Cunning or Compassionate? - Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost Narrative Lectionary 3

Cunning or Considerate?

Pentecost 22 – NL 3

October 20, 2024

Our Savior’s, Faribault, MN

2 Samuel 7.1-17; Luke 1.30-33

What do you think? Is King David faithful and considerate or politically cunning?

Much has happened since last week’s story of Hannah’s prayer for the birth of a son. Hannah’s prayer is granted and in gratitude Hannah dedicates her son, Samuel, to service of the Lord. Samuel will grow up under the tutelage of his mentor, the prophet and priest Eli, eventually replacing him.  Samuel will be God’s instrument to anoint Saul, the first king of Israel. Of course, at this time Israel is more a collection of tribes than a kingdom. God allowed the Israelites to have a king in spite of God’s warnings. Israel persists because “everyone else has a king.” God’s admonition to the people that they won’t like a king is borne out with the displacement of Saul by the shepherd-turned warrior David after a bloody civil war.

David is anointed king over all Israel and decides to make Jerusalem the capital city, a city he conquered over the Jebusites. Hiram the king of Tyre, a small kingdom on the Mediterranean Sea, sends material and labor to build David a house. It is a house fit for a king. Then David brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem as well, the ark being the seat of God’s presence and the box that contains the two stone tables with the Ten Commandments. The Ark has been residing amidst the elaborate and highly mobile tent that has been moving from place to place since its construction in Egypt. 

In today’s text, David asks his advisor, the prophet Nathan, about building a house for God. One strain of commentators believe that David is being considerate of God and is demonstrating appropriate piety towards God. After all, he is described as a “man after God’s own heart” and there he is sitting in a beautiful house while God is in a makeshift and impermanent tent. It seems it’s the least David can do. Besides, that’s what conquering kings do, they build a temple for their god. It’s the done thing. That’s precisely what other commentators use as proof that this is a cunning strategy that David uses to consolidate his power, both politically and religiously.

But God is having none of it. Whatever David’s motivations are, and they are probably mixed, Go says, “No.” In essence, God indicates that he will not be used for whatever purposes David has, noble or otherwise. As one commentator notes, “God cannot be bought off, controlled, or domesticated.” To make the point and reverse the tables, God recites all God has done for David to bring him to this point, all of it unmerited, undeserving, and pure grace.

And God isn’t done as God promises to make David a house, one that will last. Of course, this isn’t a house of cedar or stone, it’s a house full of descendants. This is a promise that is utterly fantastical, that the Davidic monarchy will rule forever. Think for a moment how many “kingdoms” have come and gone since David’s time: Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians, Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, the list goes on. None of them has lasted more than a few hundred years.

We are pretty sure that David and his descendants didn’t think of Jesus Messiah when they read this text. However, as the followers of Jesus looked back into the Jewish scriptures to make sense of his incarnation, life, death, crucifixion and resurrection, they saw Jesus in it. The snippet from Luke’s Gospel, part of the Annunciation to Mary by the angel, expresses the assurance that God’s promise to David has been fulfilled in God’s Son Jesus.

Here’s where we need to be careful and take 2 Samuel 7 to heart: neither God the Father nor Jesus the Son will be co-opted for personal or political purposes. In the Sixteenth Century, Martin Luther got into an argument about the real, physical presence of Jesus in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. His opponents claimed that Jesus can’t really be there because he had ascended to heaven and sits at God’s right hand. Luther countered with an elegant argument that says not only can Jesus be wherever he wants to be, he declared that the right hand of God is wherever Jesus is. Furthermore, although Jesus can be wherever he wishes, he promises to be in the waters of baptism, the bread and wine of Holy Communion, the preached word, and among God’s faithful people.

On the one hand, we trust in God’s promises that God dwells among God’s people, but on the other hand, God will not be manipulated, controlled, exploited, or put in a box. The kingdom of Jesus is one where sin, death, and evil are broken through his sacrificial love not through a muscle-bound, six-pack abs Jesus with an AK47 in his hand.

