O Happy Sin! (sermon, July 26, 2009)

2 Samuel 11-12:25

Remember the first story we heard in which David had an active role? It was the story of David and Goliath. Young David, ruddy and handsome, showed up on the front lines of battle and with nothing more than a slingshot and a stone, defeated the giant Goliath -- a giant who had all of Israel’s army, including King Saul, paralyzed with fear. That was just the beginning of David’s youth and young adulthood, which was characterized by nonstop action: running from Saul, leading armies in victory after victory, becoming king over Israel, bringing the Ark of God to Jerusalem, building a palace, filling it with wives and children, leading more victorious battles over Israel’s enemies. When I think of David during this period in his life, I think of Matt Damon in the Bourne Identity movies, constantly on the move, using his intellect and physical power to escape his would-be captors time and again. Or I think of Barack Obama, cool, calm, and collected; able to think on his feet, handsome and fit, surrounded by wise advisors, flanked by a beautiful wife and daughters. Like these men, David was in the prime of his life, and even though he faced constant challenges, life was exciting. It was full of action. There was always more to do than David could get done, and that’s how he liked it. He was the man every man in his kingdom wanted to be: smart, strong, handsome, and faithful to God. What a testament to his faith, that through it all, David maintained a firm hold on his awareness that everything he had came from God and that God -- not David -- deserved the glory.

But then, gradually, one winter, it happened as it happens to us all! His stomach started to pooch out in a way it never had before. His jaw line, always so firm, started to soften. When he put on his armor, it felt tight in places, uncomfortable. And, frankly, after riding his horse for just a short period of time, he’d get these nagging aches and pain. The thought of riding into battle suddenly held little appeal, especially when he imagined sleeping night after night in a tent with just a thin blanket between his body and the ground. For the first time in his life, David didn’t want adventure. He wanted to stay home. So when spring finally came and the mud had dried up enough for armies to travel the roads and defend their territory, David stayed behind. But just to remind everyone who was the king, he sent his army out, told them where to go and what to do, claimed his authority so that they would remember who was in charge.

David had never been home in the springtime before and he quickly discovered that without the company of his advisors and his soldiers, there wasn’t much to do. There were wives and concubines, but that was nothing new. After just a few days, David found himself deeply, profoundly, utterly bored.

And so one day he wandered onto his roof, from which he had a view of the courtyards of the surrounding houses. That’s when he saw her. A young woman, bathing her strong, slender, youthful body, oblivious to the rest of the world. That’s what David wanted, that’s what David needed to feel young again, to give his life meaning. Just seeing her gave David a renewed sense of need, of purpose. Now he had something to do, a goal to pursue. And David springs into action. He finds out who she is, he sends for her, and he takes her to his bed, hoping, in that encounter, however brief, to feel young again.

Maybe, for a moment, he did. But what really made him feel young again was when he received word, a few weeks later, that Bathsheeba was pregnant. Now the king had more than a purpose. Now he had something to make him feel motivated, inspired, powerful: now he had a big problem that had to be solved and fast. As stressful as it may have been, it made him feel like a king again. And, boy, did he act like one. He brainstormed the perfect cover-up, sending for Uriah who would surely want to make love to his beautiful wife while he was home from the battlefield, creating the illusion that he was the father of her child. What David didn’t bargain for was that Uriah was a good man, thoughtful of others, loyal to his troops. Uriah refused to enjoy the comforts of home while his soldiers slept on the ground of the battlefield. David, on the other hand, could think only of himself. He sent Uriah back to the battlefield carrying in his own hands the directive that would end his life. David just kept on scheming. Why? Because it felt good! He felt in charge, full of purpose. He felt young again. He felt like a king. He felt like the king.

As the sense of his own power overcame his mind like a drug, David forgot something. When he was young, his drug of choice wasn’t his own power. It was his firm belief in God’s power. It was the comfort he took knowing that no matter what challenge confronted him, he could face it head on because God was with him and God was in charge. The rush he felt now obscured that. God, what God? David had the power now, power to seduce, to deceive, to kill. He felt young, invincible, immortal. He felt like a god. He felt like the God.

******

Over the course of one hundred days in the spring of 1994, nearly a million Tutsis, the minority group in the African country of Rwanda, were massacred by members of the Hutu majority. The killers acted on orders from the Hutu government, which adhered to an ideology known as Hutu Power. No one was spared. Men, women, infants, children, teenagers, the elderly; Hutus even killed members of their own extended families who were Tutsi.

Philip Gourevitch, a reporter, visited Rwanda several times in the fifteen years after the slaughter of the Tutsis. He got to know a Hutu named Girumuhatse, and he got to know him well enough to ask him very personal questions about his involvement in the killings. Girumuhatse had publicly confessed to killing no less than eleven people. At one point, Philip asked him whether he had enjoyed the killings.

“Yes,” Girumuhatse answered. “For me it became a pleasure to kill. The first time, it’s to please the government. After that, I developed a taste for it. I hunted and caught and killed with real enthusiasm. It was work, but work that I enjoyed. It wasn’t like working for the government. It was like doing your own true job--like working for myself. I was very, very excited when I killed. I remember each killing. Yes, I woke every morning excited to go into the bush. It was the hunt--the human hunt...The genocide was like a festival. At day’s end, or anytime there was an occasion, we took a cow from the Tutsis, and slaughtered it and grilled it and drank beer. There were no limits anymore. It was a festival. We celebrated.”(1)

Granted, this example is extreme, but when I read it I couldn’t help but think of David. The way Girumuhatse felt when he murdered his fellow citizens must have been similar to the way David felt when he glimpsed Bathsheeba and knew, for the first time in a long time, what he had to do. Then when he found out she was pregnant, that feeling, that sense of purpose, just grew stronger and stronger until Uriah was dead in the ground and Bathsheeba, large with new life, was officially a wife of the king.

