• II Samuel 18:5-9

The King’s generals, Joab, Abihai and Ittai, persuade David to remain in the city while they go out to battle.  He gives them a special order: Deal gently with my rebellious son, Absalom.  Despite the fact that Absalom had mangled his family relationships and started a coup against his father, David retained affection for his son.  In a subsequent battle in a densely wooded area, Absalom’s head gets wedged in the branches of a tree.  His cousin, Joab, orders his men to kill Absalom.  The first report David receives about the battle is about a glorious victory of the King’s army.  When David finally hears about the death of his son, he is crushed and agonizes and mourns uncontrollably.  (The words of the prophet Nathan that violence would overwhelm David’s family begin to be fulfilled.)

• Psalm 130

Speaking in the first person singular, the psalmist admits realistically his situation: From the depths I cry to the Lord/if you keep careful track of everyone’s sins, no one will survive/therefore I hope in the Lord”s legendary forgiveness/for which I wait with the same eagerness I look for the dawn after a restless night.  Then the psalmist addresses the whole nation: Wait and watch expectantly for the Lord’s steadfast grace and redemption.

OR

• I Kings 19:4-8

Fleeing for his life after what had been a victory celebration, the prophet Elijah pleads to the Lord to just leave him alone and let him die.  Exhausted, he falls asleep under a “broom tree,” but is awakened by the touch of an angel, who instructs him to “get up and eat.”  He eats and drinks and goes back to sleep.  The angel touches him again to wake up and eat some more of the cakes and water, which had miraculously appeared.  After that, Elijah went for forty days and forty night before he needed to eat again!

• Psalm 34:1-8

The psalmist praises the Lord “at all times” because the Lord hears and sends “messengers” to surround “those who fear the Lord” and “to set them free.”

• Ephesians 4:25-5:2

After reviewing several conventional admonitions about how to live one’s life, the writer to the Ephesians provides two powerful motivations to follow them.  First, treat others as Christ has treated you, with forgiveness and generosity.  Secondly, “be imitators of God,” “live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us….”

• John 6:35,41-51

John’s substantial commentary after Jesus had fed well more than 5,000 people and still had generous leftovers now takes up seminal memories of God’s people, in particular God’s miraculous feeding of God’s people in the wilderness (see Proper 13 B).  Now Jesus declares that he is that “bread that came down from heaven,” “I am the living bread, whoever eats of this bread will live forever,” “that bread is my flesh.”  But some of those hearing him that day objected, We know his family.  But Jesus persists that “everyone who has heard and learned from  the Father…” will grasp what he is saying, because I have “seen” the Father.

Walter Brueggemann regards the miraculous feeding of God’s people in the wilderness as “an action on a par with deliverance from [slavery in] Egypt.”  And, he notes, that the words “eat” and fully “sated” are linked to emphasize “Yahweh’s extravagant generosity, which gives abundantly beyond Israel’s need, and Israel’s complete delight in Yahweh’s abundance.” (Theology of the Old Testament, p. 203)

John the evangelist does not invent the meme of God’s abundance, but he deepened it in his dramatic application to Christ.  In John’s narrative, Jesus first calls himself “the bread of life.”  Then John goes further, “Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, and they died, but, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  He pushes even further, No one can make this claim expect someone who has “seen” the Father and I have seen the Father, Jesus asserts.  This pile up of claims reaches its climax, “the bread that I give…  is my flesh.”  John advances the core theme of his narrative: God sent Jesus motivated by love to love all so that God’s love is finally seen in all its dazzling glory on the cross and in the empty tomb– God’s love ‘in the flesh.’

In some introductory comments at one of those now-famous Villanova conferences focused on post-Modern thought and religion, Michael Scanlon made this observation as he was about to moderate a dialogue between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion: “One of Augustine’s words for the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, is God’s gift, the donum Dei.  Augustine puts it very nicely, ‘God gives us many gifts, but Deus est qui Deum dat’ (‘God is He who gives God’).”  (God, the Gift and Postmodernism, p.54)

The miraculous feeding of God’s people in the wilderness is “on a par” with the initial act of deliverance– escape from slavery in Egypt– according to Brueggemann; the only event described in all four gospels is Jesus’ miraculous feeding of more than 5,000, which John’s narrative follows with a lengthy and important commentary about Jesus.  The bright thread that runs throughout this rich biblical tapestry of narratives, “old” and “new,” is that God is motivated by and operates through generosity and we can, too!  (Be “imitators” of God, the writer to Ephesians encourages.)

Jean-Luis Chretien figures that the realization that we live off all that has gone before us and the further realization that we have the capacity to give/pass on to others is nothing less than the actual birth of one’s spirit!  He writes, “Spirit becomes mine only when something in me shatters and loses itself in gift.”  (The Call and the Response, p.44)  All pretenses that “I’m on my own,” or “I don’t owe anything to anyone” shatter life like cheap glass when we admit our status as beneficiaries and realize our capacity (or perhaps our need), to give to others, as we have benefited.  This admission that we participate in the vital cycle of abundance may come as lite as the “touch of an angel,” as it did with Elijah, but it will feed/sustain us for the rest of our life; (Elijah was so sated he did not need to eat for another forty days and forty nights).  We are to expectantly be on the lookout (Psalm 130) for God’s “grace,” because we never know exactly when it will come.

The biblical narratives could not be clearer or more fundamental: We were born, live now and will die as the beneficiaries (in the debt) of others; and we, too, can benefit others in our unique way.  God is the one who set this pattern in motion– “Deus est qui Deum dat.”   And,  just when it was needed, sent “messengers,” including finally the most extravagant reminder of the power of generosity, Jesus “in the flesh.”  Participating in this realization is the “birth” of our “spirit.”