"Here Am I" (Isaiah 6:1-13)

The Leaves Conundrum

Over the last few weeks, I have observed with curiosity how my neighbors deal with all the leaves falling from their trees. One neighbor in particular has caught my eye. Every Saturday, I see him outside in his front yard with an old rake, slowly but steadily gathering his leaves into piles. His activity draws a stark contrast to the rest of us around him. There are some neighbors that employ the periodic services of yard crews who come in with high-powered leaf blowers and vacuums, other neighbors who have their children out doing the hard labor for them. And then other neighbors like me…who are still waiting for the last leaf to drop! 

Even if you might frown on this tactic, I’m sure you can appreciate its logic! Why put in the back-breaking hours if all that you have done is just going to be undone  in another week’s time?

And yet that is precisely what my one neighbor does. He seems completely unbothered by the fact that his work will be undone. Instead, he seems content to be doing his work, week after week.

Contamination or Purification?

The first half of today’s scripture is a relatively well known passage. The prophet Isaiah has a breathtaking vision of God—or rather the hem of God’s robe filling the temple. Immediately he feels unworthy. Unclean. In ancient Israel, the prevailing theology held that God was holy, and that any little impurity allowed into God’s presence would contaminate God’s holiness and result in disaster. It’s the same logic as “one bad apple spoils the barrel.” 

Isaiah is afraid that his uncleanness and the uncleanness of Israel will spark a catastrophic reaction with God’s holiness, perhaps even resulting in his death. But what happens is quite the opposite. This is the beginning of Isaiah’s life! One of God’s attendants, a seraph (and just what a seraph is, will have to wait for another day), brings a live coal to Isaiah’s lips and declares him purified of guilt and sin. In other words, Isaiah did not contaminate God, God purified Isaiah. This is the reverse of a little rottenness spoiling the rest. Rather, as a little disinfectant cleans the rest, so God’s presence purifies Isaiah and makes him well. 

Some Head-Scratching Instructions

Many readers of scripture have observed a parallel between Isaiah and Peter. When Peter stands before Jesus for the first time, he recognizes Jesus’ holiness and is afraid: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” But Jesus dismisses his concern and reverses it. He draws near to Peter and entrusts him with a sacred task: “From now on you will be catching people.” And Peter follows him. In the same way, in today’s scripture Isaiah feels encouraged and emboldened. When he hears God call out, “Who will go for us?” his hand shoots up like an eager student. “Here am I; send me!”

What follows, however, is positively perplexing. God issues a head-scratching assignment, which basically amounts to Isaiah prophesying to an unreceptive audience. To ears that will be stopped up, to minds that will be closed, to hearts that will be shut. God’s instructions basically amount to Isaiah working hard and then seeing all his work undone. 

Why? Why would God ask Isaiah to do something that will be ineffective and unsuccessful? Why work hard for something when all your work will be undone?

Not Results, but Witness

I imagine that when Isaiah said, “Here am I!” he was filled with adrenaline and purpose. I imagine he was thinking, “Alright! I’m going to go out into the world and make a difference!” God knows the world around him needed some positive change. In the eighth century BCE, Israel was beginning to fall apart. On the outside, things may have looked pretty good. Celebrated kings like David and Solomon had earlier expanded the borders and accumulated a lot of wealth. But if we take some other prophets at their word, we see that the riches and power of Israel had come at the cost of grave injustice. Amos cries out that Israel are “trampl[ing] the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push[ing] the afflicted out of the way” (Amos 1:7), that some are living lazily in luxury—singing “idle songs” and “drink[ing] wine from bowls” and “anoint[ing] themselves with the finest oils”—without any concern for the suffering around them (Amos 6:5-6).

I imagine Isaiah looked out upon a corrupt and degenerate nation and thought, “I’m going to make a difference!”

God’s assignment would have burst his bubble, to say the least. But if we pay close attention, God’s assignment also reveals quite a lot about the way God goes about God’s work in the world. It reveals a lot about God’s spirit. 

To put it in a nutshell: God is not about results. God is about witness. “Who will go for us?” God had asked, suggesting that whoever goes, goes as a witness, a representative. “Who will go for us? Who will represent us? Who will be our ambassador in the world?”

“Be a Difference”

I think Isaiah’s initial proclamation, “Here am I!” is a fundamental posture of our faith. When God calls Abraham, when God calls Moses, when God calls Samuel, they all respond, Hinneni, “Here I am!” But what we discover in today’s scripture is that “Here am I!” does not mean, “I will make a difference.” It means something more humble and more profound. “I will be a difference.”

If we think about the phrase itself, “Here am I,” we discover it makes no claim on other people. No claim on the future. No claim on the outside world. It makes no claim on control over anything except “I,” “me.” “Here am I” is not about the future but the present; not about others, but about me; not about control, but about responsibility; not about results, but about witness. It is saying not, “I will make a difference,” but only, “I will be a difference.”

We see this in Jesus himself. As Paul puts it in the first chapter of his letter to the Corinthians, to the outside world, Jesus was ineffective, useless, “weak,” “foolish.” The outside world looked around itself, and everything looked the same. If Jesus had raked the metaphorical front yard, the leaves had covered it once more. The poor were still poor. The rich were still rich. Caesar still ruled the world with his sword. 

But as Paul says, what looks like foolishness and weakness to the world is salvation for followers of Christ. It was not so much that Jesus had made a difference as that he was a difference. It didn’t matter to Jesus what the results were, he would live his way all the same. And his way was different. In a word, his witness, his way was not control but care.

I’m afraid that the recent election cycle has invited us all to see salvation as force from above, as powerful people who make changes that affect us for the better or for the worse. As a result, some people are celebrating and hopeful, and others are grieving and in despair. But as followers of Christ, we are called like Isaiah not to look for a God who will make a difference, but to be a difference ourselves. To become a part of God’s difference. To live a different way. We are called not to remove the leaves once and for all, but to rake regularly in the faith that the work itself is good and making us well, whatever else it’s doing. We are called to surrender the expectation for results and to trust in God’s love—which is either foolishness or salvation, depending on how you look at it.

Prayer

Holy God,

Whose love we know

Not through force or the effectiveness of powerful people,

But through the quiet, enduring witness of Christ—

Inspire us with the spirit that came upon Isaiah,

Not to make a difference

But to be a difference,

To become a part of your difference,

Living not by control but by care.

In Christ, whose love gives us life: Amen.

 

"Abounding in Steadfast Love" (Jonah 1, 3-4)

A Humorous Fable

If you grew up in Sunday School, then chances are the first thing you think about when you think about the story of Jonah…is the whale. Chances are, you’ve engaged in speculation about whether such a thing could actually happen. Perhaps you’ve even heard an argument or read an article explaining how this unlikely phenomenon is not beyond the realm of possibility.

I’m not a marine biologist. I don’t intend to go there. Instead, I’d like to approach the story from a different angle, one less concerned with the mechanics of the story, and more concerned with its meaning. Scholars of ancient literature have pointed out that the story of Jonah is filled with satire and irony. They contend it is not meant to be told with a straight face but with tongue in cheek, with a frequent nod-nod, wink-wink. They think the audience would have been groaning and laughing in disbelief and delight. Sort of like my nephews do when they hear a funny children’s book, like Grover’s The Monster at the End of This Book or a modern adaptation of the three little pigs. In fact, this similarity is instructive. Many scholars think Jonah is meant to be a humorous fable, which is to say, a comical tale with a deadly serious point. Not unlike a few of Jesus’ parables, come to think of it.

With that in mind, I’d like to try something different today. I’d like to let the story tell itself. I will be reciting from my own translation, which is printed in the insert. But to ensure that the story’s humor is heard and its satire seen, I will periodically interrupt the reading of the scripture with an additional word of commentary.

So, without further ado…let us all listen now for the word of God, in the words that we read and in the meditations of our hearts.

Act One: Jonah Goes Down

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, “Get up! Go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it for their wickedness has come up before me.” Just so we know what God’s asking here: Nineveh was the largest city in Assyria, which was Israel’s biggest and most feared enemy in the eighth century BCE. They were known for their cruelty. For example, they would leave big piles of skulls outside conquered cities to scare others into submission.

But Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa. Notice the change in direction. God told Jonah to “get up,” which he initially does, but then immediately afterward he begins going the opposite direction: down. We might also pause to ask why Jonah is fleeing God. The most obvious reason would be that he is afraid of entering the heart of enemy territory to proclaim God’s judgment. That would surely be a death sentence, right? He found a ship going to Tarshish, and he paid the fare, and he went down—again, going down, when God said get up—into it [the ship] to go with the others to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.

But the Lord cast a great wind upon the sea, and there was such a great storm at sea that the ship was about to break up. And the sailors were afraid, and they cried out each one to their god. And they cast the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to make it lighter for them. Jonah, meanwhile, went down—a third time, Jonah goes down, when God had said get up!—into the hold of the ship, where he lay down and fell asleep. During a great storm. While the ship is on the verge of breaking up. Worth noting here is that Jonah’s name means “dove,” which perhaps says something about him. First, he is “flighty,” so to speak, fleeing the responsibility God gives him. And second, he’s a bit thoughtless, like a pigeon, choosing to take a nap here in a moment of mortal danger.

Act Two: Pious Pagans

The captain called to him and said, “What are you doing fast asleep?! Get up”—Interesting…the same command that came from God, now coming from a pagan sailor—“Call to your god. Perhaps the god will give some thought to us, so that we will not die.”

The men said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we might know on whose account this evil has fallen on us.” And they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.  They said to him, “Tell us, you on whose account this evil is upon us, what is your work and where do you come from? What is your land, and from what people are you?” And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of the heavens, who made the sea and dry land.” If Jonah indeed feared the God of the heavens, who made the sea, surely he should have known there was no escaping God on the waters, as he has tried to do. Perhaps Jonah is a few french fries short of a happy meal.

The men were greatly afraid, and they said to him, “What is this you have done?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from before the Lord, for he had told them. And they said to him, “What shall we do that the sea might calm down for us?” For the sea was getting more and more stormy. And he said to them, “Lift me up and cast me into the sea that the sea might calm down for you, for I know that this great storm is upon you on my account.” But the men rowed to get back to the dry land. Remarkable! These pagan sailors have quite a conscience. More moral fortitude than Jonah. Even with Jonah’s admission that he is the guilty party, they try to row back to land with him on board. They try to save him. But they were not able, for the sea was getting more and more stormy around them. And they called out to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life, and do not hold us guilty for innocent blood, for you O Lord have done this according to your will.”  Again, we might marvel at these pagan sailors, who demonstrate more piety, more prayerfulness than the prophet Jonah. You’ve heard the expression, “He curses like a sailor”? That stereotype was around in the ancient world too. But these sailors are not cursing but praying, practically wearing halos when we compare them to Jonah. 

And they [the sailors] lifted up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the sea stopped from its raging. And the men feared the Lord greatly and made a sacrifice to the Lord and vowed vows. If these angelic sailors haven’t yet caught your attention, then here they do. Make a sacrifice on board a ship? That takes the sailors’ piety to a comical extreme, for surely a sacrifice—with its requirement for a large fire—would risk their ship going up in flames. But no matter. For God, these sailors will do just about anything.

Act Three: Jonah’s Real Fear

[After Jonah had spent 3 days in the belly of the fish and had been vomited upon dry land] the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up! Go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the message that I speak to you.” And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was a huge city, a three days’ walk across. And Jonah started to go into the city, a one day’s walk, and he proclaimed and said, “Forty days more, and Nineveh is overthrown.” One of the world’s shortest sermons! Just five words in the Hebrew. Why so short? Perhaps Jonah hopes to remain unnoticed? Or perhaps he hopes to fulfill his responsibility and get out as quickly as possible? 

