This sermon was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday July 5, 2015
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Mark 6:1-13
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
Most of us have never seen a coronation. The last major coronation was Queen Elizabeth II and that was in 1953, over 60 years ago. Any images from the event were in black and white and they were on film, not video. They might have been on television via satellite, but it is more likely those who saw it saw pieces of her coronation on newsreels in the theater.
Anyone under the age of thirty will need to Google half of the words in those last two sentences. Black and white? Via Satellite? Newsreels? Those three phrases alone show that coronation is positively archaic to Americans where we have no monarchy.
We read in 2Samuel, “So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David,” who was king of Judah at the time, “made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.” Considering we have almost no idea about what is involved in a coronation, do we even have a clue about what it takes to make a covenant? Considering the more proper term is “cutting” a covenant, not “making” a covenant, no.
While the fullness of this expression is unknown, one reason is that in cutting the covenant, the sacrificed beasts were cut in half from head to tail. Then the parties making the covenant would pass between the cut halves of the offering. Doing this, they symbolically take upon themselves the fate of the animals should they violate the covenant. So in this case, the Elders of Israel came to David and said, “Let’s do this and should we fail may this fate befall us.”
Between you and me, I think we could use some of that in DC and Austin. I believe we could all benefit from politicians sharing our fate. Anyhoo…
These days though, the symbolism and the theology of the sacrifice system are beyond us. So unless you grew up on a farm or ranch or are a butcher, the whole process is more than most of us could imagine. It began when the priests took first a heifer, and then a female goat, and then a ram, and split each of them in half. They didn’t have chain mail gloves like many who work in slaughter houses. They didn’t have power tools or refrigeration. There was no high powered water jet to cut the animals. They had iron or bronze knives which they used to slaughter and then prepare the animals for the sacrifice. They cut skin, fat, muscle, tendon, cartilage, and membranes preparing the livestock.
Imagine the blood and muck, not just on the priest’s clothes but in the mud between his toes. Finally, after hours or perhaps even days, when the preparations were made, David and the priests put the finishing touches on the stock; adding a full dove to one stack and a young pigeon to the other. The offering was complete, but until the covenant ceremony was finished, they had to drive the buzzards from the carcasses.
Then came the walk between the halves of the offering, between the carcasses. Carcasses, what a word! It creates the sort of image that might make a steak eater cringe and does make a PETA member scream “that’s what I’m talking about.”
To seal the covenant, the parties would pass between the halves of the offering, the pieces of the carcasses. The experience would be absolutely visceral. The ache you would feel from the hard work of preparation. The frustration and the danger from keeping the scavengers from the offering. The smell of the livestock and their entrails. The blood and fat which has saturated your apron and gotten into your clothes. Finally, as you pass between the halves, the feel of blood and bile and refuse between your toes. Covenant promises aren’t made lightly or forgotten quickly.
This worship preparation would take days. It would be difficult. It would be back-breaking. It would require a special set of skills that only the priests and the Levites had. There was no butcher’s union back in the day, the Levites were the butchers. The entire experience would fill every sense to overfilling. It would end in a bar-be-que to make the BBQ Pitmasters finale look like amateur hour. It would be a mess. It would be sloppy. It would be sloppier than we can imagine.
This is not what the Prince of Wales will go through when he becomes King Charles III.
There has been a trend in the gospel readings in the Revised Common Lectionary over the past few weeks which did not escape today’s reading. It begins with Jesus working. In this case he is teaching and doing great works. The people who were there were astounded. The passage reads, “’Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!’” but that’s not where it ends.
In this case, after a brief genealogy lesson, Mark’s gospel says, “And they took offense at him.” They took offense at him. What a switch! In basketball you’d say that was the kind of move that would make a defender break an ankle. The passage goes from power (hooray!) and glory (hooray!) to offense. Talk about sloppy. We go from astounded by the wisdom to offended by him. It doesn’t say offended by his words, or his teachings; it says offended by him. His person. His being. His very existence. There’s a lovely turn of events.
About ten years ago I was at Montreat for the “Hope of the Church” conference. The event moderator shared something with us about the nature of the Church. She said that about every 500 years there’s a tremendous shift. About 2,000 years ago saw the birth of the Jesus. It was not only the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, but the birth of Christianity; and it doesn’t get bigger than that.
About 1,500 years ago came Constantine and because of him the Nicene Creed. The first 500 years of the Church saw a lot of good and a lot of very, very bad theology. The Nicene Creed was humanity’s first real attempt to state what we believe. Its continuing authority is proof that these bishops got something right.
About 1,000 years ago saw the great schism between east and west, the split between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Honestly, we don’t pay too much attention to that because 500 years ago was our split, the Reformation. Luther had no intention of forming a new church. He wanted to reform the Mother Church, hence Reformation, but when they put a bounty on your head schism’s the way to go.
As for today, 500 years after the Reformation, people say the church isn’t the same as it was 50 or 60 years ago and I say this is true. People say things are changing and I say this is true. Some people say we’ll never have the same status we had in our glory days and I say not the same…
People say, quite correctly, that the splits in the modern church are nasty, but at least the PC(USA), the EPC and ECO don’t have death squads. Say what you will about what happened at Highland Park, First Longview, and dozens of other congregations, but nobody put out a hit on anybody and that’s progress.
People say nothing’s like it used to be and it’s not right. I won’t go that far. Things are changing and it’s not easy. It’s sloppy, but the church reformed and always being reformed is sloppy.
The reformation, the real reformation began with the birth of a child, God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us. The in breaking of all that’s holy into a world that is anything but. God came to earth not in power and glory but as the least powerful being known, a human baby born of an unwed mother. Sloppy.
Now look at the crowd in the synagogue from our Gospel reading… They were at the feet of the Lord. They heard his words first hand. They spoke the same language. They saw him doing great deeds of power and were astounded, and in the next breath they were offended. Fully human and fully divine; man and God in one. His presence was offensive to his own people—and we wonder how come people don’t understand the Good News like we do.
I wonder how we understand the gospel the way we do. Praise God the Holy Spirit because it is only by the Spirit that we understand the gospel at all, and in truth, we don’t understand the full breadth of the gospel. We can’t. God is too much for us to understand. Like in Mark’s gospel the people expected one thing and when they got Jesus they were astounded and then offended. Sloppy.
The last couple of weeks have been sloppy on a national level. Supreme Court decisions, the 1001 Worshiping Communities Controversies, symbols and what they mean; sloppy. I’m not here to tell you what to believe about any of these things. I’m your guest, trying that would be ignorant on my part.
What I am here to say is this, take off your sandals. Walk in the sloppy, sloppy faith knowing this—There is no place we can go that Christ has not gone first.
There is no place we can go that Christ does not lead us. Rules come and rules go. This is how we get to eat bacon and shellfish, rules change. Our understanding of the faith changes. Changes came 2,000 years ago, and 1,500, and 1,000, and 500 years ago and changes come today.
To say that God has nothing new to teach us today is the sort of arrogance people of faith cannot afford to have. That sort of arrogance says we cannot be taught. We cannot learn. To be taught God can no longer astound us, that’s a world I don’t want to live in.
Sure, it’ll be sloppy, but it beats the alternative, a world where God is done with us. Because if God is done with us, and this, this world is all that’s left, well, that’s not much of a life. Give me God’s sloppy grace and peace and love over human wisdom and folly any day.