This feeling of power, of immortality doesn’t entirely fade for David, even after Bathsheeba is his wife. He manages to keep at bay the awareness of his sin -- of all the sinful actions that started small and got bigger and bigger until a man was dead. When the prophet Nathan comes to David and tells him a story, David doesn’t even hear the parallels to his own actions. By the end, he is furious with the thieving man and -- again, eager to play God -- declares that the man should be put to death.

Nathan says to David, “You are the man.”

And just like that, the elaborate image of himself that David had erected, the idol of his own likeness he had started worshipping the moment he saw Bathsheeba and took her into his bed, that idol crumbled to the ground. At that moment, seeing himself for what he really was -- a mere mortal, capable of being overcome, undone by his sin -- at that moment, he remembers who the real King is.

*****

The early theologian Augustine of Hippo is believed to have first come up with the Latin phrase felix culpa, which translates, “O happy sin!” It may sound strange to our ears, but the point is that sin has a good side, an aspect that is even more beautiful than the sin itself is ugly. And we don’t have to read this episode in David’s life to know that sin and its consequences can be very, very ugly.

It’s a moment of exquisite pain, matched only by the feeling of intense relief. Because what is sin for any of us if not a moment or series of moments during which we think we are gods -- or, if we don’t actually think that, we act like it? We act like we are totally in charge of our lives (and all too often, the lives of others). And when it finally occurs to us that we have forgotten who is really in charge, we simultaneously remember that the One in charge is none other than the God who created us, who watches our every move, hears our every thought, witnesses the destruction we bring on ourselves and others, and -- here’s the really humbling part -- loves us still, every minute of every day. We remember that the one in charge is the God who loves us enough to bring to our attention the thing we refused to see while we made idols of ourselves: “You are the one.”

In her book Speaking of Sin, writer Barbara Brown Taylor argues that in today’s culture we have stopped speaking of sin in theological terms. We find it offensive or difficult to use the words that have enabled centuries of faithful Jews and Christians to express and understand the role of sin in their lives, words like repentance, penance, salvation, damnation. Instead we talk about sin in either legal or medical terms. In legal terms, sin is simply a set of behaviors which are forbidden or which will result in punishment. In medical terms, sin is a disease or a disability, one that all human beings have through no fault of our own. Like an illness, we are at the mercy of sin; it is not something we have any control over. But, says Taylor, neither of these models are adequate substitutes for theology, because only when we cast sin as a theological issue can we proclaim “O happy sin!” The way Taylor puts it is this: “sin is our only hope, because the recognition that something is wrong is the first step toward setting it right again. There is no help for those who admit no need of help. There is no repair for those who insist that nothing is broken, and there is no hope of transformation for a world whose inhabitants accept that it is sadly but irreversibly wrecked.”(2)

In a strange way, it is this episode in David’s life that truly makes him a role model for us, because it is here, more than anywhere else in David’s story where we recognize ourselves. Do we not hear ourselves implicated when Nathan turns on David and pronounces: “You are the man!” -- shocking him (and us) out of his idolatrous reverie? And then David offers us an example of how we might respond, because instead of arguing with Nathan and denying his responsibility for the wrong he has done, instead of insisting that he needs no help, that nothing is broken, David says simply, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

What follows is anything but simple. David and Bathsheeba’s son becomes ill and David prays and repents. He doesn’t eat and -- aches and pains be damned -- he sleeps on the hard ground to show his remorse. Only after the child dies does David wash himself, change his clothes, and go to worship God. The death of his son will not be the last consequence of David’s sin: some believe that all the bad things that happen to his family right up until the Israelites are taken into exile by the Babylonians, are all the result of David’s unfaithfulness to God in this series of events. No wonder we don’t like to speak of sin. Because it is almost unbearable to think that the consequences of our actions will reverberate for the rest of our lives and the lives of the next generation.

It is almost unbearable. Except that by identifying such actions as sin we have already taken the first step toward the hard work of repentance, which as Taylor puts it, “begins with the decision...to accept our God-given place in community, and to choose a way of life that increases life for all members of that community.” When we recognize our sin, we remember who we are and who God is -- a God whose capacity for mercy is infinitely greater than our capacity for sin; a God who longs to make us new, not by erasing our sin but by helping us to see it and ourselves and the world as they really are, a God whose mercy washes us clean like the healing rain in the video we saw earlier, a God who chose to redeem the whole world by sending his son to walk among us and show us what a life without sin would look like. O happy sin indeed.

*****

During the Italian Renaissance there was a man apprenticed to a master potter, one who made exquisite pottery. The master set out one day to make a vase. He crafted it by hand, shaping it slowly and deliberately as it turned on the wheel. After glazing it and firing it in the oven, the master set the vase on a pedestal and he and the apprentice admired its beauty, which was almost indescribable. It was a thing of perfection. The master lovingly took the vase into his hands, lifted it above his head, and let it crash to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. The apprentice was horrified.

Then the master set about picking up each shard of the vase and piecing it back together. Once it was whole again, in spite of the web of cracks that covered its surface, he painted it with liquid gold. The gold seeped into every crack and when the whole vase was painted, it was even more beautiful than before, and the most exquisite thing about it was how the light bounced off those cracks, reflecting the gold. That vase became the most treasured piece of art in all the land. May we know the joy that comes when we get put back together by the Master. And may we then go forth doing the satisfying, life-giving work that shines God’s light in the world, knowing that God’s light shines brightest through our broken places. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Philip Gourevitch, A Reporter at Large, “The Life After,” The New Yorker, May 4, 2009, p. 37.
2. Taylor, Barbara Brown, Speaking of Sin. Cowley Publications 2000, p. 41.

