Homily
By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
John’s Episcopal Church, Bainbridge, GA
9
Aug. 2015
Proper
14 Year
B:
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35,
41-51
It
wasn't the apple hanging on the tree that got us in
trouble in the
Garden of Eden:
“It
was the pair on the ground.”1
We
say Adam & Eve ate the apple in the garden, although the Bible
does not specify the fruit.
We associate apples with health: “An
apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
Apples
remind us of school: We give them to teachers. Today an apple helps
us acknowledge the start of a new school year, which, in a few
minutes, we will ask God to bless.
We say a child is “the
apple of our eye” & someone “is a good apple.”
We
also speak of a person as “a
bad apple”.
Our very human condition of dysfunction started not with the apple
hanging on the tree but with the pair of humans on the ground. We
know pairs of feet on the ground still keep us hanging in suspense,
keeps us dangling between heaven & earth2.
Think of the hacking & security breaches that have recently
headlined the news.
In the article “Experts
Go To Extremes To
Stay Secure At Black Hat Conference”,
USA
Today reports that experts at last week's security conference in Las
Vegas protected their own security by using pen & paper instead
of laptops, paid with cash instead of credit cards, had face-to-face
meetings instead of talking by cell phone.3
We're talking about 9,000 people at a conference: “security
executives, hackers, academics, government & law enforcement
staffers.”4
Right
after that conference, the
newspaper report says,
about 16,000 were expected at a more hacker-oriented conference:
25,000 people at 2 conferences outnumber the 20,000 men who die our
first lesson today.
The 20,000 soldiers die fighting in support of
King David's rebel son, Absalom,
who has hacked into his dad's administrative support system
& come close to overthrowing the king. Absalom's name means “the
father is peace.”5
The
whole story is a mess of intrigue & human sin. I suggest you read
it for yourself.
I will clarify6:
Absalom is David's first son, born to one of his wives before he
married Bathsheba. Absalom's half-brother, Amnon, whose
name means “faithful”7,
is anything but faithful to family values: He
raped his half-sister, Tamar, Absalom's full-sister.8
For 2 years, Absalom plots & then kills Amnon & gets exiled
for 3 years. His father, King David, recalls him to the kingdom but
has nothing to do with him for 2 years. Absalom broods over this &
plots to overthrow his dad.
Absalom's
pride kills him9
– that head
of hair of which he is so proud & which he had weighed each year10
–
“is
his undoing,”
as
the Jewish Study Bible notes.
Both
Absalom & his father, David, are culpable in this disaster. Both
are guilty of murder.
One Bible
commentary11
points out that Absalom
pays for his sins & those of his dad, noting
the irony of his being trapped by his own hair like the ram caught in
the thicket
in Genesis
22:13
that
saves Abraham from having to sacrifice his son Isaac.
David
has sacrificed his son, Absalom,
to
end the rebellion in his kingdom.
At
the end of this lesson we hear the poignant cry of this king whose
son has died fighting against him. It reminds us of what we hear at
the start of today's lesson when David emphasizes to his commanders
to “deal
gently”
with his son. The
Jewish Study Bible quotes him:
“Deal
gently with my boy Absalom....”12
We
hear the king's resistance to killing his son, his resistance to
drawing the sword to kill him.
What
a contrast we have between life & death in our scriptures. In our
Gospel, Jesus says: “No
one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me...”
We
are drawn to Jesus by faith. As
one Bible notes, This
gift of faith “is
neither coercive nor mechanical.”13
The
Greek word in the Bible for “drawn”
is one that implies some resistance, such as drawing a sword from the
scabbard14
or
drawing in a fish you catch in the Flint River.
Resistance
is in our nature. We hear resistance in the reaction Jesus gets
today from the people who know him: He says something that draws on
their hearts & they look at earth-bound facts to resist this new
perspective.
Like
the people with Jesus, like the people Paul writes to in Ephesus, we
live suspended between heaven & earth. Paul's guidelines that
we read today help us have a more heavenly perspective in our human
interactions:
“Put
away falsehood; be angry but do not sin;
forgive
each other; be imitators of God as beloved children
&
live in love like Jesus has loved us.”
As
God's beloved children, we are wise to remember to live open to
learning. Learning never stops. We are always students of life.
May
we always be hungry to learn,
hungry
for God's love, hungry to share God's love,
hungry
to share Jesus,
“the
bread of life” that feeds our hunger.
Bibliography
Barclay,
William. The
Gospel of John: Volume 1.
Revised Edition. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1975.
Greene
, Mel. The
Greatest Joke Book Ever.
New York: Harper. Avon Books, Inc. 1999.
Handy
Dictionary of the Bible.
Ed.: Merrill C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House.
1965.
Harper’s
Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1988.
Harper’s
Bible Dictionary.
General Ed.: Paul J. Achtemeier. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1971.
Holy
Bible with the Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
http://www.sermons4kids.com/living_bread.htm.
“The Living Bread”. Accessed: 3 Aug. 2015.
Jewish
Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Klein, Ralph W. “Commentary on 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33”. Accessed: 2 Aug. 2015. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2530.
The
New American Bible for Catholics.
South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.
Peterson, Brian. “Commentary on Ephesians 4:25-5:2”. Accessed: 2 Aug. 2015. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2547.
Satterlee, Bishop Craig A. “Commentary on John 6:35, 41-51”. Accessed: 2 Aug. 2015. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2551.
USA Today.08.04.14. “Experts Go To Extremes To Stay Secure At Black Hat Conference”. Section B. McLean, VA: A Division of Gannett Co., Inc. 2015.
3
USA
Today.08.04.14. “Experts Go To Extremes To
Stay Secure At Black Hat Conference”. Section
B. P. 5B.
4
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
13
Holy
Bible with the Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989. P. 1295.
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