Week of 5 Epiphany: Thursday, Year 2

Above:  An Eastern Orthodox Icon of Solomon

Faith–Individual and Communal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

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Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada.  I invite you to follow it with me.

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1 Kings 11:1-13 (TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures):

King Solomon loved many foreign women in addition to Pharaoh’s daughter–Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Phoenician, and Hittite women, from the nations of which the LORD had said to the Israelites,

None of you shall join them and none of them shall join you, lest they turn your heart away to follow their gods.

Such Solomon clung to and loved.  He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned his heart away.  In his old age, his wives turned Solomon’s heart after other gods; and he not as wholeheartedly devoted to the LORD his God as his father David had been.  Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Phoenicians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

Solomon did what was displeasing to the LORD and did not remain loyal to the LORD like his father David.  At that time, Solomon built a shrine for Chemosh the abomination of Moab on the hill near Jerusalem, and one for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites.  And he did the same for all his foreign wives who offered and sacrificed to their gods.

The LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him about this matter, not to follow other gods; he did not obey what the LORD had commanded.  And the LORD said to Solomon,

Because you are guilty of this–yo have not kept My covenant and the laws which I enjoined upon you–I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants.  But, for the sake of your father David, I will not do it in your lifetime; I will tear it away from your son.  However, I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give your son one tribe, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.

Psalm 132:11-19 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

11  The LORD has sworn an oath to David;

in truth, he will not break it:

12  ”A son, the fruit of your body

will I set upon your throne.

13  If your children keep my covenant

and my testimonies that I shall teach them,

their children will sit upon your throne for evermore.”

14  For the LORD has chosen Zion;

he has desired her for his habitation:

15  ”This shall be my resting-place for ever;

here will I dwell, for I delight in her.

16  I will surely bless her provisions,

and satisfy her poor with bread.

17  I will clothe her priests with salvation,

and her faithful people will rejoice and sing.

18  There will I make the horn of David flourish;

I have prepared a lamp for my Anointed.

19  As for his enemies, I will clothe them with shame;

but as for him, his crown will shine.”

Mark 7:24-30 (J. B. Phillips, 1972):

Then he got up and left that place and went off to the neighbourhood of Tyre.  There we went into a house and wanted no one  to know where he was.  But it proved impossible to remain hidden.  For no sooner had he got there, than a woman who had heard about him, and who had a daughter possessed by an evil spirit, arrived and prostrated herself before him.  She was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she asked him to drive the evil spirit out of her daughter.  Jesus said to her,

You must let the children have all they want first.  It is not right, you know, to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.

But she replied,

Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under the table eat the scraps that the children leave.

Jesus said to her,

If you can answer like that you can go home!  The evil spirit has left your daughter.

And she went back to her home and found the child lying quietly on her bed, and the evil spirit gone.

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The Collect:

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Week of 5 Epiphany:  Thursday, Year 1:

https://adventchristmasepiphany.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/week-of-5-epiphany-thursday-year-1/

Matthew 15 (Parallel to Mark 7):

http://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/proper-15-year-a/

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The theology of 1 Kings holds that faithlessness to God led to the decline of the Jewish kingdoms of the Old Testament.  The truth is not quite that simple, I maintain, for one must consider economic factors in the mix.  Marxian analysis rounds out the historical analysis nicely.  I covered some of that ground in the previous post.

There is also the question of how to relate to Gentiles.  The author of 1 Kings 11 preferred to stay away from them.  But Jesus went to them in Mark 7.  Tyre was, simply put, Gentiles Central.  Thus I propose that, if our Lord had wanted to avoid Gentiles, he would not have chosen to visit Tyre.  With that social context in mind, what might seem like an insult comes across as a statement meant to elicit a faithful response, which it did.

The proper question is not whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, but whether one is faithful.  A home ought to be a place for the nurturing of faith, so marrying within the faith makes sense to me, assuming that marriage is one’s vocation.  (There is nothing wrong with remaining single if that is one’s call from God.)  Nurturing faith is also the proper work of a congregation and certain other social support system one has.   Religion, which is somewhat personal, is also inherently public, not that this fact ought to lead to the establishment and maintenance of a theocracy.  Besides, mutual forbearance and toleration where respect fails at least has the virtue of fostering civility.  And, as Roger Williams, a minister and a colonial advocate of the separation of church and state, said, a prayer one utters under compulsion is meaningless.

As for me, I stand by and for certain propositions, but I do so without being habitually cranky.  Most of my professions, many of which I offer via this and other weblogs, are positive.  The grace of God is for all people–Jews and Gentiles.  The Apostle Paul and James, Bishop of Jerusalem, stirred up controversy by welcoming Gentiles.  These great men were correct, of course.  Simon Peter came to realize in Acts 10 that purity codes separating Jews from Gentiles were null and void.

I, as a Gentile, stand on the shoulders of these men.

An enduring lesson I offer you, O reader, is this:  Who are your “Gentiles,” those you consider impure, assuming, of course, that you make such judgments?  Like Peter, Paul, and James, and Jesus, may you reach out to them and welcome them in God’s Name, to the glory of God and for the benefit of your “Gentiles.”

KRT

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