The Lord Will Make You a House (2 Samuel 7:1-14a)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on July 22, 2018, Proper 11)

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Where Does God Live?

Where does God live?  That is the question asked by our scripture today.

Having just settled into his throne in Jerusalem in his palace of cedar, David announces that now he will build a house for God.  But God bristles at the suggestion.  “House?  When have I ever needed a house?  Do you not remember that I have always been on the move, alongside the people, from Egypt until now?”  And then God arrives at the point as succinctly as you could, saying: “House?  If you want to talk about houses, let’s talk about this: I will make you a house.”  I’ve been paraphrasing, of course, but that last bit comes straight from our scripture today.  When David announces his intention to build God a house, God turns the tables and says: “The Lord will make you a house” (7:11).

It’s a double entendre, a saying that has a double meaning.  On the surface, God is saying that God will establish David’s family as the rulers of Israel.  The Lord will make them into a dynasty, “a house.”  But beneath that meaning lies another meaning.  David had just been talking about making a house in which God could dwell.  “The Lord will make you a house,” then, is God’s way of saying that the only “house” God needs is David and his family and the people of Israel.  The only dwelling place God needs is flesh and blood.

We hear Paul say the same thing in one of our other lectionary scriptures today.  In Ephesians 2, Paul says that we Christ-followers are “a dwelling place for God” (Eph 2:22). 

Cleaning Up Inside

It is a beautiful image, and I think it resonates so strongly with us because we sense its truth in the person of Jesus Christ.  This past week, at the Bites, Brews, and Big Questions gathering, we wondered at the mystery of the incarnation, that God could somehow dwell fully in the flesh of Jesus, that somehow Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. 

But as beautiful as the image is of us as a dwelling place for God, it is also a difficult image.  For millennia, Christ-followers have asked the question: how could God possibly dwell within me?  There is already so much of “me” inside.  What I think.  What I feel.  What I believe.  What I am planning for, what I am worrying about, what I like and what I don’t like.  There’s so much of “me” inside.  Where is there room for God?

The Desert Mothers and Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries had a response to this question as plain as it was profound.  They said we had to “clean up” what is inside us.[1]  They said there is no space for God unless we make space. 

I can definitely attest to the need for making space.  It is so easy to get caught up in our own thoughts and feelings.  I shared several months back that I play soccer once a week.  When our games are later in the evening, it usually takes me an hour longer to go to sleep because inside I’m replaying clips from the game, feeling good about what I did right, bad about what I did wrong.  That’s an innocent enough example, but the truth is, we’re always doing this.  Our interior lives are an unending commentary of thoughts and feelings.

Who’s Observing?

I wonder if this is the reason that in our gospel scripture for today, Jesus says to the disciples, “Come away to a deserted place and rest a while” (Mark 6:31).  The disciples had just been on the road, caring for the sick and sharing the good news of God’s kingdom.  I wonder if here Jesus is really saying, “You’ve been around people a lot lately, you’ve had ups and down, you’ve been thinking and feeling a lot…and all of that’s taking up space.  It’s time to clean up inside.  Come away and empty yourself.  Come away and make room for God.”

How, though, can we empty ourselves?  How exactly can we make room for God?  How do we quiet the mind, still the heart, suspend the “me” inside of us, so that God can get a word in?  It is unfortunate that prayer has become so mechanized in the Christian tradition, to the point that we think of prayer as a way of changing the world around us, so that either prayer works or it doesn’t, either God listens or God doesn’t.  Because in scripture, prayer is simply about a conversation with God.  Which means that we don’t only speak.  We listen.  We allow ourselves to be addressed.  And perhaps the most important change that happens is not outside us, but inside.

The Desert Mothers and Fathers remind us that prayer is not simply our thinking and feeling.  If that’s all it was, it’d be a whole lot of “me” and little room left for God.  Prayer means making space for God amid our thoughts and feelings.  Thoughts and feelings will always pass through us, they said.  There’s nothing we can do to stop them.  But one thing that we can do, so that they don’t take up residence in our heart, is to practice awareness of these thoughts, to observe them without judgment.  So let’s say we’re sad and frustrated.  Instead of nurturing our feelings and thoughts and developing them into grudges and judgments and plans—instead we simply make ourselves aware of them.  We observe everything about them.  We observe the inner commentary that is playing in our mind: “How wrong he was to do that!  I deserve better than that.  Next time, here’s what I’ll do.  That’ll show him!”  We observe all of this, each thought and feeling that we have, as good or as bad as they are.

When you’ve tried all this, when you’ve gone all the way into the heart of observance, then try asking this question: Who’s observing?[2] 

Is it us?  The same “us” who are feeling and thinking all these things?   Or doesn’t this awareness almost feel like we’re being observed, being addressed, being spoken to?  Doesn’t it almost feel like we have a Guest within?

Always Knocking

“The Lord will make you a house,” David heard thousands of years ago.  “You…are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God,” Paul proclaimed to the Ephesians.  The good news at its most basic, then, is this: we are not alone.  God is with us.  God is always knocking at our heart’s door.

