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.