And the people of Nineveh trusted God. And they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. Well that was…unexpected. The most fearsome empire of the known world, infamous for their brutality, suddenly becomes teary-eyed and remorseful!

When the word was told to the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat down in ashes. And he had it proclaimed, and he said in Nineveh, “By the authority of the king and his great men: Every person and creature, of the cattle or the flock, shall not taste a thing! They shall not graze, and they shall not drink water.” To be clear, this is no ordinary fast. The king is calling for everybody—including every animal—to join in the fast. Now, I feed my cats regularly, and they still complain. If I instituted a fast in my house for more than a couple of hours, I’m afraid my furniture would be in utter shreds. “And they shall clothe themselves in sackcloth—every person and animal—and they shall call out to God with all their might.” If you’ve ever tried to clothe your pet and received that look of utter disdain, you have a sense for how ridiculous this decree is. Every animal in sackcloth? “And let everyone turn back from his evil ways and from the violence to which they hold fast. Who knows? Perhaps God will turn back and relent and turn back from his blazing wrath, and we will not die.” And God saw their acts, that they had turned back from their evil way, and God relented from the evil that he said to do to them, and he did not do it.

And this was very evil for Jonah, and he was incensed. This is…interesting. If Jonah had feared for his life, then we might have expected him to be relieved that the Ninevites had repented. He prayed to the Lord, saying, “Oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was still in my own land? It was for this reason that I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a God gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from evil. And now, Lord, please take my life from me, for death would be better for me than life.” 

Jonah Refuses God’s Ministry of Reconciliation

This is the final twist in the story, and it’s a big one. The real reason that the prophet Jonah refused God’s assignment was this. He was afraid of God’s love. 

Jonah is a parody of a prophet. Not because of what he thinks about God. He has good theology. He knows that God is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding steadfast love and relenting from evil.” He is a parody of a prophet because he does not actually follow God. He is opposed to God’s ministry of reconciliation. He knows what God wants to do, and he wants no part in it. He wants to stop it, if he can.

At the beginning of the story, Jonah would rather keep quiet and not prophesy. He would rather see his enemies die than be reconciled to them. 

At the end of the story, when God intervenes, the inverse becomes true. Jonah would rather die himself than be reconciled to his enemies.

Either way, Jonah prefers death to reconciliation.

Division and Reconciliation

Unless you have lived under a rock this past week, you have likely been encouraged to look around and see enemies. You have likely been encouraged to see them as Jonah saw the Ninevites. You have been told that “those people” are the problem.

But the real problem is this perspective. The real problem is not another person or group of people, but the spirit of control and division that draws battle lines and pits us against one another. 

The Greek word for the devil, “diabolos,” means literally “the one who throws apart” or “the one who divides.” Our partisan politics is diabolical. Greed and competition are diabolical. Bitterness and resentment are diabolical.

Our God, our heavenly father and mother, seeks not division but reconciliation. Paul expresses the meaning of Christ in just these terms: “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Col 1:19-20). Elsewhere, Paul insists that as followers of Christ, we are charged with the same mission of reconciliation: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making [God’s] appeal through us” (2 Cor 5:19-20). 

Paul’s language of ambassadorship here has radical implications. It suggests that we belong to a new nation, a nation of the future—that is, the kingdom of God—and that we are ambassadors of this new nation to all the present nations of this world, including the one in which we reside. To be an ambassador for Christ brings me comfort and hope in troubled times. It means, on the one hand, that I can surrender the exhausting effort to control outcomes, to fight, to win. An ambassador has no claim on the foreign territory where they reside. Their job is not “to exert force or impose their will.” Their role, rather, is “attractional and invitational.” They live as representatives of a different nation and a different way. They are “a living flag, of sorts—a constant reminder of the existence of another country.” And so while I have the comfort of not being in control, I also have the hope of my homeland, where things are done differently. And I can share that hope here. I can be a witness to the simple fact that it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be competition; it could be consensus and collaboration. It doesn’t have to be profits-first; it could be people-first. It doesn’t have to be combat. It could be forgiveness and reconciliation.

