Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Scriptures: 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19, Psalm 24, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:14-29
Anyone who picks up a copy of The Holy Bible and says, “There’s nothing in here for me,” clearly hasn’t read it. Devotional material aside, the best-known verses and our regular Sunday morning readings are barely the tip of the iceberg of a story that covers tens of thousands of years, and reaches from the heights of the human experience of life to the very depths of loss and sorrow.
With the highs and lows, it can be difficult to see the bigger story, the continuity… the plan, if you will. This is also true of life, sometimes, and yet I say thanks be to God for remaining faithful to us from creation.
Today’s readings truly get at the highs and lows of family relationships. Starting with our first reading, David famously unified the divided tribes of Israel into one nation. He is remembered above all else for being a ruler who was faithful to God, and his reign becomes the standard against which later rulers are judged for generations.
On the flip side, David was so bad at family relations that his family disentraged partway through his reign. Perhaps worse, his passions and political dealings tore apart other families as well. Parts of David’s story in the books of Samuel play out as badly as any modern soap opera. Reading his story, whatever legacy David left as king, it’s impossible to lose sight of the sinful, remorseful man.
Reading the Gospel of Mark together this year, in our Sunday lectionary readings, the theme of family has stood out to me, despite this account’s lack of details. Mark doesn’t include the story of Jesus’ birth or many details about his family. Mark does write about two apparent clashes Jesus had with his family, without emphasizing that his earliest followers included some of his closest kin. Mark’s focus instead seems to be that Jesus expanded his family to include everyone who does God’s will, a theme Paul picks up in his letters. More from Paul in a bit.
Most of us have people we call “cousin.” Many of us have biological cousins, and if your family is closely knit, you may call extended family members “cousin,” since it’s easier to say than, for example, “step-cousin, once removed.”
Today we read about the death of John the Baptizer. This would have been jarring news for Jesus and his disciples: John baptized Jesus, and some of John’s followers left him to study with Jesus. Further, John was related to Jesus and several of the disciples.
John’s parents were Elizabeth and Zechariah. Elizabeth was Mary’s aunt, so in our terms, John and Jesus would have been “cousins, once removed.” In Aramaic, they may have called each other “achyana,” or perhaps they used a more specific term with Hebrew roots. But I’m getting lost in the weeds, while we’re talking about a family tree.
Jesus and John probably called each other something like “cousin.” Mark chose to focus on the intense action of Jesus’ ministry, and so as he and the disciples rush from place to place, it’s too easy to lose sight of the human side of things. Later in Mark, on two separate occasions, Jesus remembers John’s ministry and death, knowing that his own walk leads to the cross.
However, Mark doesn’t tell us Jesus’ immediate reaction to John’s death. Instead, Mark contrasts this awful event with a very different image of power, the Feeding of the 5,000. In today’s reading, Herod Antipas uses his earthly power, as a leader in the Roman Empire, to execute a man he knows is innocent. Herod does this to save face, even knowing that it is an abuse of power.
Next week, the Gospel reading picks up without missing a verse, to offer an image of the Kingdom of God. Herod’s feast ended with murder. Jesus’ feast will fill the bellies of 5,000 hungry people. As concrete as these events may seem, the real story lies in their deeper meaning: the power of the world leads to death; the power of God leads to true life, a peaceable kingdom that overthrows human boundaries through love, turning human need into plenty.
I am grateful beyond words to be part of the family of God, and not of David or of Herod. That is not to say that my family is perfect; in an early draft of this sermon, I talked about how awesome my cousins are, trying to relate to how Jesus might have felt about John the Baptizer. But that’s really not the point here. I love my family and in the same breath I will say that we are a family of human beings, and we have our dysfunctions, rooted in sin.
God’s family is, quite honestly, beyond our understanding. Even Paul’s description of it, in Ephesians and elsewhere, isn’t quite how we look at things today, so I’d like to take a moment to unpack some of what he’s saying to the people of Ephesus, almost 2,000 years ago.
In today’s reading, Paul writes that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” Paul’s doing about a dozen things here with the concept of adoption, and I’d like to unpack a couple of them, to get at the heart of his message.
First off, Paul is writing this letter to a group of Gentile Christians, or non-Jewish followers of Christ. Because God is identified with the nation or tribe of the Hebrew people, Paul wanted the Gentile audience to understand that they belonged fully to God’s people, no less than Jewish-born Christians. His metaphor for this was adoption. Keep in mind that Paul could relate to both Gentiles and Jewish-background Christians because he was Jewish and had been born as a Roman citizen, which was a very rare combination.
This adoption into God’s family speaks to us, today, as well. Most, if not everyone in our community was born into a Gentile family, yet when we read about “the God of Israel,” this is our God. The Hebrew Bible, or “Old Testament,” is part of our Holy Scripture. Moses, Sarah and Abraham, Joshua, and even David are our ancestors-in-faith no less than Mary, John, or Paul.
Paul is also using the practical, everyday definition of “adoption” in this passage. You and I, here today, understand what this means. I love hearing about families that grow in number and love through adoption. We have a family friend who with his wife has fostered and adopted 18 children, and while they have had their challenges, to witness the incredible love the family shares, partly through sheer numbers, is an incredible thing.
Paul writes, “[i]n Christ we have… obtained an inheritance.” What he’s asking his readers to imagine is being adopted by a king, and here’s where they would have understood something other than what we hear today. In the ancient world, it wasn’t uncommon for rulers and important families to adopt adults. They did this to expand their families, make alliances, and consolidate power and influence. Sometimes they were relatives, and a famous example of this was Julius Caesar adopting his great-nephew as his son and heir.
That said, Paul’s not talking about power-brokering. He’s talking about going from rags to riches. In the Roman Empire, slaves could also be adopted, and go from having no status or rights to becoming Roman citizens. He’s flipping the imperial narrative upside down, taking his audience outside of their Roman context to help them understand that God has already made them part of the story God began at creation, and that their knowing Christ was the plan all along.
So that’s a glimpse of what Paul’s trying to convey to the people of Ephesus. I’ve talked about Paul’s intended audience, folks who lived 2,000 years ago. The differences are worth drawing out, so we can more fully understand what he’s saying.
What about God’s intended audience? Yes, God spoke to the people of Ephesus through Paul, and the message was intended for them. This message is also for us, here and now. Think about your own family. Maybe it doesn’t look like David’s or Herod’s – I really hope it doesn’t. For some people, it does; this message of adoption may be most liberating for those of us for whom distance from their families would give space for healing.
For all of us, no matter our life or family circumstances, sin seems to distance us from God. Hear God’s promise, in Paul’s words:
[God] destined us for adoption… through Jesus Christ…. In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
“All things.” This is God’s plan, set forth at creation. This is the scope of God’s love, where Jesus wasn’t impressed by his own miracles, including feeding 5,000 people with a snack, because he knew it was barely a glimpse of the abundance of God.
God redeemed David. I’m challenged to believe through Paul’s writing here and elsewhere that God redeemed even Herod. God redeemed the disciples in their doubt, transforming them in faith to messengers of the Good News of Jesus Christ, and I believe God redeems even me.
Adopted through Christ, reconciled to God in Christ, receiving the free gift of Grace, unmerited… what do we do with this inheritance? I pray that God make us faithful stewards of all that we have.
Amen.
-Pastor Will Bevins