Don't Just Do Something - Sit There! (sermon, July 19, 2009)

2 Samuel 7:1-17
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

As many of you know, last week my friend and colleague George Anderson gave two talks on the Gospel of Matthew at Westminster Presbyterian Church. For those of you who weren’t able to attend, I wanted to share with you one particular insight from his talks which stuck with me. It also happens to relate nicely to today’s episode in the story of David.

George started out talking about the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew chapter 5. The first thing Jesus does in this sermon is pronounce blessings, and the first blessing is this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This is the translation most of us are used to hearing, but George spoke of another translation which renders the first blessing as this: “Blessed are those who know their need for God.”

What follows this beginning is a litany of other blessings and then a list of commands, all of which underscores the keyword of Matthew’s gospel: obedience. Those who are blessed with an awareness of their need for God and of God’s grace are likewise blessed with the expectation that they are to show grace to others, since all of us are in need of God whether we know it or not. In the Gospel of Matthew, God’s freely-given grace and God’s high expectations go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. (1)

Of course, this isn’t just true in Matthew, or the New Testament, for that matter. In today’s episode from the life of David, God lets David know that along with the promises of God’s favor and grace, God also has high expectations for David and his offspring.

The passage we read today is a critical moment in the salvation history of Israel and the world. (You know, I feel like every week during this sermon series we are covering an critical moment in Israel’s history, but I guess that’s why David is worth preaching seven straight sermons on!) In this passage we hear a speech from God through the prophet Nathan, a speech in which God responds to David’s idea to build a house -- a temple -- for the Lord.

Before Nathan pronounces God’s oracle to David, we find David finally enjoying a moment of peace. After his boring childhood full of nothing more exciting than hanging out with the sheep, David’s life was nonstop for a while -- first he was living and working in Saul’s court, then he was trying to escape Saul’s murderous rages; after Saul died he was caught up in leading battles as the ruler of Judah and then as the king of all the tribes of Israel. For the moment, though, the Philistines were defeated, the capital city of Jerusalem was established, the ark was in its rightful place in the city of David. At last, things were settled and David had a moment of peace. And where most of us would probably have settled into the hammock with a good book and a glass of lemonade or zoned out in front of the TV with the remote and a strong drink, trying not to think about anything, much less God, what does David do? He immediately starts thinking about what he can do for a God who has clearly shown him great favor.

Looking around for some way to say thank you to God, David realizes that even though he has brought the Ark to Jerusalem, it is still housed in a tent, a temporary dwelling. David, on the other hand, lives in a rather nice house of cedar. When he points this out to the prophet Nathan, Nathan doesn’t even wait to hear the rest of David’s plan; obviously, David has in mind to build God a permanent house, a temple worthy of the true King, the God of Israel. Without even stopping for a moment of discernment, Nathan says, “Absolutely, fantastic idea. Clear the site and let’s start tomorrow!”

Well, in spite of the fact that no one actually asks God’s opinion, God interrupts Nathan’s sleep that night to make sure David gets the message. As admirable as it might be to us that David’s first thought in his moment of peace was what he could do for God, it turns out that isn’t what David’s story is about. This story of David isn’t about what David can do for God but what God can and would do through David and through his offspring.

This speech that God gives to David through Nathan is also known as the Davidic Covenant. It contains a play on the Hebrew word for “house” which can mean, as can the English word, both a dwelling place and a family or a dynasty. God doesn’t need David to build God a house; instead, God is going to make of David a dynasty. God makes an unconditional commitment here, a promise which one commentator calls “a crucial theological innovation in Israel” because this Davidic Covenant is truly unconditional: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever,” God says. (2) This is in contrast to the Sinai Covenant, the promise God made with the Israelites when God gave them the Ten Commandments, because that covenant was conditional in nature. “I will be your God if you will keep my commandments,” God told the people.

But that kind of conditional covenant was over now. From now on, David and his offspring would be the ones God would raise up to rule and save the people -- all people. This Davidic Covenant plants the seed in Israel that from the lineage of David will come an ideal king, a Messiah.

This passage is important for us because it shows us exactly where the idea came from -- the idea that is witnessed to in the prophets and the psalms -- that from David will come a Messiah who will be the Savior of Israel and of all the world. Those wonderful prophecies from Isaiah that we read during Advent, the time leading up to Christmas, are all based on the promise God makes to David here. The Gospel of Matthew makes such an effort to trace Jesus’ lineage back to David because of this speech, this covenant God makes with David, this unconditional promise to establish the throne of David forever.

God makes this promise to David when David seeks to take control of his story, to do what he thinks needs to be done for God. As important as it is to praise and worship God, as crucial as it is for our faith to put into action what we believe, to express our gratitude to God through our service to others, there are times when we need to remember: a life of faith is not primarily about what we can do for God. The life of faith is first and foremost about what God has done for us. Everything else flows from that.

Have you internalized what God has done for you? Are you wondering what that would even look like? Well, let’s start with this. Most of you are dedicated, devoted members of this particular faith community. You come to worship Sunday after Sunday -- even last week, when I told you to go hear George Anderson preach, you faithfully came here! You visit, take meals, send cards, and make phone calls to support each other in times of crisis. You meet for Sunday school and Bible studies. You sing in the choir. Through the various mission projects of this church, you serve the community in a number of different ways. All of these are wonderful things. All of these are things you are doing for God. My question to you is, do you know why you do them? Is it because you think it’s what a good Christian should do or is it because you have received the love God has for you in such a way that that love can’t help but flow out to others?

For all of us there are times we get so busy, so settled in the routines of our lives that we forget why we do what we do. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing all of those good things, but it does mean that it might be time to stop and reflect, at least for a few minutes, on why.

