Wish I’d Said That!

Sometimes, not often, I recognize that the commentators I follow have said better things than I can with my limited language. This week, I’ve decided to let them speak for themselves; I’m reading the Common Lectionary from FEASTING on the WORD, Proper 14 in Year B, pages in Volume 3 of 314 through 337.

I KINGS 19:4-8 (Susan E. Vande Kappelle, once pastor of 4th Presbyterian, Washington PA) “Elijah is a faithful servant of the living God. In the prophetic office, Elijah has known the Lord’s provision in drought and famine….Even without blatant personal sin, Elijah sees no good in his life….He assumes that he can be of no further service to the Lord….Feeling the hopelessness of his situation, Elijah flees into the wilderness and seeks an end to his life….In every situation God makes redemption possible….God breaks the power of evil and offers new life….In response to an individual who has lost hope and direction for life and who has a poor sense of self-worth, God acts with compassion….The redemption of Elijah takes time. It requires compassionate nurture and the recovery of Elijah’s sense of his value to God….Elijah’s worth is found in God’s love for him and in the call of God upon his life….Human worth does not depend upon living a sinless life. It is the concrete love of God that provides humans with self-worth and meaning for life.”

EPHESIANS 4:25-5:2 (G. Porter Taylor, Episcopal Bishop of Western North Carolina, Asheville NC) “The new believers are to ‘put off’ or ‘strip away’ the old self so that God can give them the new….Because we are reborn, the habits of the old self have no dominion over us….Therefore, the works described by Paul are not merit badges set out for us to achieve. Rather, they are marks of the new life given to us in baptism….Paul is calling for the new Christians to remember who they now are in Christ and to focus on the way to life, instead of turning back to the ways of death….God gives us the capacity to turn around as well as to refrain from turning back….Paul is calling for these early Christians not merely to worship God in Christ, but through the Holy Spirit to imitate Christ in their own behavior…”

JOHN 6:41-51 (Will Willimon, Bishop of the United Methodist Church and resident scholar at Duke University) “As modern scientific people, we have learned so much about everything we can taste, and touch, and feel. In the process, the world got demystified, explained, unbearably flattened and figured out. We therefore long to peek behind the veil, to penetrate the less obvious….What the Bible names in places as ‘idolatry’ could also be called attempts to seek sustenance in places other than with Jesus, who says he is the bread of life….Whatever we need in order to comprehend Jesus must come as a gift, insight not of our own devising.”

Egad, what a lot of words! I pray that they’ll direct your life as they do mine.

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

Join us next Tuesday to explore Scripture passages to be read during worship on the upcoming weekend.