The biblical material assiduously undermines the logic of human achievement. When Yahweh does his remarkable work, he nearly always uses badly flawed human agents.
The waning days of David’s rule read like an ‘I told you so’ anti-monarchical screed. The aged king commits the atrocity of numbering his people, a violation of the tribal traditions against a standing army and a centralized political-military apparatus. Then, while a beautiful young virgin warms him against the dark night, a palace farce unravels outside his door. Two of his sons line up behind their corresponding priestly advocates in what sounds like a shameless playground exercise of ‘Take me! Take me!’
It is not remotely dignified. Yet it does not end the monarchy’s agency as the historian reads Yahweh’s purpose in the shifting sands of history-in-the-making.
As Jesus’ teaching ministry and indeed his life—so it appears—lurch towards their final moments, one of the story’s potential heroes proclaims loudly that he will never betray Jesus. Then we are treated to three trembling denials that he even knows his erstwhile master.
It all seems to promise the imminent collapse of everything to which the story—indeed the Story—seems to have pointed.
Extraordinarily, it means nothing of the sort. Yahweh will continue to employ flawed human agency in a manner that will lead one of his human interpreters memorably to pen the observation that ‘we hold this glory in jars of clay … ‘
