In the language of "left brain, right brain"
constructs, the scriptures for the weeks of August call upon our
right-brain gifts. We leave the world of what we can see and
touch and document and enter a world of imagination and
creativity, a world of poetry and emotion.
We pass from the last vestiges of the wilderness and the
prophet of the wilderness, Samuel, to the courtly chronicler and
the beginning of the record of the Kings. We had begun such a
transition last month with the movement from the swift action and
immediacy of Mark to the leisurely contemplation of the meaning
of it all in John.
There is a world of human experiences in the scriptures and
many ways in which those experiences are shared. Let us be open
to them all. This is our Story. These are our spiritual ancestors
who are speaking to us. What can we hear from the Hebrew record,
from the gospel, from the epistle that will speak to us today so
that we can, in our own voice, pass the Story on?
August 7
Between Heaven and Earth
Psalm 130; 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Ephesians 4:25-5:2;
John 6:35, 41-51
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children."
No more graphic example of that proverb is given than the
household of David the King. David, the winsome, fearless, gifted
shepherd boy grew up to be a powerful leader who could rule
kingdoms but not his sons or himself.
David did nothing to prevent the rape of his daughter Tamar by
one of his sons. But her brother, Absalom, the half brother of
the rapist, took his wretchedly used sister into his household
and for years plotted revenge. With revenge accomplished, he then
conspired against his father, making it necessary for David to
flee for his life. In pursuit, Absalom’s glorious hair was
caught in a tree, and he died as he had lived, hanging between
heaven and earth.
Our lectionary gives us the matchless Psalm 130 to express
David’s grief for his son, as it offered to express
David’s grief for Saul and Jonathan. But the words in the
book of Samuel have entered history as an eloquent expression of
a father’s grief: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son
Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my
son."
From that dark, tragic scene, it is a relief to turn to the
sixth chapter of John, where we will stay for the rest of the
month to meditate on one of John’s great "I am"
passages. John has Jesus identify himself as the bread of life
while speaking in a synagogue. He reminded the gathered learners
that their mothers and fathers had eaten manna in the wilderness
and had died. He offers them himself, which they can eat of and
not die. Understand-ably, they were confused. "How can this
man give us himself to eat?" they asked.
The epistle for the week describes the new life of the
eucharistic community, that, week by week, eats the bread and
drinks the wine and experiences the bread as flesh indeed and the
wine as blood indeed.
VERNA J. DOZIER is an educator and lay theologian in
Washington, D.C. She is the author of The Dream of God: A
Call to Return (Cowley Publications) and The Authority of
the Laity (The Alban Institute).
