• II Samuel 11:26-12:13a

The denouement of King David begins.  Having successfully plotted the death of Uriah, David takes his widow, Bathsheba, as his wife, who gives birth to a son.  The prophet Nathan is sent by the Lord to tell the King a story: A wealthy brute steals and has slaughtered for a feast the only lamb of a humble man rather than take a sheep from his own large flock.  David is outraged by the injustice and insists, “the man who has done this deserves to die.”  The prophet says simply, “You are that man.”  Nathan reviews all that the Lord has done for and through David, but tells him that he will live to see his own family filled with violence and his own wives taken by the kings of other nations.  What David did in secret will now be revealed in broad daylight and become part of the memory of the whole nation of Israel.

• Psalm  51:1-13

The psalmist produced a model for confession that endures prominently in Christian (Ash Wednesday) and Jewish (Days of Awe) liturgical practices.  Placing it right after the story of David’s reckoning, it is particularly poignant, while retaining  its universal meaning for the whole human condition.  The confessor pleads for God’s grace/kindness/mercy.  He admits his crimes and offenses against the Lord.  Throwing himself on God’s mercy, he pleads for the Lord to not look at his offenses.  “…Purify me,” “wash me,” “avert Your face from my offenses,” “do not banish me from Your presence,” nor “take your holy spirit from me.”

OR

• Exodus 16:2-4,9-15

Between Israel’s dramatic exit from Egypt and miraculous arrival in the promised land, there are forty long, dull, testy years of wandering in the wilderness interrupted with occasional outpourings of God’s extravagant generosity on which they survive.  On this occasion, the level of moaning and groaning against Moses and Aaron rises to the point some are even saying it would have been better if they had died while still slaves in Egypt.  The Lord tells Moses that the complaints have been heard and “I am going to rain bread from heaven on you….”  Moses relays the news to Aaron who tells the people.  While Aaron is still announcing the news, “the glory of the Lord appeared” and the promised food appeared.  There was enough to eat from morning to night.  When the dew lifted, there was an unfamiliar  “flaky substance.”  Moses says, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”

• Psalm 78:23-29

This very long psalm reviews the narrative “that our fathers recounted to us,” (v.3) of the forty years in the wilderness when the Lord tested Israel.  Sometimes they passed and sometimes they failed those tests.   Their chronic complaining about lack of food and water became a flash point that revealed whether they did or did not have “faith in God” or “trust in God’s rescue,” (v.22).  The psalmist acknowledges God’s extravagant outpouring, “and they ate and were fully sated/what they craved God brought to them.”

• Ephesians 4:1-16

The writer of this letter to the church in Ephesus combines powerful assertions about the real significance of Christ and the role for this new body, the church.  The church is united by “one hope, one faith, one baptism,” but it is as diverse as each unique person who “was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”  Then the writer refers to the assent to Sinai by Moses to receive the Law and his return to give the Lord’s “gifts to the Lord’s people.”  He follows with a reference to Christ’s “descent,” “(earth? Hades?) so that Christ “might fill all things.”  Therefore, the church is full of all kinds of people, each with her or his own unique experience of God’s grace.  Working together, this diverse community comprises a functioning body that “works” effectively.  The “ligaments” of this body are love, unity, peace and maturity.  The church is a body of individuals who recognize themselves and other persons as uniquely “gifted” by “Christ’s gift.”  They have the privilege to announce and to work together in that new reality.

• John 6:24-35

Immediately following the feeding of 5,000 men and uncounted women and children and the disciples subsequent encounter with Christ who “comes close” to them in a boat with the admonition, “do not be afraid,” John’s narrative places this interpretation/commentary on these events.  Using the format of question/answer with his disciples, Jesus stresses that he is not only the conduit for God’s gifts, he is himself “the bread of life.”  He is not just a sign that points in the direction of something else, he is the “bread of God which came down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  He is the Giver; He is the Gift!

Both appointed readings from the Hebrew scriptures and both psalms run the gamut of human failures, but are interrupted with injections of unexpected, undeserved promises of God’s mercy.  The excerpt from John’s gospel makes an extraordinary claim about Christ as both Giver and Gift.  And the appointed epistle depicts the church as witness and participant in this extraordinary extravagance  to which the biblical narratives attest.  The account of David’s disgrace and public humiliation is followed by the psalmist’s recollection of David’s behavior and the realization that a complete cleansing (confession) to God and throwing himself on God’s grace/mercy/kindness is his only realistic recourse.  An account of God’s people in the wilderness is followed by the psalmist’s poetic restatement of the reality that sometimes we feel God’s presence while at other time we feel just as keenly God’s absence.  But most of the time we are distracted by the daily grind.  In such routine times, the actual extent of our trust in God is revealed.  The psalmist concludes with a reminder that what we crave, God gives.  The writer of the letter to the church in Ephesus values both the unity of purpose of the church and the infinite variety of people drawn to it.  Each person has been uniquely “gifted” by “Christ’s gift” and participates in the church’s witness to God’s supreme gift, Christ.  In today’s appointed gospel, the testimony of the church reaches a climax– Christ is not merely a sign of God’s generosity, Christ is yet one more stupendous manifestation of God’s extravagant goodness.

The notion of “gift” has preoccupied many writers regarded as postmodern from Husserl and Heidegger to those reaching the peak of their productivity today.  One of the most useful and succinct summaries (and frequently cited) of this notion of “gift” is an essay by Jean-Luc Marion, “Sketch of the Phenomenological Concept of Gift,” which appears in the collection of essays, The Visible and the Revealed.  After comparing and contrasting his notion of “gift” with Derrida’s, Marion concludes that the life-changing decision one makes is to see (sometimes he writes “recognize”) oneself, others and indeed all we experience as beneficiaries.  This is the “starting point” for whatever else we decide about life and we accept it as a “fact.”  And then there is an even more staggering realization– the greatest gift is not something tangible, but it is the awareness that I am gifted, we are gifted; we are born and flourish only because we know we are gifted and our greatest privilege is to participate in giving to others.  In a memorable aphorism Marion writes, “It involves less a gift of meaning than the meaning of gift…” (p.94)

For Marion, the gift-giver who reveals the genius of “giveness” to us par excellence is Christ.  The details of his life, the precise twists and turns of his phony trial and execution and the reaction to the discovery of the empty tomb comprise the most complete and convincing display ever given to us of what absolute giving looks likes in human terms  and the impact it can have on individual men and women and their relationships.

In another essay in that same collection, Marion writes about the church:

“…Christians cannot bring anything other than what they have received: Christ.  He who gives and delivers himself as our bread belongs to all.  Christians do not own Christ as property, but as first recipients they must in turn hand him on to others….” (p.152)

At their core, biblical narratives are descriptions of the complete range of human experience, from its glory to its gore.  But these narratives are always disturbed by one staggering assertion: God’s goodness/mercy/generosity set all that is in motion and sustain it, including me and all others.  I chose to see/recognize/participate in that assertion or not.  If I do, I live my life by this “fact.”  The church, at her best, is witness and perpetrator of this status of “giveness” for all persons.  The greatest gift, which Christ fulfills better than any other, is the realization that we are gifted; this is indeed “Christ’s gift” to all.  That is the message and should be the modus operandi of the church.