Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost; 8 August 2021; Proper 14B (RCL); 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-31; Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2; John 6:35, 41-51.
Last week, we heard Nathan tell David that the sword would never depart from his house. We skip over a bunch of material to arrive at our reading for this week. Amnon rapes his sister Tamar, Absolom kills Amnon, and then sets up a seat of judgment in the gate in opposition to David’s seat, hearing cases only of Israelites (not Judahites). David flees Jerusalem, and Absolom lies with his wives on the roof the palace. David eventually musters his army and defeats the Israelites. The unity of the two kingdoms was always fragile.
Again, we might ask why David is held up as the paragon of the monarchy, and the answer seems to be some sort of political calculus. Only during his and Solomon’s reigns (note the similarity of the names Absolom and Solomon) were the kingdoms united and was Judah ever a political power to be reckoned with. Israel was always the more prosperous kingdom, and after the split following Solomon’s reign, Judah was relegated to relative unimportance. When Assyria conquered Israel in 722 BCE, and many of the literate class fled south the Judah, the story had to be rewritten to show Jerusalem as God’s chosen city (replacing the various northern shrines). It was David who settled the ark of God at Jerusalem, so clearly, he must be God’s chosen, conveniently ignoring the vicissitudes of his reign and character.
And again, if David is the hero, Jesus in the Gospel is a kind of anti-hero, the opposite of David. He is too well known to have any claim to God’s favor (Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? — of course the evangelist’s irony drips in this question — Jesus is the Son of God). And Jesus’ kingship will not be revealed until his crucifixion on the cross.
But the evangelist hints at it here: the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Instead of strewing the flesh of his enemies as food for the birds of the air, as David did, Jesus will give his flesh for the life of the world. Again, the contrast between David and Jesus couldn’t be more pronounced. Instead of God’s favor resting on the person who can conquer God’s enemies, God is present in the gift of self to the world.
And whoever eats of this bread will have eternal life (the life of the ages). Our translation says “will live for ever.” The Greek says “will live into the age.” I don’t think the two are equivalent. To live into the age implies arrival at some sort of fulfillment. Living forever means just living forever (not a thing I think I would want). It raises the question of the nature of the life of the age. I think it means something like the life God intended for humankind and for creation.
In that life, no one goes hungry, no one is thirsty, and we live by God’s self-gift to us, and our gift of self to each other and to God. That is the bread of life, which sustains all life that lives.