August 4, 2024
Pentecost + 11
Friends,
Every so often, over my career, I’ve used a sermon to bring my community up to speed on something I’d been thinking about –something I contemplated when life in the parish brought new insights to earlier thought or suggested new directions or new horizons. So, for this morning. In one sense, I’m begging your indulgence. In another, I’m wanting you to understand how very important it is for Christians to rethink themselves.
Sometime last year, Pastor Eileen prompted some conversation about the Revised Common Lectionary, the lectionary we use every Sunday morning at St. John’s and which I’ve used since the 1980’s when we put the Lectionary out for trial use. And so the wheels began to turn and the time is right to say something.
A great lifetime ago, I came to work with the late Paul Gibson whose mind and sensibilities are woven throughout the Book of Alternative Services and whose mind and heart later kept a living catalogue of texts and tunes –numbering well into the many thousands which was distilled into Common Praise. Together, Paul and I served in the group of people who, in the mid-to-late 1980’s, created the series of Sunday readings, which is based on the Roman Lectionary for Mass of the late 1960’s. Our Anglican “Lectionary” is a gift and stepchild of Vatican II.
In one of our twice-yearly meetings, when our Lectionary was being put together, Paul advanced the principle that one ought not to proclaim a controverted text without preaching on it. The idea was that you don’t put a reading before the assembly – a reading which holds wanton violence, or a view of God or God’s people which would cause hurt – you don’t read that sort of text without speaking to the concerns raised.
At issue was the story of the Rape of Tamar. Our consultation heard from some women scholars that the text should be included in the Lectionary, to address certain truths, and from other women scholars, “absolutely not — it’s too terrible a text for words”.
Paul’s cautionary note helped some of us to conclude that the story of Tamar was more suited to a serious adult Bible Study than to 12 or 15 minutes of sermonizing, or strategic avoidance, on a summer Sunday morning. Moreover, today, we have a clearer understanding that Sunday worship, this moment, is for all of God’s people, some of innocent ears not ready for that sort of stuff and some of sensitive ears who need not be triggered by that sort of stuff.
I think we made the right call. But then, without fully connecting the left and right sides of our brains, we affirmed the idea that, during the long dog days of summer, we ought to focus on the covenant with Moses, and his adventures, during the Year of Matthew – last year; the covenant with David, and his adventures, in the Year of Mark – this year; and the adventures of Jeremiah, and of the other Prophets, in the Year of Luke—next year.
So every three years, for over 30 years, we’ve covered these long narrative arcs of ancient history in a Lectionary now embedded in our Prayer Book. But one problem quickly emerged. People were increasingly not in church every summer Sunday to hear all of the episodes in these great long sagas. That’s a major problem. This week’s reading makes no sense unless you were around to hear last week’s reading, which made no sense unless you were here the week before. But while this is a significant problem, it is likely not the most hurtful.
A second problem has to do with new learnings and understandings. E.g. We have come to appreciate the great devastation of colonial history, especially a history written by the colonizers as when Israel tried to destroy the Canaanites. The Israelites laid waste this ancient culture, so the story goes. That was last year’s summer fare. But should we still be extolling the virtues of Godly imperialism, vengeance and colonization? Has our own history taught us nothing?
And this year, in the Year of Mark? Well… We get this awful story of the now convicted schemer, adulterer, thief, conman and murderer David whose spectacularly misspent youth we must endure, the price for showing up to church in July or August. Last week, we got the elaboration of David’s crimes. The week before, he was beginning to commit them. This week, the Prophet Nathan takes David apart, first with a parable that David cannot fail to appreciate, especially with the denunciation “You are that man.” –the original “Ecce homo!” — and then with a dressing down that David can only greet with “I have sinned against God.”
Unfortunately, not for the last time. The great moral failure in the story of David is that David never connects his sin against God — which he confesses at the drop of a prophet’s tongue – his “sin against God” with his sin against Bathsheba and his sin against Uriah, which, to remind folks who didn’t catch last week’s episode, involved killing Uriah. David murders Bathsheba’s husband to cover his assault upon Bathsheba and his getting her pregnant. David is an awful man.
Moreover, David also sins against the people he’s called to serve who are made to do his dirty work. He plots. He schemes. They execute. Of course they do! I’m not convinced that God needs to hear today’s summary report that this was all of a sin against God. Tell that to Bathsheba and Uriah. So, the story of David leaves me wondering “Is this the best we can do?”
By the way, these ancient sagas represent our most significant departure from the Lectionary we borrowed, and adapted, but perhaps not to greatest effect. I would change my vote in favour of this version of the Lectionary and I would retract my recommendation to the church I served, if it were up to me today.
And the idea, that, come Christmas, Joseph will be heralded as “of the house and lineage of David” (Gospel of Luke) or that Joseph should be hailed as “Son of David” (Gospel of Matthew) … this will niggle at me precisely because Joseph’s nobility requires no appeal to his ancient and ignoble ancestor, David. Joseph loves Mary, she’s pregnant, he takes counsel from God’s messenger and Mary and Joseph will go on to form a family and have a bunch of kids. But now, the kicker.
David is the same “king” who did nothing when his daughter, Tamar, was assaulted by his son, Amnon, in the story left on the Lectionary cutting room floor. Oh, he gets mad, but he chooses to do nothing. The exact words? “He did not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn.” You wouldn’t want to be second-born, or third or fourth, in that outfit.
David’s son assaults his daughter (they were half-brother and sister) and he does nothing because of some once-upon-a-time understanding of the place of first-born sons. Why would you want to be of the house and lineage of that man. There’s just not enough “that was then, and this is now” to redeem that story. And I’m not sure, as I lean into my dotage, that what we conjure every three years, in its length, breadth and tawdry depth is worthy of our recollection.
So … let me offer you a different story.
When the flames threatened and then overtook the village of Jasper, I heard the mayor of Jasper comforting his people. Perhaps you did too. A significant role of good leaders is simply to comfort their people. Come a certain moment and knowing that a great many homes had been lost — the news was only just trickling out and even now, only responders and officials have been permitted back — in that early moment the mayor stood to face the camera one more time.
And he said something like, “many who have left their homes will now return to the arms of their community.” Something like that. It was so deftly and insightfully put. You’ve left your home. Your home may be gone. But you will still have a community, this community, our community, to be there for you.
What was opaque, initially, was that there was a time when the mayor already knew that his home, his home of a lifetime, his home was gone — the only home on the block to burn, and to burn to the ground. But he would comfort his people and assure them that while homes were lost, their community would stand. With that sort of leadership, I’m sure it will. And eventually, when the time was right, the mayor began to mourn publicly the loss of his home as would so many others. Initially, he could have played the “me too” card. But it wasn’t about him. Good leadership isn’t about the leader but the led.
Mayor Richard Ireland offers the witness of thoughtful, careful, compassionate, unadorned and empathetic leadership in the face of soul crushing communal and personal loss. And you just know that he’ll be working in the trenches and the long arc of the story will see trials, tribulations and triumphs … worthy of a king.
Silence.
And may the church say “Amen”. Amen.
André Lavergne CWA (Pastor)
Honourary Assistant,
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener.