2020 has been an unprecedented year requiring much innovation and imagination. At our Centre, this work began in March when the first shutdown forced us to start handing out bagged lunches and groceries. At our church, 2020 called us to transition to an online service and then to a hybrid service that now includes the occasional outdoor service. 

As leadership, this year has seen us make significant progress on governance as we work with the Niagara Community Foundation to improve policy. Grazia Shepard, first-time board chair, led with grace and courage. She kept us going through the tremulous year. Although our board is not yet at the point we’d like to be in terms of governance and policy, COVID has only slowed us down; we’re on the right path. 

Finally, despite all these challenges, we’ve been blessed with financial success. With the payment of our mortgage in full by a generous donor and the increase in tithes, we are now closer to financial sustainability than ever before. 

Thank you to those who continue to give of their money and time, and who share love, despite the struggle, pain, and isolation. We see you on zoom, we hear you at church, we welcome you at the Centre, we love you. 

COVID-19 has forced us all to practice Lent. Daily life has been disrupted; we are fasting from much, especially physical community As Christians, it’s worth asking what the Easter story can teach us about our pandemic experience. Perhaps the uncertainty, fear, and confusion we are experiencing, can give us new eyes to see the suffering and beauty that’s been with us all along.

The uncertainty and fear are also part of the disciples’ story. Christ's mission — his preference for the weak and total condemnation of the powerful — clearly disturbed business as usual for many, including some of his own disciples. Christ regularly provokes the powerful, discourages the use of arms, and predicts his own death. Much of what Christ did and said signalled that things were going to change and yet “the disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about” (Luke 18:34). The disciples were clearly confused by much of what Christ did, and it’s easy to imagine the confusion expressed by the disciples turning to fear when Christ is arrested, crucified, and buried. 

This confusion likely played a crucial role in the disciples’ lives.  It’s difficult to say, but I believe the disciples understood Christ's teachings more fully because of the uncertainty they encountered on the road to Jerusalem. What was revealed to the disciples through the uncertainty of their Lenten journey? Surely some of these insights are recorded in the Gospels. 

It’s important to note, however, that not all of Christ’s disciples were predisposed to the same uncertainty and fear. The story of the woman who prepares Christ for his death and the story of the women who discover Christ in the garden seem to suggest something different. These stories make me wonder if the lesser among Christ’s followers were more confident than their male counterparts about how Easter would unfold. Perhaps they weren’t surprised by the way Christ was treated. We can assume that these women were, after all, well acquainted with violent abuses of power. Such suffering continues today, hidden in plain sight. Perhaps, the suffering of Christ, and the confusion and fear which accompanied it, prepared the eyes of his male disciples to be opened to the truth and beauty of his now-famous saying that “the last shall be first and the first, last.”

It’s possible for the feelings that we are experiencing during our COVID Lenten journey to function in a similar fashion as they did in the Easter story. The uncertainty of the coronavirus is slowly awakening us to a new reality, one that in some respects has been here all along. Chasing wealth and power alienates by forcing people into a competition rather than companionship. The effects of pursuing wealth are especially damaging to those who can’t match the pace of the “strong.” COVID-19 has forced us to slow down. As the pace eases, many are once again appreciating the ways in which we depend on each other. The suffering and the beauty that we overlook because of our pursuit of endless wealth is rising to the surface. Just as the disciples’ experience of uncertainty and fear brought new insight into their lives, so too can the current pandemic reveal new life to us today. 

In terms of beauty, we’ve been awoken to the beautiful way we depend on cashiers, health providers, bus drivers, migrant workers and stay-at-home parents. When the world slows, these essential services continue and often accelerate. We depend on these services, but more importantly, we depend on the beautiful people that make them happen. During this crisis, our confusion and fear are breaking down the illusion of our independence, revealing our interdependence.

In terms of suffering, we are slowly developing a better understanding of what it’s like to live in a daily state of crisis, something that’s normal for many. For those who struggle with mental health, housing, or addictions, ongoing social isolation has devastating consequences. For many, the only people they can call for help are also sources of pain. For those with means and support, it’s now a little bit easier to see how isolation can create or exaggerate barriers to health and wellness. 

We pray, therefore, that the suffering and beauty of our Lenten COVID-19 journey reveals the way we depend on each other. More importantly, however, we pray that after the storm passes we enact these lessons by working to bring about a more equitable world; a world defined by mutual aid and cooperation rather than ever-accelerating competition. Already we can see what such a world might look like in practice: a living wage for all, including grocery store cashiers, and a universal basic income that starts at $2000 a month. Like Christ’s disciples, we now recognize that such a social order must be guided by mutual dependence and life rather than capital and a thirst for power; such is the new life declared by the resurrection.   

​

Post 1: Intro by Rosilee Sherwood
Post 2: Evil In David's Heart
Post 3: David and the Anti-Christ
Post 4: Noah's Ark

Children’s stories about David and Goliath often portray the king as a man after God’s own heart. David, the story goes, is an innocent young man who shows courage in the face of long odds. We want David to be good, a desire that colours readings of his reign. 

The quality of David’s heart, however, is a matter of some debate. like all of our hearts, David’s is dynamic and often uncertain of itself. However, it would be a mistake, to model our lives off David and a disaster to organize our communities in the image of his Israel. Taken as a whole, David’s life is in direct opposition to the life of Christ. ​

Bathsheba is a natural place to begin discussing the failings of David’s heart. The story is well known: and includes David abusing his power, lusting after a married woman, raping her and then murdering her husband to cover up his sins. 

Bethsheba, unfortunately, is just one victim in a long line of injuries perpetrated by the king against the most vulnerable. This great grandmother of Christ is often used as a stand-in for all the women victimized by David. It’s useful, therefore, to recall the stories of these other women, in particular, Michal, David’s first wife. 
 
The text offers two stories of how Michal, a daughter of Saul, comes into David’s possession. First, we’re told in 1 Samuel 17 that the prize for killing Goliath is the daughter of Saul. Presumably, therefore, Saul gives Michal to David for killing the giant. But there’s a second accounting as well. In this story, Saul uses Michal as a pawn against David. Watching David and his son Jonathon become close confidants, Saul senses a rival in David. Spying an opportunity, Saul uses his daughter, who is said to love David, to ensnare him in a plot to take his life. He offers his daughter as a bride without a dowry. David can’t say no. and accepts her as a wife. Unfortunately for Saul, Michal betrays her father, warning David of the plot to kill him, helping him escape out the window, and covering up his actions by lying on his behalf. In an act of heroism and defiance, Michal risks her life to save the one she loves. 
 
It’s interesting to note that this is the only place in all of Scripture where a woman is reported to love a man romantically. Sadly, David never returns Michal’s love; like all the women in his life, David uses Michal for his own purposes. 
 
After Saul discovers his daughter’s betrayal, he annuls the marriage and marries her off to another man. Saul dies two years later but David still manages to take over as king. As a prize for his accomplishments, David demands Saul’s wives and his daughter Michal. In 2 Samuel 3, we read of Michal’s new husband weeping as she’s returned to the newly crowned King David. 
 
The final interaction between David and Michal occurs three chapters later in chapter 6 verse 16. Here we read:
 
“As the ark of the Holy One of Old came into the city of David, Michal looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Holy One; and she despised him in her heart.” 
 
But why does Michal despise David for bringing back the Ark of the Covenant? In her book Womanist Midrash, biblical scholar Wildas Gafney, provides one explanation:
 
I believe that the reason Michal despises David is that, after all she has done for him, after taking and using her love to escape from and ultimately succeed her father on the throne, he has abandoned her. David has moved on to other women and other children. He will not return to her bed; he will not father children with her. She is a living widow watching him woo, seduce, and impregnate women all around her. Michal, who has used her agency in the narrative to defy and deceive her father, has lost that agency. She has been passed from man to man and now finds herself retrieved like property, but not rescued to the loving embrace of the man she once loved. Michal uses her voice for the last time in the Scriptures to tell David about himself in 2 Samuel 6:20: ‘How the king of Israel honored himself today, stripping today before the eyes of the slave-girls of his slaves, as any empty fellow might strip, uncovering himself.’
 
David’s response does not acknowledge her feelings for him, her actions on his behalf, her suffering on his behalf, any indebtedness to or care for her at all. Instead, he taunts her with the theology that it was God who elevated him at her father’s expense… And about those slave-girls enslaved to his slaves, the lowest of the low, especially compared to a king’s daughter, David says to Michal in verse 22, ‘I will make myself yet more accursed than this, and I will be degraded in my own eyes and with the slave-girls of whom you speak, with them I shall be honored.’ 
 
In other words, ‘I have yet to begin to debase myself. I’ll do so with whom-ever I choose--anyone but you. And they--slaves of slaves--those girls are just my speed. No matter what I do, they’ll cheer me on, and they’ll like it’” (Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne, 196).
 
In the same way that David’s eldest sees evil in his heart on the battlefield, Michal uncovers it fully, finding an “empty” man, his vulgar heart stripped bear in the comfort of power. 
 
This narrative of David and Michal ends, “And Michal did not have a child to the day of her death” (2 Samuel 6:23). Evidently, David never allows Michal to give birth — he forces her into barren life.
 
Michal and Bathsheba are excellent examples of the way in which David wrongs the women in his life: he fails to listen to them, he abuses them, he uses them for political gain. 
 
Hannah, the last woman I want to discuss here, is the mother of Samuel, who was the prophet that God called to anoint both Saul and David. 1 Samuel begins with Hannah’s story which includes the prayer of thanksgiving she gives after Samuel’s birth. Hannah’s prayer finds resonance in Mary’s Magnificat —  another song dedicated to a miraculous birth. Hannah’s story and her prayer set a standard for God’s relationship with Israel in First and Second Samuel, a standard that the Kings repeatedly fail to uphold. 
 
Summarized, Hannah’s prayer speaks of military power being broken like the “breaking of a bow.” Power, according to Hannah, is found with those who stumble. She tells the arrogant not to speak proudly. She claims that the hungry will hunger no more while the wealthy will need to work. She blesses barren women with children and says that those with many sons will “pine away.” The poor will inherit thrones of honour. Hannah’s God is with the humble, the hungry, the poor, the barren, the disabled, and those who shun military violence. 
 
In stark contrast, David ends his life with a song directly opposing Hannah’s prayer. David glorifies military strength with the symbol of an unbroken bow. Unlike Hannah and Mary, his boasts show no concern for the poor, the widow, the barren. David’s final song reveals just how far Israel and her kings have wandered from the way of God which was described by Hannah. David leads his nation into a theological and moral wilderness. Speaking of his enemies, David sings, “I beat them as fine as the dust of the earth;  I pounded and trampled them like mud in the streets” (2 Samuel 22:43). 
 
Based strictly on David’s summation of his own career one can argue that, taken as a whole, David’s life opposes the life of Christ. Unlike David who opposes Hannah’s prayer, Jesus listens to Mary’s Magnificat. Jesus praises the women in his life showing them respect and kindness. He rejects military strength. He demands that Israel cares for the widow and the powerless. Like Hannah, Jesus dreams of a world in which the poor are lifted up to inherit thrones of honour. Jesus has far more in common with Hannah, Michal, and Bathsheba than he does with David and the nation he inspires. To play off a tired cliche, Jesus’ kingdom is an upside-down version of David’s.

​Caleb Ratzlaff works at Westview Christian Fellowship in St. Catharines Ontario. When he’s not chasing his two toddlers and newborn around the neighbourhood. You can also find him at calebratzlaff.wordpress.com and on twitter @calebratzlaff.
​

By Caleb Ratzlaff

8 Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9 Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10 Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11 Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12 He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

[The majority of interpretive moves in this post come from the brilliant insights of Pete Enns and Jared Byas found on their podcast, The Bible for Normal People. Eps 89 is of particular interest.]

Samuel, God’s prophet charged with anointing the first two kings of Israel, searches for a king to replace Saul among the sons of Jesse. The first to impress Samuel is the eldest son, Eliab, who is tall and kingly in appearance just like the old king. But God cautions Samuel not to choose based on appearance, explaining that “the Lord looks on the heart.” So, Samuel rejects all of Jesse’s sons until he finally meets the youngest, David. At this moment we discover two important details about David: his physical appearance — ruddy,  beautiful eyes, and handsome — and that God’s spirit is mightily upon him. 

David’s description is reason for pause; after all, if God isn’t concerned with appearances, then why should the beauty of David concern the reader? The description of David’s appearance reminds us that, like Saul who was also chosen by God, we aren’t privy to the inward workings of David’s heart. At his anointing, we are only given an accounting of David’s appearance. Perhaps, David’s heart will be revealed as he grows into his role, something we witnessed in the story of Saul. As David’s story begins, then, we must wonder, will God’s spirit successfully David’s heart towards justice and mercy, or will David succumb to the temptations of kingship? We have high expectations for David, but, just as Samuel is scolded for being too quick to judge Eliab based on appearance, we too should withhold praise. 

The question around the nature of David’s heart continues in 1 Samuel 17 where we read about the Goliath. Saul’s soldiers reveal to David that“the king will greatly enrich the man who kills him [Goliath], and will give him his daughter and make his family free in Israel” (1 Samuel 17:25). David overhears their gossip and asks, “What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine, and takes away the reproach from Israel?” (1 Samuel 17:26) The soldiers assure him that he’s heard correctly. David’s eldest brother listens to the exchange and questions David: “‘Why have you come down? With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart; for you have come down just to see the battle.’ David said, ‘What have I done now? It was only a question’”(1 Samuel 17:28-29). David then turns and continues his inquiry into the nature of the reward for killing Goliath, that is, Saul’s daughter Michal.

