1 Thessalonians 5:16
If you have ever driven east on Interstate 70, down from the Rocky Mountains and into the city of Denver, then you probably remember the signs. For the last 20 miles or so coming out of the mountains, there are huge signs along the road trying to get the attention of truckers.
“Truckers,” one sign says, “You are not down yet! Another 12 miles of steep grades and sharp curves to go!” Then a mile or so later there is another one: “Truckers: don’t be fooled! Four more miles of steep grades and sharp curves.” Another sign poses a question: “Truckers: are your brakes adjusted and cooled? Steep grades and sharp curves ahead.”
As I read through the end of the story of David in 2 Samuel, I began to wish that in the margins of my Bible there had been signs like that. Because every time I thought the story was almost over, it started up again. The verses we read today, the so-called “last words of David,” are not followed by an account of David’s death and burial but instead by another two chapters narrating more stories of the final years of David’s rule. In fact, when we finally come to the end of 2 Samuel, David is still alive! He doesn’t die until the middle of 1 Kings chapter 2.
Even though David actually dies in 1 Kings, I decided to reflect on these last words of David because they remind us of one of the most remarkable things about David: his life was saturated with God. In this psalm-like poem, David recalls that God chose and anointed him to rule Israel and that God made an unconditional covenant with David that his family would reign over Israel forever, a covenant that reached its fulfillment when Jesus, an ancestor of David and God incarnate, came to earth and established God’s unconditional covenant of grace with all humanity.
In order to understand just how fully David’s relationship with God defined his life, it helps to go outside the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and dive into the other words often attributed to David: the psalms. According to Jewish tradition, David was the author of the psalms. Some of the psalms attributed to David go so far as to suggest the episode in David’s life that prompted the writing of that particular psalm, and once you know the David stories, it is a whole new experience to read the psalms with them in mind.
For example, listen to these opening verses of Psalm 3, which is described as “a psalm of David when he fled from his son Absalom”: “O Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’ But you are a shield around me, O Lord; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head...I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me” (Psalm 3:1-3, 5)
Then there is Psalm 51, a heart-wrenching and intimate portrait of a man brought face to face with his sin. This is described as “a psalm of David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” In it, the writer begs: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation...” (Psalm 51:8-12a).
Psalm 57 is one of several psalms connected to all those times David went into hiding to escape the murderous rage of King Saul. Listen to David’s cries to God: “I cry out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills his purpose for me...My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn” (Psalm 57:2, 7-8).
Then, of course, there is the much-beloved Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...” (v. 1). Although this psalm is attributed to David, the editors of the psalms have not connected it with any particular event in his life. At the session meeting this week, the elders and I speculated on when David might have written this exquisite prayer, and we decided there was a case to be made that he wrote it when he was young and had no idea the depth of the dark valleys ahead of him. We also decided there was an equally strong argument that he wrote it at the end of his life, looking back on all the he had come through by the grace of God. Time and again, in good times and bad, David’s life was saturated with God’s presence, and David chose God.
David chose God. Those, I think, are the operative words about David, keeping in mind of course, that God chose David first, just as God chooses all of us. But for David, no matter the situation, from being anointed king of Israel to losing more than one child to brutal murder -- all of these things became opportunities for David to approach God, to relate to God, to choose God.
For David and for us, choosing God is an ongoing process in the life of faith. It’s not something that happens all at once, and, for most of us, it’s not something that happens automatically. It takes hard work and diligent practice. We heard stories over the last few weeks in which David seemed to almost willfully ignore God as he made selfish choices that harmed himself and others. Yet David always returned to God, showing us how, over time, an intimate awareness of God’s presence and God’s providence in our lives can become as much a part of our existence as the air we breathe. Over time, it can become easier for us, almost involuntary, to choose God.
In the introduction to the book How God Changes Your Brain, author and neuroscientist Andrew Newberg tells how his research “has consistently demonstrated that God is part of our consciousness and that the more you think about God, the more you will alter...your brain. That is why I say, with the utmost confidence, that God can change your brain.”(1)
Newberg and his coauthor, therapist Mark Waldman, point out that since children cannot process abstract ideas, they develop a very concrete picture of God in their minds based on the attributes they hear assigned to God: if they are told about a God who “sees” and “hears,” then they imagine God with a face that looks human, with eyes and ears. This is good for a child, but if we stop talking and thinking about God as we grow up, then our faith development stops there, and we are left with a God who looks like us, but who is wholly apart from us, a totally separate being.