But sometimes there’s too much “me” inside for God to find any room.  And so as Jesus suggested, sometimes we need to go to an empty place where we can become empty ourselves.  Or as the Desert Mothers and Fathers advised us, “Clean up inside.”   And it’s good advice.  More often than not, we’re stuck listening to our own commentaries, living by our own scripts.  To follow the God who is always on the move, to follow where God leads, we need to make space.  We need to make God a welcome guest.

Prayer

Homeless God,

Be our holy guest—

Help us to make space for you

Amid the ceaseless babble

Of our inner commentaries,

So that you might take up residence within

And speak to us a new word;

Draw us out of the narrowness

Of our own stories,

Into the embracing story

Of your kingdom coming.  Amen.

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[1] For the Desert Mothers and Fathers, purgatio (catharsis, Gr.)—or “cleansing”—was the first step in their faith journey.  It was followed by the steps of illumination and divine union.

[2] This example of non-judgmental observation is adapted from a Rob Bell podcast: Episode 154, “Rabbi Joel Brings the Questions,” https://robbell.podbean.com/e/rabbi-joel-brings-the-questions.

Goggling at God (2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on July 15, 2018, Proper 10)

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A Piece of Political Propaganda

In last week’s scripture, Israel anointed David as their king.  In this week’s scripture, David gets to work.  His first order of business is moving the ark of the covenant to his new capitol Jerusalem.  This is a bit of brilliant political propaganda on David’s part because the ark of the covenant is an ancient symbol of God’s presence.  The ark had gone before the people in their wilderness wandering.  It had gone with them into battle.  For much of Israel, then, the ark stands for God.  If the ark is with David in Jerusalem, then it must mean that God is on David’s side.  It must mean that David is the rightful king.

That is the history of today’s story.  David is establishing his authority as king.  Through the ark, David is enlisting God’s support.

But hidden within this history, I think, is a wonderful metaphor for God’s holiness in our world. 

Just a Parade, Just a Prop

At the beginning of the story, David and his entourage begin a royal procession to take the ark to Jerusalem.  The Bible doesn’t give us too many details, other than to say that they’ve made a new cart to carry the ark and everyone is singing and dancing and playing music.  I imagine the event as a parade.  I imagine people coming from far and wide for the spectacle and the show, bringing along picnics and taking in the pageantry of it all.

But there’s a big bump in the parade.  The lectionary chooses to avoid it, cutting out several verses from today’s scripture.  But at some point in the middle of the procession, the oxen stumble and the ark shakes and one of the attendants reaches out his hand to steady the ark.  And when his hand touches the ark…he drops dead, right then and there.  Which is to say, I think, that he actually had no idea what he was dealing with.  It would be as though a flaming hot pan was knocked off the stove—and we reached out to grab it. 

In other words, what we see at the beginning of the story is a people who had lost reverence for the holiness of God.  For them, this procession was a spectacle, a show, a parade of power by their new king David.  The ark was just a stage prop.  Just a token.  Just a bit of ancient history. 

I wonder already if this is not a bit like our own world, where brand names and businesses continually parade their goods before us, to the point that everything becomes just a product for our consumption, something we use and then discard and move on to what’s next…unaware of the holiness that lurks in our midst.

From Dread to Joy

When the attendant touches the ark and dies, David is no longer unaware of the holiness of the ark.  Suddenly he realizes that this is more than a prop.  Suddenly he senses that this is something greater than him, beyond his control.  The missing bit of today’s scripture tells us, “David was afraid of the Lord” (6:9).

How afraid?  The storyteller says he leaves the ark alone for three months.  Only after he learns that the ark’s temporary caretaker is doing well—so well that people are saying it must be because of God and the ark—only then, does he decide to renew the grand procession. 

But it’s here that the story really puzzles me.  Because the storyteller says that when the parade resumes, David rejoices alongside the ark all the way to Jerusalem, dancing with all his might.  I wonder how David moves from such a deep fear—he won’t even come near to the ark for three months—to dancing and shouting and rejoicing alongside it.  I wonder what transforms his dread into joy.

Reverence: Fear and Awe

I think there’s a clue in the way David rejoices.  Because if we look closely, we’ll notice that his dancing and shouting is different than the pageantry of the first procession.  No longer is the ark just a stage prop.  No longer is this just a spectacle for the eyes.  Now it’s a mystery for the heart.  Now there is a profound reverence for the holiness of the ark.  The storyteller says that after the procession moved just six steps, everyone stops and David offers a sacrifice.

The clue, then, is this.  David’s joy is in fact a deep awe, a tongue-tied wonder.  In that feeling is retained David’s deep reverence, his sense that this ark is something greater than him, something beyond his control.  But now instead of worrying for himself, he wonders at the unknowable depths of what is beyond him. 

In fact, when the storyteller says that David was “afraid” of the Lord, the Hebrew word there—yirah—captures perfectly the movement of David’s reverence from fear to awe.  Because that’s what yirah means—both fear and awe.  For the Hebrews, they were two sides of the same coin.  We experience these two sides ourselves—fear and awe—whenever we are reminded that we are not in control, whenever we realize that this thing called life is so much more meaningful and mysterious than the little plans and programs that our small selves have designed.  Standing on the edge of a mountain can fill us with this fear and awe—fear if we stand too close to the edge and look down, but awe if we take a step or two back and look at the world around and beneath us.  Standing before an irreversible passage, like marriage or death or college, can fill us with this fear and awe—fear if we dwell on the inevitable loss of what we know, or awe if we wonder at the possibilities and surprises and new life before us.