In today’s reading from the gospel of Mark, when Jesus encounters a crowd of people who looked lost, he has pity on them because, “they were like sheep without a shepherd.” They had lost their sense of direction. They did all the things sheep do -- eat, sleep, wander the hillside, but they did it aimlessly. And what did Jesus do? He taught them. He gave them direction. In a sense that is exactly what God does for David when God makes the covenant with him. God tells David, “this is what your life is about, this is how your kingdom is defined.” And it wasn’t defined by what David could do for God but by what God would do for David.

Preacher Fred Craddock tells a story of going to lunch one Sunday after church to the home of one of the long-time members of the church. This woman was a widow and had lived alone for many years. When they got to the house, the woman told Craddock to sit in the den and read the paper or watch TV while she got everything ready. He saw her put an apron on and go into the formal dining room. He followed her and told her, “Now, don’t fix up all this. We eat in the kitchen at home.” She pulled out a drawer of the sideboard and took out linen napkins. She put the tablecloth and napkins on the table and then took out stemmed glasses from the china cabinet. Craddock said again, “We eat in the kitchen at home.” She went right on preparing the table. He said, “Look, it’s just the two of us. We eat in the kitchen at home.”
The woman turned around, looked him in the eye and said, “Will you shut up and sit down?”
Craddock responded, “Yes, I suppose I will.”
She said to him, “Do you have any idea what it’s like fixing a meal for one?”
And they ate their meal in the formal dining room with stemmed glasses and candles and linens. (3)

Do we have any idea what it’s like for God to be God? David thought he did, and he wanted to make sure God had a fancy dwelling place on earth. God told him to shut up and sit down and receive what God was doing for him and through him. This story reminds us that when we resist always trying to do something to show our gratitude for God and instead just sit there, if only for a few moments, just sit and receive what God has done and is doing for us and through us, then we might just gain a clearer sense of how we can faithfully follow God.

There is also an added benefit for the church when we do this. When we have clarified in our own minds what God has done for us through this particular community of faith, then we are in the best position to articulate to others what this church has to offer them. We don’t need to bend over backward to offer people what we think they want in a church. David’s instinct is to build God a fancy, permanent dwelling for the ark and God makes crystal clear that isn’t necessary. Likewise, we shouldn’t get distracted by the mentality that “if we build it, they will come.” God is already here, blessing us, loving us, working through us for the sake of this community. And the most important thing we can do to attract people to this community is to sit down and shut up and receive God’s gifts for us. Then we will be able to show and tell others about this God who prepares a table for us -- for all of us, before we have done anything to deserve it -- a table of fine linens and the best crystal, a table where we can sit and receive this blessing that, when we have truly received it, will flow right through us into the world, inspiring others to come and meet this God who so graciously cares for all people.

Endnotes:
1. Anderson, George, from a talk given at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Akron, OH, July 12, 2009.
2. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, pp. 138-9.
3. Craddock, Fred, Mike Graves, and Richard F. Ward, Craddock Stories. Chalice Press, 2001.

The Power of a Good Book

Recently I was reminded again how a good story, even when it is not specifically religious in nature, can inspire, deepen faith, and solidify our commitment to justice. My mother-in-law recommended the book The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, about African American maids working for white women in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. Once I started reading it, I could hardly put it down. Stockett writes from the perspective of three different characters: Aibileen, a maid who has raised seventeen white children in addition to her only son; Minny, a maid whose tendency to talk back has lost her multiple jobs and who is raising five children of her own; and Skeeter, a recent college graduate who longs to be a writer and to solve the mystery of what happened to the maid who raised her. Together these three women embark on a project to record the stories Jackson's maids have to tell and to get these stories published.

Stockett beautifully confronts issues of race and family dynamics, true friendship, true love, and the cost of following your heart and speaking (or writing) your mind. She also reveals, as some of America's best authors have done, the pain that necessarily results when one group of people considers themselves superior in every way to another, so much so that they treat the other as if they exist to serve the superior group. Reading The Help reminded me once again what a tragedy this is and how destructive this behavior is to everyone who takes part in it, willingly or unwillingly.

Stockett writes in the afterword to the book that the one line she truly prizes is this (speaking of the book that Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny write together): "Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."

One thing our faith teaches us is that every human being is created in the image of God and, as such, must be treated with love and respect. When another person has deeply hurt us physically or emotionally, this is a very difficult thing to do and may not ultimately be possible on this side of heaven. Reading The Help and hearing the Rev. Dr. George Anderson speak about the Gospel of Matthew (in which Jesus tells his disciples that we must forgive those who hurt us not just seven times but seventy times seven, in other words, our forgiveness should be essentially unlimited) in the same week has gotten me thinking not only about what it means to be created in God's image but also how that image gives us the capacity to forgive even what at first seems unforgivable.

I'm willing to facilitate a book group at FPPC if anyone is interested. We could start by reading and discussing The Help or another recommended book. Stories, especially fiction, often open doors to aspects of our faith that we might not otherwise look at closely. If you're interested, let me know. Or if there is a book you've read this summer that has impacted your faith, I'd love to hear about it.

God in a Box (sermon, July 12, 2009)

2 Samuel 6
Mark 6:14-29

Shortly after the end of World War II, Dr. John McKenzie was an officer of the World Council of Churches and the moderator of the Church of Scotland. Dr. McKenzie went on a trip to the Balkans with two other pastors, both from conservative, pietistic denominations. Their goal was to see how the World Council of Churches’ money was being spent in the region to help needy churches rebuild after the war.

