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.