• I Samuel 15:34-16:13

David is introduced into Israel’s grand narrative of her relationship with the God of Abraham/Sarah and Moses.  The Lord’s strong emotional commitment to Israel is on full display.  The Lord regrets having made Saul the first King of Israel and directs Samuel to go behind Saul’s back to anoint a new King.  The Lord lays out the plan to Samuel: Go to Bethlehem, take a heifer for sacrifice, find a man named Jesse and tell him you want him and his sons to join you in that sacrifice.  Samuel follows the instructions, thereby meeting all of Jesse’s sons.  Each one is considered and rejected, until there is only the youngest left, who is not even there.  He has to be summoned from the fields, where he is shepherding his father’s sheep.  Still unnamed in the story, the “handsome” last brother is brought to Samuel.  “Rise and anoint him; for he is the one,” the Lord tells him.  Finally the name is given in the text– David.

• Psalm 20

The psalmist prays for the safety of the Lord’s anointed.

OR

• Ezekiel 17:22-24
  

As a member of an aristocratic family, Ezekiel is among the first forced to leave Jerusalem and be marched into their captor’s capital city, Babylon.  For most of the book that bears his name, Ezekiel blames his fellow Judean Israelites and then their enemies for their humiliating fate.  But then he hints at a better future.  “…The Lord God, I myself,” the prophet declares, will break off a tender twig and plant it on “the highest mountain of Israel.”  There it will grow strong, flourish and “produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar.”  All other trees, (Israel’s neighbors), will see what has happened and “know that I am the Lord.”  When the Lord is finished, trees that are short now will be made tall and tall trees will be made short.

• Psalm 92:1-4,11-14

The psalmist recalls the Lord’s kindness, steadfastness and past actions as reason to sing the Lord’s praises.  He then cites the two tallest trees with the deepest roots that produce the most notable abundance in his environ– the palm and the cedar– to characterize the “righteous” person.

• II Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17

Paul seems to allude to a pressing reality for himself and then breaks out in one of his ecstatic declarations about his/our new status in Christ.  He seems to be addressing questions in the Corinthian community about his reputation or integrity.  He expresses full confidence that he is ready to stand “before the judgment seat of Christ,” as must we all.  He rebuts any rumors about his stability when he writes: “For if we are besides ourselves, it is for you.”  “…If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation”

• Mark 4:26-34

Mark’s narrative of the public life of Jesus began with his baptism, then the call of his first disciples and the early accusations against him–” he is “crazy” or in league with Beelzebub.  Now the narrative launches a long section of parables which explains that Jesus spoke “the word” to the public only in parables, “but explained everything in private to his disciples.”  The first parable Jesus tells seems to be rather straightforward.  He compares the “Kingdom of God” to a tiny seed, which is so small it is not even noticed.  Its embedding and generation are not seen and seem to be haphazard and spontaneous.  But when growth occurs, it can be very substantial and productive.  Given the dominance of farming in the lives of Jesus’s hearers, he uses a common, ordinary experience, but re-presents it in such a way that he catches their imaginations.  Its meaning seems clear, but it is never settled.  (The simple story never stops yielding a harvest!)

[Because the Revised Common Lectionary offers two readings and responsory psalms from the Hebrew scriptures for the next ten Sundays, through Proper 16, the preacher might want to make a strategic decision this Sunday about which option to be read in the liturgy over this period.  The first option each Sunday  follows the story of David, from young boy to his death and burial and the ascendancy of Solomon.  The second option of readings from the Hebrew scriptures were chosen to complement the epistle and gospel.]

The Bible is a collection of narratives; (even those long lists of “begets” and obtuse purity laws serve their respective narratives).  They ought to be respected for what they are, and not systematized, synthesized or homogenized.  “God is a name (without concept),” insists Jean-Luc Nancy (Dis-Enclosure, p.87).  Each story is the story of an encounter with God, in one way or another, and, therefore, implies a relationship, or at least the possibility of a relationship with, — a “Name,” not a “concept!”  And, each story ought to be taken on its own terms and for its own purposes.  They are wild and cannot be tamed or reduced to something more ‘understandable’ or always satisfying.

Consider today’s reading from Samuel where David is introduced into Israel’s grand narrative of relationship with God; and then consider the story told by Jesus within Mark’s carefully crafted narrative.  In the story from I Samuel, we see a conniving God at work, recruiting an accomplice, Samuel, manipulating the piety of Benjamin’s family and undermining the King of Israel, whom God had chosen as the first King of Israel.  This is a little shocking, unsettling, and, therefore, unforgettable and not accessible to snappy interpretation.  What kind of God is this?  What is going on here?  What is this God trying to do?  But Jean-Luc Nancy insists: “God is not within the jurisdiction of a question?”  We live with no final answers, if we dare to enter into a relationship with this God of Abraham/Sarah, Moses and Jesus.  We hazard tentative interpretations, thereby entering into the “sacra conversazione” of all the faithful over all the centuries.  We could interpret this story right at the beginning of the saga of David as the work of a God so in love with those who are in relationship with this God that this God might even bend the rules to accomplish a larger goal.  But that is only one interpretation, and certainly not the final.

The story Jesus tells actually raises more questions than it settles.  He takes something dully familiar and causes us to see something entirely new.  Someone drops some seed on the ground, Jesus says.  To make the point more dramatic, Jesus identifies the seed as a mustard seed, which is conventionally regarded as the smallest of all seeds. After awhile, it sprout and grows, unseen yet wonderfully.

Writing about his friend and colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, C.S.Lewis made an observation about myth that could apply to all story-telling, “…the value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them rich significance which has been hidden by the ‘veil of familiarity’.”  “As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves…” (On Stories, p.90)

Mark explicitly writes that “With many parables Jesus spoke the Word.”  Mark does not write that Jesus used stories to illustrate “the Word;” the stories are “the Word!”  They do not have to be peeled apart to get to hidden or esoteric or conceptual (“theological”)meanings. There is no work of analysis or dissection or categorizing or even allegorizing or moralizing to be done.  This kind of story does not introduce us to ideas, but to a “Name (without concept).”  It does not invite speculative dallying, but it does invite a personal commitment to a relationship with a God who does not always put all the cards on the table or even play by the same rules we know and can even be accused of being a little “crazy,” but who has demonstrated repeatedly a radical commitment to our well-being.  These stories we hear about God’s radical love can germinate when we are distracted, when  the “seed” was out of sight and out of mind.  But then we see its growth and production, that is when we discover something has taken root in us!

Writing about the “Christian parable,”  which is the hallmark of Jesus’s ministry, Jean-Luc Nancy says, “the excess of its truth does not have the indeterminate character of a general lesson that, in some way out of proportion with each particular case, would suggest a regulatory principle.”  “…If you do not understand, do not  look for the reason in an obscurity of the text but only within yourself, in the obscurity of your heart.”  “… There is a message there for those who want to and know how to be called.”  (Noli me tangere, pp 8-9)

The readings, psalms and gospel today are about new growth from surprising beginnings.  The stories throughout the scriptures, which Jesus used primarily to relay his message, are seeds/seedlings that break new ground, establish deep roots, and produce abundant growth in fertile conditions– imaginations and hearts willing to allow  growth.