How does David get from fear to dancing and shouting and rejoicing?  I think he took a step back from the cliff and saw the view.  I think that in the presence of the ark, the world suddenly swelled and thickened far beyond his own aims and ambitions—and as scary as that was at first, it was also breathtakingly glorious, like glimpsing the world from above.

The Disenchantment of Our World

David encountered the holiness of God in a box container, an ancient artifact full of history and meaning for the Israelites.  Some people in ancient Israel actually thought that that box contained God.  But as they would discover later when their Temple was destroyed and that sacred box went missing, the ark did not contain God.  God was still with them, even in exile.  God was in all the world.

We hear that news in today’s psalm, where the psalmist declares, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (24:1).  We hear it also in the reading from Ephesians, where Paul proclaims that the mystery of God’s will is “to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:8-10).  God is in everything.  Everywhere.  Everything in heaven and on earth belongs.  It was not just that box that was holy.  All the world is filled with God’s glory.  All the world is worthy of our awe—our dancing and shouting and rejoicing.  

But you wouldn’t know that living in our society today.   Where people chase after money and things but find only emptiness.  Where beauty is not a wonder to behold but a thing to consume and dispose.  Where science explains more and more of our world, but instead of marveling at the mysterious connectedness of life, we see only more ways of exploiting the world’s resources for our short-lived gain.  As sociologist Max Weber prophetically announced at the beginning of the last century, our world has become “disenchanted.”  Everything is merely a tool, a means to our ends.  Nothing is sacred.  Nothing is holy.

To Re-enchant the World

A story is told in the Jewish tradition of a community where a man stood accused of adultery.  The leaders of the community demanded from the rabbi a harsh punishment upon the sinner.  In response, the rabbi prayed, “O Lord, your glory on earth—in this community—has become invisible.  In contrast to its invisibility, the object of this man’s passion stood before his eyes, full of beauty and enravishing his body and soul.  How could I punish him?”[1]

In other words, the problem was not just with that single man.  The problem was with a community that had become blind to the depths and glory of God in all the world around them.  Their world had become so disenchanted that the only thing this man could find to marvel at was one woman. He could not see the holiness of God—he could not feel fear and awe—in his wife or in his children or in the strangers on the street, all of whom carried secrets and had intricate histories, all of whom had come from somewhere and were going somewhere too, just like him.  He had no sense that there was more to life than he knew, that life was greater than just him and was ever unfolding into something wonderful.  He could not see the terrifying valley beneath, or the terrific vista before him.

Part of the reason our world has lost its enchantment, I think, is because the world has ceased to goggle at God—to look at the world wide-eyed with wonder and reverence and curiosity, seeing not tools for advancement or means for our own ends but gifts for treasuring and pondering and celebrating.  There is no more dancing and shouting and singing, like David did before the ark.  But that is our call.  To re-enchant the world.  Our story of faith says that in the beginning, everything was good, and Jesus came to insist on this truth, to proclaim this gospel, that everything and everyone belongs, that God is gathering up all things in heaven and in earth into a good and beautiful and true creation.   Why shouldn’t we be dancing and shouting and singing? 

God in everything and everyone—just the thought is enough to make us goggle at all the world.  Everything sacred, full of depth and mystery and unforeseeable possibility—and we on the cusp of it all.

Prayer

Holy God,

Alive in all the world—

Awaken us to your glory;

Open our eyes to see around us

Neither the props of everyday life,

Nor the means to our own ends,

But a world full of mystery,

Inspiring deep reverence, curiosity, and care.

And may our goggling

Help to re-enchant the world

With your love.  Amen.

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[1] Adapted from the story told by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967), 21.

A Tale of Two Cities (2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on July 8, 2018, Proper 9)

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Greater and Greater, Less and Less

Today’s two scriptures tell the tale of two cities: Hebron, where David is announced king, and Nazareth, where Jesus receives a rather disappointing homecoming.  The two stories are as far as apart as night and day.  One is a story of acceptance.  The other is a story of rejection.

On the one hand, we have David, anointed king and applauded.  But not just by anybody—by his former enemies!  Just before today’s scripture, the storyteller tells us that the house of David and the house of Saul had waged a long war against each other (2 Sam 3:1).  In today’s scripture, team Saul finally accepts defeat and accepts David as their king.  Acceptance does for David what acceptance does for many of us.  It builds him up.  It prospers him.  We’re told that after his anointing, David grows “greater and greater.”  In the scripture that follows our passage today, we learn that David takes more wives and concubines, fathers a number of sons and daughters, and leads Israel to victory in a series of battles, expanding their territory. 

On the other hand, we have Jesus who has returned to the town of his upbringing, Nazareth.  While David is accepted by his enemies, Jesus is rejected by his old friends and neighbors.  His hometown takes offense at him.  (We’re never told why exactly.)  This rejection corresponds with a certain diminishment in Jesus’ movement, not unlike the way rejection sometimes reduces us to our core.  While David in his acceptance grows “greater and greater,” Jesus in his rejection embarks on a journey of less and less.  Forsaken by his hometown, Jesus and his disciples split up and travel to other villages.  Jesus commissions his disciples to take with them no money, no food, no extra clothes.  He counsels them to prepare for rejection themselves, and simply to move on when they encounter it.  It’s almost as though rejection has intensified Jesus’ focus on what matters: not success but faithfulness.  Do what you are called to do, and keep moving.