One afternoon the three pastors visited an Orthodox priest in a remote village. The priest was clearly thrilled to receive visitors since he normally was quite isolated. As soon as he had seated his three guests, he pulled out a box of fine Havana cigars and offered one to each man. Dr. McKenzie gingerly took one, bit the end off, and took a few puffs, saying how fine it was. The two other pastors declined, “Oh, no, we do not smoke,” they said emphatically.

Their host, the priest felt bad, and to make amends he left the room, only to return with a flask of his finest wine. Dr. McKenzie accepted a glass, swirled the wine like a connoisseur, and praised its high quality. Soon he finished his glass and asked for another. The other two pastors again declined, saying, “No, thank you, we do not drink!”
After the visit, when they were alone in the car, the two pastors attacked McKenzie. “What were you doing in there?” they asked. “You are an officer of the World Council and the leader of the Church of Scotland! How can you smoke and drink?”

“Normally, I don’t,” he snapped at them. “But somebody in there had to be a Christian!” (1)

We all do it from time to time. It happens to the best of us. It happened to those two pastors who refused to recognize the way God could be present when someone accepts an offer of hospitality from a stranger -- even when it means breaking the rules. It happens when someone says that unless you believe every word in the Bible is the literal truth, you cannot be a faithful Christian. It happens when someone says they don’t need to come to church to worship God, they can do it just fine in their garden or on the golf course, thank you very much.

One way or another, we all put God in a box sometimes. Poor Uzzah did it quite literally...he put God neatly in the box also known as the Ark.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about that’s because you didn’t hear the whole story. All we heard in what I read before was that Uzzah was driving the cart with his brother Ahio. Well, like I said, we all try to put God in a box from time to time...even the eminent theologians who created the lectionary, the schedule of scripture readings that I am using for this sermon series on David. This week, that committee drew a box around our scripture readings. And when they did, they left out the best part. Well, okay, maybe not the best part, but certainly the most intriguing part. I’m not sure if it was because they thought you couldn’t handle hearing it or I couldn’t handle preaching it, but either way, they left it out. So in the spirit of letting God out of the box, here they are, the forbidden verses. This comes right after Uzzah and his brother Ahio were driving the cart that carried the Ark of God while David and all of Israel went dancing before it:

When they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the Ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the Ark; and he died there beside the Ark of God. David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah; so that place is called Perez-uzzah* to this day. David was afraid of the Lord that day; he said, ‘How can the Ark of the Lord come into my care?’ So David was unwilling to take the Ark of the Lord into his care in the city of David; instead David took it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. The Ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household.

Okay, so I guess we can maybe understand why these verses were left out of the reading. After all, it seems kind of arbitrary, doesn’t it -- that God would smite someone stone-cold dead just for reaching out to steady the Ark when it was in danger of falling off the cart because the oxen stumbled? God’s inexplicable outburst against Uzzah made David so mad that he stopped the whole procession and decided he didn’t want to mess with something so dangerous. On second thought, maybe those people who set the lectionary were right to leave it out. What in the world are we to make of this?

Well, first we need to understand exactly what the Ark of the covenant is. Okay, be honest, how many of you got most of your knowledge of the Ark of the covenant from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s okay, you can admit it. Everything I knew about the Ark came from that movie until I went to seminary. But the Ark did more than just melt off the faces of those who dared look upon it when it opened.

In the book of Exodus, after the Israelites have been delivered from slavery in Egypt and given the Ten Commandments through Moses, God commanded Moses to build an Ark four feet long and two feet wide. This Ark would hold the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written and would reside in the innermost sanctum of the tabernacle, the tent in which the Israelites worshipped God.

Later, two more objects were added to the Ark: a jar of manna, the food God provided the Israelites each day as they wandered in the wilderness toward the Promised Land; and the staff of Aaron, a staff that twice was miraculously transformed -- once it turned into a serpent in front of Pharaoh and once it sprouted leaves, flowers, and almonds to signify that Aaron’s tribe, the Levites, would be priests for the people.

The Ark was the symbol of God’s presence on earth. When God gives Moses instructions for building the Ark, God says that from the Ark God will meet with Moses and speak to Moses. The objects inside were reminders to the Israelites of all that God had done for them: told them the requirements for following God through the commandments, provided sustenance for them with manna, and saved them more than once with Aaron’s rod. The Ark was tangible evidence that God was with God’s people.

In order for David’s new capitol city, Jerusalem, to truly acknowledge David’s allegience to God, David needed the Ark there. David wanted everyone to know that he ruled not by his own strength and wisdom but because the power and presence of God was with him. Now for the last twenty years the Ark had stayed in the house of Abinadab, looked after by his sons Eleazar, Ahio, and Uzzah. Before that the Ark had been captured by the Philistines, those perpetual enemies of Israel. But so many bad things happened to during the seven months they had the Ark that they were eager to get rid of it.

The Ark was powerful, there was no denying it. But it wasn’t magic. It represented the presence of God and God’s salvation of Israel, but it wasn’t God. And here is where Uzzah made his mistake. Because after twenty years of protecting the Ark in his house, he had started to believe something very, very dangerous. He believed his most important job was protecting the box. He believed that God was in that box and that he was in charge of that box...which meant he believed he was in charge of God.

In his book Leap Over a Wall, Eugene Peterson points out that over the many centuries Christians have reflected on Uzzah’s death, one insight has popped up over and over again: “it’s fatal to take charge of God.” (2) First, there were certain rules that went along with the Ark, rules set out by God when the Ark was built. When the Ark was carried, as it was always carried in front the Israelites as they made their way to the Promised Land, it was supposed to be carried by Levites, the priests of the people, using poles inserted through rings on the four corners of the Ark. And the reason for this is that no one was allowed to touch the Ark.

