By Father Casey
This Sunday we finish our summerlong Game of Thrones, Bible Edition. I hope you’ve enjoyed this soapy saga about the kings of Israel, and I hope our preachers have helped you make connections across the millennia to our own lives with God. I know I’ve enjoyed this summer every bit as much as last year, when we journeyed through Genesis.
It’s so important that we engage the whole Bible – including the Old Testament – not only as being about “those people, over there, back then,” but also as being about us, here and now. To call the Bible the “Word of God” doesn’t mean that we believe it was literally dictated to people by God and is therefore always inerrant; it means that we believe the Bible conveys sacred truths about who God is and what that means for us. God is able to speak through these texts, including stories that make us cringe, such as the fall of King David, so it’s essential that we approach them with open and listening hearts.
Our journey through the books of Samuel began back in June with the people of God clamoring for a king, and it will end this weekend in 1 Kings with Solomon dedicating the newly built Temple. There is a rich irony here that is important to notice. The people felt that God wasn’t enough of a ruler for them, so they demanded a king, but it wasn’t too long before they realized that they still needed God to be at their center, so they built the Temple.
We do this, too, don’t we? We get to places in our lives when it seems like everything is good, so we step back from God. “I’m doing just fine,” we think, “and besides, life is just so busy and full that I can’t really fit God in there right now.” So our relationship with God takes a backseat to all sorts of other things, things that seem to offer more satisfaction, pleasure, or whatever we’re seeking.
But there usually comes a time when, just like Israel, we realize we still need God to be close, to be near, to be at our center. The things we made king in our life turn out to not be all they were cracked up to be. We prioritized them, but they eventually disappointed us. And so we turn back to God and seek that holy intimacy with our Lord that offers us what we most deeply desire.
It’s like the disciples in the gospel story we’ll hear this Sunday. Jesus has just finished the so-called “Bread Discourse,” a lengthy teaching about how he is the Bread of Life. All who want to follow him and live with God must eat of him, he says. It’s not the easiest of Jesus’ teachings to understand or get behind, and that’s not just my opinion; apparently many people who had been following him ever since he miraculously fed the 5,000 decided they’d had enough. Seeing them turn away, Jesus looked at the twelve disciples and asked, “Do you also wish to go away?”
To which Peter replied, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
I hope you’ll join us this weekend to hear this last episode in the summer drama. I hope you’ll come and hear how the people put God back at the center, and consider how you can put God back at the center of your life, too. For while there are plenty of things ready to fill our time, demand our allegiance, and rule our lives, there does come a day when we echo the disciples: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”