More than Meets the Eye

Today’s tale of two cities, then, shows us David flourishing in the City of Acceptance and Jesus languishing in the City of Rejection.

But of course, there’s so much more than meets the eye.  The City of Acceptance where David is celebrated looks wonderful on the surface, but look a little deeper and you’ll discover that it is built on the foundation of war, deception, and betrayal.  Not everyone in that city is as happy as they look.  Many of the people at David’s anointing had lost a war to David.  Those wounds do not fade so quickly.

And the City of Rejection where Jesus dwells looks difficult on the outside, but look a little bit deeper and you’ll discover a world of abundant life, where the poor have no riches but are blessed with a deep companionship, where the sick are blessed with hands to hold, where the sinners and rejected are blessed with a table to gather around in communion. 

Dying to the World

We all want acceptance and affirmation.  No one desires rejection and difficulty.  But as these two cities show us, acceptance and rejection are not reliable guideposts for life.

The earliest monks were fond of saying that we should be moved by neither praise nor disapproval.  One of my favorite stories is of Father Macarius, who gave this advice to a young man: “Go to the cemetery.  Rebuke the dead.  Then praise them.”  When the young man did this and returned, Father Macarius asked him, “How did they react?”  “They didn’t,” said the young man, to which Father Macarius responded, “Go and do likewise.”  In his own artful way, Father Macarius expounds upon Paul’s metaphor of dying with Christ.  When we die with Christ to the world, we become like the dead to the world’s approval and disapproval.  We orient our lives not by praise and condemnation, but by trust in the way of Christ, which is the way of the cross, which is the way of giving our life and finding it anew.  Acceptance and rejection no longer decide for us whether what we’re doing is good or bad, right or wrong.  (Just a glance at the most popular Youtube videos will prove that popularity bears no correlation to quality!)

And so for a little church like ourselves, the ultimate question is not: “How many backsides are in the pew?  How many likes have we got on Facebook?”  That’s no longer where we find our life.  We’ve died to that.  Instead, the question is very simple.  Are we being faithful to the way of Christ, to the way of abundant life that we have found?  Are we being faithful to the call that we’ve heard, that call to share life around tables and in small groups and with the needful?

Perhaps Disciples preacher and teacher Fred Craddock put it best: “The question,” he said, “is not whether the church is dying, but whether it is giving its life for the world.”  How things look on the outside say very little about the life that matters, the life that’s on the inside.  It was, in fact, amid difficulty and trial that the gospel of Christ shone brightest.  The stories we read of Jesus are not stories of great acclaim and achievement, of high seats and long robes and successful programs, but rather of the poor and the sick, the sinners and the rejected.  That’s where Jesus found abundant life. 

And that’s where we followers of Christ have found it too.  Whether it’s with the neglected and forgotten in hospitals and memory care units and refugee housing developments, or simply with family or friends or work colleagues with whom needs are shared, with whom healing and repentance are found in truthful talk and tender touch—we find abundant life not in acceptance or rejection, success or failure, but in the way of Christ.

Prayer

Dear Christ,

In whose rejected body

The fullness of God

Is pleased to dwell—

In our success,

When we are built up,

Humble us with a reminder

Of your simple call;

In our disappointment,

When we are reduced to our core,

Encourage us with a reminder

Of your simple call:

To give ourselves

For the life of the world.  Amen.

How the Lowly Have Fallen (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on July 1, 2018, Proper 8)

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Our Eyes Are Trained on the Top

“How the mighty have fallen!”  These words have had a long life.  Uttered first in tears over three thousand years ago at the death of King Saul, these words find voice today too, although sometimes in mocking tones.  When scandal breaks around political figures or business leaders or pop stars, how often have we heard someone crow with gloating satisfaction, “How the mighty have fallen!”

Whether these timeless words express genuine lament or smug celebration, they remind us of what appears to be an eternal truth.  Our world has eyes only for the mighty.  Our eyes are trained on the top—the powerful, the prosperous, the beautiful.  That’s what we care about.  Because that’s where we want to be.

There is no public crying or crowing for the single mother endlessly juggling the demands of parenting and multiple jobs.  There’s no collective outcry when disease strikes a low-income family and forces them to subsist on a food-stamp diet.  No one sings, “How the lowly have fallen!”  Because that’s not whom we identify with.  In our ambition and our anticipation, we identify with the top, the place we dream about, the place we want to be.

Just a glance at how this nation handles its money will tell you where our interest really lies.  For while we question welfare for the poor, we “hardly blink at welfare for corporations or for the banking and military systems.”[1]  We care about—we identify with—the top.

What’s Happening Below

In today’s gospel story, we can hear faint echoes of the ancient chorus of David: “How the mighty have fallen.”