In a sense, God calls us as God called Jonah. To march into the heart of another territory, not to announce its certain destruction (although that’s the tack that a bitter-hearted Jonah takes), but rather to announce as Jesus did God’s abounding love for us all and the invitation to live in God’s nation, the kingdom of God.

Prayer

Most gracious and merciful God,

Who is slow to anger 

And abounding in steadfast love,

In Christ you have knit us into one body.

You have made us into a unique and strange nation, 

Stretching across all the world,

Where old divisions fall away

And old animosities have no place.

Make us ambassadors of your reconciliation,

Not by the devil’s spirit of control

But by your spirit of care and grace,

In Christ, who gave himself to us: Amen.

"A Little Bit" (1 Kings 17:1-16)

The Miracle of Sharing

The danger of interpreting miracles as a supernatural bit of magic is that we pay attention to the hand but not the heart. We see the physical but not the spiritual.

The Bible suggests that miracles originate in the heart, that they are fundamentally spiritual phenomena. When Jesus encounters folks who do not have faith in their heart, he is unable to heal them (cf. Mk 6:5; Matt 13:58).

Scenes like we have today, where a little bit miraculously becomes a lot, have one thing in common. What is multiplied, must first be shared. Think about it. Every instance of multiplication in the Bible involves sharing. Five loaves and two fishes become enough to feed five thousand when a boy shares what little he has. A handful of meal and a little oil become enough to feed a destitute household for many days when a widow shares what little she has with her starving guest.

The miracle of a little bit becoming a lot is in fact the miracle of sharing, the miracle of a heart that is willing to share what little a person has with someone else. I think Paul had this in mind when he writes to the Corinthians, “By always having enough of everything [by God’s grace], you may share abundantly in every good work” (2 Cor 9:8). Paul practically writes the equation for us. First there is having enough. Then there is sharing abundantly. Enough becomes abundance when it is shared. A little bit becomes a lot.

The Miracle’s Opposite: 

Too Much, Not Enough

Today’s scripture begins with the prophet Elijah in the royal palace before King Ahab, who we are told just verses earlier “did more to anger the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kgs 16:33). As Samuel had warned years earlier, kings generally take far more than they give (cf. 1 Sam 8). Which is to say, they have a lot, and they do not share it even a little. Elijah prophesies to King Ahab that God is bringing a great drought on the land. In my mind, it’s almost the mirror opposite of the miracle of a little bit becoming a lot. When an individual like King Ahab has more than enough and does not share (but in fact competes to accumulate more and more), the world around them dries up. Life becomes stale.

I think of Jesus’ parable of the rich man who builds large barns to store the accumulated excess of his harvest, who says to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry,” when in fact that very night his life will be demanded of him (Luke 12:19-20). This is the equal and opposite equation for our miracle of multiplication. A lot becomes a little—too much becomes not enough—when resources are accumulated and not shared.

From Scavengers to Sharers

As we might expect, King Ahab is not very receptive to this message, so the prophet Elijah runs for his life and finds refuge first in the wilderness where a raven spectacularly feeds him bread and meat every morning and evening, and then in the home of a foreign widow. There is a delightful symmetry to the story of Elijah’s salvation. Both of his helpers are scavengers—people or creatures who must feed off whatever scraps they can find. This is probably obvious in the case of the raven, but perhaps less so in the case of the widow. It may help to remember that widows in the Bible are often at the bottom rung of their very patriarchal society. Not having a man to care for them, either a father or a husband, left them in dire straits. It’s no coincidence that one of the first ministries of the early church we read about in Acts is toward widows (Acts 6). Nor is it a coincidence that in today’s scripture we find the widow of Zarephath literally scavenging, looking for sticks so she can make a fire to prepare what she expects to be her and her son’s final meal (1 Kgs 17:12). 