Those whose faith matures with them into adulthood, however, experience changes in brain activity as they contemplate God, forming new circuits that enhance our feeling that God is real and God is with us. These circuits enable us to experience a very real sense of God’s presence with us. The next rung on the ladder of faith and brain development is found in the brains of people who engage in intense prayer and meditation. The brains of these people change in such a way that the boundaries establishing “you” and “God” as separate entities dissolve. They experience a sense of oneness with God by choosing to saturate their lives and their minds with God in prayer and meditation.
Here’s the catch. It makes a profound difference what kind of God we imagine when we think about God or pray to God. If we focus on a loving, compassionate God, then this stimulates areas in the brain that help us feel a sense of security as well as areas that allow us to feel compassion for ourselves and others. On the other hand, if we focus on a vengeful, angry, judgmental God, then that stimulates the part of the brain that makes us fearful and anxious.
Fortunately, our brains don’t let us off the hook by making us choose between a compassionate God and a judgmental God. If we take the Bible seriously, then we will encounter both a God of compassion and mercy and a God of judgment and vengeance, and we will develop areas in our brain corresponding to these different aspects of God. So most of us who have spent a lifetime hearing about and thinking about God have a multitude of what Newberg and Waldman call “God-circuits” in our brains, a variety of images of God. But at some point, we have to make a choice about which attributes of God we will focus on. And these choices matter. They matter because our brains actually change when we focus on beliefs about God that we want to emulate in our own lives. If we choose to focus on God’s compassion, love, and peace, then we increase our ability to show compassion, to love others, and to seek peace at the same time suppressing the parts of the brain that generate anxiety, depression, anger, and fear. If we take a lesson from David and choose to saturate our lives with God’s love for us, presence with us, and compassion toward us, then we become better able to manifest those attributes in our lives.(2)
Obviously, in the course of his lifetime, even David, who was saturated in an awareness of God’s presence and love and mercy, had a variety of “God-circuits” in his brain. In these so-called “last words” of David’s that we read today, we see that he recognizes aspects of God that are harsh and judgmental, and we certainly saw times in David’s life when he judged others harshly and sough revenge. From time to time, even the brain of the great King David short-circuited. But looking at the whole of David’s life, all the stories and prayers we have of David, we see that ultimately, David chose to focus on God’s goodness to him and to the people of Israel. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,” David says in the 23rd Psalm “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23:6)
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There is an old Cherokee legend about a little boy who received a drum as a gift. It was beautiful and he loved it. Then, as he was playing with it one day not long after he had gotten it, his best friend came up to him. He admired the drum and then asked to have a turn with it. The little boy was torn. He loved his drum and he didn’t want to share it. He also loved his friend. After a few moments, he clutched the drum tightly and ran away.Later, the boy went to see one of the elders for guidance. The elder sympathized with him, and told him that he often felt like he had two wolves living inside him. One wolf was greedy, angry, and selfish. The other was kind and generous and compassionate. And the two wolves inside him were constantly fighting with each other. The elder told the boy that he thought the boy had two wolves inside him too.
The boy nodded and then asked, “Which wolf will win the fight?”
The elder responded, “The one that you feed.”
Every one of us has those two wolves inside. And as we journey through life, we might find that reading the stories and prayers of David can be for us like visiting a wise elder of our tribe. David surely knows how it feels to struggle each day to turn to God when the rest of the world is telling us there is an easier way. And like us, David had plenty of days when the greedy, angry, selfish wolf won the fight. But I believe if there was one piece of advice David would give us, it would be to do what, over the course of a long and eventful life, he was able to do over and over again: Choose God, the God who saves you, the God always ready to forgive you, the God whose love makes each stage of the journey bearable. Choose God. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Newberg, Andrew, and Mark Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain. Ballantine Books, 2009.
2. from the paper, “Too Many Gods in Our Brain,” by Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, Center for Spirituality and the Mind, University of Pennsylvania, available for download here.
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