Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, 28 Aug 2022, LoLLC
Channel: Lord of Life Lutheran Church
Date: 05/09/2022

These lessons offer disparate models of monarchy. There is the human monarch whom Samuel predicts will plunder the people and their resources; scholars understand this passage to be a critique of Solomon. Imaginatively, Psalm 72 is a response to that critique in the form of a prayer that Solomon might receive divine guidance to avoid the pitfalls of Samuel’s prophecy. In the Epistle Jesus is presented as a claimant to the throne in order to portray his followers as enemies of the state. In the Gospel Jesus goes to extreme measures to avoid having an earthly crown forced upon him; he literally (or literarily) walks on water to escape his would-be subjects. Is there any better critique of monarchy? Yet we continue to perpetuate that language and imagery.

Cover art: "Hannah’s Prayer", by Durga Yael Bernhard; “As Hannah prays for her unborn child, her belly changes from barren winter to fertile spring to the fruition of summer”