July 26, 2009

Denise Kelsall

Pentecost 8     2 Sam 11:1-15     Eph 3:14-21     John 6:1-21

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Absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ ‘power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’ - such common expressions. We all know the truth in those statements and we also know how perverse and insidious the allure of power and the powerful can be. I have met, as I am sure we all have, people who appear and probably are quite ordinary and unremarkable but the power they hold, whether it is political, financial, social, or even religious I might add – whatever their claim to notoriety or fame or position – the powerful are seen to be gilded with an allure and carry a certain indefinable aura of prestige. They inhabit a space that makes them fascinating, desirable, frightening, loathsome, tiresome - take your pick – however we feel, publicly powerful people usually elicit a response of some kind.

King David has ultimate power. Having vanquished his enemies and fought his way into a divinely predicted future – the house of Israel is now a nation and his own predicted dynastic legacy, the house of David is come. Significantly in our story today, for the very first time this warrior king does not lead his army into battle but stays back at the palace. And I wonder, does that indicate change of heart as well as change of fortune. However, David can, it could be said again for the first time, relax a bit - maybe while away a bit of time strolling about in the cool of the evening musing and idly checking his city out. He spies Bathsheba, wants her, takes her, impregnates her, and to cover up has her husband, who is one of his loyal soldiers fighting at the front, killed. Perhaps murdered is a better word. Power, desire, corruption, death - that’s what this story is telling us about.

Jesus, the healer, the miracle worker, the rabbi – the teacher, attracts crowds, numbering up to five thousand. They are hungry. He makes miracles out of five loaves and two fishes – he feeds all 5000 of them and there are still twelve full baskets left over. Jesus can see that the people want to make him a leader, a king maybe, so he skedaddles. Later, in the evening, he walks miles across the stormy sea to the disciples in their boat who are terrified to see him in the middle of the sea. This sort of power is astonishing and miraculous - it defies our human understandings.

Power, generosity, miraculous love.

Both stories are about power but reveal vastly different uses of it.

The power of David is the power we see in much of our world today – we want it so we will have it. Blow the cost in financial, human or environmental terms. We want – I want – individual desire rules. Material wealth and accumulation are the signs of success.

The collective, the communal, the neighbour, the other, the hurting, the hungry – all pale beside the rapacious and brutal desires of powerful corrupt leaders, bankers and businessmen, corporate sharks and wealthy elites, gangsters, warlords and suchlike who plunder, murder and maim with impunity, for their own gain and to maintain their preeminence. Power makes them think that they are invincible, like David. This sort of power feeds upon fear and abuse and finds its home in deceit, greed and violence.

David, the hero, the warrior king begins to fall with this story. He has broken four of the commandments – murder, adultery, lying and coveting your neighbour’s wife. Subsequently his family goes to pieces and the nation of Israel is plunged into chaos and begins to crumble. David’s behaviour descends into that of an oriental despot desperate to maintain power rather than his call to be a ‘man of God.’ He has been seduced by power of the worst kind.

In contrast, the wondrous power of Jesus is open, compassionate and giving, wanting nothing for itself. It tells of the divine wealth of a loving empathetic heart that brings life joy and radical amazement. It is about miraculous power of gift – the gift of life and of love – from Jesus to the five thousand and his disciples, from me to you, from you and me to our own individual worlds and beyond.

This story of Jesus feeding the five thousand is the only miracle story that is in all the four gospels so it is worthy of closer examination. There is no traditional last supper in John’s gospel. This is it. Jesus takes the loaves and fishes and uses the Eucharistic symbolism of take, give thanks and distribute. With such abundant results that there are 12 overflowing baskets of bread left over. In many interpretations this is seen as alluding to the 12 houses of Israel - people who were hungry for justice over against the corrupt priestly powers, the ruling classes who supported them and the might and empire of Rome. Jesus assuages their hunger and gives them abundant new life and hope. We too are on that mountain.

These Jesus stories are, like many stories in the gospels, directly related to corresponding events in the Old Testament. Feeding the hungry masses and stilling troubled waters – remember Moses wandering in the wilderness and the manna that fed his people. The stilling of the waters and the deep darkness upon the sea recall the creation stories found in the opening chapters of Genesis. When Jesus says ‘it is I’ in response to the disciples fear he is really using the same words for God in the Old Testament – ‘I AM.’ This phrase ‘I AM” indicates a theophany, an appearance of God. Here, in Jesus, we are given a new creation, a new way to live, a new and abundant life. It speaks of the wonder and miracle of divine grace between us, and which permeates all of life if we choose to embrace it.

We are here in church today because we believe in the ultimate mystery of life that we call God. The mystery of this incredible and beautiful and painful life that calls us to goodness and hope, that we see most perfectly in Jesus and that we live between each other. The Bible chronicles wonderful and dastardly deeds and stories - ordinary human stories of our faith history that teach us how precious and fallible we are and how to live and not to live. We could say, quoting Mary Daly in our sentence for the day, that God is in and is seen in how we live, how we are together, what passes and moves between us. God is the dynamic of life and is here amongst us as a verb, rather than as a object or a noun.

Most moving for me this week is today’s epistle from Paul to the Ephesians. Our prayer for the day is a paraphrase of this reading. While the progressive theology which St Matthews espouses does not hold to the literal interpretation of biblical texts, nevertheless therein contains such wisdom and beauty. This passage is one of them. Paul exhorts us to go within, to seek our inner voice humbly and in love, as this is where we learn to find the Spirit to live strongly in love and in faith. This is the power we seek, the power that enables us to transform our lives within and between, that stretches beyond, that brings us here together where we share in the deep and inexplicable power of the Eucharist. We do not, like David, fall into chaos and crumble – we are given the power to see clearly in strength with faith, the power to give and forgive, the power to love.