better of him, he brought suffering and destruction into his life and
into the lives of those around him.
Of
course, appetite can cut both ways, right?
We
don’t need to know the story of David and Bathsheba to see only too well the
power of destructive appetites, how people’s lives and souls are twisted by an
insatiable appetite for power, pleasure, wealth, fame, popularity, …
But
appetite can be positive, too.
Maybe
some of you know the 20th Century American writer, Flannery
O’Connor.
She
was a brilliant writer, one of the best of the many fine writers produced by
the South, and also a most devout Roman Catholic.
A
couple of years ago, her prayer journal was discovered among her papers and
then published.
I
have kind of mixed feelings about this because it was private, not really meant
for publication, but that didn’t stop me from buying and reading it – and
finding lots of things to ponder as I read O’Connor praying to – and wrestling
with - God.
Here’s
one line that I thought of as I reflected on today’s lessons:
O’Connor
writes to herself: “God is feeding me and what I’m praying for is an appetite.”
“God
is feeding me and what I’m praying for is an appetite.”
In
today’s Gospel lesson, we pick up right where we left off last week.
You’ll
remember that Jesus miraculously fed the hungry multitudes starting with just
five loaves and two fish and ending up with twelve baskets of leftovers.
Now
it’s the next day and whoever is left from the multitudes is waking up from
their bread-and-fish coma and they are looking for Jesus and his followers.
Now,
I’m sure that part of this search for Jesus is because yesterday’s meal has
been digested and their stomachs are beginning to growl again.
And,
I’m sure that part of this search is because the crowd is hoping that Jesus the
wonder-worker is going to do another miracle, going to show them another sign,
give them another spectacle.
As
we heard today, when they catch up with Jesus, they have the nerve to ask him,
“What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you?
What work are you performing?
(Kind
of sounds like, “What have you done for us lately, Jesus?”)
But,
part of the search for Jesus, I think, is because the crowd has now truly experienced
the “good food” of Jesus – they’ve found the good stuff – and they’ve got an
appetite for more – an appetite for more signs of God’s love and presence – an
appetite for more signs of God’s abundant blessings.
The
crowd is hungry for the bread of life.
The
crowd has an appetite for Jesus.
“God
is feeding me and what I’m praying for is an appetite.”
Well,
God is certainly feeding us here in Jersey City, right?
God
is feeding us with this holy place and with one another, this diverse and
beautiful mosaic that disproves the wrongheaded and increasingly common idea
that all different kinds of people can’t get along – that somehow we can’t love
one another.
God
is feeding us with God’s Word and beautiful music – and, most of all, God is about
to feed us with the bread and the wine of life – the Body and Blood of Christ.
One
of the great privileges of my life is the opportunity to administer Communion –
and I’m often moved and touched and, yes, I’ll admit it, occasionally puzzled
by, how people receive Communion.
But,
you know, out of everybody, more often than not I think it’s the kids who
really get it – who have the greatest appetite for the bread of life, the Body
of Christ.
Almost
always, they put out their hands nice and high, and look up at me expectantly,
as if they’re saying, “Give me the good stuff.”
And,
finally, God is also feeding us with so many opportunities to serve one
another, to serve those in need, to serve those who the world dismisses as not
worth the effort, as too dangerous or too different or, even, like David, too
sinful.
So,
God is blessing us with the opportunity to serve the hungry, the homeless, the
lost people, right here in our community.
God is blessing us
with the opportunity to stand up for the detainees held in notoriously bad
conditions right here in our own county jail, as our county – which means us
– as we profit handsomely from their misery.
And, as you may
have seen on the news the other day, thanks to Pope Francis, God is blessing us
with the opportunity and, yes, the very real challenge to see absolutely everybody
– even the worst, most hardened criminal, the person we might be sure deserves
to die – God is giving us the opportunity to see them as so much more than the
worst things they’ve ever done, to see them as beloved brothers and sisters.
David will pay for
his terrible sins, but God doesn’t throw away David.
And,
God doesn’t throw away anybody.
So, yes, my
friends, there’s no doubt that God is blessing us in so many ways.
God is feeding
us in so many ways.
What I’m praying
for is an appetite.
Amen.
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