Bread of Life II: Angel Food?  Proper 14, Year B

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 130; Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

The Elves have abandoned the story of King David, just as they abandoned Mark’s Way.  Instead we use 1 Kings 19:4-8 as a proof-text to accompany John’s Jesus’s continuing argument with “the Jews” about embodying the bread of life.  Once more, the danger of anti-Semitism appears for the unwary.  The radicality of God’s distributive justice-compassion – which comprises the entire Biblical message –  has been reduced to sugar-drenched, melt-in-your mouth, angel food cake, “baked on hot stones.”  “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another . . .” preaches Pseudo-Paul.  His “rules for the New Life” would certainly make 21st Century home owners’ association meetings much more agreeable.  But is “kindness” what is missing for “the Jews” in John’s contentious community?

In the rush to confirm the orthodox belief that Jesus is God, we ignore the consequences of David’s imperial sin with Bathsheba that continue to reverberate through the walls of David’s house of royal cedar:  2 Sam.12:15b-18:4.  We skip the death of Bathsheba’s child (“But now he is dead, why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?”); the birth of Solomon; the Rape of Tamar (major family dysfunction); the Death of Ammon (killed by Absalom in vengeance for Tamar).  Absalom flees, but then returns to Jerusalem; David forgives Absalom for killing Ammon; but then Absalom usurps David’s throne.  “Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel.”  2 Sam. 16:6b.  (This may remind some of us of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager:  Luke 16:1-8a)  Then David flees Jerusalem.  Zadok the priest, loyal to the King, tries to bring the Ark along, but David sends the Ark back.  “If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and let me see both it and the place where it stays . . .”  Then Hushai the Archite agrees to infiltrate Absalom’s court and report everything he hears to Zadok and Abiathar.  Counsels of war are held; Hushai warns David to escape; Absalom is defeated and killed.

David’s heart-broken mourning for Absalom is all the Elves allow us to know about David until “Christ the King” Sunday when we read his last words (stay tuned).  

What has actually happened?  David’s kingdom has been destroyed, and Israel and Judah are once more two separate states/kingdoms.  “How the mighty have fallen!”  David’s lament for Jonathan applies to the Great King himself.  For this Proper 14 of Year B, it might be interesting to consider that King David is paying dearly for succumbing to the powers and principalities of Empire, and Elijah is suffering the consequences of opposing those same powers.

The author of the letter to the Ephesians, however, is not concerned with liberation from injustice.  The letter is nearly 100 years removed from the life-shattering experience of the people who knew Jesus.  It is 50 years or more removed from Paul’s transformational theology, and the conviction that Jesus’s return and the establishment of God’s kingdom were imminent.  By the time the letter was written, Jesus had not reappeared.  Life in the Empire had moved on.  Conventional family life and an orderly society were paramount.  A cosmic order of peace and goodwill had replaced the radicality of distinguishing what belonged to Cesar, and what belonged to God.  Forgiveness of petty personal trespass replaced the personal commitment to liberation from oppressive systems.  Thieves should “give up stealing,” as though robbery were a career choice made from wilfulness or greed.  Instead, they should get a job and give their excess to the poor – a positively Dickensian circular admonition.  The church leader who wrote Ephesians was not the first, nor the last, to insist that there must be work-houses; that if the poor don’t work they will lose their welfare benefits; or to suggest what the poor might eat if they have no bread.

John’s Jesus is offering far more than Marie Antoinette’s cake – Angel or Devil’s food.

He continues the argument begun last week, which also may well include some of the Pharasaic theology of the Apostle Paul:  “I will resurrect them on the last day.”  If so, John’s Jesus is desperately trying to get people to move from their literal skepticism based on the fact that they know who his parents are.  “Forget my parents!”  Jesus yells.  “This isn’t about me, it’s about life in God’s kingdom where justice prevails!”  

Of course, we do know that the writer of John’s gospel was likely the leader of a recalcitrant group of Synagogue members who were insisting that this Jesus was the Messiah.  So of course, John’s Jesus would point out that if people would pay attention to what the prophets were saying, they would realize that Jesus is “the one who is from God.”  But they can only realize that if they are willing to be informed (or taught) by God – through the prophets, and Jesus himself.

The Jesus Seminar scholars point out that according to the writer of John’s Gospel, “there is no unmediated access to God.”  The Five Gospels, p. 421.  In other words, unlike the synoptic tellers of the story, this one does not agree that anyone can know God directly.  John’s Jesus is the mediator between God and normal mortals.  Nevertheless, this Jesus escalates his argument beyond mediation to willing sacrifice:  “I am the life-giving bread that came down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.  And the bread that I will give for the world’s life is my mortal flesh.”  The end result of willing sacrifice is right relationship with God’s rule of law – the restoration of God’s Kingdom of distributive justice-compassion.

        “But this is not an exclusive club.  Anyone who wishes to participate in the program of restoring God’s Covenant (non-violence, distributive justice, peace) is part of the kingdom.  The only requirement is the radical abandonment of self-interest: That is the “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [or reasonable] worship.”  Sacrifice can only make sacred what is freely offered as a symbol of reconciliation with the realm of distributive justice-compassion that humans continually cut ourselves from.  That life can only be acceptable as a sacrifice when self-interest is freely and radically abandoned in the service of the greater good.

        “In 1st Century Rome, Paul’s call to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” meant declining to participate in the usual patronage system of public sacrifice and banquet, the purpose of which was to reconcile the participants with the gods and the emperor, and to restore the commercial balance between patrons and clients.  Instead, by radically abandoning self-interest and sharing everything necessary for community without cost or price or condition, members of the Christian community restored God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion here and now.  This state of affairs is bad for business as usual, and is therefore unacceptable to Empire, as history has proven over and over again.  Nor did members of the Christian community find this model easy – as evidenced in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.  Following such a program gets awkward, if not extremely difficult.  What about the slacker who joins the community just to get food, and never makes a contribution?  How can my daughter get a decent marriage proposal without a dowry – which is only made possible because of deals I make in the course of business?  If all property is owned in common, how can I get yours?  In order to survive, the Church had to make some accommodation, and the accommodation began within a few short years after the death of Jesus.”  (blog.08.24.08)  
       
For followers of the Revised Common Lectionary, the Elijah saga is mostly told in Year C (the “Year of Luke”).  But look at the whole vignette in 1 Kings 19, not just the cherry-picked verses that seem to foreshadow Jesus’s claim.  The crucial core of the story is Elijah in the cave at Mt. Horeb (Sinai).  Exhausted and despairing, Elijah – in a stunning demonstration – reversed the progression of the Hebrew people, and went from Israel back to Mt. Sinai.  An Angel baked him a cake on hot coals, and woke him up to eat and drink.  The food sustained him for 40 days and 40 nights – a sacred number for wandering in the shadowland between life and death, between justice and injustice, between doubt and certainty, between call and response.  

We already know what the cost was to Jesus, and to thousands of martyrs to justice since humanity first began to organize itself into sustainable life.  Jesus says, you don’t need cakes from angels or manna from heaven.  If you take in what I have taught you, you – humanity – will be sustained forever.

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