Scripture:
2
Samuel 7:1-14a (NRSV)
Now when the king
was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all
his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See
now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a
tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in
mind; for the Lord is with you.”
But that same night
the word of the Lord came to Nathan: “Go and tell my servant David:
Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I
have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of
Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent
and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of
Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of
Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, 'Why
have you not built me a house of cedar?' Now therefore thus you shall
say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from
the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people
Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off
all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great
name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will
appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that
they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and
evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that
I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest
from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the
Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie
down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you,
who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his
kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the
throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he
shall be a son to me.”
Sermon:
Our God Will Not Be Contained
We're continuing to
study David this week! Again, I encourage you to read along during
the week in first and second Samuel. David's is the longest
continuous story in the Bible, and we won't do it justice in just the
few weeks we'll look at it in worship. But at least it will give you
a taste of the story if you don't know much beyond David and Goliath!
Let us pray:
Patient Teacher,
We give thanks
for another opportunity to explore your love for us
through the story
of David. May the words of my mouth
and the
meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen.
David wakes up one
morning, and in the style of his dance, he is overwhelmed by the way
God has loved him. I don't know if you have ever felt that way, when
you wake up one day, the sunshine kissing your face, feeling rested
and full and content. There isn't always a reason, you know. Just
sometimes you get caught up in beauty and realize how beloved you
are.
This
is how I see this scene in 1 Samuel. King David has successfully and
somewhat peacefully brought together Judah and Israel, scattered,
fragmented tribes of people who have dispersed since being led into
this land of milk and honey from Egypt. He has suffered persecution,
and also already committed some evils or at least questionable acts
like his own involvement as a mercenary soldier among the Philistines
who killed his beloved friend Jonathan. But he has also felt
overwhelmed by the presence of God in his life, and I don't mean
overwhelmed in a bad way. I mean completely covered by the beauty of
God's presence. And so we read today how he gets caught up in that
moment, looks at the richness of his own life and wants to give back
to God.
So he speaks to
Nathan, a fascinating man we too often forget about. Nathan is a
prophet. You will notice if you read through the Old Testament
especially in Samuel and Kings, though also in the books called The
Prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, that prophets accompany kings. See,
God did not want to give the people a king. Samuel, the priest and
prophet who anointed David, did not always want to give the people a
king. God was supposed to be their king! But the people were
stubborn, and living under intense violence, and so God gave them a
king. However, as we saw with Saul and will see with David, and as we
see with our own politicians consistently in both parties, with power
comes corruption. Prophets are supposed to keep kings honest. We see
throughout David's rule that though he can be corrupt, he does listen
to and take the advice of the prophet Nathan. And so here he seeks
out Nathan to run by his idea.
So here's King
David, living in what is essentially a palace, a house of cedar,
having grown up sleeping in sheep pastures when he was shepherding.
And he remembers dancing in front of the Art of the Covenant, that
box, that, while beautiful in and of itself, has been housed under a
tent. And he thinks to himself, and then asks Nathan what he thinks,
“Aha, God doesn't have a fancy house like me. I can build one, an
offering of sorts for all God has done for me!” So it is a piety
that can be twinged with a little guilt. Nathan agrees that this
would be a good idea, at first.
But as so often
happens with all of us, God laughs at David's plans, coming to Nathan
later that night to say so. David, like we often do, is missing the
point, and God turns the tables on him. I really like the way Kate
Huey, a United Church of Christ pastor, paraphrases God's response:
“Hey!
Did you hear me complaining about living in a tent? No, I prefer
being mobile, flexible, responsive, free to move about, not fixed in
one place.” God then turns the tables on David and says, “You
think you're going to build me a house? No, no, no, no. I'M going to
build YOU a house. A house that will last much longer and be much
greater than anything you could build yourself with wood and stone. A
house that will shelter the hopes and dreams of your people long
after 'you lie down with your ancestors.'”1
There is a lot to
unpack here, though I think Rev. Huey has presented the conversation
in a way that makes a bit more sense to us. God turns the tables on
David, reminding him that, though he means well, God cannot be
contained. Here is David, with his assumptions that God should live
in the wealth that he as a king lives in.
Last week, we talked
about how David moved God to the center by bringing the Ark of the
Covenant from gathering dust in his brother's barn to his new capitol
city. As we remember from last week, the Ark of the Covenant was not
a boat, like Noah's Ark, but it was from way back in the time of
Moses when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. It was a
beautifully crafted chest made of wood and covered in gold that
contained reminders of how God provided for the Israelites: a jar of
manna, Aaron's staff, and the ten commandments were found within. And
since it was created, the Ark traveled beneath tents. And as the Ark
was mobile, it symbolized God's mobility, the fluid ways that God
could interact within the community, which in and of itself in the
time of the escape from Egypt was a mobile community.
David
was bringing in a time of supposed stability, though. Finding the Ark
a new home, Jerusalem, was part of that stabilization. And it is
funny--- I spoke last week about how sometimes we just need to be
undignified, like David was when he danced in front of the Ark with
all his might glorying in God's presence with him. And then this week
we read about how David was trying to make God a bit more dignified
by putting God in a real house instead of a tent. And God points out
how silly David's assumptions are. God prefers being mobile,
flexible, responsive, free to move about, not fixed in one place. And
God is, in effect, choosing to be homeless.2
We don't understand
that choice. David probably did not either, but did not have the time
to process it before God proposed alternate plans. But we do have
time to look at this choice this morning, and it is the piece of the
scripture that has captivated me since I first read it.
