Psalm 89:20-37
Proper 11 (16) - Year B
This is good warning not to set too much stock on any given piece of scripture all by itself. All these wonderful promises are simply prelude to the rest of the Psalm. The longer arc is the experience of losing sight of the fulfillment of the promise - in this case exile, not eternal enthronement, becomes the focus.
Perhaps the best that can be said is "G*D's faithfulness and steadfast love shall be with you" -- in prosperous times and in hard times come again to our door. There is a tendency to equate G*D's faithfulness and steadfast love us with a sufficiency of the coin of the realm accumulating in our pockets. This partial vision never does fully cover the unrealistic upward and onward now and forever approach to life. While it is a pat and creedal response when things are going well, it turns bitter in our lives pretty quickly when death and disaster appear.
The out from this sort of bitterness is a continual affirmation that G*D's faithfulness and steadfast love is with us all along the way from the pleasure of conception to the pain of birth to the struggles with meaning to the walking of valleys by oneself. That's all we have -- presence. And it is enough.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/july2003.html
Psalm 89:20-37 or Psalm 23
2 Samuel 7:1-14a or Jeremiah 23:1-6
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
"Come away beloved/disciples," has a different feel when said by Solomon than by Jesus.
Jesus was an active prophet, not a poetic one. Particularly in Mark do we have an agenda-driven presentation speeding on.
When Jesus invites us to a deserted place it is only deserted inasmuch as he is not currently there, not that it is a desolation. A part of his teaching is to be active where you are in such a manner that such activity can be sustained for we are always dealing with desert-ion.
Sometimes we enter desolate territory only to find it wasn't, isn't, wont be. Sometimes we find such desolation visiting our routine life. Whether visiting or being visited, opportunity for "making whole" is available.
Our choice is to view desolate places as our life's joy or an impingement upon our possibilities.
- - -
a deserted place
is never so
when it is sought
desolation has a life
and rhythm of its own
not to be presumed upon
transforming strange aliens
into intimate family friends
hostility to peace
out of such journey
comes healing aplenty
for every unbidden dark valley
a desired desolate place
teems with expectation
and vast need
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
A youngest son out tending sheep is finally found and anointed. Three ancestresses, foreign and sexually wily, Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth had to be overcome. There is no predicting his ascendency with this background — so imagine the political ads against David. We will, however, grant great importance to his descendants.
There are whole theories about the queen of England being a descendant of David’s along with who knows how many Jews. There are whole organizations of David’s descendants such as the Davidic Dynasty, much like the Mayflower Society and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
There is a drive in us to be among those who are “established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies”. You don’t have any prophetic responsibility to live up to, you’re in like Flynn.
Presumably David’s descendants are as motley and of no account as he was before Samuel came looking. It’s not fair to presume upon your lineage if you are not going to do anything that would honor it. First do what the kings didn’t - protect the weak, lift up the weakened. This is the line to be continued — care-for-all has persistence while looking-out-for-one’s-own eventually leads to division and exile. If the internals are not strong, there will always be a crack for an enemy to exploit.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/07/psalm-8920-37.html