Thursday August 5 Pentecost 10
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Psalm 85
Trust that God will save us, despite what we have done, and will fill us with plenty and fill the land with justice.
Psalm 86
O God, you have been so generous to me, I trust you, and ask you to uphold me when I am attacked.
2 Samuel 11: 1-27 What’s Samuel about?
David commits adultery with a married woman, Bathsheba, violating her monthly purification rituals. The offence is not only sexual, but is abusive because David is abusing his power to take advantage both of the woman and of her husband, a soldier under obedience to him and is flouting God’s holiness codes.
When Bathsheba reports she is pregnant by him, David recalls her husband Uriah from battle back to Jerusalem so that it will appear that she became pregnant by her husband. David’s invitation to Uriah to go home and wash his feet has a second meaning in this ancient culture in which “feet” was used as a euphemism for one’s private parts. But Uriah, who is not even a Jew, remains faithful to the commitments to holy war despite David’s repeated cajoling over several days and he continues to practice holy celibacy as God required in battle. In defiance of David’s political, sexual and social pressures, Uriah does not sleep with his wife. David then sends him back into battle with secret instructions that he be killed by the Philistine so David can marry Bathsheba and hide the outcome of his adultery.
King David has used his power to violate personal holiness, commit adultery and murder, and defile the holiness of war (as they understood it). There will be consequences, not only for David personally as we shall soon see, but as the writers make clear, for the entire nation as this sort of injustice becomes increasingly typical of kings who in that world were absolute despots not accountable to anyone.
These stories remain amazingly contemporary in our world. Rather than being fascinated by the antics of those in power in our day, do we put our energy into objecting to the abuse of those who are less powerful, and aware that the God of justice will not be mocked?
Mark 9: 2-13 What’s Mark about?
Jesus has just spoken about some of his disciples seeing the resurrection despite their reluctance to undertake the necessary sacrifices. In the transfiguration, some of the disciples do indeed see Jesus in his resurrected glory, in company with Moses who was given the Ten Commandments, the codification of justice, and with Elijah who challenged the king of his time because of the king’s injustice. It’s clear that Jesus is the new embodiment of justice. But the disciples do not yet understand because they cannot yet put their trust in dying with Christ, the necessary enactment of justice in an unjust world. Jesus reminds them that people rejected Elijah, just as they will reject him. And so, by implication, will the disciples.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life
and the word of his kingdom.
Renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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