Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
August 2, 2009
2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gets us off to a good start in my sermon for today. “I beg you,” says Paul, “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Paul goes on to talk about how we discern the gifts we have been given to serve God in his church. But first, we have to BE the church. Before we act, before we do anything to serve God in this church and in this world, we have to show ourselves worthy of the call God has given us to be the church. And what are the signs which show us to be worthy? Paul tells us the signs are humility, gentleness, patience the willingness to bear each other’s faults and frailties in love, making the effort to maintain unity in the midst of division, and being a peacemaker in the midst of strife.
Paul really lays it on us, doesn’t he? He has some pretty high expectations of us church people. But we need to remember, Paul doesn’t set the standard for how we are to be the church. Jesus does. And in Paul’s letters to his churches he is always calling us to measure ourselves by the standards set for us by the example of Jesus. This is what makes us worthy of God’s call to be his church, with each other and in the world.
In our lesson from Samuel today, David stands in contrast to that worthiness. The many sins he has committed are not worthy of the God who called David to be King to his people. But thank God for his best friend, Nathan, who reminds David of the high standard to which he has been called. Nathan who is not afraid to hold David’s feet to the fire for his sin of adultery and his many sins to cover it up; murder, an illegitimate pregnancy, an unlawful marriage.
Paul and Nathan show us two completely different approaches to being a standard bearer for God. Paul is didactic. He tells us what the signs are, and they become the standard by which we measure our own worthiness as a people of God called to be his church in the world. Nathan, on the other hand, tells a story in the hope that David will see the unworthiness of his behavior. Nathan’s story convicts David of the very sins the rich man has committed. The problem is David can see the sin in the rich man in the story, but he cannot recognize the same sin in himself. This brings Nathan to realize that David has not only been able to cover-up his sins; he has covered up his conscience. And now it’s up to Nathan to lay it bare. When David, in his self-righteousness, declares that this rich man should die for his lack of pity, and the poor man should be paid four times what was stolen from him, Nathan confronts David with these famous words in scripture: “You are the man!” Needless to say David is stunned by this revelation. Stunned by the truth of it. He realizes how far he has fallen from God’s standards for being Israel’s King and he recognizes how deeply he has sunk into sin.
But almost immediately, and to David’s credit, he shows us a sign of his worthiness to be restored to the King God has called him to be. Unlike most rulers or people of power who are caught in sin and its cover-ups, David immediately acknowledges his sin before God and he willingly accepts God’s punishment. At the same time, David is also penitent, as we can see in Psalm 51. It is generally accepted that David wrote this psalm in his despair over his sin. But he also wrote this psalm as a vow of repentance and a promise of hope for restoring his life to God.
Paul begs us “to live a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” And he gives us a set of standards by which we can measure our life by Jesus’ life. Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Bearing with one another in love. Maintaining unity in community. Making peace in the midst of strife. Those of us who are called to be the church know the value of such standards for our life. They make us worthy of our calling to be the church. But we also know how easy it is for us to fall short of such standards. This is why it is important for us to hear David’s story today. David’s fall is steep. But David shows us a way back to God by another set of standards God places in our tool box for those times when we fall short, or fall into sin. Tools which make it possible for us to rebuild our lives and restore them to God. Tools which provided the means by which we can be forgiven and reconciled to God and to each other.
Like David, and like the people of Paul’s congregation in Ephesus, we can always see the sin or shortcomings in others; not so easy to see them in ourselves. And we are not always willing or able to measure our life by the gift of Jesus’ life. We need others to help us see when we are falling short or falling into sin. We need the help of those who will support us in the life God is calling us to live, and make us accountable when we are not. We need people like Paul who will hold up a mirror so we can see the measure of Jesus’ life in us. We need people like Nathan to call us on our stuff, to bring us out of denial, and confront us with the truth of our faults and sins. And we need them to love us and forgive us in the process. Most of all, we need Jesus to lead us into a deeper awareness and understanding of who he is, who God is, and who we are so that he becomes the bread for our life. Not the food of miracles, but spiritual food for our journey through this world.