The story begins with Jesus and Jairus, a synagogue leader, which is to say, a privileged and prominent person in the community.  Jairus begs Jesus to see his little daughter, who is at the point of death.  So Jesus follows Jairus, and a large crowd follows Jesus. I think there’s a reason for this large crowd.  The misfortune of this prominent man and his daughter has seized the public’s attention.  We can almost hear the whispers and rumors among the crowd, as some share their sorrow and others glibly speculate.  “Poor man.  He doesn’t deserve this, after all that he’s done for the community.”  “Yeah, it’s tragic, isn’t it?  I imagine this’ll break him.”  And if we listen closely enough, I imagine that we might hear someone in the crowd mutter that mournful phrase, “Oh…how the mighty have fallen.”

With everyone consumed by what’s happening at the top, no one notices what’s happening below.  No one notices a ragged woman making her way through the crowd.  For twelve years, she’s suffered from hemorrhaging.  Every time she’s visited the doctors, they’ve taken her money but left her worse off than before.  They have bled her dry.  So she’s poor.  She’s impure.  And as you might have noticed, she’s nameless.  She’s anonymous.  No one cares about her, the way they care about the synagogue leader Jairus.  Even though she has fallen too.

I’m nearly certain that we’ve all seen this woman before.  But when we see her on the corner of the street, we wonder why she doesn’t get help, why she’s begging.  We don’t know that she’s already sought help and been bled dry.  We don’t know her tragic back-story.  And doesn’t everyone have a story?

He Cares for the Lowly First

So there go Jesus and the crowd to the home of the prominent and privileged Jairus, when suddenly this poor, impure, no-name woman reaches out and touches Jesus.  Immediately she can feel it.  She is healed!  But Jesus can feel it too.  He asks who touched him, and if it weren’t Jesus asking, we might expect a reprimand or a rebuke or worse from him.  For not only is this woman poor and insignificant, she is also impure.  In ancient Israel, impure folks like her were supposed to keep separate from the public.  People thought that touch transmitted the impurity, as though it were a contagious disease.  For her to rub shoulders with the crowd, to reach out and purposefully touch a clean person, was a significant social transgression.  It would be like that woman on the street corner grabbing a passerby and then coughing into their face.

But listen to the first word out of Jesus’ mouth: “Daughter,” he calls her.  To everyone else around him, there is one only one fallen daughter that matters right now.  The daughter of the mighty.  The daughter of the prominent synagogue leader.  But Jesus addresses this poor, impure, nameless woman, “Daughter.”  This daughter matters just as much as the next.

While the rest of the world is looking to the top, singing, “How the mighty have fallen,” Jesus looks at this lowly woman and cares deeply for how she has fallen.  Of course, the procession resumes and Jesus shows the same care for the synagogue leader’s daughter, raising her to new life too.  But I can’t help wondering at the meaning of this sequence.  Today’s gospel story begins like the story of our world.  It begins with the headline news or what you’d hear at the top of the hour.  Everyone’s a-chatter about what’s happening among the powerful and prosperous.  And when Jesus hears the news from the synagogue leader himself, he follows him at his request.  Suddenly this headline story has gotten even bigger.  This rabbi who’s been causing quite a stir—Jesus—has gotten involved.  So far, the story is following the way of our world.  But then from among rabble emerges a lowly outcast figure, who touches Jesus and interrupts the grand procession.  And instead of casting her aside, or telling her to wait her turn, or calling for the authorities, Jesus turns toward her full of love.  He cares for the lowly first.

The First Verse in the Kingdom of God

For over three thousand years, our world has sung in almost perfect unison, “How the mighty have fallen.”  But when Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God, he sang a different song.  “Oh look how the lowly have fallen.”  And we hear it from him again and again.  Not until the last are first, he said, and the least are greatest, and the leaders are servants, and the lowly are lifted up in love—See how they’ve fallen—not until then will the kingdom of God arrive in its fullness.  Not until we stop idolizing and identifying with the top and instead seek life in relationship with others, seeing where they have fallen and singing their songs and stories, not until then will the kingdom of God arrive in its fullness.

We’ve all caught glimpses of this kingdom where the lowly are lifted in song before anyone else.  I know we have.  We’ve caught glimpses in the hospital, where suddenly all the furor of the front page fades, and we hold the hand of a fallen person whose hardship no one knows—except for us, who sing their song.  We’ve caught glimpses across the street at the memory care unit, where the pomp of the world pales in comparison to the fanned embers of life in folks whom the world has forgotten—but we haven’t forgotten, we who sing their song.  I caught a glimpse recently in the face of a refugee youth who works sixty-hour weeks (night shift, no less) in the summer break for the sake of his family.  Unsung by the powerful men and women whose decisions determine his world, his life I sing this morning.

Oh look how the lowly have fallen.  Thus begins the first verse of the kingdom of God, where the last are first, the least are greatest, the leaders are servants, and the lowly are lifted up in love. 

Prayer

Compassionate Christ,

Who directs our gaze

From the privileged to the poor;

Whose love does not obey

The conditions of purity or worth;

Help us not to be conformed

To the principles of this world—

Power, privilege, prestige—

But rather to be transformed

By the upside-down vision

Of your kingdom,

For which we pray always.

Inspire us to sing,

With you,

“How the lowly have fallen.”  Amen.

