• I Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11: 14-15)

The elders approach Samuel with a request: because you are old and your sons are not trustworthy, “appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”  Samuel prays to the Lord, who tells him to accept the will of the people who have not rejected Samuel but have rejected the Lord, as they have since the Lord brought them out of slavery in Egypt.  The Lord also tells Samuel to “solemnly warn them” of the pitfalls of a monarchy.  A king will conscript their sons for a standing army.  A monarch will demand a portion of their money and property to fund the military.  Their daughters will also be put to work for the military.  Their land and work animals will be taken, too.   When the consequences of monarchy are fully realized, the people will cry out, but the Lord will not listen.  “But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said ‘No! But we are determined to have a king over us, so that we may also be like other nations….’ ”  In the intervening chapters not included in today’s reading, Saul was privately anointed king.  After a decisive victory over Ammon, Samuel organizes a large public assembly to confirm Saul as king.

• Psalm 138

The psalmist declares her praise of the Lord boldly in defiance of any other gods.  She testifies to the Lord’s “word,” which is spread out across all heavens.  Furthermore, “all kings of the earth” will praise the Lord for even they have heard “the words of Your mouth.”  She now notes a great paradox: this One, who is universally exalted is the same One who “sees” and who “knows” the “lowly” of the earth.  So, the psalmist concludes, she can personally be assured that the Lord will “rescue” her.  The Lord does not abandon the Lord’s “handiwork.”

OR

• Genesis 3: 8-15

This excerpt from the “J” creation story (2:4b-3:24) accounts for the consequences of humankind’s  disobedience.   Although man and woman had been created to be partners with God in the completion of creation and placed in a “garden” that supplied all their needs, their disobedience spoiled it all.  They were conscious of their “nakedness,” which caused them to hide from the Lord when the Lord came walking among them in the cool of evening.  When asked how did they gain this awareness, the woman described the role of a “serpent” who talked her into eating the fruit of the “tree,” which the Lord had told them they should not eat.  Immediately, the Lord curses the serpent, who is condemned to crawl on his belly and eat dust.  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers….”

• Psalm 130

The psalmist cries out from “the depths,” which is the furthest from God’s presence.  The psalmist acknowledges that if God kept a close score of his sins, he would not survive the scrutiny.  But, thank God, God’s nature is “forgiveness.”  Therefore, he “waits” with “hope” and invites all Israel to “wait for the Lord’s steadfast kindness,” which will “redeem”  “all its wrongs.”

• II Corinthians 4: 13- 5: 1

Paul writes movingly about the suffering and pain he has endured for his role in spreading the gospel.  “I believed, and so I spoke,” he quotes “scripture.”  He writes that he accepts all that he endures “for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”  The wasting away of his strength and body is being replaced with preparation for “an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure….”  His earthly “tent” will be replaced with a “building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

• Mark 3: 20-35

In Mark’s narrative, resistance to Jesus comes early and strongly.  In this excerpt, (immediately after Jesus has just named his twelve disciples), Jesus’ family try to restrain the rowdy crowds so they could at least eat a meal.  They crowds are claiming that Jesus is crazy–“out of his mind.”  Next the “scribes” arrive from Jerusalem calling Jesus “Beelzebul” or “ruler of the demons because he has cast out demons.”  But Jesus responds: “How can Satan cast out Satan?”  In response to another accusation against him– that he tapped into some sort of “unclean spirit”– Jesus declares that they have committed the sin of denying the power of “the Holy Spirit.”  The mother and brothers of Jesus reappear in this chaotic scene.  When the crowd draws his attention to them, Jesus asks: “Who are my mother and my brothers?”  He then answers his own question.  Looking around at this motley group of fledgling disciples, Jesus says: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Today’s appointed gospel is compact, complicated and important.  It deals with questions that would have been urgent to the readers of Mark.  It deals with rumors/accusations that Jesus was crazy; that his powers were so powerful they must be demonic; that Jesus claimed/acted as if he had another status that was suspicious if not outrageous, or worst, blasphemous.  Mark is a skillful writer.  Why does he group these three quandaries in one compact incident?  What do they have on common? 

When God acts/speaks in the world, as God did in Jesus, the message and the messenger do not fit neatly into human categories, seems to be Mark’s intent.   Is God being cantankerous?  Or, must we just accept the fact that God’s ways are close enough to human understanding for our benefit, but will always challenge/upset/shatter human expectation because they are never an exact match for human understanding?  To human common sense, God’s ways are “crazy.”  The human/divine status of Jesus has been and always will be confusing.  These questions seem so important, yet Mark treats them succinctly so he can get to the point of real import in this whole incident.  Jesus provides a simple, clear criterion against which these and all other questions can be measured: “Whoever does (emphasis added)  the will of God…” understands and shares in God’s work in the world and his his family of choice.  Jesus then adds a dire warning: anyone who “blasphemes” against God’s work in the world, which is the reliable and consistent sign of the work of the Holy Spirit, commits the “unforgivable” trespass.

Both readings from the Hebrew scriptures and the responsorial psalms prefigure this same point.  In the reading from I Samuel, the Lord allows the people to have a monarch “so that they would be like other nations,” thereby abandoning their unique relationship with the Lord, which they never fully understood nor fully participated in all along.  Despite the people abandoning the Lord, the Lord is “crazy” enough to never abandon them, the psalmist realizes and celebrates.  Likewise, in the creation story of Genesis, the first human beings squander their innocent relationship with their creator and creation.  But the psalmist recalls that if God kept strict score of human failures, no one would survive such exact accounting. But, thanks be to God, God is known by a surreal “steadfast kindness” that always leaves open the possibility of forgiveness and, therefore, hope.

So God never stops trying to show God’s ways to the created.  But,  there is a long and ugly history of the ways we get confused, frustrated and outright wrong in our response.  Yet the promise is that the Lord never abandons the Lord’s “handiwork.”  And there is the even more incredible promise that despite our inability to ever fully understand God’s ways, we can still participate in doing “the will of God” in the world as the  “brother and sister… chosen by  Jesus.” 

In her powerful and important study, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology, Kathryn Tanner connects the identity and activity of Jesus with the Creator/Father and the Spirit:

“…the Word becomes incarnate from the first in Jesus’ birth, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as sent by the Father.  The man Jesus over the course of his life is, consequently, the Son of God following the will of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit, in order to distribute the goods of God to the world– healing, forgiving, directing the course of human lives in imitation of his own.  Whatever Jesus does for us, he does as the Word incarnate sent by God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.”  (p. 51)

In the gospels, Jesus is the latest and clearest iteration of all those past attempts by the Creator to stay in relationship with the created.  Because we have sullied and spoiled all past attempts,  we struggle to comprehend that God is so persistent.  Yet, the biblical assertion is that Jesus is the embodiment of the venerable work of the Creator and the Holy Spirit.  To understand Jesus (or to not misunderstand him), he must be recognized  as the direct envoy– born human (which means he had family, neighbors and friends who knew him throughout his childhood!)  yet he is also a peer with the creator with the Creator and Spirit.  What is the “proof” of this assertion?  His whole life was taken over and surrendered to “distribute the goods of God to the world– healing, forgiving, directing the course of human lives in imitation of his own.”  How can we “comprehend” this claim?  “Whoever does the will of God” is as close to “understanding” God as any human can get.