Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

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Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, July 19

I think today’s passage is one of those texts where something that seems remote to us reflects a significant moment in time for a previous generation.

While visiting Joerg Utpatel in Germany on vacation, we visited his boyhood hometown of Ripsnick in northern, formerly East Germany. Joerg’s dad was a pastor and he told us that every Sunday morning his dad would put on his clergy robe and walk the three-four blocks to the church so all could see. I didn’t understand the point until he added that in the time of communist rule, to be a pastor or a public Christian was a risky, bold thing. I realized his dad’s simple walk was a powerful witness – one I can’t fully appreciate now but that clearly carried great weight at the time.

Sometime in the late sixties, during a real year of drought on the plains of North Dakota, some of the farmers who attended the small Zoar United Methodist church – the childhood church of my wife’s Tammy’s parents – built a Christmas tree made of tumbleweed to stand outside the church on Christmas eve. Some thirty years later, the pastor wrote a note telling them that at the time their willingness to work together to proclaim their faith in a difficult year was an amazing and powerful sign of hope. Driving by the church today (it closed last Sunday), one can’t appreciate the power of the act so long ago that only a few people saw.

And so it is with this text in which the image and perception of God’s presence in the world begins to shift. Earlier in 2 Samuel, David was anointed King of Israel (5:1-5) and consolidated political power in Jerusalem culminating in the construction of a royal palace of Lebanon cedar and with great drama and liturgical fanfare brought the ark of the Lord to rest in a tent in Jerusalem (6:1-23).

David is clearly feeling comfortable and presumably desires that the ark of the Lord – the very presence of the Lord – have a house as well. David alludes to a desire to build a temple in Jerusalem for the ark of the Lord. That night, however, the Lord intervenes by way of Nathan with a theological statement about the ‘house’ of David.

The promise, anchored in the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt (7:6), plays with the Hebrew word bayit, meaning house. David sits in his palatial house contemplating building a house for the Lord. The divine promise, however, is of a house not of stone or cedar, but a royal dynasty that the Lord establishes forever (7:16).

This passage is not just about the graciousness of the Lord in not demanding a suitable dwelling. Rather, it makes the central point that this God of Israel is one whose very nature is to be ‘on the move’ and to be calling his people to follow. He has travelled with them out of a place of captivity to one where they can dwell secure (cf. v. 10). This is a God who travels with people and whose sanctuary, the symbol of divine presence, is not one which radiates, but pilgrimage and journey. (Samuel Giere)

And yet, a shift has begun to happen. A temple will indeed be built a short time later by Samuel, recorded in the 1st book of Chronicles, introducing a companion theology to that of the “movable tabernacle” and its theology of journey. It is the “fixed temple” and a theology of place. Within our tradition, we have both of these images. The temporary tent speaks to a theology of God’s presence in our wandering through life, a God of the journey. The temple and its location in a specific place points to a God we find located in a particular place and time. Depending on the time and circumstance, the embracing of these two theological views has been a powerful component in the molding of the people of God.

A few months ago, I attended a forum of our sister congregation, Madison Mennonite Church. Because they share this building with us, and have done so for almost 20 years, I wanted them to know that we were embarking on a Next Generation inspired look at our building. I raised the question of whether or not they would want to participate in any subsequent remodeling or expansion – even if it meant adopting a small portion of the project. If we put on solar panels, for example, maybe you would want to be responsible for that? While there was great enthusiasm for our efforts and admiration for our overall Next Generation process, one man acknowledged that for them to pay anymore than rent for this building would require a shift in thinking. We live with a theology of a “movable tabernacle” he said, referring to this very discussion between Nathan, David and God. In response, I acknowledged the beauty of that theology, but commented that we (ORUCC) seemed to be increasingly returning to the idea of a “theology of place.” What does it mean to be God’s people in THIS time, in THIS place with these present circumstances – in our congregation and in our neighborhood? Both perspectives are valid and every congregation or group of people, indeed every individual, needs to work through the balance of both.

Understanding the Holy One as the “god of our journeys” acknowledges that what matters in our faith is that God is present in our lives. We are not puppets manipulated by God, nor are we abandoned by the clockmaker God who makes the clock and then says – ‘you are on your own.’ The Exodus God, the God of the Pilgrims, can be found in and through every moment of our lives.