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[1] Richard Rohr, “Protecting the System,” https://cac.org/protecting-the-system-2018-06-26/, accessed on June 26, 2018.

Fear, Faith, and Peace (1 Samuel 17:32-49)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 24, 2018, Proper 7)

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In the Deep End:

Trusting the Water

Do you remember the first time you went into the deep end of the swimming pool without any help?  Without a parent to hold you up, without floats around your arms, without a pool noodle to hang onto?

I remember my first time.  My heart was in my throat.  What would it feel like without any ground beneath my feet?  Nearby my parents were cheering me on.  They told me to trust the water.  I could turn over onto my back, they said, and the water would hold me up.

So I splashed my way down into the deep end.  Full of fear, I flapped around at first and it felt like I was sinking.  But then amid my fear, I stopped flapping and trusted the water.  I turned over onto my back.  And I floated in peace.

The Difference between Faith and “Belief”

When Jesus stills the storm, he asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  In our world today, that question—Do you have faith?—is often understood as a matter of the mind.  For many folks, faith has to do with what you believe.  In the same way that we might say, “I believe there’s milk in the fridge,” or “I believe in thunderstorms, that they exist and make lots of noise and bring lots of rain,” many folks today express their faith by saying, “I believe in God.”

But when Jesus asks the disciples if they have faith, he isn’t asking them what’s in their head.  He isn’t asking if they believe in the existence of God.  Back then, everyone believed in at least one god if not more.  That’s why they made so many sacrifices.  Their belief filled them with fear.  They believed in these gods who could cause storms or droughts or other catastrophes in the flick of a finger, and so they were continually trying to get in the gods’ good graces.

Jesus isn’t asking his disciples about what’s in their head but about what’s in their heart.  He isn’t asking them if they believe in God but rather if they trust God.  For Jesus, faith is not a belief in powerful gods that fills us with fear.  Faith is an intimate trust in God that confronts our fear.  Faith is what stops us from flapping in the deep end and enables us to trust the water.

Contrary to popular opinion, I think Jesus was afraid in the storm just like his disciples were.  We know Jesus experienced the frailty of fear.  The gospels tell us that he sweated blood and wept tears.[1]  I think Jesus shared his disciples’ fear, but unlike his disciples he trusted in God.  Faith, I think, was the difference between Jesus’ calm and his disciples’ flapping about.  His faith enabled him to respond to his fear with a defiant—one might even say miraculous—peace.

Faith Fiddling around with the Text

In the story of David and Goliath, the Israelites are the ones flapping about in the deep end.  They are fearful of the Philistine warrior Goliath.  But David is not flapping about.  “Let no one’s heart fail because of [Goliath],” he says to Saul (17:32).  David appears to be floating serenely at the deep end.  When Saul expresses doubt at David’s proposal—“You are just a boy,” he says (17:33)—David recites how he has dealt with lions and bears, and this Philistine will be no different.  The Lord, he says, will deliver him now as before.

We generally read this story as an illustration of David’s great faith.  He has no fear because he has faith.  That is a fine reading, and an inspiring one, and quite possibly what the original storyteller was hoping to tell us.  But today I want to explore another reading of the story, a reading inspired by Jesus in the storm, Jesus who responds to fear with a defiant peace.  Let me be clear, this is no authoritative interpretation.  What follows is my faith fiddling around with the text, wondering how the way of Jesus might have looked in the time of David.  So treat what I am about to tell you as a rumor, as gossip—and see what truth you can work out from it.

David Shows No Fear

Look at David, ready to waltz into battle, so sure of himself, so sure of the Lord.  Does this look at all familiar?  Are not such self-certainty and such a combative religious zeal also marks of the religious fundamentalists who have wrought great violence in our world?  Anyway…I think there’s a reason we love this story so much.  Not only is it the tale of a victorious underdog.  It also gives us the bravado that we love.  David is cool, calm, and fearless.

Isn’t that the model we’re given growing up?  Don’t show your weakness, your doubts, your fear?  And so we don’t.  We hide them behind boasting resumes, behind sharp and professional attire, behind uncompromising attitudes—“It’s my way or the highway.”  We don’t overcome our fear.  We hide it.  We push it down.  We deny it.  But what is repressed, often rebounds back upon us in terrible fashion.  And so we see bullies who compensate for their hidden fears with shows of domination.  We see bosses who respond to adversity with a brutality of their own.  Again and again, repressed fear returns in a show of strength and force, as though to prove there is no fear in the first place.

Now look at David again.  Is this a man of faith who faces his fear with peace?  Or is this a man who has denied his fear, repressed it behind a mix of holy machismo and misguided nationalistic piety, a man whose response to fear is not peace but bared teeth. 

A Lapse in Faith?

We generally read this story as an illustration of David’s great faith.  But the narrator is strangely silent.  He furnishes David no praise here, nor criticism.  It is left up to us to interpret.  Personally, a part of me can’t help wondering if his meeting Goliath on the battlefield might not be a lapse in faith.  David shows no fear, for sure.  But what has he done with that fear?  Has he confronted it with faith and defiantly declared peace?  Or has he repressed it?  Does he trust in the God who blessed the family of Abraham to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, the God who the prophet Amos says liberated the Philistines from their captivity as the Israelites had been liberated from Egypt (Amos 9:7)?  Or does he put on his best James Dean, his best Marlboro Man, and act out in the way of our world, a way that shows no weakness, no doubts, no fears, a way that prefers strength and force over peace?

