The Anointed OneSermon preached at All Hallows by Annie Heppenstall-West on 13 June 2004Readings: 2 Samuel 11:26 — 12:10, 13—15; Luke 7:36 — 8:3In the name of the Mother–Father God of all, In the name of the breath of God, Sophia, Wisdom, Lover of the soul, In the name of Yeshua, Jesus, Wisdom’s child, Our brother, Amen. In my writing, I have been exploring the names we call God; the names we call Jesus. The analogy I used to introduce Reclaiming the Sealskin1 is of a seal as representing the human soul, or even the mythological selkies of Scotland, the shape-shifters who lived for the most part as seals in the ocean, but could take human form and dance on the shore in the moonlight. The seal or the selkie can represent the human soul, and the ocean, God. It’s an idea of moving away from describing God as a person or with human attributes: God is our proper environment: in God we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28) As a stranded seal longs for the ocean, so does our soul long for God. What we call God says something about the relationship we think we have with God, and also about who we think we are, how w see ourselves. The relationship we have with God must also define the relationship we have with other people, and vice versa. For example, I can call God Mother and see myself as her child, but it is only meaningful if I treat all as my brothers and sisters; and so on. Today we can use the readings we heard to look at one particular name applied to Jesus: the anointed one. But to find the link takes a little unpacking, so the first thing to do is put the story about King David in context. The tradition in ancient biblical times was to mark items and people dedicated to service of God, by pouring olive oil on them. The priests were thus anointed, likewise the objects for religious use within the tabernacle, and some offerings on the altar. The olive oil which they used was a prized commodity, the olive trees of Palestine were the best in the world; the economy depended on them. A modern equivalent in our own dedication of priests might be to pour petrol over them! In the old days, the Hebrews lived in the land alongside the indigenous population (Canaanites) in family-based tribes, loosely bonded, only joining forces in time of crisis. At such times they would band together under the leadership of a judge, but it was always God who was seen as ultimately in charge. And there were plenty of times of crisis. Palestine was a corridor linking two great powers: Egypt in the south, and Assyria, now better known as Iraq, in the north. When the Hebrew people decided they were unhappy with the state of affairs, and wanted to be like the other nations, with a king, the last judge Samuel warned them against it. He said that a king would exploit them. But the people ignored him, they wanted a special somebody, and so Saul was picked: he was tall and handsome; surely he would make a good king! So Samuel anointed him with oil. His power was nominally from God, but also from the people, in their decision to subvert God’s authority by placing a man in charge. But Saul struggled with kingship, and it seemed the power of God left him; in time he became a desperate man. David, was anointed as Saul’s successor behind his back, even while Saul was still king. David became a very popular leader, brave, strong, clever, handsome, the kind of guy legends are based on. God was obviously with him, how else could he be so successful? And so David became established, a heroic warrior king, who made the nation a force to be reckoned with, and a secure land in which to live. A king anointed by a prophet of God, set apart to serve God and the people by giving them the security, leadership and prosperity that they wanted; all well and good, after a fashion, although these days we might raise our eyebrows at his warmongering. We might also raise our eyebrows at what happened next, the story we heard today. One spring, David sent his warriors off to fight, but he stayed home. Having risen from his siesta one afternoon, he noticed Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most devoted men, Uriah, and he seduced her. On discovering that she was pregnant he made arrangements to get the husband brought home on leave, so it would look as though he were the father. But it didn’t work, and David ended up having Uriah murdered, then bringing Bathsheba into his harem, as if he didn’t have enough wives already. The power had finally got to David’s head. He had come to see himself as someone who could use his power to get whatever he wanted. One brave soul, the prophet Nathan, dared to criticize him, and to his credit, David accepted the criticism and was sorry. But the consequence of his abuse of power was terrible, for Uriah and for Bathsheba at least. Bathsheba lost not only her husband, but also her child, and was obliged to marry the killer of her husband, and her own seducer. All she could do was bow to his power, the corrupt power of self-service. Oppressor and oppressed, horribly bound together. It seems that being God’s anointed was not enough to save David from his own nature. It is not surprising, though. After all, we see the same abuse of power happening all around us today. Take government for example. A government is made up of ministers. The role of a minister is to minister, to serve the people. They talk about serving a term of office. They seek to be given power by the people, in order to take up the task of service, but what happens when they actually get into power? Who are the politicians who serve faithfully, with the best interests of the people at heart, and who are the ones who take their power and use it for self-service, at the expense of the people they are supposed to serve? And what about the church? The church has leaders, who are meant to serve. They are the equivalent of the anointed ones, marked out as dedicated to the service of God and the people. It can be a very holy position. It can also be an opportunity for abuse of power. And when it goes wrong, we have a lot of hurt Bathshebas, and a lot of prophet Nathans as well, trying to put everyone right. At the end of the day, God is not served if the people are exploited and dominated. God is served if the people are served. So — what kind of a god do people believe in, who take power and use it for their own satisfaction at the expense of others? How do they justify the relationship they set up, with themselves as dominant and others as subordinate? In ancient times there was a feeling that wealth and power came as rewards from God for good behaviour, so in those days the powerful could claim, ‘my power is from God, I must be doing OK because of all these blessings.’ But the prophets challenged that, they said no, these people were powerful through their own selfish violence, not because of God. God did not support the oppressor but the oppressed. Their god was self, then, and it is self now. The creed of the god of self-service is ‘look out for number one.’ The defining relationship is that all people, all life, all resources, are things to use to get what number one wants. Jesus, according to Luke, at the beginning of his ministry, stood in that synagogue, and told the people that he was turning concepts of power and kingship upside-down. He knew all about King David, and how these oppressed people longed for a ‘son of David,’ to free them from the burden of the Romans. He knew all about the abuse of power, whether it was by the Romans, the establishment, the tax collectors or anyone else. But he also knew his history. Back in the days of Samuel, wanting a human king was a statement of lack of faith in the kingship of God. The institution, the power structure of human kingship was flawed from the beginning because humans are by nature fallible. Yet Jesus knew he too had power, charisma, support from the people, a spiritual potency, a confidence in his own understanding, and he was going to use it, not to oppress, but to build people up to the level where they could believe they were acceptable to God, that their lives were valuable, not worthless. This was Jesus’s mission, to put God back as sovereign, to proclaim the kingdom of God! Luke chapter four describes how Jesus gave his inaugural sermon. He didn’t mince his words, but went straight for Isaiah:
A radical model of kingship: the way it should have been in the beginning; a radical way to take on the role of God’s anointed. But it wasn’t just words. We see the real dynamics of the statement played out in the story we hear in Luke 7:36, where Jesus is dining with Simon the Pharisee. Character one is Simon, a man of authority in the community. To him, God is judge and law-maker, Simon is a guardian of the law, and the woman is a law-breaker. In short, he thinks he is better than her. Character two is Jesus, also a man of authority, so we can expect tension in the air. But he uses his authority to humble Simon, and to affirm the woman. Two men, with differing attitudes to power. But what about character three, the woman? She comes from among the people, the ordinary, uneducated ‘little ones’ who were despised by the righteous-minded, because they didn’t following the whole of the law. These are the am ha-arez, ‘peasants,’ who actually made up the majority of the population at the time, did most of the work, and with whom Jesus concerned himself. The gospel says she was a woman who was a ‘sinner’. People immediately assume this means she was a prostitute or something, but there’s no need make that assumption. She was am ha-arez, and that was bad enough. Just as Samuel long ago came to the home of David, with a flask of oil, she too comes along to Simon’s house with a jar, with the deliberate intention of anointing Jesus. She is a strong, brave woman, and what she does is extraordinary. She goes into Simon’s house, but ignores him. He is the important guy in the area, but she shows no deference to him. No ‘excuse me, but do you mind if I just have a word with your guest … ’ or anything like that. She doesn’t give two hoots what Simon thinks, his self-importance means nothing to her any more. She breezes past him and goes up to Jesus. And so, Jesus is anointed by one of the people; even better, by a woman. At the outset, I said I was interested in what we call God, and how names of God — or Jesus — speak about our relationship with God and with one another. Today we have considered Jesus as the anointed one, the one dedicated to service of God through service of the people. So where does that get us? With Jesus and the woman in the gospel story, there was a reciprocal relationship: he affirmed her, allowed her to feel accepted and forgiven, and she affirmed him as the true source of authority. He gave her a new insight into God, which altered her life. The relationship she though she had with God changed because of her encounter with Jesus. Even in the space of the story we can see how her relationship with other people was starting to change too, as a result of that encounter. So, if Jesus is the anointed one, our servant king, what does this say about our relationship with God? What about the kingdom of God? What about our relationship with one another, with all life? What about our own selves? Who are we? Whatever answers we come up with, and they will be different every day, it is worth remembering the characters in today’s stories, because there are times when we are all of these and encounter them all, as we work through our relationships: Bathsheba is our vulnerability and our need for empowerment; David is our violent self-interest. Samuel is our inner voice of caution, and Nathan the voice of conscience, calling us back to true justice. Simon is what we are in danger of becoming, if we think we have never gone wrong, and Jesus is our devoted servant, leading us to relationship with God. And that woman, she is the part of us that sees self-important power for what it is, and chooses the way of Jesus instead. Amen. Copyright © 2004 Annie Heppenstall-West This page was last updated on Sunday, 13 June 2004home | about all hallows | what’s on | worship and prayer | discussion and reflection | action in the community | projects | an open, welcoming … | weekly bulletin | site map | search site | admin | |