The attempted domestication of God

"I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel  from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle."

2 Samuel 7:6

When you are a king,

well practised in raising taxes,

commanding armies

and building palaces,

life can be a bit too good.

Striving to justify his enjoyment

of the comfortable life,

(while the poor still go hungry

and the widows and the orphans

make the best of their lot),

David decides to co-opt the Lord

to ease his guilt

by building God a temple;

with fine gold vessels, plush cushions,

carved cedar beams,

and ornate fittings.

An impressive house for God

would make the king's grand domicile

less offensive to the dignity

of God's people.

God, however,

politely declines the offer,

preferring to dwell in a tent.

Rev Ken Rookes

Dancing in Christ

Dancing, I suggest to you tonight, is therefore a potent symbol of the gospel covenant as we experience it in our worship. It can become, for us, the double-performance of both human prayer and divine address. On the one hand, the Dance can expresses our deep desire and longing to be free of conflict and grief and sorrow and oppression. ... One can also see something of that spirit in the dance scene from The Matrix Reloaded, when the whole of the people of the city of Zion dance out their longing for salvation from the machines that are coming to destroy them. On the other hand, the Dance can become an icon or oracle of God for us, a material and fleshly way by which God calls us to turn, in repentance, to accept with empty hands God’s gracious offer of mercy, forgiveness, and healing. In the image and experience of the dance, then, God shows us a profound mystery. The mystery that theologians call Christ, or the Paschal Mystery. In Christ the man, you see, all the pains and griefs and longing of human beings are lived out in a life of total prayer, a prayer offered to God as one who hears, and loves, and saves. Yet, in Christ, we also learn also that the griefs and longings of human beings belong to God first of all. For Christ is God amongst us, living our griefs and dying our deaths, that we might also die to our fears and our sins, and be reborn to a new kind of live altogether. Christ, in his Spirit, continues to live amongst us in the church, living our prayer and praying our life until earth and heaven are reconciled, and all are finally free as Christ is free.
http://www.laughingbird.net/SermonTexts/GD025.html

a story of exploitation

The party appears typical for the time. The women are in an adjoining room. This is a men’s party. That is why Salome must go there to consult her mother. Dancing girls were often prostitutes. The promise to give away half his kingdom is the stuff of legendary stories of this kind (see Esther 5:3,6; 7:2). It also serves to expose fickleness. It is a terrible story, not just for its gory ending, but also for the machinations of power and the structures of injustice it displays. It is a sad irony that preachers have sometimes focussed on women’s wiles as its ‘message’. It should rather be seen as a story of exploitation - of women, of citizens and slaves; and as a story about silencing the cry for justice. Notice that Herod feared and is fascinated by John. John is not the last prophet whom leaders have reduced to an item of intellectual fascination, nor the last preacher. Ideas are fun.
This bizarre story, lifted from the ‘popular press of the day’ or its Galilean equivalent, casts a shadow over what is to come. Fickle, exploitative political powers will perform another convenient execution, reflecting arbitrary individual choice and reflecting structures of injustice. Mark’s readers may have made the connection between themselves and Herod’s wondering: can it be that someone so callously executed comes to life again? Is the risen Jesus to be seen where such powers are confronted anew, whether within us as individuals or among us in our society? Or does the entertainment drown out the voices?

http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MkPentecost7.html

Salome

More than a little spooky methinks
Gustave Moreau

Half a kingdom

In this sad, sordid

and anything but edifying story

a lusting, leering and utterly laughable

monarch makes himself a fool

for the sake of his drunken urges.

Half a kingdom, ha!

he never had a realm of his own to give away

save that which his Roman overlords

allowed him to administer. He is smitten

by the no doubt charms of his dancing

stepdaughter, (in fact the daughter

of the niece that he has acquired as a wife,

but that is too complicated by another half!)

As the story goes, the pathetic king

paints himself into the naked corner

that will become a pitiful but convenient

excuse for murder.

The tale might elicit much ribald jesting

were it being told anywhere else

other than the holy gospel scriptures;

but here it stands as a solemn remembrance

of human weakness;

of overheated sexuality, power and abuse,

of masculine wretchedness

and of feminine duplicity and intrigue.

And, of course, the need for us all

to find deliverance.

© Ken Rookes

counter-cultural, Jesus?

But this is all very counter-cultural.
I feel sure that vulnerability, weakness and dependency, and the very idea of putting someone else life before our own.
these things are not particularly welcome in our society and are certainly not instinctive for us.

Our society, as was the case in Jesus' times, is very self-centered. Just look at our nations attitude to asylum seekers ....

Or to climate change. We would much rather keep our own lifestyle than surrender some of it in order  to give the future generations a sustainable way of life.

What Jesus was trying to sell was radical unselfishness and it always was a hard sell. Arguably, we in the church still find it hard to take. We, the followers of Jesus, still struggle to live out the message of the sermon on the mount. ...

Perhaps this is why, as we look at our situation in the church today, we should take heart from the encounter with Jesus that we have in our gospel reading today. A reading that perhaps at once challenges us about how comfortable our Christianity has become; How we are perhaps just a little too like the people of Jesus’ home town who thought they were familiar with him, but their very familiarity made them unable to hear his confronting gospel of vulnerability and selflessness. Then, this same reading perhaps tells us of the simplicity and vulnerability of Discipleship. All it takes is one cloak, some sandals and a stick, and the willingness to depend upon the hospitality and grace of the stranger.

Discipleship outfitters

http://www.reverendfun.com/?date=20041209

Discipleship

The work of Jesus is to continue ...

The work of Jesus is to continue, and for that purpose the church is called and sent.  For that work Jesus grants the word and the power that characterized his own ministry.  The church is to go trusting this to be true, never contradicting that trust with the excess baggage of security and wealth that offer the world the image of unbelief.  There will be rejection and refusal to listen, to be sure, but there will also be those who will welcome both the ministry and the minister.

Fred Craddock

W.H Auden He is the way

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

(W H Auden – 1907-1973 )

No-one special

The family lived at Nazareth,

his mother, sisters and brothers;

plus all the in-laws, nieces and nephews.

It was where he had been raised,

where he had been taught the law

with his schoolmates

at the feet of the local Rabbi.

They recalled how he had learned his trade

at his father’s workshop;

and everyone agreed he had done all right

with the mallet and saw.

Most people had liked him well enough;

his life had been quiet, uneventful.

He should have taken a wife, by now;

and more than one of the village girls

had eyed him off. And then,

without any apparent reason,

he had simply left town

to set up home in Capernaum.

What was he running from?

No-one had any answers,

and no sign of scandal had ever turned up.

Until now.

The reports from surrounding towns

of a miracle-working teacher

had not struck anyone as that unusual.

They were intrigued, and a little curious,

but there must have been thousands of men

by the same name, and it took a while

for them to realise that he was theirs.

He’d arrived back home affecting the teacher,

pretending to knowledge and understanding

way beyond his village-school education.

He had the gall to turn up at the synagogue

to regale his captive audience

with his feigned wisdom and insight.

They had to concede that he had spoken quite well,

but that was beside the point.

He might convince the uninformed

in any of a hundred other towns across Galilee,

but he wasn’t going to fool them.

They knew he was nobody special,

just like themselves, so they told him to go.

© Ken Rookes 2012