The readings are (to read them, go HERE):
2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in an ideal world? Wouldn’t it be nice to be free of all the things that trouble us?
Now different people might have different descriptions of what would make an ideal world. In the past few weeks, as things have opened up in society a bit more, I saw a headline in a newspaper online. It was about being able to go to a nightclub again, and it quoted someone as saying, “This is what life is all about.”
And I thought, Really? Nightclubs? Not to be overly critical, but saying the foundation of life is being able to go to a nightclub after 18 months of a pandemic seems just a bit shallow.
So what would constitute an ideal world for you? For many people it would be to eradicate cancer, sickness, poverty, natural disasters. Many people in church circles talk about bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. What they often mean is getting rid of poverty and racism and war and environmental disaster, and having human beings live harmoniously with one another and with the planet.
After 18 months of a pandemic, we might include in a definition of an ideal world things we would not have thought of before. Singing in church. Being able to get on a plane and fly somewhere — perhaps Greece or Portugal or Spain. Going to a sporting match with thousands of other people and cheering till we’re hoarse. People talking about life returning to “normal” might reflect some longing for an ideal world, or at least a world that approaches more ideal than we feel the present moment is.
Our readings this week — just like last week, if you heard them — offer us a great contrast between what is ideal and what is not. The reading from 2 Samuel, about King David, shows us a very un-ideal world. What we heard today is the second part of the story. So if you missed last week, here is what is happening. The mighty King David, beloved of the Lord, has just committed the worst sin of his life. When his army was off fighting a battle for him, David slept with the wife of one of his warriors and got her pregnant. Then to hide the fact, David ended up arranging to have the warrior, Uriah the Hittite, killed in battle.
In the reading today, Nathan the prophet lays out before David just how horrible his deed was. Psalm 51, which we read part of today [and always read on Ash Wednesday], is the confession that David then makes to God that he has sinned:
“Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness,” he laments;
according to the abundance of your compassion blot out my offences.”
This is a story of a very un-ideal world. It is a story of adultery, deception, and murder. Yet it could have been ripped from the newspaper headlines of today. Or skip the headlines: all sorts of un-ideal things happen like this, and worse, that never even make it to the headlines. David at least admits he has committed evil — which might not be so true of the sins of world leaders that we might read about these days.
Contrast all this with the Gospel reading. Jesus has just fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. The people who saw this event and ate their fill have followed him. They have seen before them something ideal. They have seen the kingdom of God come to earth. They are not saying this; they may not be able to say just why they are flocking after Jesus. Jesus tells them they are following him because they got some food from him. And then he warns them, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” — meaning he himself. He has given them a taste of something ideal, come to them right here on earth; do not aim for anything less, he is saying.
And then after a bit more conversation, he says to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
There’s the ideal world. I remember one evening years ago when I came across this line, as I sat reading the day’s Bible lessons. It just smacked me in the face, drove straight into my mind and heart: “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It told me that there is an ideal world, and Jesus is the way to get there. It told me that we will not completely fulfill that ideal in earthly terms here in this life, but we can know its presence among us and in our lives anyway.
This is what the Apostle Paul is writing about in the passage we heard from the letter to the Ephesians. He is reminding us that we have been called to something higher, reflected in our knowledge of Christ and maturity in faith and in how we live among one another. It is not a matter simply of being nice and kind to one another. We are actually bound to one another in Christ, he reminds us, knit together into one body, with the one Spirit of God filling us and guiding us.
“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord,” Paul says, “beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Wow, yes, a tough calling. An ideal which we perhaps may not reach — or maybe we will, as we cast aside anything in us or around us that is not worthy of such a calling; as we accept God’s forgiveness for any sin we may have committed, for no matter how terrible the sin may be, God calls us to repentance and new life and offers forgiveness; as we turn aside from all the winds of doctrine that get tossed around as edgy and the latest trend, as we simply grow up into him who is the head, grow up into Christ.
We may be longing for an ideal world. We may be longing for life to return to “normal.” But we must remember Jesus’ words: Do not work for the food that perishes — in other words, be careful of longing for something that may give some temporary earthly satisfaction but leaves us still hungry and thirsty. There is a higher aim to which we are called.
I suggest that an ideal world would be where “normal” means all of us living with “all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Lord God, bring us to such an ideal, we pray.
— By the Rev. Canon Liz Beasley