Did you hear anything in today’s text about Levites and four poles? No, that would have made for a rather slow procession, one that would have been hard for David and all those people to lead with frenzied dancing. Apparently, Uzzah and his brothers decided it made a lot more sense to put the whole Ark on a cart and let oxen pull it -- ox-carts were the latest technological innovation to come from the Philistines and why shouldn’t the Israelites take advantage of them? But, as Peterson notes, this was an impersonal means of carrying this object that represents God’s desire to be personally involved with God’s people. (3) Not to mention that it was a flat-out rejection of God’s explicit rules involving the Ark.

This was also true of Uzzah’s attempt to keep the Ark from falling off the cart by reaching out to steady it. The rules were that no one was to touch the Ark. No one was allowed to control God.

But the reality is, we all try. We draw our lines around what we understand to be God’s attributes and characteristics. Uzzah did it when he started to believe that the Ark was God and that he had to protect it; Michal did it when she told David that it was more important that he act like a king and command respect from his subjects than allowing himself to look foolish by proclaiming his devotion to God by dancing; those two priests did it when they rejected the hospitality of a fellow Christian even when it meant breaking cherished rules; Pilate did it when he honored his daughter’s wicked demand instead of trusting his instinct that John the Baptist had something to say to which he ought to listen; the lectionary committee did it when they left out the part of the text when God kills a man for breaking a rule that may seem trivial to us. We do it anytime we start to feel certain that we know just what God wants us -- or others -- to do or not do.

Try as we might, we can’t put God in a box. It would make our lives more comfortable, certainly, at least in the short term, but long term, it’s nothing short of a death sentence. Because when God is in a box then there is no room for God to do a new thing, and what the Bible teaches us is that God is always doing a new thing, finding a new way to save God’s people. In anointing David king over Israel, God did a new thing, trusting that a human being could remain faithful to God even while facing the challenges and temptations of ruling a nation. David was perhaps the only one of Israel’s kings who managed to do this. And when it didn’t work out for other kings, God tried a new thing again.

What God tried was being with God’s people, not in an inanimate object like stone tablets or a fancy box, but in a body -- a newborn, fragile, human body. And then God invited us -- all of us -- to participate in the salvation story of the whole universe by by being the body of Christ here on earth. We represent the presence of God -- to each other and to the world. So look around -- just at the diversity in this room -- and imagine trying to put God in a box if God is already in each one of us, calling us to share God’s love with all the world. There’s no way we can control God if that’s true, anymore than we can control another person. There’s no point in thinking we can reach out a hand and protect God. Even better, there’s no need. God has already broken out of the box and into the world, into the body of Jesus Christ his son and into the body of Christ which is us, the church. So may you be released from the anxiety that plagued Uzzah, the worry that God needs us to protect God. And may you instead be inspired to recognize God in you, and to be your unique part of Christ’s body in the world. Amen.

Endnotes
1. Hoezee, Scott, "This Week in Preaching," May 11, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=293
2. Peterson, Eugene, Leap Over a Wall. Harper San Francisco, 1997, p. 150.
3. Ibid., p. 150.

The Challenges of Change

If we are human then chances are we have, at one time or another, resisted change. Even when change involves something we think of as positive, like a new marriage or a new baby, it means letting go of the way things used to be and that inevitably causes us some amount of grief.

In the past two weeks after worship we have talked after church about why we worship the way we do. Many of the worship practices that we would label "traditional" actually came about during the Protestant Reformation, when leaders set out to make intentional changes in the way Christians worshiped God. Of course, such changes didn't stop with the Reformation but continue even today, as churches struggle to discern whether their services should be traditional, contemporary, or emergent (or if they should conform to any such label).

Today, I am happy to announce a change at FPPC that I hope will bring mostly positive feelings to all of our members and friends: our new website is finally up and running. Check it out and please give us feedback: www.fppchurch.info. This is truly an important and efficient way for FPPC to gain visibility in the community and to share with others how we are living out our vision to "Grow in Spirit and Make Christ Known."

In the midst of changes at church and changes in your life, may you know the power and peace of the Holy Spirit that guides us in our journey of faith as we seek to follow Christ, who brought to earth a most remarkable change -- the living testimony that God's love is offered up, poured out for us all. Thanks be to God!

Promises, Promises (sermon, July 5, 2009)

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Mark 6:1-6

A friend of mine who is a pastoral counselor with a decade of experience counseling couples and families has a saying: You marry the right person...for all the wrong reasons.

You marry the right person for all the wrong reasons. What this means is that when we fall in love we have ideas about why this particular person is the right person for us. It’s because they are beautiful or funny or kind or smart or a person of faith or whatever it is we always hoped we’d find in a spouse. My therapist friend would say that even though we think these are the reasons we are marrying someone, these are actually not the reasons this person is the right partner for us.

Most of us have experienced this, right? If not in marriage, then with a family member or a friend. Because in almost every close relationship, something happens over time. We discover that this person who could once do no wrong in fact does a lot of really annoying things. Maybe it’s the way he chews his food or that he squeezes the toothpaste tube from the middle instead of rolling it up from the bottom. Maybe it’s the way she never has dinner ready at the same time two nights in a row or that she turns everything serious into a joke. Some of these things may even go beyond annoying and actually hurt us deeply. Maybe it’s the fact that he refuses to turn off his cell phone, even when the family is on vacation. Maybe it’s that she won’t come home until the work is finished, even if it means missing the family dinner three nights in a row. Whatever it is, in most relationships, we discover that there are things about the other person that we neither knew nor could have predicted when the relationship started.

Now, believe it or not, these are the things my therapist friend would say are the reasons this person is actually the right person for us. We’re smarter than we think, she says. Because most of us end up in relationships with people who have a lot to teach us about ourselves and about life, if we let them.

