1 Samuel 15.34-16.13; Psalm 20; 2 Corinthians 5.6-10 [11-13]
14-17; Mark 4.26-34
Lord, you have taught us that all our doings without love
are nothing worth: send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts
that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all
virtues, without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
TWO strong and related motifs leap out of this week's readings:
that judging by appearances is often a mistake; and that important
things can grow from humble and insignificant beginnings. Both are
matters of common sense, and, at first glance, it may seem that
there is little more to say about them. All of the passages,
however, mark critical stages in longer processes: the Davidic
kingship and God's covenant with it; the achievement of God's
eternal Kingdom; and the re-education of perception for all time,
in the light of the fact that Christ died for all. Although their
value as moral illustrations is not unimportant, it is only a facet
of something much more compelling.
Jesse of Bethlehem was a pragmatist. He had a number of sons;
and flocks and herds that needed tending. There was no need to
detach the youngest from his shepherding duties to introduce him to
the prophet, when all his good-looking elder brothers could be
presented to Samuel at the sacrifice. But God refuses to let Samuel
choose a king to replace the unsatisfactory Saul on good looks
alone -even though the narrator cannot resist mentioning David's
beautiful eyes and ruddy cheeks (1 Samuel. 16.12).
Indeed, it is surprising that God is choosing a king at all,
after the evident shortcomings of Saul's reign (1 Samuel 15.10-26).
Why not instruct Samuel to put a stop to the idea that God's people
have any king but God? By refusing the option of no king, and by
not choosing as king a fully mature adult, God is saying something
extraordinary: that in David - this promising but fallible human
being - the grace of God's Spirit will work for good, even though
many lapses and injustices lie along the path of David's future
reign.
Keeping faith with an individual chosen almost against the odds
to rule a chosen people becomes the irresistible pattern for the
new and perfect kingship of Jesus, springing "from David's line and
David's city" (Isaiah 11.1-5; Matthew 1; Luke 1). Yet typology and
prophecy do not resolve the puzzles and difficulties of the Gospel
accounts of Jesus's life and teaching, particularly on the subject
of the Kingdom. Jesus never asks his followers to imagine the
Kingdom of God as a place, however tempting it might have been to
offer utopia as an alternative to Roman rule. Rather, it is
something dynamic - a process carried along under its own momentum
- and, therefore, difficult to stop once it has started.
The parable of the sower (Mark 4.26-29), unique to Mark, takes
things further - to the harvest; for the crop is grown to be used,
not just admired in the field. There will come a time, in the
proper order of growth, when it is ready to be gathered. The
parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4.20-32) takes us back to small
beginnings. The unstoppable process of the Kingdom, as it develops
into something strong and sheltering, is out of all proportion to
its modest origins.
No wonder that this style of teaching could only go as far as
the audience was "able to receive it" (Mark 4.33). The pictures it
provides touch on the mystery that was later privately explained to
the disciples, making it just sufficiently accessible to suggest to
those who heard that what they observed in the world around them
might be showing them something about the world that they had not
yet imagined. Repeatedly, the parables of this fourth chapter
exhort their hearers to pay close attention (Mark 4.9, 13-20,
23-24).
Paul presses the imminence of the Kingdom much more urgently on
the Corinthians. He calls them away from the distractions of
outward show, especially in assessing his message. If his words
seem mad, that is because the process alluded to in the parables
has already, in his experience, reached a further stage. The seed
that falls into the ground and dies has been raised to immortality
in the resurrection of Jesus, raising with it all mortal life (1
Corinthians 15). Now everything appears differently. The apostle no
longer sees anyone "from a human point of view"; for all are caught
up in Christ, and "we know longer know him that way" (2 Corinthians
5.16). There is no turning back from that conviction: the new
creation has begun.