Next week we will hear that God’s temple will be built, on God’s own time and through God’s purposes and not by someone with blood on their hands. Today we have a good reminder that, like David, we can be both cunning and considerate. But also, like David, we are blessed with God’s abundant grace through Jesus Christ and are forgiven wherever and whenever we fall short. Thanks be to God. Amen.

My sermons don't always preach as they are written. For video of the sermon with the entire service, click here.

The One True God - Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost Narrative Lectionary 3

The One True God

Pentecost 20 NL3

October 6, 2024

Our Savior’s, Faribault, MN

Exodus 32.1-14

God is angry and the word angry doesn’t begin to cover it. God is ticked off, mad, and decency prohibits other words that could express God’s anger. It hasn’t been long since God has liberated his chosen people from slavery in Egypt and parted the Red Sea so they could cross safely, preventing the Egyptians from following. Along the way, God has provided for their every need. The people have just agreed to a covenant, essentially what we now call the Ten Commandments plus other guidelines for living together. Then in just a few days the people replace Moses and God with a false image of that very God.

However, we need to understand that God’s people are scared. They’ve left the familiarity of the only life they’ve known, albeit an excruciating one. Now they number in the tens of thousands wandering in the wilderness. They are eating unfamiliar and rather uninspiring food (manna) on a day-to-day basis. There are enemies and wild animals all around, waiting to attack. Furthermore, their leader Moses has been gone 40 days, ostensibly chatting with God. They don’t know this God very well, and they’re not so sure about Moses either. They’re scared, and can we really blame them?

When you’re scared you do stupid stuff, and sometimes when you’re mad you say stupid stuff. The people are not yet a cohesive nation, more a collection of tribes. And though God is the God of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they’re just getting acquainted with this God after a long absence and haven’t caught the vision that God has for them yet. So, they don’t exactly throw out God and Moses. Rather, they make an image, one that they can see and touch and bow down to. Unfortunately, Moses’ brother and right-hand man Aaron doesn’t have the backbone to deny them.

In hindsight and with 3,000 years of wisdom behind us, it is easy to judge the Israelites for their apostasy. But our story today invites us to consider those ways we do the same, if not as blatantly as the Israelites. We need to ask, how does our fear cause us to put faith in poor substitutes of the One True God? We know that possessions and leaders are not our saviors, but how do we do stupid things, trusting in things that don’t deserve our trust. 

One example that concerns me and other pastors deeply is a growing movement called Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism is a complex phenomenon in our country, but essentially it is understood as conflating what it means to be a follower of Christ with being a citizen of this country. This sermon doesn’t have the wherewithal to go deeper than to express concern and invite you into exploring this. Pr. Drew and I would be willing to discuss this further.

Back to the text. I think that the reason God is so mad is that God is deeply hurt by the peoples’ rebellion. When we love deeply, as God does us, it hurts deeply when we’ve been betrayed. God’s declaration to Moses that he will “consume them” shows just how hurt God is. But, as some theologians point out, God’s command to Moses to “let me alone” also shows an openness for more conversation. And Moses shows us just how open and vulnerable God is, to love, to talk, and to risk being hurt over and over again.

Those of us who are a certain age have had the experience of riding in a car with our siblings and fighting in such confined spaces, especially on long drives. After a while, one of our parents would say, “Don’t make me come back there!” I’ve seen billboards that ascribe a similar sentiment to God as it says, “Don’t make me come down there!” Yet, we as Christians believe that God ultimately does just that in his Son, Jesus Christ. We believe God so loved the world that God has come down, not to condemn us and the world but to save it.

If you are in a scary place right now, know that God is with you, all evidence to the contrary. And if you wonder if God is mad at you, know that God’s heart is broken because of all the brokenness in this world, and that he sent Jesus to love us and show us the way to wholeness and healing. In a few minutes, we will have concrete experience of that love as Jesus again comes down to us in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. This is not an image of God but the One True God made present for us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

My sermons don't always preach as they are written. For video of the sermon with the entire service, click here.