An old high school friend came through town, someone we hadn’t seen in over 20 years. He is a recovering alcoholic and told us that he first learned to meditate at AA meetings. I could never just sit and meditate on my own, he said, but when I was in the middle of a meeting when someone was droning on and on, repeating the same story over and over – and I was tired of simply looking for another cookie or cup of coffee – I took the opportunity to begin meditating – visualizing my breathing, repeating a simple prayer. He found the God of his journeys right where he was, on the ground on which he sat.

A theology of places highlights that God is a part of our concrete history and circumstance. It highlights that if God is to be known in this neighborhood, on the prairies that surround this city, or in critical moments and places in history – it is in part because people of God commit themselves to loving a place and time, to learning its nuances and to offering a concrete witness through their hard work, persistence, and patience. The powerful witness of faith in South Africa and the Christian resistors to Nazi Germany come to mind. The presence and ministry of Christians in Palestine or the steadfast faith of so many in our own inner cities could be cited.

And yet, the text is about more than just David and Nathan. It points to an evolving faith, a people whose ideas about God are not forever constant. It offers us the question, “how are we evolving, learning, growing in our faith? How is our understanding of God adaptive in the face of our changing lives?

In a recent book, The Evolution of God, Robert Wright says that the single most important way to keep growing with God is to avoid thinking about others –people, animals, the creation – in zero sum ways. If our basic belief is that God wants us to get along with others – those who share our faith and those who don’t – and if we keep opening ourselves to the Spirit in situations in our lives – in our relationships with others – then we are going to continually grow in our understanding of the way God works in the world.

For example,
We befriend a Muslim or Hindu, we worship in their sacred spaces or share stories and rituals from our respective traditions, and we come away with a deeper sense of God’s movement in the world. I have a Muslim friend in my home, he interrupts our dinner to go pray to the east in our living room, and my sense of God as a God of discipline and persistence is enhanced. I don’t have to embrace the totality of his faith, but I am compelled to grow and learn about MY faith, my experience of God.

A family member goes through a crisis of their own doing – maybe their addictions cause them to lose their job or relationship, maybe their materialism comes back to haunt them. As we seek to maintain a relationship with them we often get to choose between being judgmental (I told you so or I knew this would happen) or respectful and humble (there but by the grace of God go I). Our desire to remain in relationship is powerful and often complicated and seldom easy– but to do so stretches us and our understanding of divine grace. Our biblical forebears witness for us that indeed, these are powerful opportunities for our own faith, our own journey into deeper relationship with God.
I think much of the resistance to religious life in our culture is rooted in an unwillingness to see God in new ways. People reject the God they learned about in childhood, in their parents’ home, in some previous tradition. However, there is a lack of desire or energy or interest to consider the idea that faith evolves, that others experience and relate to God in different ways – ways that aren’t oppressive, abusive, or parochial.

If we didn’t open ourselves to new learning after our childhood in the areas of finance, relationships, gardening, eating or politics – would we not be stuck and trapped also? Why is religion any different?

What the world needs is not less religion, Christian activist Jim Wallis often says, but better religion. I would contend, humbly, that “better” religion means faith that is more open, more adaptive, and rooted in right relationships BEFORE right beliefs. It is for this reason that the way we live matters. WE bring our faith experience to others.

Maybe we witness to the power of loving same sex relationships in our more traditional or conservative families.

Maybe we speak to the power of prayer and spirit in our daily lives to those who are agnostic or skeptical.
Maybe we witness a compelling desire to learn from those who are different in circles of friends who are all too comfortable in their small worlds.

The ways are varied, but the truth remains – our faith experience, coupled with our love for others, influences and motivates and shapes others.

May our lives, and our faith, be a witness to the compelling and hopeful grace of God – always constant and forever changing. May we know the presence of the Spirit each and every day from daybreak to dawn and may our work for peace and love and community be done right where we are, on the ground upon which we stand. Amen.

2 Samuel 7:1-14a God’s Covenant with David
God’s Covenant with David
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, ‘See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.’ Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.’
But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’
Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, 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. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings.