Sunday Bible discussion with Father Dave and Rev. Joy Steele Perkins

Once again, I didn't make it to Binacrombi this week. This means I had the privilege of joining the Reverend Joy Steele-Perkins at St David's church in Haberfield who, as ever, contributed enormously to our discussion of the weekly readings.

The Hebrew Bible reading is the sordid account of David's affair with Bathsheeba (2 Samuel 11:1-15). Perhaps 'affair' isn't the right word. Perhaps 'rape' is the proper word. Of course, it is difficult to know exactly what role Bathsheeba played in this terrible story but, however we understand it, there is no excusing David. He abuses his power, not only by satisfying his lust for Bathsheeba but by murdering her husband.

By contrast, the reading from Paul's letter to the Ephesians is beautiful and uplifting. Paul seems to be caught up in wonder over 'the breadth and length and height and depth' of the love of Christ (3:18-19). His key focus here is on what he calls 'the mystery made known' (3:3) which is the wonderful bringing together of Jews and gentiles through Christ. Paul is wonderfully excited by what he calls the 'multicoloured wisdom of God' , made known through the church (which is the literal meaning of the Greek in Ephesians 3:10).

In our Gospel reading this week we have moved to John's Gospel, where we get an account of the two miracles that were left out of last week's reading in Mark - namely, the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus' walking on water.

Unfortunately, technology let us down and our video stream suddenly died half way through our discussion of this reading. The key thing to recognise though is the role these stories play in John's Gospel as compared to Mark. In Mark, the focus was on Jesus' compassion for the hungry crowd and for his drowning disciples. John is more concerned with what these miracles say about Jesus Himself. Jesus is not only a miracle worker but is the 'bread of life'. This will be spelt out even more explicitly in our readings over the coming weeks.

Dave
http://www.fatherdave.org
http://www.fighting-fathers.com