Seventh Sunday in Course 2025
Unless you have a pretty strong grounding in what we used to call “Bible History,” today’s first reading could leave you a little blindsided, that is until you heard the Gospel. King Saul, first king of the Israelite kingdom, had taken three thousand of his best soldiers into the desert to find and destroy this young David and his followers. What? Wasn’t David the champion who had knocked down the giant Goliath with his sling and a stone, then cut off the bad guy’s head with his own sword? Let’s learn the rest of the story. In the process, we’ll learn why David, for the rest of Israel’s history, is considered Israel’s ideal king, and Jesus as Messiah is called the Son of David.
Saul was impressed with David the Giant-slayer, and took him into his service as a leader against the Philistine enemy. He also liked David’s lyre-playing and songs, tunes that the shepherd David had used to sooth his flock. But Saul was mentally and emotionally disturbed, and paranoid about David stealing his throne. One time “While David was playing the lyre, Saul tried to pin him to the wall with his spear, but David eluded him as Saul drove the spear into the wall. That night David made good his escape.” This background explains the lead-in to today’s first reading.
David’s soldier, Abishai, ventures with David into Saul’s encampment, aided by the three thousand veteran troops being sound asleep. Abishai urges his leader to let him take revenge on Saul for his attempt on David’s life. He’ll nail Saul to the ground with his own spear. “No,” David decreed, “he is the anointed of the Lord. It’s a grave sin to kill him in cold blood.” (By the way, the prophet Samuel had already anointed David as Saul’s successor.) David did, however, have some fun by sneaking out of the camp with Saul’s spear and canteen. He then, at a safe distance, taunted Abner and the posse along with Saul.
You really need to read the rest of this story in first Samuel.
Our psalm today gives us the answer to the question I asked earlier, “Why is David for the rest of history considered the ideal king of Israel, so that Jesus as Messiah is called ‘Son of David’?” It is entitled “a psalm of David” in the original Hebrew. We read David’s words: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities. as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him.” David treated Saul just as God treats all of us. He did not deal with Saul in the same way Saul dealt with him. He showed mercy and compassion. He pitied Saul.
David was not a perfect king. He was ultimately guilty of adultery, lust, deception and murder, and paid a heavy price for his sin. But he did acknowledge his guilt and was forgiven. Scripture says that God found David to be “a man after His own heart.” Would that all of us live so that that kind of description applies to us! Until Jesus, Blood and Water pouring from His Sacred Heart, gave His life for our salvation, there was no king of Israel who was better than David, his human ancestor.
There was another Saul, many generations after the corrupt king Saul, who saw the Truth, repented of his persecution of the Church, and became the apostle Paul. He saw Jesus as Someone entirely new, because He saw Jesus in glory appearing on the Damascus highway. There, Jesus had asked him why he was persecuting Himself. From that moment on, Paul saw that the Church of Jesus was actually the Body of Jesus, with all of us being members of the living Christ on earth. Today we hear words he wrote to the church at Corinth, contrasting Adam (Eve, too) the first humans, with the risen Christ, as a New Adam. An ancient Greek icon depicts Jesus descending to the dead and redeeming Adam and Eve. (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-icon-showing-the-resurrection-christ-pulling-adam-eve-from-their-tomb-20549381.html) Jesus became human in the womb of the virgin Mary so that He could enable all of us to rise as He did, with glorified bodies. We would then fulfill what we might call “God’s dream” to make all mankind in the Divine Image and Likeness, joyfully praising the Blessed Trinity forever.
All this leads to the words of Jesus recorded in today’s Gospel from Luke. If we are to be in the image of God, then we need to act as God acts. God forgives those who do evil, who show themselves as His enemy. All they must do is repent, even of murder. We all are obligated to forgive our own enemies. Perhaps somebody sent you an email that you took to be authentic communications from your financial institution. You clicked on the wrong link and lost a thousand dollars. Certainly, report the theft. This guy or gal needs to be taken out of circulation. But forgive. Act as God would.
Forgive and pray for enemies. There have been and still are politicians who would make all of us admit murder is a good way to treat a child before birth. Forgive them; pray for their conversion and healing. There are medical doctors who would treat “gender dysphoria” by mutilating a young man or woman’s body. Forgive them; pray for their conversion and healing. Yes, ask the question “what would Jesus do?” and follow through appropriately.
Many people go through life just hoping to get by, to live in mediocrity. The popular way to phrase this is “fly under the radar.”
Did the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Lord and God and Creator of the Universe, put aside His transcendent glory and empty Himself, coming down all the way to assume our weak human nature so that we could “get by”? Listen to J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor and focus on the almost unbelievable “Crucifixus.” Try to do that without weeping all the way through. Did Jesus, the crucified King of the Jews, naked before the world and dying between two condemned criminals, give up His spirit so that we could live in mediocrity? The plan of God to deify every human, to make us eternal images of Christ, united with the Trinity in power—was that consummated so that we could just “fly under the radar”?
Look carefully at today’s Gospel again and see that Christ’s commands to us about our enemies, about doing good, about blessing those who curse us are about making us by grace into the men and women God intended from the start. He wants us to be magnanimous, virtuous givers. He wants each of us to be great. For this dream of God and the grace to accomplish it, we give praise to the Blessed Trinity now and forever, Amen.
