July 14, 2024
Pentecost 8, Year B
Epiphany, Winnipeg
2 Samuel 6:1-19; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29
Maybe this is the only word we need today; a word that we heard a few minutes ago in the reading from Ephesians: “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will…a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”
To gather up all things. All the broken pieces, all the beautiful pieces, all the pieces that have been scattered and left lying here and there. All things, the whole creation, gathered back together.
I had another sermon written by yesterday afternoon, and I thought it looked alright, and then somebody tried to shoot Donald Trump. I looked at the sermon I had written and it just seemed like a strange piece that talked out of nowhere about nothing, so I sat down later in the day to have another go. Gather up some broken pieces, maybe not in the fullness of time but in the few hours left before Sunday at 10:00.
Three readings we heard today are readings and stories about broken pieces. Now they might not look that way at first. In that first reading we heard about King David leading the people of Israel – thirty thousand, we’re told – into Jerusalem with the Ark of the Covenant. That’s a big gold-plated box that carries the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments and a jar of manna from the wilderness, and during and ever since Israel’s days in the wilderness that box has been carried along with them. The box is sort of a sign of God’s presence; sometimes it's even spoken of as God’s home. Sometimes it has seemed to be a blessing, and battles have been won and life has been good when it gets the respect it deserves, and sometimes it’s seemed like more of a curse when people have been struck dead for either treating it badly, treating God badly, or in one unfortunate case, just for touching the thing. Over centuries the ark will travel with the people or rest in its home in Jerusalem; it will accompany the people, just as God accompanies the people, through times of thriving and times of dying, times of power and times of exile. Scattered times, sometimes broken times.
And today we heard about King David and the people bringing the ark into Jerusalem during one of those thriving times. And there’s a party, and there’s dancing and singing, and David dances so wildly that his clothes kind of have a wardrobe malfunction now and then so that Michal, one of his many wives, berates him for exposing himself like that. It’s a party, things get a little crazy sometimes…it's a high point, a celebration, because God is with the people and the future is full of promise.
And we know, whether we known the history of our Bibles well or whether we know what’s going on in the world today, that the life of Israel and their neighbours has not always been about promise and thriving. It so often just kinds of seems like broken pieces. And beautiful pieces. And broken pieces.
Jump ahead a thousand or so years and we heard that story about the beheading of John the Baptist. Thanks to some good planning or divine luck or just plain old coincidence, in my thirty some years of being a pastor I’ve been on vacation every time this story comes up every three years, so I’ve never had to figure out what to do with it. My luck ran out this year.
We don’t need to go over the details again; the story’s still fresh. Political power perceives a prophet as a problem and so the prophet ends up with his head on a platter. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the alliteration). The king, the president, the prime minister, the exalted ruler, the one in charge gets rid of someone who is a threat. Or, as the story seems to go as we heard it, the king actually sort of likes the prophet who speaks a truth that strikes too close to home sometimes. Herod doesn’t understand John, but likes him anyway. But the king’s beloved does not like the prophet – Herod’s wife Herodias has grudge against John – so John ends up dead anyway. We know that’s no surprise; political power tries to get rid of its enemies.
In divided and broken times we’ve heard talk about Donald Trump wanting to arrest his political opponents. No heads on platters or loss of life, I’m sure, but we’ve heard. And yesterday someone else took it upon themselves to try to get rid of Donald Trump; I guess a lone shooter saw him as an enemy, a political opponent, and that’s what needs to happen to an opponent.
There’s an old song by an old favourite band of mine – Level 42, one of those ancient ‘80s bands – with a line that says “We dream in colour; we paint each other black and white.” We dream of a world where all the pieces are together, it’s rich and lush and full of wonder and beauty and joy and all the best things. And we paint each other as this or that, good or bad, our friends or our enemies.
Broken pieces. And beautiful pieces. And broken pieces.
And then, right in between those two readings, we heard a word from Ephesians. The writer of the letter – let’s call him Paul, like the letter itself does – is writing to a Christian community that, like every Christian community in the mid to late first century, is brand new, only a decade or two old…maybe three. So every church is still struggling with divisions or at least tension about who belongs and who does not. The struggle they’re having is between Jewish Christians and non-Jewish Christians, and it’s been a really big divide. It might sound strange to our ears because it’s not a conflict we have, but every church anywhere in that day was a new church, and the question of who belongs more than another was so important to them that the community could be pulled and broken in two over it. It might sound strange to us, but I guess we might imagine a letter arriving here at Epiphany in 2010, 2011, that would remind us that we are one as we struggled and divided over questions of sexuality, and what’s right and what’s wrong related to all of that. That’s the kind of tension that strains that young Christian community back in Ephesus.
And Paul reminds that church that all of them – Jews and non-Jews – have been drawn together, gathered together, by God’s good will set forth in Christ. By God’s good will, shown to the world and given to the world in Christ. Every one of us, whether we were adopted into the Body of Christ so so long ago or in the last few years or just a moment or two ago is woven into this thing called the church, the Body of Christ. God has had that in mind since forever. And there is not one group that is stronger or more a part of the whole thing than another. Paul is reminding the church then, as we too are reminded now, that the church is like these broken pieces, and God has gathered them together in Christ. And we are gathered together, broken pieces gathered together in Christ. All this has happened not for our own benefit but as a sign to the whole world, to the whole creation, a sign of God’s will and God’s promise that all things, everything, the whole bunch, will be gathered together and reconciled in Christ. It’s really hard work for us to live like it’s true. It’s so important, and so difficult, and God is always already doing that work in Christ. It is true.
Broken pieces. Beautiful pieces. Broken pieces, gathered up and brought back together in Christ. Democrats and Republicans or, let’s face it, Liberals and Conservatives and New Democrats; Israelis and Palestinians, the young woman mocked by peers on the internet and those very same peers who made it all happen in the first place, the churches down the street and across the spectrum from each other. The kind of people who zipper merge and the kind of people who turn left into the outside lane; Melting glaciers and smoke filling the air, electric drivers and drivers of F150s – the gas kind; People who can only see each other as opponents. A whole creation that really is colour and fullness and variety. Beautiful pieces. Broken pieces, that are being gathered up and brought back together in Christ.
Hear it again: “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will…a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”