The thing about scavengers is that they’re generally solitary creatures who look out for themselves. They scrounge for their survival. And today’s widow has given up on even that. She is preparing to die. How ludicrous must the idea of sharing sound to her. One of the key words in today’s scripture, its signature motif perhaps, is the word for “a little bit” or one of its synonyms, like “morsel” or “handful” (1 Kgs 17:10-13). The point is clear. There is hardly enough for one person to survive, much less for two or more people. And yet it is precisely here that we see our miracle. A little bit becomes a lot when it is shared. A little bit is enough in God’s economy of grace.

The “Little Things” of Our Saints

It is common to think of saints as spiritual superheros, people who did a lot. But in light of today’s scripture, I find myself wondering if the heart of being a saint isn’t much simpler. Maybe a saint is someone who shares what little they have. Whether they go on to attract worldwide fame or ride off into relative obscurity is immaterial. What matters is that what little they shared became a lot to someone else—priceless even, bigger and more important than anything else.

Think for a moment about your loved ones who have passed. I would wager that what we remember most about them is not their wealth or their accomplishments or their popularity. If they had these things, that might be how the outside world remembers them. But we remember them for the little things. Perhaps it is their laughter, their eyes when they were excited about something, their unique manner of touch, the words that they chose to use when speaking from their heart, a special sentimental gift they gave us, their way of saying hello and goodbye. These “little” things are in fact the biggest things, the things that touch us and shape us and remain forever with us and a part of us, because these are the things that our loved ones shared with us.

Giving is a divine quality. Which is to say, it is eternal. It is of the profoundest value. The gifts we received from our loved ones forever echo with the love of God. 

It is true, of course, that much of our human giving is conditional, limited to family and friends, perhaps to strangers whom we trust. Much of our human giving falls short of God’s unconditional love. Even so, the gifts of our loved ones point us toward God the Giver and remind us of what matters most. They are an invitation to live more like God, to live more in the way of openhandedness, sharing what little we have, sharing ourselves with others, friends, strangers, enemies alike.

“It Is Enough”

Paul writes that in a time of suffering, he heard God say, “My grace is enough for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Or as we could perhaps paraphrase with today’s scripture in mind, “God’s grace is enough for us, for a little bit becomes a lot when it is shared.”

In place of a prayer, I would like to conclude with a simple ritual that recalls the miracle of the widow at Zarephath. I hope it also recalls the miracle of our saints, our loved ones who shared God’s grace with us.

In just a moment, stems of wheat will be passed down each aisle, emblematic of the handful of grain meal that the widow had. I invite you to take a single stem of wheat for yourself and to remember a loved one who has passed who is on your heart. 

Remember the little things about them. 

How they shared themselves with you. 

Know that this is part of God’s grace for you. 

And know that this grace is yours forever…

And that God’s grace is forever enough.

And so, as you pass the wheat to your neighbor, I invite you also to pronounce this blessing upon them: “God's grace is enough for you.” 

(There will be a brief moment of silence now to remember a loved one and the little things about them that meant so much to you, that were God’s grace for you. Then the stems of wheat will be passed out.)

 

Uncontainable (1 Kgs 5:1-5; 8:27-30, 41-43)

To Contain a Favorable Result

As an uncle, I am slowly learning the art of just barely losing. Losing in the most dramatic, agonizing way possible—which is to say, for my nephews, the most gratifying way possible. It’s the last kick of the game. Uncle Jonny is losing by a single goal. Will he score and rescue a tie? Oh, so close. He hits the post, and the ball bounces wide of the goal.

My nephew Nathan loves playing soccer. But he hates losing. The contrasting emotions of enjoyment and fear practically do battle on his face as a tight game nears its conclusion. Giddy, uncontrollable laughter mixes jarringly with moans and groans of “Oh no, oh no!” In an effort to control the outcome, to contain a favorable result, he suddenly becomes referee and the rules start changing. Boundaries become more narrow. The goal becomes smaller and smaller. He can use his hands. And so on. 

Built on a Lie?

When Solomon takes the throne from his father David, one of the first items on his order of business is to build a temple for God. Solomon justifies his building of the temple by claiming that God has given him a time of peace that his father David never enjoyed: “My father David could not build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him…. But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side” (1 Kgs 5:3-4). 

