King David
is a central figure in Judaism . . . he was the ruler over the last undivided
house of Israel, who unified the twelve tribes, and whose reign has never been
equaled since. Jewish messianic
expectations revolve around him, around a Messiah in the Davidic line who will
restore the monarchy to its former glory.
Christians, of course, believe that Jesus Christ was that Messiah, and that his glorious reign is of a different
nature than earthly glory or military might.
Be that as it may, David is important in both of our traditions, so it
behooves us to spend a little time with him.
But first a
little background. David, you will
recall, was not the first King of
Israel . . . that honor belonged to Saul.
Not that God really wanted a king, you understand . . . God warned the
people through Samuel – the last of the judges, who (coincidentally, I’m sure)
would lose his high-paying job if a king were to arise – God warned the people of all the bad things
that would happen if they got themselves a king, but they didn’t listen, and so
God had Samuel pick Saul who – holy self-fulfilling prophecy – turned out to be
a less than stellar ruler, and the Spirit of God left him and an evil spirit sent from God took its place and drove
him nuts, and he chased David all over Palestine before getting cornered and
falling on his own sword. So much for
Saul.
And now
David is king, and he’s the best thing anybody’s ever seen, the best thing
since sliced way-bread, and he defeats all his enemies – with God’s help, of course
– and he’s living in a cedar house in Jerusalem – that’s a sure mark of
kingliness, if you’ve developed a taste for cedar – and he gets to ruminating
about how here he’s living in the lap of luxury and God’s ark is living in a
tent, and there’s this prophet named Nathan who would no doubt like to serve God in a shiny new cedar
temple, and son of a gun if he doesn’t say “Go, do what you have in mind; for
the Lord is with you.” But the Lord has
other ideas, and that very night God
tells Nathan “Go and tell my servant David:
Thus says the Lord: Are you the
one to build me a house of cedar?” Uh,
oh . . . sarcasm. It’s never good when
the Lord gets sarcastic. God goes on “I
haven’t lived in a house since the day I brought y’all up out of the land of Egypt”
– not-so-subtly reminding them of who did what for whom – “but I’ve been going
around in a tent and tabernacle.”
And can you
see that this speech is a remarkably understated piece of prose? At once it conveys God’s disdain for the idea
of living in cedar, and at the same time subtly rebukes David for doing the
same. I mean, if a tent is good enough
for God – ruler of all rulers, monarch of all monarchs – shouldn’t a tent, or
even a moth-eaten bedroll, for Moses’
sake – be good enough for David who, lest he forget, serves at God’s pleasure?
God is mobile, on the move, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee,
like David . . . or like David used to be, before he settled into his
fancy-schmancy house of cedar.
And God
reminds David about his forebears, the ones God didn’t want replaced by a king,
and he says “Did I ever once speak
any word to any of your predecessors, any of the tribal leaders of Israel –
whom, by the way, I commanded to shepherd my people Israel – did I ever once
say “Gee. I’d really love a house of
cedar. Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?” And this whole line of thought, of David
getting a little fat and happy in his
wooden house, will come to a head in next week’s passage, where David stays at
home while others go to war . . .
But here the
God of the highways and hedges, of the tents and tabernacles, takes out after
David and his request to build him a place to stay . . . this God is free, not
to be confined to anyone’s box, not to be molded into anyone’s shape. And that’s what David is trying to do . . .
he’s trying to build God a place of his own
choosing, to use God to legitimate his own
regime, his own living-in-cedar-clad
luxury . . . David wants to remake God in his own image, so he can justify the
way he himself wants to live . . .
and of course there’s always a lot of that going around, isn’t there? There’s always a lot of cedar thinking to be
had in organized religion . . . the most obvious being the purveyors of prosperity
doctrine, the sellers of “God wants
you to be happy or rich or insert-your-own-good-thing-here.” They’re most obvious on Trinity Broadcast
Network with their golden-throned sets and their “Something good is going to happen to you” message. But those targets are only the most obvious,
they’re low-hanging fruit, almost too easy . . . and they’re so egregious, so
over-the-top that they obscure the fact that even mainline churches have their own air-conditioned houses of cedar
built for God to occupy in a way that’s suits them just so . . .
