2 Samuel 7:1-17 · God’s Promise to David
No More Camping Out
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Sermon
by Schuyler Rhodes
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I wanted to see if we could get a show of hands today. Are there any folks here who went through a "nomadic period" in their lives? Did any of you ever enter a time in your life when you sort of camped out? A time when you were unsettled or on the move? Maybe you stole some nights on a friend's couch. Perhaps you were on the road for a while, or maybe you just wandered about for a time, trying out different places and new experiences. I know that it happened to me. For a number of years I lived a nomadic sort of life, trying out a host of different things. I moved here and there, trying my hand at truck driving, selling shoes, carpentry, and running a café.

I had a great time. For my folks it was torture. I remember someone reported to me that they had asked my dad how I was doing. As the story goes, he heaved a huge sigh while looking skyward, and finished the exhale with the words, "Someday he'll light." Ultimately, of course, I did settle down and head off to seminary, but not before adding a few more gray hairs to my father's thinning collection. While bugging my folks, it all seemed quite normal to me. After all, it was my life, and I was having a good time.

But finally, I landed. And today with a wonderful family and a great ministry, I feel blessed beyond description. I guess it was time.

In our scripture reading today we hear about another landing. In this case, it's the people of Israel. Talk about wandering around a bit! These people had been there and back again. I remember as a young boy in church school seeing what some scholar presumed as a possible route that the tribes of Israel had taken through the Sinai. Drawn in a thin red line, it went round and round, and looped back and forth until it looked like a giant plate of spaghetti overlaid onto the map. I can see God rolling his eyes and sighing as he wondered when they would light.

And finally, they did. As we come to our passage from 2Samuel, we find the people Israel with a new king. The newly anointed King David has just laid waste to the Philistines, whose land God was giving them. Scripture doesn't give it much attention, but the carnage can be imagined in filmic detail. All the men were killed and the women and children were either sold as slaves or taken as slaves with the Israelites. After this, David takes 30,000 "chosen" men of Israel to accompany him to Jerusalem with the Ark of God. It is a victory march of sorts. An eventful trip, indeed.

One of David's men, who was named Uzzah, was walking with the Ark, which had been placed on a new cart that they had gotten just for this occasion. We don't know much about Uzzah, except that he was the son of Abinadab, and that in Hebrew, his name means strength. Well, Uzzah and his brother, Ahio, were driving this cart containing the Ark of God while the rest of the crowd was getting kind of excited. They were singing and carrying on and "dancing with all their might" (2 Samuel 6:5) as the procession moved on to Jerusalem.

With all the noise and celebration one can only imagine that the oxen pulling the cart would get a little nervous. Maybe they halted or reared up; maybe they pulled in a different direction or simply bolted. Whatever took place, the cart began to shake, and old Uzzah thrust his hand out to the Ark in an attempt to steady it. Wrong move. God, it seems, was averse to having his Ark touched in any way. [His] "anger was kindled" (2 Samuel 6:7)" because Uzzah had touched the Ark, and God struck him down. He died right there beside the Ark.

This made David a little angry. Have you ever been angry at God? You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Have you ever been really angry at your Creator? Angry for the wars and the violence? Angry for having someone taken from you? Angry at him for Florida in the 2000 presidential election? Angry because of the way this world was made? Well, David was angry at God, too. But in a very real way he wasn't angry at the same God that you and I get exercised at today. No. I'm not trying to say that God changes. God is God. Immutable, eternal, that which is greater than you or I can conceive. No. It's not God who changes. It's we who change. Thus, our perceptions of God change, and we can see this by the way people relate to their understanding of God throughout our history.

This was a God untempered by the religion of Jesus. This was not the gentle Jesus kind of God who snuggles up with the kids on his lap. This was a God who could lose it and "burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah" (2 Samuel 6:8). This was God with an attitude.