But here’s the thing. Solomon’s temple seems to be built on a lie. The Lord God had given David rest from his enemies too. In our scripture last week, the storyteller told us this fact in the plainest terms: “The Lord had given him [David] rest from all his enemies around him” (2 Sam 7:1). In fact, it was this very rest and freedom that had prompted David to plan building God a temple. God’s response was an unmistakable, “No, thank you!” “Did I ever ask for a house?” God asks. “I prefer to be on the move with my people” (cf. 2 Sam 7:6-7).

The most charitable interpretation would be that Solomon is not purposefully lying but rather simply has a confused history of events. But even if this is the case, his claim that he now enjoys a peace his father never had, smacks of justification. It seems to me like he’s looking for a rationale to do what he wants to do. There is no prompting from God to build a temple, no divine nudge-nudge to say, “Okay, Solomon, now it’s time.” This is Solomon’s idea, Solomon’s plan. This is Solomon’s temple. 

Doing What God Never Asked For

And it’s going to be built in Solomon’s way. They say the devil is in the details, and that seems to be the case in Solomon’s story. On the face of things, a glorious temple in honor of God seems like a good thing. But look more closely, and we begin to catch glimpses of a king who seeks not God’s honor but his own. To begin, Solomon builds God’s temple through the very means of oppression from which God had first liberated the Israelites. He conscripts thousands of Israelites to “forced labor,” the same word to describe the work that the Israelites do in Egypt (1 Kgs 5:13; cf. Ex 1:11). It is no coincidence that, later when Solomon dies, “all of the assembly of Israel” complain to his son, “Your father made our yoke heavy” (1 Kgs 12:4). When God becomes angry with Solomon for turning from the Lord and following after the gods of his many wives, the prophetic messenger who delivers God’s judgment to Solomon ends up fleeing to Egypt for refuge (1 Kgs 11). The suggestion is remarkable. Solomon has become like Pharaoh, and his empire has become like Egypt. The tables have turned to such an extent that now people are fleeing the other direction. 

If we zoom out, the picture we get is incredibly ironic. As I touched on last week, the temple is no more a part of God’s plan than are kings or sacrifices. Sacrifices, kings, and the temple are all initiated by humanity, and God ultimately lets us have what we want. So to summarize what we see in today’s scripture: a king, which God did not want, builds a temple, which God did request, where people will offer sacrifices, which God did not ask for (until it became clear this was how people wanted to worship God). In other words, we see in today’s scripture layer upon layer of God’s people doing all these things that God never asked for, doing things their own way. And lest we wash our hands too quickly of this waywardness, saying that was Israel and we’re the church, I would suggest that is the very attitude that leads us into this mess. What we see played out among Israel and King Solomon is humanity, and we are humans. If this is what a man who is reputed to be among the wisest in the Bible ends up doing, then we are all of us susceptible to doubling down on things that God never asked for or wanted, even and perhaps especially in our best laid plans.

Containing the Uncontainable

As Solomon is dedicating the temple amid much pomp and excess—the storyteller even throws his hands in the air and says, so many sheep and oxen were sacrificed at the dedication, that they could not even be counted!—Solomon cannot avoid the absurdity at the heart of his endeavor. “Will God indeed dwell on earth? Even…the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kgs 8:27). But he continues in his prayer and asks that, even so, “[May] your eyes…be open day and night toward this house” (1 Kgs 8:29). On the one hand, Solomon knows that God cannot be contained. But on the other hand, he cannot help but want to contain God, to point to a place and say, “Here God is!”, or to proclaim to others, “This is God’s name! Use it!” Indeed, Solomon repeatedly refers to God’s “name” throughout his dedication, in a manner that suggests he sees it as he sees the temple, that is, as another container for God. 

I think back to my nephew Nathan playing soccer. On the one hand, there is an uncontainable joy, a smile nearly plastered on his face as he kicks and runs and dives. Yet on the other hand, there is a fear of losing, a desperate desire to contain the experience, to control what happens next. It seems an apt metaphor for what is going on in the temple. What is going on in God’s name. What is going on in religion. In each case, we are trying to contain the uncontainable. 

