A Reflection for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost Thomas E. Wilson Guest Celebrant and Preacher
Grace, Plymouth, and St. Luke's Roper, NC` July 28, 2024
2 Samuel 11:1-15 Psalm 14. Ephesians 3:14-21. John 6:1-21
"All Of It"
When I looked at the lessons for today I saw a theme: “All Of It”.
“All of it!” In the Collect, I saw a message that with God's Message is that with God's help we can get through all of the garbage that life seems to throw our way sometimes. “ All of it!”
“All of it!” In the Hebrew Testament David the King wants all of it! What ever it is that his little heart, or whatever part of his body desires; he wants all of it. The story begins with the line,"In the Spring, Kings go out to war." David sends his troops out, but he himself doesn't go out to war. Because there is something else he wants. David has several wives and they have children. But he wants more. Much more to fill his appetite.
“All of it!” David's palace is the highest one of the city, because he wants no one to look down on him. He looks out of his windows and he can see everything that is going on in HIS City, it is not for nothing that it is called the “City of David.” He sets up his capital there on this Hill city, but one problem he has to deal with is that it is hard to get enough water. It will take another three centuries before a water Tunnel is built by King Hezekiah, as he prepares to resist an invasion, so that there will be enough water to get to the cities west side.
“All of it!” One day, David looks out from his perch over his city, and he watches Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one his commanders taking a bath, purifying herself after her period. The author of this passage wants to point this out, to show that she was not already pregnant, since Uriah was away serving in the army. David looks at Bathsheba and he wants her. At first all he wants is a dalliance with her, what the British used the phrase, “a little slap and tickle”. After all he was King, King of the whole shebang of a country, and she should be honored that he picked her to solve his boredom. He assumed she would not tell her husband, after all Uriah was David's property as his general. David wanted both the husband AND the wife.
“All of it!” The problem is that Uriah was a man of honor. When David finds Bathsheba is Pregnant, he sends for Uriah to come home from the front. He tries to get Uriah to go home to his wife and resume marital relations so they could just declare the child's birth as “pre-mature”, as at 7 or 8 months. Uriah had made a pledge to be faithful to his call to war and he was a faithful man. And for his honor, he had to die, so David's dishonor would not be made known. David wanted it all. He would even go through a ceremony of adopting the child Solomon. David wanted to have it all. As William Steig used to say: “People are just no damn good!” And yet, our faith tells us that we are loved.
“All of it!” In Psalm 14, the Psalm for today, the 1st line is; “The Fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God' ”. The author of this Psalm, some say it was David himself, has this moment where he see how we are all fools at one time or another and we act as if God is only a fable which our ancestors passed on to us. That Psalm is a perfect fit for David, Uriah and Bathsheba. It is the game we play when we say to ourselves, “Let us pretend that God, if there is one, is off, busy or sleeping, in a parallel universe and is easily confused.” A perfect fit for David, Uriah and Bathsheba and for me more times than I would like to think of.
“All of it!” Paul who know what it was like to be a scoffer of Christ and a beloved by the same Christ and even at the same time. When Paul writes to the people of Ephesus in today's Epistle, he assumes that all of us have the need for a strength greater than ourselves: a perfect fit for the Davids, Uriahs and Bathsheba's of this world and the Pauls, Disciples and Saints of our acquaintance and for those of us who fit into both camps more than we would like to admit. C. S. Lewis’s view of prayer is that we pray not to change God, but to change ourselves. As Paul writes: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
“All of it!” In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is working and more people show up than expected. There is not enough money in their treasury to buy enough food for all . So Jesus takes what is given, all that a young boy has he gives away, five loaves and two fish and breaks it and distributes it to all. Every one is fed and there is enough left over to fill 12 baskets. All of it is given and yet, there is more than enough left over.
“All of it!” This story is a prelude to a story that comes later in the Gospel when Jesus is taken and broken and set on the cross to die. There were so many times Jesus could have taken a different path, but he does what he does with the feeding of the multitude. Jesus has a meal with his disciples where he take and blesses the bread and breaks it giving it to his disciples as an outward and visible sign that this will be done to him. He will be taken by the authorities and ripped with a lash and broken on the cross and given for all the world,. All of it! Every breathe he has, he uses to forgive his tormentors, his companions, his disciples. He dies and in the Resurrection he gives his spirit to all who come to him; not drips and drabs, but all of his Spirit. His spirit, all of it, is in each one of us; if we open ourselves to receive it. The power to forgive; all of it, is given to each one of us so we and the people who we have harmed and the people who harmed us can enter into a new relationship of love; all of it!
“All of it!” Love is not based on approval or merit, but of a decision that is made to love; come what may. We are in a place of history when we wonder what will come next and what is left for all of it and all of us.
“All of it!”When I started to think about this reflection, I began with my own experience with love between me and another human being. In my first marriage which ended in divorce; I was 21 and we went into it with how we could each benefit. By the time came for me to enter a second marriage, my focus changed to how I could give all of myself and accepting and caring for all of her.
“All Of It!”
When younger, I went into a relationship,
Holding back and didn't give all of myself;
Fearing, I'm afraid of losing my very self
When I did enter into a deeper partnership.
I held the other one at distance and at bay
For fear of being swallowed into a mass,
Which only just looked as a nice romance.
It did finally end, one long expected day.
Then I learned what this “love” was liken,
Giving all of myself, accepting all of her,
Giving freedom to each new moment there,
Growing into each new day of deeper ripen.
Even after her death, I still remember it all;
We were blessed, in every moment I recall.
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