This really is unfair of me to put David on the stand.  After all, the Old Testament is full of war and violence.  Maybe David trusted in God but knew no way to extend the peace of that trust to the world around him.  Whatever the case may be, I cannot shake the example of Jesus from my mind.  I can think of two instances in the gospels when the fearful followers of Jesus want to respond to the world with violence, and in both cases Jesus rebukes them.[2]  And so today as I read the story of David, I also hear his words: “Put away your sword.  For all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”  Sadly this would be all too true for much of David’s family and royal court.

What Would Jesus Do in David’s Place?

It’s nearly impossible, of course, to imagine an alternative ending to the story of David and Goliath, just as it’s impossible to imagine peaceful resolutions to many of our world’s conflicts.  But let’s try for just a second.  What would Jesus do in David’s place?  I believe that instead of hiding his fear and putting on a strong front, he would have felt fear, sweating as he did before the cross, perhaps crying over the brokenness of his own nation and of the Philistines’.  But I believe that amid that fear, he would do as he did on the stormy sea: he would defiantly declare peace. I believe that instead of speaking death and curses, he would speak life and blessing, reminding folks that God had liberated both Israel and the Philistines, that God was on both their sides.  That all sounds wildly impractical, and you might be thinking that would get Jesus killed.  That’s not much different than what happened in his own time.

But that wouldn’t be the end of the story.  When Jesus went into the deep end of his world, he went not only with fear but also with a deep faith.  Some called it weakness.  Some called it foolishness.  He went into the deep end with nothing—no floats, no noodles.  It looked crazy, but he trusted in the water.  He trusted in a God of love, a God whose love was even stronger than death, a God whose love would keep him afloat.  Even in death he did not sink.  And so even in the deep end, even amid fear, he could confidently proclaim peace.

It really is gospel—good news.  Our faith is not a belief in a powerful, violent God that fills us with fear.  Our faith is an intimate trust in a loving and life-giving God that enables us to face our fear.  It’s what empowers us to stop flapping around in the deep end, in fright and violence, and instead to echo the defiant declaration of Christ within the storm: peace!

Prayer

Creator God,

Whose creation is cut

From the cloth of love—

There are many things in life

That we do not understand,

That we cannot control,

And so we are fearful.

We thank you

For being in the boat beside us.

Inspire us with the deep trust

In your love

That enabled Jesus to proclaim, “Peace!”

Amid wind and wave;

So that one day we would live

Not by fight or flight,

But by trust in your incomprehensible peace.

In the name of our companion, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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[1] Luke 19:41; 22:44; John 11:35.  Cf. Dorothee Sölle, The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity (trans. Robert and Rita Kimber; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 149.

[2] Matthew 26:52; Luke 9:54-55.

The Extraordinary Sense of God: Beyond Human Binaries (1 Samuel 15:34-16:13)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 17, 2018, Proper 6)

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This or That

I discovered spicy food at a very early age.  I don’t remember the day myself, but my parents tell the story this way.  As my mom, dad, and brother were preparing dinner, someone had left the refrigerator door open.  I was a toddler at the time and toddled on over to explore what was inside.  On the lowest shelf sat a red bottle.  I stuck its top in mouth.  And for the next hour or so, I was wincing and smacking my lips.  I had discovered Tabasco!

As far as I can reconstruct, that’s the day I learned the word “hot”—as opposed to “cold,” which the refrigerator certainly was.   And that’s the way we all learn, according to psychologists and linguists.  You can’t know one thing until you know its opposite.  Hot/cold, up/down, night/day: as children, we begin to make sense of the world by dividing it up into this or that.

As adults, we generally make sense of the world in the same dualistic, divided-up way.  And with good reason: these binaries are the basis of our survival, our self-preservation.  Without distinctions like poisonous/safe, healthy/unhealthy, predator/prey, friend/enemy, hot/cold, we wouldn’t be here today.

Binaries are the basis of survival.  But binaries can also blind us.  They limit the world to this or that categories.  Instead of seeing a fellow American, we see Republican or Democrat.  Instead of seeing a human being created in the image of God, we see man or woman, black or white, straight or gay.  Not only do these binaries blind us to deeper realities, they also make us biased.  Because binaries are about self-preservation, about keeping order, about keeping things the way they are. In any binary, we prefer the term that preserves our sense of self, whatever preserves the world as we know it.

Saul’s Selective Listening

If you were in a traffic jam, and you heard a random honk behind you, would pay much attention?  What if it were a police siren?  If you were on the sidewalk, and a stranger in a business suit was politely requesting help, would you approach him?  What if it were a homeless person whose voice was slurred?

The problem with Israel’s first king, Saul, was his selective listening: hearing this but not hearing that.  Right before today’s scripture, Samuel calls him to account for not precisely following the instructions of God, and Saul replies: “I feared my men and listened to their voice” (15:24).  In other words, King Saul was a people-pleaser.  He had strayed just a little bit from the command of God in order to please the strong men in his army (cf. 14:52). 