If we’re honest, the uncontainable is what puts a smile on our face in the first place. The uncontainable is what gives us joy and life. The uncontainable is the source of all gifts, all good surprises, all the things that we could not see coming that we look back upon and say, “Thank you!” For my nephew Nathan, the uncontainable is doing something with the soccer ball that he has never done before, or accomplishing a thing that he never thought possible, or a turn of events that he could not have predicted but which he will always remember and say, “What a game!”

And yet it is only human to try to bottle up this goodness, to contain the uncontainable, to control it. For my nephew Nathan, this means adjusting the boundaries and tweaking the rules and blowing the whistle on everything that does not go according to plan. For the people of God, this might mean confining God to a name or a creed or a building, or refereeing in God’s name and declaring that God favors this nation over that nation, this party over that party, this kind of person over that kind of person, and so on. 

The Risk of Faith

I do not mean to say that all our containers for God (like buildings or names or rituals) are bad. On the contrary, I think God is looking for containers, which is to say, God’s Spirit is looking for flesh, the uncontainable is looking for the containers of names and rituals and behavior that can give it full expression. To put this trivially, the uncontainable God is like the uncontainable joy of sports that needs the containers of a field and some rules and a ball and so on. These containers are what make possible an experience of the uncontainable; they are what allow people like my nephew Nathan to experience the uncontainable joy of the game, which brings a smile to their face. But to put it a little more seriously, the uncontainable God is looking for containers that allow for authentic experiences and expressions of God’s love, like songs and stories and habits of service to one’s neighbor and care for the earth, deeds done not because they are mandated, but because in doing them we experience an uncontainable joy. These things are how love, which is uncontainable, gets expressed in little, contained ways.

Containers are not bad. It is only when we try to contain excessively, to use the same old wineskins, to insist on only one set of containers, that we risk draining life of love, or this world of its original, God-given goodness. 

This is the risk of faith—it is the risk of letting go and allowing the uncontainable to find new containers, lest the old containers contain it too well and keep it from spreading and being renewed.

And this risk originates with God. God is always taking a risk. God is always giving of Godself to humanity, putting the divine in human hands, the uncontainable in human containers.  This can go horribly wrong. I’ve mentioned the dubious motivations and deeds of Solomon, but I have in mind now Constantine, who I think gave God a regrettable container; he gave God an incredibly bad name with a long and lasting legacy. Constantine turned the cross, where Christ proclaimed forgiveness on his enemies, into a standard to carry while killing one’s enemies. Constantine turned the peace that Christ proclaimed, into a constant war. Constantine turned the freedom of faith into the obligation of a national religion. Constantine stuffed Christ into a container where Christ couldn’t even breathe, much less express the good news of God’s love that he’d come to express.

And yet God takes the risk. Because on the other side of Constantine is Jesus himself, who does not try to contain God for his own selfish ends but rather gives flesh to the uncontainable, which is to say, allows the uncontainable to exceed the limits we keep putting down. Isn’t this what we see in things like loving the enemy (i.e., loving the unlovable), forgiving the unforgivable, giving without expectation of return, hoping for what you cannot possibly foresee? And it doesn’t stop with Jesus. His followers like him do not so much insist on one set of containers as they do on letting go and letting God’s Spirit continually exceed expectations, as we see in the early church’s inclusion of non-Jews among God’s people and their recognition of women as equals of men (Gal 3:28).

I’ve veered into the abstract, so allow me to close with a concrete image that recalls my nephew Nathan. God is the love of the game, not the obsession with winning or losing. 

Prayer

Uncontainable God,

Whose love outlasts and exceeds

Every altar we have built:

When we like Solomon

Seek to contain results,

To control outcomes,

Remind us 

Of where our joy and vitality really come from.

Teach us in Christ the letting go 

By which your uncontainable love, forgiveness, and generosity

Find flesh.

In Christ, our Lord and our savior: Amen.