You see, what it means that we marry the right person for the wrong reasons is that the things that drive us crazy about the people we spend the most time with can actually be opportunities to learn about ourselves and ultimately to become better people. This may sound simple, but it is an extremely painful process, which is why so many marriages (over half) end in divorce, why so many friends drift apart over time, why so many family members ultimately become estranged from one another. Because it’s easier to blame the other person, to say that he is the one who needs to change, rather than to look at how changing ourselves might improve our relationships. Another favorite saying of many therapists is that you can’t change someone else, you can only change yourself. But changing someone else seems so much easier, so much less personal, so much less painful than looking honestly and objectively at our own deep-seated issues.

In today’s text from 2 Samuel we come to the end of what has been the first half of the story of David. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann labels this half of David’s story the “Rise” of David (1). All of the stories up to this point have been leading to this moment when David becomes king, not just of the tribe of Judah, which he has already led now for the seven and a half years, but of all Israel.

What happened was this: after King Saul died, Saul’s son Ishbaal became king over all the tribes of Israel except Judah, which anointed David king. There was a long war between David and Ishbaal, during which David grew stronger and Ishbaal grew weaker. Eventually, Ishbaal was murdered, and the elders of the remaining tribes accepted the inevitable: David was destined to be their king. So they came to see David and to remind him that when he was little more than a boy shepherd God chose him to be the shepherd, the ruler over all the tribes of Israel. And so David made a covenant with them to be their king, a covenant that was upheld for thirty-three years, through richer and poorer, through sickness and health, through battles lost and battles won.

We don’t know the exact terms of the covenant between David and the people, because the text doesn’t say. But a covenant is simply a promise between two parties -- not unlike the promises two people make when they get married -- so we can imagine that David promised to lead and protect the people and the people promised to be loyal to the king.

These promises David and the Israelites made to each other weren’t just political promises. They were sacred promises, promises made in the context of the sacred promises God had made to David and the Israelites. God had promised all the Israelites that he would be their God and they would be God’s people -- always. And God promised David that he was the chosen king and that God would always be with him. In the context of these promises, David and the Israelites made a covenant with one another, trusting that God would guide and support them in keeping their promises to each other -- even when David made some bad political and personal decisions, even when they people did not follow him they way David thought they should. Because just like any human relationship, David and the Israelites would discover that the things they loved about each other when they first got together would at times be overshadowed by things that drove them crazy about each other as time went on.

We’ll get to some of the details of the ongoing relationship between David and the people over the next few weeks. For now, the text gives us this glimpse of David’s future. What it says is this: “David became greater and greater.” But David didn’t become greater and greater just because he was a talented leader and warrior. He became greater and greater, the Bible says, “because the Lord, the God of Hosts, was with him.” That’s a reference to that promise that God had already made to David: God promised to be with David always.

Two weeks ago I helped out for a couple of days at Westminster Presbyterian’s Vacation Bible School. Each day there was a saying for the day. Every time the kids heard that saying, they were supposed to enthusiastically respond “Fear not!” The first day the saying was “God is with us.” So every time any leader or teacher happened to say those four words, the kids would shout out, “Fear not!”

That sounds pretty good to me. How about to you? I think that sounded pretty good to those kids in Vacation Bible School too. Wow -- someone who will always be with us, who will love us no matter what -- that sounds like the perfect god for me. This might be the way many of us first approached our faith. But if that’s the way we did it, then guess what: we chose the right God for all the wrong reasons.

Let me ask you something: if your daughter or son or best friend or sibling told you on the eve of their wedding that they were afraid of the commitment they were about to make, would you simply say to them: “fear not!”? If you’ve been married for any length of time, then if you were really being honest, you would probably tell them that a little healthy fear is a good thing when you’re about to make promises for a lifetime. And what is the really scary thing about marriage or any genuine relationship? Is it not that living with and loving another person might force us to see things about ourselves that we don’t want to see, to change in ways that we don’t really want to, even if those changes might be for the better?

Now, I love the fact that “God is with us” was the underlying theme of Vacation Bible School. I pray that if they learned nothing else that week, the kids learned that. But after hearing “God is with us” followed by “Fear not!” about a hundred times on the first day alone, I got to thinking about it. And, just as I think a little fear is a good thing when you’re making a lifetime commitment, I also think that when it comes to God, we have good reason to fear. In fact, when you look at stories in the Bible when God or angels visit a person, the common response is fear. Why do people fear God? Well, one reason is because God is God -- the creator of the universe and of us. And what goes with that is that God knows everything about us, even the things we wouldn’t tell anyone, even the things our parents and spouses and best friends don’t know. Worse than that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we might admit that some of these things are things we could and should change for the better, things that God wants us to change so that we can be the people God created us to be. So fear not? How about fear everything?!

So what does it mean that God is with us, and is there anything about that promise that’s comforting? Well, today’s text tells us that David grew greater and greater because God was with him, so there must be something positive about God’s constant presence in our lives. And the stories of David teach us something about that. David is so very human; in some areas of his life and work he was very successful, but in other areas he utterly failed. What it meant that God was with David is that whether David succeeded or failed, he turned to God to rejoice or repent, to receive the comfort that only God’s grace and presence can give. Now David knew that God was with him because David had been anointed king by God’s prophet, Samuel. We know that God is with us because God came to us in the descendant of David, the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus suffered death on a cross and rose to new life, God chose us, God established a new covenant with us. God promises us that even in the midst of our greatest suffering, even during moments that feel like hell on earth when we have to face things about ourselves and other people that we’d really rather not see, God will always be there with us, loving us, creating new life out of what looks and feels to us like death.

