From Pleasant to
Problematic
For Katie, it began with book club. Every Thursday evening, she would gather with friends. Talking about a book seemed to open an exhaust valve for all of the emotions that had built up over the course of a week. The resentment toward her domineering boss. The frustration with her husband’s stonewalling. The worry about her aging parents. Book club was therapeutic. Talking about the travails and triumphs of characters helped her to accept and manage her own experiences.
One evening, the host opened up a couple bottles of wine. Katie noticed as she left that night how distant she felt from her usual concerns and worries. The next week when she hosted, she made sure to have wine for everyone. Soon, it was a ritual. It was enshrined as part of book club.
Once a week at book club was great, but Katie wanted even more of this cathartic experience. So she began to incorporate wine into a personal nightly ritual of reading and journaling. It felt therapeutic at first. But over time, things changed. She noticed that when there was no wine at book club, she became irritable and uninterested in sharing. She noticed that on her nights alone, there was less reading and more drinking. She noticed that she was becoming protective of her evenings, going out less with friends, even missing book club on occasion. It took a couple of years to become honest enough with herself to admit she had a problem.
Katie’s story is typical. No one chooses an addiction. No one sits down and seriously acknowledges the distant, potentially disastrous consequences of a decision (or a series of decisions) and says, “Even so, let me begin.”
The irony of addiction is that what becomes a problem, begins as a pleasant experience. “I should do that again,” a person might think. “I want more of the same.” And so the pleasant experience becomes enshrined in a repeated event. A ritual develops. A problem develops, too.
Finally Settled
Today’s scripture begins with King David finally “settled in his house” (2 Sam 7:1). Until recently, King David has lived much of his life on the move. Running away from a murderous king Saul. Hiding in the hills. Securing resources. Winning wives. Fighting battles. Now, for the first time since his youth perhaps, he is “settled.” He’s in a good moment. He has united the north and south of Israel and established a capital at Jerusalem (2 Sam 5:1-5). He has just comprehensively defeated Israel’s nemesis, the Philistines (2 Sam 5:17-25). He’s brought the ark of the covenant, the sacred symbol of God’s presence, to be by his side in Jerusalem (2 Sam 6). And he has built for himself a fine house of cedar, a royal palace, for him and his growing number of wives and concubines and children. Life, it would seem, is pleasant for David.
David decides that God needs a house too (2 Sam 7:1-2). As God will later point out, God has not asked for a house (2 Sam 7:7). This is coming entirely from David. So what, I wonder, is David’s reasoning? The English word that sometimes gets used to refer to a temple— “shrine”—hints at one possible motivation. David wants to enshrine the present moment. (Think of Peter at Jesus’ transfiguration, when he suggests building dwelling places for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, so that they might stay as they are, so that the euphoric moment might be captured!) Perhaps as David has finally settled into a pleasant way of life, he would like to keep things just as they are. He would like for God to settle down beside him and bless things the way they are and preserve them.
And David is probably not alone. Hundreds of years later, after a temple—a “house”—for God has been built, Jeremiah will stand in its gate and proclaim to the people, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’” (Jer 7:4). The implication is that the people of Israel who are in a pleasant moment, who are doing well (but at the expense of others, like the widow and the foreigner and the poor), have come to see the Temple as God’s guarantee of their way of life. They see the Temple as a sign of God’s blessing, a sign that God is on their side.
Part of me wonders if David’s desire for a temple, and the people’s later attachment to it, does not reflect the roots of addiction, or what in biblical language we might call idolatry. Could the temple maybe sometimes function as a shrine? That is, could it be the enshrinement of a pleasant experience that will in fact become a problem. As we will see next week, David’s downfall involves him reclining in his palace while his army are out at war. It seems that David is indeed trying to preserve the pleasant moment that he finds himself at in today’s passage. He is trying to maintain this way of life to which he would like to become accustomed. And it will become a big problem for him.
