You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
David: Seventh son of Jesse and lowly shepherd boy
relegated to the back forty with the lambs.
David: Master of the slingshot and slayer of giants. David: Lute player and songwriter. David:
Spontaneous and joyful liturgical dancer once clad only in his
skivvies. David: One third of an unholy trio with Uriah the
Hittite and the lovely Bathsheba, prone as she was to showing off her better
parts in the outdoor bathtub next door.
David: Chosen by God to succeed
Saul as king of Israel and anointed by the prophet Samuel. David:
Mighty warrior, kingdom consolidator who took back the Holy City of
Jerusalem, and beloved ruler of the Jewish people.
David
was a complex and very human character, and today when we meet him, he is
sitting pretty. As Reformed Church
pastor, Scott Hoezee writes, “we know that David is riding the crest of the
wave. He’s gotten rid of his enemies. Those who opposed (him) are dead or
silent. His approval ratings are sky high from the Israelites, and it’s
probably true that David could at this point do pretty much whatever he wanted
and he’d get away with it. The people trust him enough that if he
issued a decree, an edict, or declared some new set of laws, they would assume
(initially at least if not over the long haul) that it was for their good and
so they’d be only too happy to follow what the king said.” In short, the world was David’s oyster.
And
as David reclines at the table over the evening meal in his palace (or “house”
as the Biblical writer so humbly puts it), chatting with his personal prophet
and pastor, Nathan, the king’s rise from obscurity and all of his
accomplishments have not gone to his head quite yet. He is not so theologically naïve at this
point that he does not give credit for his blessings where credit is due, that
is, to God/Yahweh.
And
as David sips his wine and tosses an olive high in the air, catching it deftly on
his tongue, he muses with Nathan about the origins of his stellar good fortune
and just how to give back to the God who has given him so much. David looks around at his house, constructed
from the finest cedar, and waxes theological for a moment.
“Why?”
David asks his trusted confidant, “Why should I live in such magnificent and
well-constructed surroundings while God/Yahweh (believed to be present in the
old worn box, the ark of the covenant, that surely had seen better days), while
God/Yahweh has only a makeshift shelter in the courtyard – an ancient piece of
canvas and a bunch of worn out poles?”
David felt badly that God/Yahweh was still kicking around in a tent like
the one all the Israelites had dwelt in when they had left Egypt way back when
and wandered in the desert for forty years.
“Do
you think,” David continued. “Do you
think that God/Yahweh would like to live in a cedar house too, like mine? I could build that. I have the architects, the materials, the
labor.”
Well,
that was probably one of the deepest thoughts that had ever popped into David’s
head, much less been articulated to his prophet mentor. And David began, right then and there, to
sketch a few preliminary designs on a napkin.
I mean, after all, a temple worthy of the one true God? What a legacy
for our David to leave!
Caught
unawares by this sudden turn of generosity, Nathan responded as any good pastor
would to someone who wanted to actually give back to the Almighty
rather than once again asking for something
– be it healing or happiness or victory in battle or some such fleeting
need. Not surprisingly, Nathan was all
over David’s idea. It was – simply put –
a slam dunk. Surely it did not require
meditation or deep prayer or even a quick check with God/Yahweh first. The Holy One would love it!
And
so without batting an eye, Nathan replied.
“Go for it! Sounds good to me. If you do it, God will approve. After all,
you are God’s beloved one.”
And
so David went to bed that night, happy as a clam, with visions of not
sugarplums but blueprints dancing in his head.
Nathan, on the other hand, went to bed and slept only fitfully, his
night punctuated by disturbing dreams, not the least of which was the one where
God/Yahweh came to the old prophet and told him in no uncertain terms that he
had overstepped his bounds and had better call a halt to David’s high and
mighty thinking right away before things got out of hand and the hammers
started hammering and the saws started sawing.
Episcopal
priest Mary Brennan Thorpe imagines the nocturnal conversation this way:
“You’re not the one to figure out whether I need a temple (God insisted). I’ve
been traveling alongside my people in an ark and a tent since I took you all
out of Egypt. At any time, have I said ‘I want a house of cedar?’ No, you boys
are missing the point. YOU don’t get to say when and where I need a house. I am
the one who decides about the house thing….and this is what I have to say about
it: I’ve got it under control. I made you king, and I will give my people
Israel a land of their own, and I will build a house…but it won’t be a house
made of cedar. It will be a house made of the generations of those who follow
you. I’ll take care of David’s people and defend them against their enemies.
That’s the house that will be built.” Now, Nathan, you go tell David that that’s
all I’ve got to say about that.
` Yikes! Well, you can imagine how David felt when he
got this news the next morning. Here he
was with a hundred design concepts in his head, and Nathan was telling him that
God/Yahweh was nixing the house idea.
Just when you think you know the Almighty….
So
David spent a fair amount of time that morning prostrate before the ark of the
covenant, praying his heart out in the ancient tent with the ripped canvas and
worn out poles,
trying to wrap his brain around what he wanted for God/Yahweh and
what the Holy One wanted for him,
had in store for him.
