1 Samuel 16:1-13

This is a somewhat sordid tale of political dealings. I’ll let you sort that out if you wish. It will explain the trickery and why the elders are trembling. Eventually we get to David being chosen by God to be King, the one who will be an ancestor to Joseph, husband of Mary, the mother of God. David will break a few commandments, and not just coveting, actually sleeping with a woman then having her husband killed and trying to cover it up as if it was in battle (2 Sam 11). I'm not sure why this is included during Lenten season.

Maybe it is because of the famous verse, “for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." Although that is not consistent, even within this passage. Maybe it is something to do with how imperfect we are. I don't know, good luck with this one.

Psalm 23

And since we are talking about David, let’s bring out a most famous Psalm, supposedly written by him. It is not hard to find word by word analysis of this psalm, so I’m not going to attempt to add to that.

John 9:1-31

We get another lengthy passage from John this week. There is an unusual amount of repetition to drive home the point that the blind man doesn't know how it happened, he just knows he can see now. It ends with the somewhat cryptic words of Jesus, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." This would be a spiritual blindness. The Pharisees, who go to the trouble of confirming the miracle by asking witnesses, see that Jesus must be a prophet. Well, within the context of the Bible, but they deny it anyway. So they become blind to the spirit, despite their having seen him. This is part of one of those long standing debates about getting salvation if you have never heard of Jesus, or going to hell if you have heard of him but deny him, but I won't go in to it.

My comment about the context of the Bible is, the New Testament doesn't mention other gods or competing prophets. You get an occasional discussion about other Christian sects in the writings of Paul, but other Jewish prophets like Vespasian or early similar versions of Jesus' teachings like Zoroaster, don't get mentioned at all. If they did, you would know that some of those others had similar miracle claims, also verified by witnesses. Verses like 32, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.” would not fit in a world of competing messiahs. Worse, they might have to discuss the relative merits of their stands on morality and ethics or how to build community, heaven forbid.

The more standard Christian interpretation of this passage is; we are all born blind, we hear Christ, we follow his instructions and get baptized, then we see the light. Adam Hamilton describes this in his book about John. Hamilton then goes on to tell the story of how the song “Amazing Grace” came to be, the one that sings about being blind but now I see. What he doesn't explain, because it isn't there, is how we follow Christ's instructions and decide to lead a movement to end slavery. You can get to ending slavery by following a path of being a better person, but if you look for instructions about dealing with slaves in the Bible, you will find the opposite.

Ephesians 5:8-14

In Bart Ehrman's book “Forged”, he makes the case that this letter is not written by Paul, essentially it is a forgery, someone attempting to gain credibility by using Paul's name. Even my NIV Study Bible says this might be the case. How ironic that the author stresses honesty throughout, as in, “for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Lying is sometimes done for a greater good. The Bible has examples of that. So labeling this a forgery does not mean we just dismiss it. It's not like it was written last century. If it wasn't by Paul, it was probably someone close to him. It is still a source document from the same period and the same community.

Ephesians is a mix of nice sounding ideas about Jews sitting down with Gentiles and at other times it gives bad advice like slaves obeying their masters. This passage may have been included this week because of its use of “rise from the dead” a snippet that seems reminiscent of the resurrection, and many sermon helpers will say that is the intent.

They don’t elaborate however, and to me, if that is the intent, it’s an odd use of the phrase. Only Jesus actually rose from the dead, right? Throwing around such a phrase to simply mean “wake up” is rather crass, if not outright blasphemy. If, in the wrong company, I said, “are we waiting for the resurrection?” in reference to someone sleeping late, I could get some dirty looks.

So I took a deeper look at the Greek for this one. BibleHub offers extensive commentary on every verse in the Bible and every word. For Ephesians 5:14, they say ‘rise from the dead’ is used figuratively. You would need to know your Greek a lot better than the internet can offer to know if that is an accurate statement. I find it suspect. There are at least some who say Jesus ‘rising from the dead’ is just as figurative.

All in all, it's a tough week for preaching to the lectionary.