I think the reason
why I was so captivated by God's insistance on freedom of movement
was because too often we see our own buildings trying to box God in.
We complain a lot in institutional church meetings and in seminary
about people's attachment to church buildings. I've worked some in
cities like York, Pennsylvania, and Newark, New Jersey, where the
church is so focused on keeping an old building up and running that
they cannot devote sufficient time and energy to mission and
outreach. And even if the building is not a financial burden,
sometimes congregations are so inward focused that the church
building becomes a sanctuary away from the world, rather than a place
to invite people in to meet God. It is like pulling teeth to remind
people that *“The church is not a building, the church is not a
steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is the
people.”*
But
our God is a God who cannot be contained, a God who shows up in
mysterious people and mysterious times. Our God makes home
not out of a building but out of people we would never expect, people
like David,
and people like us.
This
is where God's promise to David comes in, when God says, in Rev.
Huey's words, “You think you're going to build me a house? No, no,
no, no. I'M going to build YOU a house.” God refuses David's gift,
a gift that shows an obvious misunderstanding of God's purposes, much
like we see the bumbling of the twelve disciples over and over again
in the Gospel stories, but then this surprising homeless God does
something more surprising. God promises to build David and house, a
lineage, one protected and nurtured by God. David thought a house
would be a way of abundantly providing for God. But God says no,
mobility is abundance, and demonstrates that abundance by promising
to build David a house.
And so God provides
David with an unexpected abundance when God promises David a house, a
dynasty. I admit I am uncomfortable with this part of the story.
Hasn't God already noticed that David messes up sometimes and it
probably wouldn't be a good idea to promise his line a throne
forever? And doesn't God know that just because you are born of some
fancy dynasty doesn't make you a good ruler? Where's the democracy,
God?
But I think this is
more about hope, abundant hope, hope of abundance, than it is about
the divine right of kings. To return again to Rev. Huey's paraphrase,
God says that God will build “[a] house that will shelter the hopes
and dreams of your people long after 'you lie down with your
ancestors.'” And on top of this, God says, “I will be a father to
[your offspring], and he shall be a son to me.”
This
is “the core of Messianic hope in the Old Testament.”3
It promises us that God's presence with us endures, and more than
that, that there is something more to come. For us, as Christians, we
understand yet another twist: God's throne is like God's house
building skills--- the throne looks different than what we expect.
Jesus is a king we do not expect. This house God builds does not
follow the pattern of, for instance, English kings who become more
and more corrupt. God turns our understanding of this house, this
dynasty, for David on its head.
And God part of the
way God does that is by expanding this promise into more than just a
biological family. When reading the Old Testament, we see that even
if this is a promise to David specifically, it extends to all
Israelites, it is a hope for all Israelites. This hope God offers all
people, a hope of a different way of living, one we cannot often
imagine but one we have tasted, even briefly at times. It is a way of
peace and security. A way of abundance.
In the Epistles in
the New Testament, we read this house metaphor even more expansively.
The author of Ephesians writes in chapter two verse twenty-two: “you
also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
(NRSV) Here, we see that this house is not just within David's
family, not just within the Israelites, but that God has built a
house in all of us.
Rev. Steve
Garnaas-Holmes, a United Methodist pastor and blogger writes:
You
are a house. God has chosen you as a tent to move about and live in.
Your opponents are also houses of God. And we all are a house where
God lives, not in any of us alone, but in the sacred space among us.
Be mindful of this mystery, for it is the foundation of a great and
powerful dynasty.4
I love this. God has
chosen each of us, each of our bodies in all their problems, as a
dwelling place, rather than a house of cedar. And such a reminder
tells us that we aren't the only dwelling places. God can use each of
us with all our faults, the way God used David with all his, and the
way God uses those we might not like as much.
The hope of the
dynasty, then, is a hope that one day we will see that sacred space
around us and find abundance all around us. It is a hope that one day
we will stop trying to contain God, to domesticate God by saying God
only belongs in Church, or that God only belongs to us Methodists and
not to Presbyterians, or that God only belongs to us Christians. God
has broken out of those containers and said, “I will build YOU a
house. I will move and dwell within you AND your neighbor AND the guy
who lives down the street you may not like as much.”
God
provides for us in ways we never imagine, just as God did for the
Israelites in the wilderness, just as God did for David. And just as
God does for us today. God
shows a mobility and freedom that provides us with an abundance and
unity we would never expect.
Let us pray:
Our
God-Who-Will-Not-Be-Contained,
We don't always
understand your ways of abundance,
presenting you
instead with gifts we think you'll like but gifts that end up boxing
you up. Be patient with us.
Remind us that
you have chosen us as your dwelling places,
and guide us to
living into this un-contained abundance. Amen.
1Kate
Huey, “Wherever You Are,” Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Weekly
Seeds,
Congregational Vitality and Discipleship Ministry Team, Local Church
Ministries, United Church of Christ, 22 July 2012,
http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/weekly-seeds/wherever-you-are.html
2“God's
choice to stay homeless, however, surprises us.” Joni S. Sancken,
Proper 11 [16], Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A
Lectionary Commentary, Year B,
eds. Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm
(Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 332.
3Richard
W. Nysse, 2 Samuel 7:1-14a, Commentary on Alternate First Reading,
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, WorkingPreacher.org,
19 July 2012,
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=7/19/2009.
4Steve
Garnaas-Holmes, “I will make you a house,” Unfolding Light,
20 July 2012, http://unfoldinglight.net/?p=1353.
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