Rick Warren,
author of the Purpose-Driven Life,
built a huge Southern Baptist church in California called Saddleback. And he did it in a wholly unconventional way
– he didn’t build a church building,
at least at first. He began by going out
into the community, propagating small groups in homes, house-churches, if you will.
By the time they got around to building a cedar house, they had
ten-thousand members. And he did it in part to avoid cedar thinking, to avoid
the comfortable, this-is-where-God-lives mentality that afflicts so many
congregations . . . he did it to avoid the worship-of-the-church building and
carpet and stained-glass-rose-window that plagues the mission of so many
congregations, which after all is to spread the gospel in deed, thought and
word . . .
Warren did build a church, there’s value to be
had in corporate worship and program development, but only after he’d established the moving-about-the-community, moving-out-into-the-community ethos of
Saddleback. He knew that our God is a
mobile God, an outward facing God,
who won’t be confined to a brick-and-mortar building any more than to a house
clad in cedar.
The God of
David and Rick Warren and you and me and Christians everywhere is a God that’s unpredictable, a God who’s in-motion who
will go wherever God wants, will be
whomever God wants. And in the second part of our passage
that freedom is demonstrated in a breath-taking pact with David. First God reviews what has been done for
David, summarized in a succinct triplet of verbs: I took
you from the pasture; I have been with
you wherever you went; I have cut off
all your enemies. One, two, three. God took
him up, out of obscurity, out of drudgery as the runt of Jesse’s
litter. God has been with him in all his trials, all his battles, all his running
and hiding from mad kings and enemies.
God took him, was with him, and cut off his foes. One, two three.
And it’s
followed immediately by another triplet, powered by another three verbs, only this time it’s about what God will do in
the future. I will make you a great name. I
will appoint a place for my people
Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies. God will make, appoint, and give-rest. God’s gracious action in the past is followed
by gracious actions in the future . . . and note that none of this is
conditioned on anything David has done.
As a matter of fact, unlike his offer to build God a cedar house, it is entirely out of David’s hands.
And speaking
of that, over and above all of this, or as God says, moreover, God will make
David a house, and here we’re playing with multiple meanings of bet, the Hebrew word for house . . .
earlier, in David’s promise and desire, it had meant temple, as in a sanctuary
for the Lord. Now, God has rejected house as a temple but promised
house as a dynasty . . . this passage is the birthplace, the taproot of the
house of David, over which wars have been fought and around which Messianic
expectations swirl. Surprisingly, David
cannot build a house for God, but God can and will build a house for David.
In God’s utter freedom – irrational as it may seem to us – God will
extend the favor shown to David in the past into the future as well.
Unlike
previous covenants with the state of Israel, the covenant with David is
unconditional –God’s faithful keeping of it does not depend upon anything David
or his heirs might do. In that respect,
it’s akin to the covenant with Abraham, whose heirs will be as numerous as
stars in the sky. And in fact, David’s
house will be made sure, it will be a
sure house, in Hebrew literally an amen bet, a house of amen . . . no
matter what David or his heirs do, no matter how badly they behave, their house
will be secure, their dynasty will survive . . . it will be an eternal covenant,
a Berít Olám . . .
And of
course this blows out of the water the oft-expressed belief that in the Old
Testament, God is angry and punishing, but in the New, God is gracious and
loving and therefore our God is better than yours . . . here is clear proof
otherwise. In fact, according to Walter
Brueggemann, this is the “root of evangelical faith in the Bible: that is,
faith that relies on the free promise of the gospel.”[1] Indeed, if the
gospel is that God’s steadfast love is not dependent on anything we do or do
not do, if it’s that God will not withdraw his love no matter what, if it’s
timeless and without end, then this eternal covenant with King David, this Berít Olám, seems like gospel, like
mighty good news, to me.
For of
course that’s how it is with us, isn’t it?
Even though Christians build houses of cedar and worship them, at times, instead of God, even
though we stay in our boxes and try to keep God in there with us, even though
we co-opt the God for all kinds of national and social agendas, God will not
withdraw the favor granted to us through Jesus Christ. Like God, grace is totally free, totally
without cost to us, so gratis we don't even have to accept it. And because covenant, our Berít Olám is so much like David’s,
taking a closer look at it seems like the thing to do. And so next week, and the week after, we’ll
do just that. Be there or be
square. Amen.
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