2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; Psalm 51:1-13
Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35
August 4, 2024
David Mealy
Create in me a clean heart, oh God, And renew a right spirit within me.
Each of today’s readings have something to offer us about truth – the telling of it, the believing in it, and the role it plays in building communities.
In the reading from Second Samuel, we hear Nathan, a prophet, being sent by the Lord to deliver some hard truths to David. This is not the first time Nathan has delivered God’s words to David – he appears earlier in Second Samuel to deliver God’s promise that David will lead a dynasty. In that promise, the Lord also reveals his great love for David. It is a promise that David receives with a long prayer of gratitude.
This time, the Lord, through Nathan, tells David that he has done great evil through his fathering of a child by Bathsheba and that he has utterly scorned the Lord. As a result the Lord promises to raise up trouble against David from within his own house. However, the Lord also promises David that he himself won’t die.
That trouble begins a couple of lines after the end of today’s reading, with the death of the child he fathered. It continues through several more chapters which we won’t hear in this lectionary cycle, except for the story of Absalom, next week.
The story of the cascade of terrible things that happen as the Lord raises up trouble within his house feels like a story arc in “Game of Thrones”. Nathan’s message that God has condemned David for his actions must have been a hard one to bear. Nathan did his best to soften the blow by couching his truth-telling in a tale about a rich man and a poor man. Nathan was probably trusted by David, particularly after his previous good news about the Lord’s plan for him. As the messenger bearing such difficult truths, things probably would not have ended so well for Nathan in the “Game of Thrones” world.
Instead of blaming the messenger, David is credited with having created the psalm we read today, Psalm 51. This is noted in an unusual explanatory note in the text of the psalm, although it doesn’t appear in today’s bulletin. The psalm, with its ”Create in me a clean heart, oh God” line, is a beautiful and lyrical expression of regret and a plea for forgiveness from the Lord.
A different kind of truth appears in today’s Gospel reading from John. We hear Jesus introduce the idea to those around him that he is the bread of life, that whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty. It’s a big, puzzling ask, this belief, and, as we learn in the verses that come after today’s reading, many in the crowd, including many of the newer disciples, are unable to understand or accept it.
It is much easier for folks to grasp the immediate benefit of the many miraculous meals provided by Jesus, or to believe in the manna from heaven that God provided, than it is to grasp a belief in eternal life. Yet Jesus presents this path of faith to them and will patiently expand on in the next several weeks as we move further through John’s Gospel. That Jesus can offer them a life without hunger or thirst, an eternal life, is a truth offered in love. It is a truth that requires faith to fully believe in, to fully hear and understand and enter in to it.
The hard truth-telling that we hear in Second Samuel, and the difficult truth-hearing that is described in John’s Gospel is also present in the simple phrase we hear today in Ephesians – “speaking truth in love.”
Ephesians is a complicated vessel to hold this simple phrase of speaking truth in love. Its authorship is uncertain – possibly Paul, probably a later admirer of Paul’s – and it was likely written for a number of different communities rather than just to those in Ephesus, as the title might suggest. And it has some material that, while held as truth by the author, may not be recognizable by us as having been spoken in love. Fortunately, our lectionary has chosen not to include those.
In this reading, Paul – or someone writing in his name – presents a vision of a universal church that brings Jews and Gentiles together, and gives encouragement to the new Christian communities forming in Ephesus and elsewhere. That simple “speaking truth in love” phrase is used to describe the bond through which Christian communities can grow.
In many of the Pauline letters, we hear of the work involved in creating communities – the travelling, the revisiting communities that are in need of strengthening, the handling of disputes and correcting misinterpretations of Christ’s teaching. Today we hear more about the formation of the body of a community itself, a formation described in physiologic terms of ligaments and members and a head, as well as in terms of growing into Christ’s body.
The writer starts by asking us – begging us, actually – to first, lead lives worthy of the calling to which we have been called, calls that we have received as gifts through the grace of Christ. We bring those gifts into our community and use those gifts to build that community. And the key to that building, that growing of community is, in the writer’s words, “speaking truth in love.”
I’ve sat with that phrase for a while as I thought about how our communities are formed – not only Christian communities but others as well.
It is a deceptively simple phrase, but in practice it gets quite complicated. To “speak truth in love” requires you to actually say something, not just think it, and to say something you truly believe will build the community. It requires that another person hear you, of course – no use speaking to an empty room – and that they be willing to accept the truth of what you say. All of that requires trust, and belief, and some faith, that together sounds something like love.
To the writer of Ephesians, it is the essential part of the formation of community, this trusting, truth- filled love that is formed between the members and becomes the bond that strengthen the whole body.
It seems kind of impossible. How are we to constantly assess if someone is being truthful and loving, particularly in our present political climate where truth and love sometimes seem to be in short supply?
But we do manage to do that, and we do it all the time. We acknowledge it when we say that we love being a part of that group, or we love being among those friends or on that team. We may feel it when we find ourselves looking forward to going out to dinner with old friends, or excited to talk again with someone you recently found a connection with.
It's been present in recent conversations we’ve had in our St. Aidan’s community as we reflect on ways the language we use, or the unexamined ideas we hold, get in the way of living into a community that is welcoming to trans folk, conversations that were possible because people were able to both speak truth in love, and hear truth spoken in love.
It's also been present in the many conversations we’ve had in the New Jim Crow book group over the past nine years that involved sometimes difficult truth-telling about our own biases and upbringings, again possible because of a shared desire to help transform and strengthen each other in a loving community. And it can be present in communities formed around more practical things, such as parent groups, work teams and neighborhoods.
As we move into our election cycle, I am hopeful – not optimistic, but hopeful – that there will be moments where our communities and our nation are knit a bit closer together through truths that are both spoken and heard in love. Moments that will help, in the words of today’s Psalm, renew a right spirit within us.
May it be so. Amen.
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