Truth be told, we are a lot like the people in our gospel lesson today who journeyed to Capernaum be fed by Jesus. We also come to this church to be fed by Jesus. But if we have come to worship today only to taste the stories of our scripture, only to sing music of our hymns, only to speak the words of our prayers, only to eat the bread and wine of our Eucharist, then we will leave hungry, and our worship will not make us worthy of our calling. Our scripture, hymns, prayers and Eucharist are meant to provide us with spiritual food which can take us deeper into God’s mysteries and God’s meaning, and God’s purpose for our life.
Jesus performs a miracle for the people who gather with him on that hillside. And each Sunday we gather for worship in this place Jesus hopes to perform a miracle in us. A miracle of spiritual growth and transformation. But that won’t happen if we only come to eat the material food we receive by our worship. It didn’t happen for the 5,000 Jesus fed on that hillside, either. Many of them went to Jesus the next day, because they were hungry again. They didn’t get it. They didn’t get the point of his miracle. The miracle was not about feeding their stomachs. The miracle was a sign meant to point them to a deeper hunger which can never be satisfied by material food. They didn’t get it. But we don’t always get it, either. And when we are not “getting it” we find that we continue to be hungry, too; despite the food we are given to eat in our worship; despite the food we are given to eat in this world. We go hungry despite the material things we consume, despite the entertainment we enjoy; despite the power, or fame, or fortune we accumulate and despite the love and regard we have from others. We are hungry because we are left with a longing which cannot be satisfied by the food which feeds us in this world. Hungry because the world blinds us to the food we really need. Spiritual food. The only food which can satisfy our deepest hunger; our hunger for God, and a hunger for the life God is calling us to live.
The question for us is, whose call do we answer to? The world calls us by many voices to eat the food it gives us to eat and to live the life it wants us to live. They are voices which call us by material means to material ends which are never ending. And they give us food which can only satisfy our material appetites, and only for the moment. But today we answered God’s call to worship. We heard God’s voice over all the others, and that’s a good thing. We were willing to leave the world, if only for an hour or two, to come to this church to be with Jesus. But we need to be mindful that our call to worship will just be another call from this world if we do not enter into its mystery and meaning for our life. If all we want from our worship experience is to feel good. If all we get when we come to this communion table is bread and wine. Jesus wants us to enter into the miracle which can happen here for each of us here; he wants his message to have meaning and he wants its meaning to transform all, or some part of our life.
The saying goes, we are what we eat. If we read between the lines in Paul’s letter to his church in Ephesus we can guess what food his people were being fed by their world; they were being fed pride, rudeness, impatience, division and strife. As a community of faith these believers came together to eat spiritual food, but they remained prisoners of this world. Paul, however would have them be prisoners of the Lord, fed by the spiritual food of humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity and peace. When God called David to be King to his people, David had an appetite for spiritual food which made him worthy of God’s call to be Israel’s King. But David began feeding on the world’s appetite for power and possession. And while God continued to offer David the food of life, David chose to eat the food of destruction and death. David could have remained a prisoner of the world; a prisoner to sin, but by choosing to acknowledge his sin, David chose to eat the fruit of God’s mercy and forgiveness. And while he was made to suffer the consequences of his sin, he was no longer imprisoned by it.
Today God has called us to worship to feed the hunger of our heart and the hunger of our soul. There is a miracle waiting to happen in us by the ways Jesus can feed our hunger. But we have to go beyond reading the stories of scripture, singing the music of hymns, saying the words of our prayers and eating the bread and wine we bring to this table. We need to go deeper to fine their meaning for our life. We need to be open to the ways they might change us, and lead us to live a life worthy of the life God is calling us to live. And we will know the signs when we see them. For Paul they will be a measure of our capacity for humility and gentleness, patience and forbearing love, unity in our diversity and peace in our strife. For David, the signs will be a measure of our willingness to repent of our faults and sins and return to the life God is calling us to live. And in a world like ours, such signs of God’s grace can look like miracles in themselves.
And now, the Lord is about to prepare his table for us. Jesus is ready to feed us with the bread of life. So. Let’s eat.