PROPER 6/B (06/16/2024): Ps. 1; Ezek. 17:22-24; 2 Cor. 5:1-17; Mark 4:26-34

Naked

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked (vv. 1-3).

From the Fall man’s problem is sin revealed in his naked condition. When Adam and the woman sinned, they discarded their divine righteous coverings. Believing Satan, the man and woman were bereft of God’s righteousness and shamed by being naked (Gen. 3:10).

Their desire to know good and evil apart from God’s word, brought an intimate knowledge of death that would inhere with the progeny of the man and the woman. Abasing the “good” creation; death and shame of lost glory drove Adam and the woman in the Garden to hide from God. St. Paul calls our bodies, destined for destruction, “earthly tents” in which we groan over the loss of a heavenly dwelling.

Christian and pagan art reflect man’s longing for restoration to spiritual innocence through male and female physicality. This yearning of lost memory was captured in marble by Michelangelo, his sculpture, “The David” of what God intended for man’s form. “The David” locates and freezes man’s fleeting beauty, in a single moment of time.

Now set aside Michelangelo’s vision of a “perfectly” proportioned, virile, youthful and handsome David. Scripture confronts us with the shame of our true inheritance, death’s mockery by the grave’s haberdasher.

Un-memorialized by Michelangelo, David is revealed in his final days (1 Kgs. 1:1-4); old, impotent, bearing the ravages of time, war, and the sin in which he was conceived (Ps. 51:5). David’s “earthly tent”, his body, was no longer vital or beautiful for seducing to adultery one such as Bathsheba. David’s “earthly tent” was unraveling; he was weak, pallid, gamy, wizened, suffering from the cold of poor circulation.

Israel’s elders searched-out a fleshly covering to comfort their dying king; Abishag was reputed the most beautiful of Israel’s young woman, recruited to lie with aged David infusing him with the warmth of her body.

Abishag’s could not forestall David’s death and the shame of the grave’s cover. Neither did God spare Jesus, David’s greater son (Ps. 110:1), and the shame of sin’s destruction.

The cross draws our eyes to another vision from Michelangelo, “The Pieta”; Mary holding and beholding her dead son, fulfilling God’s prophecy to the woman, “I will surely multiply your distresses and your moanings. In distresses you will bear children (Gen. 3:16; cf. Lk. 2:34, 35). Her husband and Pastor came to ease her anguish, imparting to her a gospel new name, “Mother of all Living”

But in heaven, memorials of the old creation pass away, as do all human art, imagination, and mustard seeds destined to change, a “house [and covering] not made with hands” (2 Cor. 5:1b; cf. 2 Sam. 7:11b-13), the resurrected flesh of Jesus, God’s Temple prepared for our eternal dwelling.

Our dwelling in the new creation coming into being, is a righteous covering in the flesh of the woman’s Seed, who on the cross who crushed the serpent’s head, to be bruised for our iniquity (Gen. 3:15).

Satan claims the world as his house. Against this boast, Jesus declared himself, “the Stronger man” to invade and plunder Satan’s stronghold. Apart from Jesus’ house, escape from satanic bondage is impossible (Mk. 3:27; cf. 5:1 ff.).

From the Lord’s house, we proclaim the good news of Jesus naked, crucified and risen. In the Resurrection we are baptized into Jesus’ victory that releases us to worship our true Prince.

Yet looking about, it doesn’t always seem so; sin, death, and grave appear dominate. Today’s two parables, “The Growing Seed” and “The Mustard Seed” explain. The church has only one job; again, we envision “The Pieta”; the Woman, bearing Jesus crucified, Word of God, seeming insignificant Seed for sowing into the world.

Even as the church sleeps, suffers, and is concerned for the gospel, her Seed germinates, unseen in good soil; moving her Word to dominical growth by stages over satanic falsity. The Word planted in good soil produces automatically and in stages; first the shoot, next the ear, and finally the full grain in the ear; and we know not how (Mk. 4:27, 28).

If in this “time of the Church”, we are unable to plumb the Word’s growth and spread; nevertheless, we discern God’s power who will bring his new creation to fruition on the Last Day, when “the full grain in the ear” is revealed at the Judgment of Christ. In short, the reign of God comes of itself.

It may seem Satan continues, by sin, to hold us as human chattel; but Jesus, the Stronger man, does not battle on worldly terms. God’s dominion is exerted by Jesus’ elevation on the cross, in naked shame and weakness, to be our righteous covering. Paul comprehends Jesus on the cross, “… My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9b).

By death Jesus fulfilled the law’s demands in our place; Satan, hellish prosecutor, is defeated and bound to destruction for his blasphemous false charges that withhold God’s gospel word (cp. Mk. 3:29, 30). Sin, death, and grave are destroyed in Baptism’s water and Word. By Baptism we enter Jesus’ death, our righteous covering before God.

Following David’s death, the “Shulammite”, another name for Abishag (Song of Songs), was betrothed of Solomon, David’s son. The church is Jesus’ “Shulammite” clothed in the bridal dress of his righteousness, against whom the gates of hell will not prevail (Mt. 16:18).

The reign of God, by a planted mustard Seed (cf. Jn. 12:24) is revealed the power of God and the church’s expansive outreach that covers the sin of the world. Amen.