It
was all very confusing – God/Yahweh being a sacred punster of sorts – playing
on words and their meanings, one against the other. Take the word, “house,” for example.
There
was David’s house – or palace – the one built of the finest cedar where David
took his evening meals and from which he ruled a newly united kingdom. Then there was the house – or temple – that
David wanted so desperately to build to honor God/Yahweh - and maybe a little
bit to bolster his own legacy too.
Then
there was the house that the Holy One referenced in that most disturbing dream
that Nathan the prophet had dreamt, from the sacred perspective apparently the
most important house of all – a dynasty, a promise that Israel would be ruled
down through the ages by David’s descendants.
“You will always have descendants (God promised), and I will make your
kingdom last forever. Your dynasty (your house) will never end.”
Yes,
it was all terribly bewildering.
However, when all was said and done, after his time or prayer in the old
ragged tent, David seemed to understand the situation a bit better.
You see, if we were to read further in this
story, we would find David proclaiming:
“And now, Sovereign Lord, you are God; you always keep your promises,
and you have made this wonderful promise to me. I ask you to bless
my descendants so that they will continue to enjoy your favor.”
So
- in the end – David got it. He
understood – at least for the moment – first, the idea that you do not always
know what God has in mind and sometimes you have to let go of your best-laid
plans and most entrenched perspectives.
And second, when God makes promises, you just have to believe that the
Holy One will keep those promises. And
third, there are more important things in life than a house – even a fine one
built of cedar.
And
so we, all these millennia later, are challenged as David was challenged to
understand as David finally understood.
We are challenged to reflect on this little Old Testament, Hebrew
Scripture story and figure out what it says about us, about our relationship
with God, and about the church. And what
will we find if we take on this challenge?
First,
like David, we too will discover that we do not always know what God has in
mind for us, and sometimes we too need to let go of our best-laid plans and
perspectives, follow where the Spirit seems to be leading us, and embrace the
idea that God always has something new to say to us.
As
Episcopal priest Mary Brennan Thorpe wrote, “That puts us in an uncomfortable
place, because we want our God to be tame and well-defined, a God for whom we
can build a temple in which to keep God locked away. But our God is not a tame
god. ‘I am who I am’ cannot be easily fit into a box.”
You
see, though in the end, God may be unchangeable, our understanding of God
cannot be. It must always evolve as the
Spirit leads us in new directions and new ways of thinking. Gay marriage?
Immigration reform? Health care?
Tough
issues, and we are likely to disagree about just where the Spirit is heading
when it comes to them. And yet, in spite
of our differing opinions, we must always keep seeking together, always keep
trying to discern what God has in mind, and, most importantly, always keep
talking.
And
it will not be easy - that’s for sure. However,
as one of our Worship Grant Colloquium leaders said several times: “A difficult conversation is still a
conversation.” It is only together – in
community – that we will be able to discern where the Spirit may be taking us
next.
Second,
like David, we too must strive to believe that when God makes promises, the
Holy One will keep those promises.
However, as David found out, it is not up to us to dictate just what
those promises are. Rather we are called
to trust that in all our days – no matter whether they are filled with soaring
joy or the deepest of pain – in all our days God has promised us life, love,
and God’s presence in all our struggles.
And maybe it is that precious relationship with God – cemented through
the covenant articulated to David in this little story about cedar houses –
maybe it is that eternal bond with God that is the promise we cling to most of
all.
And
finally, like David, we too will need to acknowledge that there are more
important things in the world than a house, than a temple, than the four walls
of this sanctuary even. In David’s time,
God/Yahweh lived in a tent for a reason.
God would not allow God’s self to be boxed in.
God
was – and still is – a nomad, not content to be tied down to a temple or a
church. In short, if you want to find
God, leave the building. If you want to
find God, don’t stay here, but look for God’s tent out in the
neighborhood. Look for it among the
poor, among the world’s refugees, among the ones who know no peace.
Sorry
folks, but God does not reside in this building – beautiful and comfortable for
us as it might be. God does not need
this building – just as God did not need a brand new cedar house like the one
David wanted to build.
God
was looking – is still looking - for a different kind of house: It is that play on words again. God was looking to build a house in the sense
of a kingdom, a kingdom birthed by a promise to David, flowing through time and
space by way of the prophets – “there shall come forth a stump from the shoot
of Jesse” - down through the ages to Jesus himself, he who embodied all that
this kingdom, this sacred dynasty, this house was meant to be.
What
David and Nathan did not understand was that God/Yahweh did not mind living in
a tent because there would one day come a time when God would “tent” among the
people once again,
when God would move into the neighborhood
and dwell among us – even us, full of grace and truth – and our best laid plans
and perspectives would be shattered even as the sacred promise was fulfilled. Oh David, there is so much more to life than
a house, even a fine one built of cedar!
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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