It's the early years of the Kingdom of Israel. Saul is the people's first king, and after seeming like a good choice, he has turned out not so well. So David has been chosen by God and anointed to be new king. But Saul is still on the throne, isn't about to give it up, and every now and then tries to have David killed. At one point David goes underground, hiding out in a cave in the land of the Philistines (Israel's enemy at that point) and then in a forest just inside the border between the Kingdom of Israel and the land of the Philistines. In hiding, he is joined by hundreds of others from "the underside" of Saul's kingdom.
For years -- maybe all my life, I have been attracted to solitary heroes. The Lone Ranger, Palladin, the Man With No Name that Clint Eastwood played in those spaghetti westerns, the Preacher that he reprised in "Pale Rider," his own version of those Leone classics.
I trace that attraction all the way back to my childhood image of Jesus as a troubled, solitary man praying at night in a garden, a barren rock his only support, a light-beam from heaven leading him on towards his fate of facing evil and suffering death alone for all the world.
A larger-than-life print of the picture above hung at the front of my childhood church. I saw it every Sunday, and to this day I am not free of that image. And I'm sure that over the years I have only scratched the surface in understanding and learning to live beyond all the ways this has shaped -- and limited, my faith, my self-understanding, and the ways I use my gifts.
I wonder ... what is your childhood image of Jesus? What image did you have of Jesus as a child, which even now you are not entirely free of?
And how has it ... how does it still, shape your faith, your self-understanding, and the ways you use your gifts?
The reading this week about David gives me a different image, though. When I hear of him threatened by the king's jealous power, hiding in the cave and then in a forest, and hundreds of others who are "oppressed, in debt or dissatisfied" (Good News translation) joining him there, what comes to mind is Robin Hood and the other refugees from the powers of the day who join him in Sherwood Forest during the illegitimate reign of cruel King John. Robin is not a solitary or tragic hero but a gatherer of alternative community, and a saviour of the people because of his communitarian vision and practice.
Which brings to mind a very different Clint Eastwood character -- the outlaw Josey Wales, in the film of the same name. Josey begins as a poor, solitary victim of unjust power on a dangerous, lonely quest to avenge the murder of his wife and only son by government agents in post-Civil-War America. Along the way, though, without planning to or even wanting to, he attracts a following of other poor souls oppressed and dissatisfied by society at the time -- a motley crew of people with nowhere to go and no good prospects, who attach themselves to him. And by the end of the film instead of climaxing his quest for justice with a gunfight against evil and a lonely ride off into the sunset, Josey finds himself part of a strange and unlikely community of powerless and dispossessed refugee souls, who settle down and together create a little bit of heaven for themselves and for whoever might come their way, in the midst of a mostly otherwise-barren wilderness.
And I wonder, is this maybe a more faithful image of Jesus around which to shape our faith, our self-understanding, and the use of our gifts?
No comments:
Post a Comment