If you’ll remember from last week, God had warned Israel that a king spelled trouble.  Power would take without asking.  It would build itself up at the people’s expense.  Power would not ensure the justice of God’s good covenant.  It would not look out for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, as the covenant endlessly called for.[1]  Instead, it would do the opposite.  Power—a king of might, a king who would fight—this would take Israel back to its beginning in Egypt.  Or as God put it, “You will be…slaves” again (8:17).

Life under Saul did not look exactly like slavery, but in Saul’s selective listening, we catch a glimpse of power’s cold disregard.  Saul does not listen to God.  Nor, we might imagine, does he listen to the widow, the orphan, or the stranger.  Saul listens to the strong men carrying swords and spears. He listens to the people with power, the ones on whom his power rests.  What the widow, the orphan, the stranger, or God thinks…well, that can wait.

Samuel’s Selective Looking

In today’s scripture, we discover the outcome of Saul’s selective listening.  God has moved on.  God has already been scouting for a future king, and God’s found one!  Samuel follows God’s prompting and travels to Bethlehem.  

What comes next is a celebrated Bible story, a timeless classic that features in every children’s Sunday School curriculum.  Samuel invites Jesse to bring his sons before him.  First comes Eliab, and he must have had an impressive physique, because Samuel thinks, “Surely this is the one.”  But the Lord says to him, essentially, “Don’t look the way humans look, selectively, dividing up and judging by your categories, old/young, tall/short, strong/weak.  For God does not see that way.  God looks on the heart.”  In other words, Samuel was looking for the future king in the same way that Saul trying to stay king.  He was dividing the world up into this or that, and he was giving priority to whatever he thought would preserve power.  Saul listened first to the mighty men with swords and spears.  Samuel looked first for a son who was strong, commanding, and experienced.

Next comes Abinadab, and then Shammah, and then four more sons.  Each time, Samuel listens to God and shakes his head.  He must be perplexed at this point, because he’s seen all there is to see.  Maybe he confused God’s directions.  Maybe this is the wrong father and these are the wrong sons.  Just to make sure, though, he asks Jesse, “Are all your sons here?”  Jesse responds that the youngest isn’t here, but is tending the sheep.  So he calls for his son David—who is the least of his sons, the last of his sons, the left-out son.  And he, of course, is the one.  God chooses him to be king.

More than Survival and Self-Preservation

The book of I Samuel contains within it a tension, a friction between the people of Israel and God.  We see it in today’s story, where Samuel anoints the next king, and in the story right before it, where Saul listens first to the voice of his army. 

On the one hand, there are the people of Israel grasping for power, power that will sort out their problems inside, power that will secure their borders outside.  This power builds quite naturally on divisions, which are a mechanism of survival and self-preservation.  This power splits the world up into simple categories, this-or-that, and prefers whatever will preserve things the way they are, whatever will preserve the present order.  

On the other hand, there is God whose covenant looks out for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, whose dream is change, the lowly lifted up and the powerful laid low.  The change of God continually bursts beyond the binaries of Israel.  It sees the potential for abundant life not in imposing kings but in a little boy like Samuel and later in Jesse’s left-out son, David.

The power of Israel builds on divisions, but the change of God bursts beyond these binaries.  Because God wants more than survival, God wants life!  God wants more than the self-preservation of the powerful, God wants beloved community, life for everyone.

The Unity of God’s Love:

From the Most Minor of Minorities

Which is the same thing that Jesus wants, the same thing we see in the Jesus story.  Jesus is consistently bursting beyond our binaries, our this-or-that thinking, drawing us beyond these divisions into the unity of God’s love.  It is Jesus who sees greatness in the smallest of seeds.  It is Jesus who proclaims enemies to be beloved.  It is Jesus who lifts high the little children as model citizens of the kingdom.  It is Jesus who calls the last first.

In the story of Samuel and Israel, as in the story of Jesus, God does not limit our world according to the divisions that we make, this-or-that.  Rather God sees infinite possibility in all things.  And thank God for that.

Binaries keep us alive.  But they also keep us from life.  When we divide the world up into this or that, and we make choices based on survival and self-preservation, the world hardens and closes in on itself.  When the powerful act to preserve the present order, to keep things the way they are, the world comes to a standstill.  No significant change in history happened because at first a majority voted for it.  The change of God that pushes past mere survival and self-preservation, that liberates slaves in Egypt, that looks out for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, that transforms enemies into friends, that draws us all beyond this-or-that into the unity of God’s love—this life-giving change of God grows from the most minor of minorities, from the smallest of things.  Like a mustard seed.  Like a little, left-out boy.  Like a convicted criminal on a cross. 

Prayer

Mysterious and merciful God,

Who transgresses

Our codes of what is correct,

Our understanding of this-or-that;

Draw us into your holy quest

For more than survival and self-preservation;

Grow within us and our community

The tiny seeds of your kingdom,

In which everything belongs

And is filled with infinite possibility.

In the name of him

Whose love obeys no laws, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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[1] According to Baba Metzia 59b, some rabbis counted in the Torah 36 warnings against wronging the sojourner; others counted 46.  Cf. Jonathan Sacks, “Mishpatim (5768)—Loving the Stranger,” http://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5768-mishpatim-loving-the-stranger/, accessed June 13, 2018.