House as Building and
House as Dynasty
Today’s scripture is a little bit like a house of mirrors. The word “house” appears many times and takes on multiple meanings, so that at each turn—each time it is mentioned—we might wonder which house we’re looking at, what kind of “house” we’re talking about. The first meaning is clear enough. David wants to build a literal “house,” a building, for God, and God says no. God does not need a house.
But then God turns around and promises to David, “The Lord will make you a house” (2 Sam 7:11). Clearly God does not mean a building, for David has already built himself a house, a royal palace. Instead, it seems that “house” here means dynasty. God explains, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam 7:12-13). On the surface, it would appear that God refers here to Solomon, David’s son, and that Solomon will build a “house”—that is, a temple—for God. The only problem with this interpretation is that the end of God’s prophecy does not come true. God does not establish the throne of Solomon’s kingdom forever, not in a literal sense. When the Babylonians conquer Judah and destroy the Temple, they effectively terminate the Davidic dynasty. There will never again be a king sitting on the throne of an independent Israel.
House as Family
The rabbis recognized this problem early on and interpreted that God’s promise here must refer not only to Solomon, but more importantly to a distant messiah who would establish (or rather, re-establish) the kingdom of Israel. This interpretation almost suits our own faith in Jesus as the messiah. I say “almost” because Jesus does not re-establish the kingdom of Israel in its original sense.
But there is a third meaning for the Hebrew and Greek words for “house.” Not building, not dynasty…but family. Could it be that God’s promise to “make…a house” for David has to do with a new family? In today’s New Testament scripture, Paul tells the gentiles in Ephesus: “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Eph 2:19). The gist of Paul’s message is that Jesus, at the cost of his life, has welcomed everyone into God’s family. In Paul’s metaphor, this “household” is not characterized by a building—indeed, he envisions Jesus in the work of demolition not construction, of “[breaking] down the dividing wall[s]” (Eph 2:14). In doing so, Jesus creates a “new humanity.” Where before there were many walls, and many different kinds of people—Jews, gentiles, men, women, free, slave (Eph 2:15)—now there is one family of God.
A “New Humanity”
I was fascinated to learn this past week that in the second century, Christians were occasionally referred to as a “new race” or a “third race.” In other words, followers of Christ were so different from everyone around them, both Romans and Jews, that they really were (as Paul puts it) “a new humanity.” To put this another way: Jesus did not come to make you (singular) into a new person. He came to make us (plural) into a new people, a new “house,” a new family. That people were calling Christians “a new race” suggests that they recognized the risen Christ not in a single person, but in a group of people. They noticed a “new humanity.” This new humanity had a peculiar way of eating together, where there were no seats of privilege, where they called one another “brother” and “sister” and considered one another equally important parts of the same body. This new humanity had a peculiar way of living together, as they shared their money and resources in common. This new humanity had a peculiar and unsettling way of resolving conflict, in which instead of “settling” things through payment or retribution they forgave one another.
Historian Alan Kreider has suggested that one additional way the early followers of Christ really distinguished themselves in Greco-Roman culture was through their freedom from the common compulsions of their society—namely compulsions toward money, sex, and power. In other words, they were liberated from that common tendency to idolize a pleasant thing, to enshrine it and try to preserve it. As a result, they were free to care for each other as part of the same family.
At this point, we are a long way from today’s scripture. King David wanted to build a temple…perhaps to preserve what were for him very pleasant circumstances. But in Christ, the walls of our shrines, the walls of our temples, our idols meant for keeping things the way they are—they all come crashing down. God does not want the kind of house that David wants. God wants not a palace but a people. Not walls but a reconciled family.
In Christ, we see just what God wants. A new humanity, not preoccupied with preserving a pleasant moment, not compelled to construct walls to keep people in their place and things the way they are—but instead a new humanity free to care for each other.
Prayer
Whose love is like the sun and the rain,
Falling on us all,
Inviting us all into our true family—
May Christ lead us from closed buildings and dividing walls
To open circles and get-together tables;
May Christ liberate us from idols and attachments
To love and care for others
…
So that you might dwell more fully in us,
And we and others might share
The salvation of a new humanity,
In Christ, who is our peace: Amen.
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