In this interaction, David’s eldest brother accuses him of having evil in his heart. We can gather from their exchange that David’s brother anticipates an underlying interest: David wants to confirm that the one who defeats Goliath will be granted marriage to Michal, and through that attain royalty. David’s retort — “It was only a question” — says it all. David seeks power, he is not satisfied with his social standing as “shepherd”; this is the evil in his heart. A brother knows best.

Although too young to be conscripted, David visits the battlefield and challenges the king’s authority on at least three occasions. He walks into the king’s tent, he rejects the king’s armour, and lastly, after defeating Goliath, he carries the head to Jerusalem, a role that belonged to the king. Emboldened by Samuel’s anointing, David, like a shrewd politician, is in search of what he believes to be his God-given destiny. 

David is not exactly the underdog we all know so well. His origin story, in its constant questioning of the quality of his heart, means we should be suspicious of his intentions, and not too quick to valorize his actions. As readers, we are called to carefully ask, “is David following God’s call or going against it?” 

Asking this question in our next post, we’ll turn to three mighty women in David’s life: Michal, David’s first wife, Hannah, Samuel’s mother, and Bethseba, a grandmother of Christ.

Notes: 

Three important things to remember when reading Samuel: 


1. 1/2 Samuel was composed by editors after the fall of Jerusalem, or around that time. So they were working with multiple sources trying to tell the story of Hannah, Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. They also knew that the kingdom of Israel was a failure. Yet, they are working with stories that praise (and are probably critical) of David and the throne while they, having the benefit of hindsight, know where the throne leads Isreal -- into exile. It's like if we were to tell the story of the Vietnam war using all the movies made of it. We know Vietnam was a disaster, but a lot of the stories praise the war, and they're not all chronologically (or logically for that matter) consistent. We'd pick and choose and tell our own story based on our perspective -- so did the editors of Samuel.

2. What the king's men do, the king does. In other words, it wasn't uncommon for a king to get credit for the things his warriors did in battle (or the Psalms he had commissioned). At the end of the book, it talks about David's warrior Elhanan killing Goliath (2 Samuel 21:15-22). David would have taken credit for this amazing feat and at some point it would have become a legend. The legend would have morphed into the story that gets recorded (it's interesting that Chronicles tries to correct this editorial contradiction by saying that Elhanan kills Goliath's brother, but that seems unbelievable to me considering what's happening in Samuel). There are around 500 years between when David lived and the recording of Samuel, that's a long time for a legend to percolate. 

3. When you read David and Goliath's, there are three very obvious clues that something is wonky with the timeline. First, David, a mere child at the time, walks into Saul's tent and does things that would have gotten him killed; no one would talk to a king like he does. Second, David cuts off Goliath's head and takes it to Jerusalem. The thing is, it was David that makes Jerusalem the capital of Israel, so Jerusalem doesn't exist yet when David is supposed to take Goliaths head there... so that doesn't make sense. Third, Saul meets David earlier in Samuel, David even plays music for him. We read, "And David came to Saul, and entered his service. Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer" (1 Samuel 16:21). But when David kills Goliath, Saul acts as though he doesn't know the boy, asking twice about David's identity (1 Samuel 17). The story is out of place and seems like it was crammed together by editors who weren't interested in the historical or chronological accuracy of the stories. The editors were interested in telling their own story about David and who he was, that's the story I talk about in my blog posts because that's the important stuff (at least I think so). 

Caleb Ratzlaff works at Westview Christian Fellowship in St. Catharines Ontario. When he’s not chasing his two toddlers and newborn around the neighbourhood. You can also find him at calebratzlaff.wordpress.com and on twitter @calebratzlaff.


​​

By Rosilee Sherwood

By John Derksen

Jeremiah 1:4-10; 7:1-11, 15; 20:7-10, 14-18; 31:31-34

A bit like President Obama stood on the shoulders of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus stood on the shoulders of Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah. As Jesus did after him, Jeremiah lived in tough times. He criticized injustice and hypocrisy, suffered a lot for his message, and longed for God’s comforting presence. And in the end he offered hope.

Background and Call

My name is Jeremiah. I come from a little village near Jerusalem. My father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather were all priests. But I was shocked when, as a youth, God called me.
God said, “I want you to announce my message to priests and politicians and kings.” I said, “I
can’t; I’m only a boy!” God said, “Don’t worry; just speak what I command you. I will be with
you; and if you get in trouble, I’ll deliver you. Your words will be my words, and they will
concern the destruction and rebuilding of nations! (ch. 1)