Today in our passage from the gospel of Mark, Jesus says something to the people of his hometown that make them wish he had never been a part of their community. Unfortunately, the text doesn’t tell us what exactly Jesus said, but it must not have been what the people were hoping to hear, which leads me to believe that he was showing them a side of God that they did not want to see. In other places in the gospels, we see people get particularly upset when Jesus shows them that God is interested in extending God’s promises to all people, not just the descendants of the Israelites. People are offended when Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinner, when he heals non-Jews, and when he suggests that God’s laws are sometimes meant to be broken. And the reason they are offended is because this reveals a side of their God that they didn’t know about and that they don’t particularly care for. And they can either say that Jesus is wrong or they can take a long, hard look at themselves and make some big changes in the way they do things.

Like marriages or other close relationships, our relationship with God can teach us things about ourselves we would rather not see. David had to face many such things: his tendencies toward lust, greed and, corruption, just to name a few. But each time he faced these unpleasant truths about himself, he discovered a wondrous truth about God: that God’s promise to be with him was true at David’s best and at his worst. And so it is for us. When we are willing to look deep within ourselves, to develop our greatest gifts and come clean about our worst faults, we not only live into the comfort and joy of our closest relationships, we also deepen our relationship with God. We might even find that God’s grace has been at work in the relationships that challenge us the most, because God uses those relationships to shape us into the people God knows we can be. In all of life and love’s many challenges, may we discover that although we may have chosen the right people for all the wrong reasons, God has chosen to be with us, to make us God’s beloved people, for all the right reasons. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Brueggemann, Water, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, chapter 12: "The Books of 1 and 2 Samuel."

All Will Be Well (reflection during hymn sing service, June 28, 2009)

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Mark 5:21-43

It is quite appropriate that we are doing a hymn sing service in the middle of a sermon series on the stories found in 1 and 2 Samuel. David was a gifted musician; one of the stories we didn’t hear in 1 Samuel tells how David’s first job in the court of King Saul was to play the lyre -- a harp-like instrument -- when the king was not feeling well. David is also the author of many psalms, which were prayers intended to be sung to the Lord.

In order to fully understand the meaning of David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan that we read in today’s story, we need to fill in some of the details. The lectionary skips over nearly half of 1 Samuel, fast-forwarding us to the time of David’s legitimate kingship, but fortunately, it does not skip over the death of Saul and Jonathan. David had very complicated relationships with both of these men, just as any relationship with a family member or very close friend or political rival is bound to be. Although Saul initially welcomed David into his court as a musician whose music soothed and calmed him, he soon became pathologically jealous of David and tried many times to kill him or have him killed. David spent years of his life running and hiding from King Saul.

And yet, David respected the fact that Saul had been anointed by God to be Israel’s first king. Instead of returning Saul’s anger with anger of his own, David kept the big picture in mind, God’s picture, choosing, as Eugene Peterson puts it, to be influenced by “God’s grace in Saul’s life rather than Saul’s hate in David’s life.”

Now although David knew terrible hatred from Saul, he was fortunate enough to find a true friend in Saul’s son Jonathan. The Bible tells us that their souls were bound together and that Jonathan loved David as much as he loved his own life. This speaks not just to the depth of their friendship but also to Jonathan’s political loyalty to David; indeed, it is doubtful that David would have survived to become king without Jonathan to help him escape Saul’s murderous and unpredictable rage.

So when David hears of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, he must grieve the losses both of his greatest enemy, who was also the king anointed by God, andof his dearest friend. From his grief, he composes a song-prayer, and he orders that the song be taught to all the people. He wants everyone to remember these great figures in the history of Israel.

Music helps us remember. My mother is a music therapist, and one of the things I’ve learned from her is that when people lose their memories to illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, they may not be able to remember the names of their loved ones but they will remember songs they learned as children. Music gets lodged inside our minds -- and our hearts -- in a fundamentally different way from other memories. Music also allows us to enter into shared experiences of joy, wonder, sorrow, despair, and feel that they are our own. Music enables us to connect with each other.

The next hymn we are going to sing together is the hymn “It Is Well.” A man named Horatio G. Spafford wrote this hymn, and although you may have heard the story before, it is worth hearing again. About the same time he lost his fortune in the Chicago fire of 1871, Spafford’s four year-old son died of scarlet fever. Two years later, he decided to take his wife and four daughters on a European vacation to hear the great evangelists Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey.

At the last minute, Spafford was delayed by business in New York, but he sent his wife and daughters on ahead on a luxury French ocean liner. In the early morning hours of November 22, 1873, the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel, and water poured in. For the passengers on board, it was a nightmare (one which we can all imagine pretty well if we’ve seen the movie Titanic). Family members fell from one another’s arms into the icy ocean. The ship sank in less than two hours. 226 people died, leaving only 47 survivors. Days later, Spafford received a cable from his wife that said only, “Saved alone.” Their four daughters had perished.

Spafford immediately left to join his wife. On a cold December night, the captain of his ship called for him to tell him that they were passing over the spot where his family’s ship had gone down. Spafford returned to his cabin but could not sleep. The words that kept him going were these: “It is well; the will of God be done.” Later he wrote his famous hymn based on those words.

Our NT story today gives us a clear glimpse into God’s power to make all things well, to heal and make whole again what has become broken and lifeless. Of course, without Jesus walking here among us we may not see or experience healings as dramatic as the two in this passage. We are far more likely to be overcome by grief, as David was when he learned of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan; as Horatio Spafford was when his children perished. But when we affirm in song or in prayer that the grief we experience in life will not overshadow the joy, we take a lesson from David about the importance of looking at the big picture, God’s picture, knowing that God’s grace is greater than our sorrow. As we sing Spafford’s great hymn, we declare that in the end, all things will truly be well by the unfathomable grace and healing power of our God.