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My favorite music & art is from the Medieval period.  But my theological side doesn’t buy the super-stition of that era:  I don’t envision demons with pointed ears, nor do I welcome local imps who resemble naughty first-graders in red underwear.  I see “Satan” as a concept of unGodliness more than a goat-footed sneak with a pitchfork.  But that doesn’t preclude our awareness of Evil, an empty power as devoid of God as “darkness” is the absence of Light.  Even today’s post-modern Church must deal with The Dark Side.  Lessons to be read this weekend include admittedly human terms as Believers attempt to live with integrity in the face of corporately condoned Sin.

After the wandering People of Israel had negotiated the Jordan and began to vanquish the inhabitants of Canaan, Joshua called them together for a locker-room pep-talk.  (Joshua 24:14-18)  “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness….If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you WILL serve…”  We visit this passage to remind ourselves of the necessity to discern the promise of God amidst  the competing allegiances of our daily world.  The ancient People remembered God’s mighty works, their release, the Law which made them a nation, and God’s protection through a devilish wilderness trek.

The Epistle is Paul’s famous analogy of The Armor of God, Ephesians 6:10ff.  Disdaining both militarism & football, I’d like to skip over it.  Don’t!  “For,” says the Apostle, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness….”  Peter Rhea Jones has some poetic language:  “When the biblical image of the powers and principalities is recovered from the dustbin, it shines a revealing light on the modern landscape.  We discover the frequent fallenness of money, sex, fashion, sports and religion in our culture.  We are told that new fortunes are to be made while the military spending boom lasts.  We learn that investing in the stocks of companies that market to human vices can earn us higher returns.”  (FEASTING ON THE WORD, B 3, p.377)

And the Gospel of John yet again brings up the hungry consuming of Jesus’ body & blood. (6:56-69)  “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” (v.66)  The demonic on our shoulder will whisper into our ear, diluting Jesus’ radical message to make it more genteel.  Evil’s alternative urges each one to merely nibble what seems polite, ‘stead of chowing down on God-With-Us!

Remember how the Evil King intimidated his innocent bride by making her spin gold thread out of straw?  An imp suddenly appeared to her, saying, “You can’t do it; but I can!”  In despair, the queen promised him anything–and this little bad one demanded her first-born baby when he came back in a year.  The year passed, the baby was born–and the imp showed up!  “I’ll give you three days to guess my name, or you’ll never see your child again!”  The queen’s spies, the CIA of the time, learned that the evil name was “Rumpelstiltzkin”.  (Who woulda guessed?)  To make a long story shorter, knowing the name of the demon caused the demon to disappear in a puff of smoke!  So name the demonic in your world, and the fearful hold of the power of evil will lessen…thanks be to God!

God Bless Us,Every One!              Horace Brown KIng

My parents thought that they were doing something great when they bought me a record of “Jack & the Beanstalk” by The Great Gildersleeve.  I was terrified when the Giant boomed, “Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum:  I smell the BLOOD of an ENGLISHMAN; and be he live, or be he dead, I’ll GRIND his bones to make my bread!!”   I also had a great-aunt who would say to me, “Oh, I could just EAT YOU UP!”  I avoided her as much as I could…  Readings for this weekend deal with the consumption of God, an ultimate feasting on the Holy.

The Hebrew scriptures come from the mystic Book of Proverbs, 9:1-6.  Madam Wisdom has set a table for the nourishment of those unobstructed by worldly affairs: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”   Am I living before God with integrity?   Are we, the Church–those unobstructed by worldly affairs–embodying a mature faith, or have we settled for less than that for which we were Created?  Here, too, is a Sacrament.

The passage from Ephesians (5:15-20) is sort of template to give our daily experience a pattern:  “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  (They’re “evil” because they erode our best intentions and sap away our vision.)  The opposite of foolishness is the understanding (participating in?) the will of the Lord.  Paul, also, is inviting those unobstructed with worldly affairs to be filled with the Spirit.

The words of Jesus as remembered by John in the 6th chapter of his Gospel are tough!  “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (v.53)  No wonder that many who had followed now turned away: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  This is a serious claim about life & death, about taking big bites of God or merely nibbling about the edge. When  Immanuel, God With Us, pitched his tent in our backyard, we shoulda known that our lives were going to be, well, different!  For me, one of the mysteries of the Sacrament is to envision the holy presence of the  Bread & Wine coursing through my arteries, out to even the tiniest cappilary.  An intimate banquest indeed!

I don’t think I’ll include it in my Sunday’s sermon, but all this reminds me of the early missionary to the cannibals of the South Sea Islands:  the natives got their first taste of Christianity…  If we are what we eat, then we can be transformed into the Image of God by ingesting Christ.  Taste and see that the Lord is good!

God Bless Us, Every One                  Horace Brown King

The Sunday School class was discussing “Anger”, and naturally, Road Rage came up:  we all made our rueful confessions.  One lady spoke of naming a dog FIDO: “forget it, drive on”.  A nice saying, but I’m gonna have to practice a whole lot more!  The lessons from scripture to be read this weekend acknowledge that we’re all on a Sacred Journey — we’ll tell you when we get there– and that there are some rules which sustain us as we travel.

In the First Book of the Kings of Israel, chapter 19, we meet the Prophet Elijah surprisingly sad after his stunning “victory” over the Prophets of the Baal.  For one thing, Queen Jezebel has put a price on his head; and now we find him huddling under some oasis shrubbery muttering, “I’ve had it , God, now let me die.”   But while he dozed there, an angel brought him food & drink, and urged him to eat:  “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” (v.7)  So he did–and thus traveled to Mt. Horeb/Sinai where he was refreshed by the Still, Small Voice.

There’s always a Holy Trip for us; but how do we get There safely,  unscathed by annoyances of others and with a minimum of remorse at our own bad behavior?  Ephesians 4:25-5:2 is a code of ethics for those hoping to live Gracefully.  “Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”  When the writer says, “speak”, we’re thinking less of verbalization than of Being Real within the Greater Community.  Anger, dishonesty and profanity are decried, as are bitterness…wrangling and slander and malice.  Those marked with the Holy Spirit are reminded to be kind, forgiving, and tenderhearted; in short, imitating God (through Christ’s help!).  Ah, what would the world look like!  What’s the name of that dog, again?

John’s Gospel reminds us yet again that most who encountered Jesus were confused, sometimes angry, with his Bread of Life claims.  They remembered the Good Ole Days of receiving manna when they were starving in the desert:  what more could God be up to NOW? (6:41-51)  To this, Jesus replied, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness and they died [eventually].  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.”  This, also, is strength for the journey.

Elijah’s despair was transformed into power; holy conversation aimed the Early Church to revolutionary alternatives to self-righteous snobbishness,  and the Bread of Heaven filled even the traditionalists with endurance.  Dean McDonald–“Post-Communion prayers voice thanksgiving for the strength contained in the sacrament, but then the liturgy urges us to ‘go and serve the Lord’ using the energy received for ministry in the world.”

God Bless Us, Every One!    Horace Brown King