David was not only angry; he was scared. "How," he wondered, "can the Ark come into my care," if God's gonna zap anyone who slips and touches it? What's that about? But he and God ultimately worked it out, and David once again proceeded to dance his way into Israel.

Now enters the daughter of Saul, David's predecessor. She takes one look at the new king dancing in his underwear in front of the servants, and has a fit. She lets David know in no uncertain terms that she sees this as highly inappropriate behavior for a king. She didn't get what Uzzah got, it's true. But for her loose lips she remained childless the rest of her days. You can see that having a relationship with God in those days was sometimes a rocky road. Finally, though, the Ark came to the city of David and was placed in a tent that David pitched for the occasion. God is settled into his tent, and David goes into his fine new house to get settled. But it didn't last long.

Soon, the prophet Nathan, at God's bidding comes and lays out a deal. Basically, God is going to let the people light. "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...." This is a planting that echoes down the generations to Jesus, who because of this landing, is of the lineage of David. Without this planting we would not even be here today to celebrate this season.

Planting is important. Lighting someplace matters.

Like plants, human beings need roots to sink into the soil. Even nomadic herders identify with the places they inhabit, understanding themselves to be part of the landscape. Being somewhere, with roots and a sense of belonging, is significant for many people. For David and his people, it was time. Even God seems tired of hanging around in a tent and hints loudly that he too wants a "house of cedar." So, the people are planted, and therein hangs a tale that continues for generations right up until Joseph and Mary head to Bethlehem for the census.

So there we are. God has located the people and has promised them peace. And in the bargain, God gets a temple. I wonder, as I think about the history of our ancestors in the faith, and what these things mean to us: How is it that these stories touch, and help to form us as a people of faith? And I can't help, as I wonder this close to Christmas time, seeing us in the same light I see Israel all those years ago.

Of course there are differences, but I would say that there are many similarities that can inform and touch us. Looking at the church of today, I imagine a tribe wandering through the wilderness of Sinai. I see that spaghetti plate map, and I think more of my denomination than I do of the tribe of Moses. What do you think? As a church, does it feel to you like we are planted by God? Do you feel safe? Undisturbed? And if not, can you say why not?

Does it feel that the lineage of David, established by God and leading to the birth of Jesus, has an impact on us here today? Have we landed here, been planted here to take root in this soil? Or are we wandering in circles in the Sinai of our own culture, feeling lost and afraid to reach out for God because we might meet the same fate as Uzzah?

Friends, we sit on the edge of Christmastide, and perhaps some are wondering if this is the appropriate time for such talk. Shouldn't we, after all, just have a nice homily and retire to the fire with cocoa and our stockings? Shouldn't we just take a large breath and decorate the tree? Well, yes. Yes, that is, and no.

Certainly your pastor plans on celebrating Christmas with all the warmth and joy that our traditions offer. But it is important, in the midst of our comfort, to understand that it is into a most uncertain world that the people Israel were planted. It was into the land of another people that the lineage of David was placed. We are born of the Spirit, you and I, and we are offspring of a wandering people, a tribe buoyed up by a mighty God even as they bow down before the golden calf (Exodus 32:1-10).

Sisters and brothers, as we gather this moment in our own temple, let us recognize that we, too, have landed in a strange land. We are a people of love and generosity, lost in a land of anger and greed. We are a people who claim the redemptive power of self giving love in the midst of a storm of narcissistic grasping, and we are a people who have been planted in this place by a mighty God, who calls us into motion and ministry; a Savior who walks with us and comes to us in this time.

This Christmas, if only a little, let us remember from whence we come so that together we can walk into a future that God calls us to build. This Christmas, if only a little, let us kneel before this Son of David as ones who truly seek to serve. And this Christmas, if only a little, let us sink our roots and allow God to plant us in hope, in mission, in ministry, and in joy.

Amen.

CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Sermons on the First Readings: Sermons for Sundays in Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, Words for a Birthing Church, by Schuyler Rhodes