The Truth and Nothing But the Truth

But Not the Whole Truth

For years early in the history of our parish — I’m thinking it was in the 1970s and into the eighties because I went with them a few times when we were home on Navy leave, or maybe it was later when I was down from Pennsylvania teaching my political science courses at UWestFlorida — my parents stopped on the way to church and picked up an eccentric old lady, then rode her home after church. I don’t remember her name, likely will come to me later, doesn’t matter. Now and then her little granddaughter was with her, and the woman called the little girl an alligator. Odd memories pop out, don’t they. It was when Battin Hall was still the nave and sanctuary, and my parents tried to sit in a pew some distance from the woman because she muttered audibly nonstop all through every worship service, including discussing with herself whatever was being preached.

The woman liked to read, and my mother, who typically read several books a week, passed books on to the woman. The only thing was, if a book had unpleasantries the woman became upset at the book and at my mother, and God forbid that mama should make the mistake of lending the woman a book that had an unhappy ending.

This comes to mind because it appears to me that the framers of our Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) think we are idiots. This summer, Year B — it comes round every three years — we are reading through Second Samuel, parts of it anyway. 2Samuel is the story of David, the heroic king who united Judah and Israel, and made Jerusalem the capital, and was king forty years, a long time. David was a brave leader in battle, and he loved the Lord; and the Lord looked after him and gave him victory and seems to have loved David more than anyone else throughout all of Jewish history.

In The Story of J, author Harold Bloom insists that 2Samuel was written by a Court Reporter in the time of Solomon or just after, a contemporary, compatriot and likely “co-conspirator” perhaps writing together, coordinating; and with the Court Reporter complementing the story of J, the J Writer, the Yahwist or Jahwist who gave us the creation story in Genesis 2, and the “Lord side” of the flood story, and whose work is sprinkled through the patriarchs and into the pentateuch. In their writing, J doesn’t write about David, and 2Samuel makes David a brave, admirable, manly and heroic figure.

Time for my “anyway” before I stray too far.

Anyway, our Old Testament reading these weeks is from 2Samuel, and I’ve not looked upstream to see what’s coming down next, but last week’s reading and our reading for tomorrow, July 12, bring to mind that old lady whom my parents for years gave a ride to church every Sunday morning, and who could not stand to read a book with unpleasantries. She is long dead, God rest her soul, but I’m thinking that she must be reincarnate in the framers of the RCL who don’t want us to hear bad news.

Whether it’s political correctness, or shielding us from realities and from the complete character of Yahweh, I don’t know and I’m not going to bother sorting them out.

Anyway again, last Sunday morning we read 2Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, about David being made king of Judah and then being acclaimed king of Israel as well, and living at Jerusalem in the fortress that he called “City of David.” Because our ears are too delicate to hear and our minds too infantile to contemplate, the RCL, like some little girl playing hopscotch, skipped over verses 6, 7, 8. I have this nagging habit, which always ends up annoying me, of going into the Bible to see what the RCL framers skipped over thinking that we are too simple to read it. Here it is in the NRSV:

6 The king and his men marched to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, “You will not come in here, even the blind and the lame will turn you back”—thinking, “David cannot come in here.” 7 Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion, which is now the city of David. 8 David had said on that day, “Whoever would strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates.” Therefore it is said, “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.”

We talked about General Convention in our Sunday School class last Sunday, otherwise that politically incorrect story apparently putting down the blind and the lame, or at least explaining why they later were not allowed to enter the Temple, would have made a good passage to explore. Or I could have preached about it last Sunday except that Paul’s bizarre line about a “third heaven” and then titillating us about his mysterious “thorn in the flesh” was too much to ignore, so I preached on that.

Anyway, they’ve done it again for tomorrow. Our first reading (this is in RCL Track One, BTW, Track Two reads something else) is 2Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19. David is relocating the Ark of God to the City of David. It’s a fine adventure. But HEY! what did the RCL framers skip over there at verses 6-12a, don’t let the lectionary police get away with skipping the juicy parts, thinking we’ll never notice. Here’s what they’ve hid from our delicate ears and innocent eyes:

6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. 7 The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark;[e] and he died there beside the ark of God. 8 David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah; so that place is called Perez-uzzah,[f] to this day. 9 David was afraid of the Lord that day; he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come into my care?” 10 So David was unwilling to take the ark of the Lord into his care in the city of David; instead David took it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. 11 The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household. 12 It was told King David, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.”

Reading just the lectionary selection, the rest of the story is hidden from us, which always makes me fill tricked, deceived. We do not see the divine characteristics that Harold Bloom describes as impish, self-contradictory, petulant, vindictive, and punishment incommensurate with the offense. Who is trying to hide from us What about God as God reveals God’s own self in the Bible, and What is Who trying to hide? The part that the RCL strikes out of tomorrow's reading is really nasty. Why should we not know this about our God?

Furthermore, cutting off at verse 19, the lectionary selection misses a significant part of the Court Reporter’s agenda that denigrates Saul to the glory of David. In despising David, David’s wife Michal, daughter of king Saul, never has children, which means that with the death of Jonathan and Saul’s other sons (except for Jonathan’s struck lame and therefore inconsequential son Mephibosheth) the Court Reporter has the Lord dispense forever with the house of Saul. WTH, David had plenty of other women, as the story makes clear. But Michal and Saul and their line were put away for all time.

RCL: the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth.