The House God Builds

July 16, 2006, 6^thSunday after Pentecost

II Samuel 7:1-17

Rev. Dr James E. Roghair

Introduction – Where Does God Live?

“ An inner-city congregation was trying as best it could to reach out to the changing neighborhood in which it was located. The church started an after-school program for the children of the neighborhood, many of whom were children of racial minorities – different from the congregation and its pastors. One afternoon, as they were welcoming the children into the church, a tiny ... boy – maybe four years old – entered with an expression of awe all over his face. Wide-eyed, he looked up at the pastors and asked, ‘Are you God?’

“Taken aback by the question, the pastors managed something to the effect that they were just God's helpers. The little boy then wanted to know where God was. His mother had told him that the church building was God's house, and he had come expecting to meet God.

Having a sense of “home, is one of the basic human experiences and what one scholar has called the base metaphor by which we all live.” All of us know about a sense of being at home – or not being at home. And so there is something very universal about home for everyone.

“When we ask about God's home, we are naturally confused, for – unlike finite humans – God does not occupy a ‘place’ or a ‘space.’ God is beyond space and locale” “Where is God's home? Certainly not confined to a church building. Yet the Bible is not shy about speaking of where God dwells. In fact, one could write a history of biblical thought on the basis of belief about where it is that God resides. Today the question of God's home seems even more confusing. While the church through the centuries has made some kind of claim of being God's dwelling place, today that assumption is often challenged.”

“We hear much about God's home.” Perhaps God is within us, in our hearts or spirits. Perhaps God is in nature – in the beauties of the mountains and forests and in the quiet of the mountain streams or the golf course. And so people may feel they can best find God apart from any organized expression of faith.http://www.Sermonsuite.com)

What do you think? Where does God dwell?

Introduction to Reading from II Samuel

Today I want to read you much an extended story from the Old Testament. It is about where God lives. This passage found in the 7^th Chapter of II Samuel, lays a theological groundwork for much of the thinking of the Old Testament, and is therefore profoundly important to New Testament understandings, as well.

It is important to hear in this reading a massive play on words. The word translated from the Hebrew as ‘house’ has two basic meanings and each of those meanings has two variations. One meaning of ‘house’ is a physical dwelling – a building, and the other ‘house’ is a family. The variations on the physical house are: (1) the house or palace that the king lives in, and (2) the temple where a God would be worshiped. These are similar and yet not quite the same – palace and temple. Then there is (3) the family as ‘house,’ (as you or I might be of the House of Roghair or the house of Smith) and (4) the ‘house’ as a dynasty like the House of Windsor. So listen for these four uses of the word ‘house’ in the reading: Palace, temple, family, dynasty. It is the play on words that makes David’s thinking meaningful.

David thinks it is time for God to settle down and so David decides to help God do that. But God takes offense at David’s domesticating notion and turns around promising that God will make of David a great house, but God does not want David building anything of bricks and mortar for God.

II Samuel 1-29 (NRSV)

1Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2the 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.’ 3Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.’

4 But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: 5Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6I 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. 7Wherever 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?’ 8Now 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; 9and 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. 10And 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, 11from 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. 12When 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. 13He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 14I 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. 15But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever. 17In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.

Walter Bruggemann, one of our foremost Old Testament scholars today, says that this chapter is "the dramatic and theological center of the entire Samuel corpus,” i.e the two books of Samuel which span such a crucial time in Israel’s history. “Indeed,” Bruggemann suggests, this chapter “is one of the most crucial texts in the Old Testament ...” (Walter Bruggemann, First and Second Samuel, Louisville: John Knox Press, 1973, p. 253.)

In the ancient middle east, there was a strong and deep relationship between certain gods and certain lands. The gods were sovereign over their own land but had no power in other lands. So the king oftentimes identified himself with the god – either as a son of the god or sometimes even as a god himself.

Building a temple was important for legitimizing any leader’s place in history. Some of this kind of building to legitimize still goes on today. A "presidential library," though built after a president's time in office, still serves the purpose of legitimizing the time in office. And sometimes church leaders, or university presidents, and other kinds of institutional heads look to buildings to give them a sense of fulfillment – or an opportunity to leave a physical legacy.

If we were to follow David's rise to power, we would see him succeed in putting down the Philistine threat, taking Jerusalem as his political capital, and then bringing the ark of the covenant – that relatively small sacred box, which in its own empty space signified for the Hebrew people the presence of God in their midst, between the golden cherubim on this small box was an empty place that was the symbolic seat of the invisible God.

However, up to David’s time this ark of the Covenant was kept in a tent. And that begins to worry David. Why? David was building a modern city. It had big permanent buildings made of substantial materials – built to last and to stay put. Perhaps David had a sense of guilt that he shouldn’t have a place better than God’s.

Or is it that David was ashamed of God. Ashamed, like a teenager who suddenly realizes that his/her parents don’t match up to the standards that the teen has in mind for him/herself. The parents are too shabby, or too much from the old country, or too rural – not sophisticated enough. And the adolescent either sets out to distance herself from the parents or to remake them. David might have thought that the God of an up-and-coming modern state should have an up-and-coming temple in which to live. And so David would make God over to meet these new requirements.

Whatever the reasons for David's intent to build God a home in Jerusalem, the prophet Nathan’s declaration that David was not to build the temple is theologically a very important passage. The reason Bruggemann believes this chapter is so essential to our faith is that in the Scriptures up until this time, God's covenants (or God’s own commitments) have been conditional -- if you do thus and so, then God will respond.

Here for the first time is the suggestion that God is really the only initiator in the covenant process. God will be faithful even if the people are not faithful. God does not depend on David for anything. The reign of David is not to be conditional on David’s dusting off God’s image by making a new house for God. Rather, David’s reign is to endure because God has decided to make of David into a dynasty – a house.

God’s commitment cannot be shaken by human sin and unfaithfulness. Bruggemann says, “In this astonishing promise, Yahweh [God] has signed a blank check ... and has radically shifted the theological foundations of Israel (Ibid, p. 257).” Yes, there will still be expectations and sanctions. But now there is an unconditional element in the promise. There will always be tension between the two sides of the covenant, ‘I will be your God,’ and ‘You will be my people.’ But now God takes the unilateral initiative.

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I would suggest that we might ponder this sort of theology for our day. I think that we are ever prone to try to dust off the house, on God’s behalf. People have built grand edifices, even as the one we are worshiping in today. And like David we may think that the edifice itself is necessary for God. We may assume that God needs us to legitimize God’s kingdom – to bring it up to date – to make it real. Perhaps like David we forget that it is not us who make God who God is, but God who makes us who we are! It is God who calls us out of the world to be the church and it is God who demands – no, pleads with us – yes, invites us to be faithful.

And so First Congregational Church – what do we learn from the interchange of God and David through Nathan the prophet? Do we learn that God wants us to have no permanent place for worship and Christian service? Probably not. In later material a permanent home is built for God’s worship – the temple in Jerusalem.

But never is the temple to contain all of who God is – always it is only a place for worship and praise. And so is this church and its real estate. To hold it too highly is to miss the point that God is never contained in any physical structure – but to disregard the value of the worship and service that can take place in the buildings is to miss a great deal of the gift God gives to us.

And so a part of our interim adventure will be to find a way into the future for this church. We might remember that even King David – that one so highly regarded in the Old Testament – cannot make God over into David’s image. God remains free to come and go, to do as God pleases.

We may have certain thoughts about how we can make the church into what we think it should be. But really we all must rely on God’s initiative. It is up to God to help us discover who or what First Congregational church should be in the future.

And so I invite you to pray. To pray recognizing the gifts God has given you. You are an old church with the gift of being God’s people. But always, being God’s people remains God’s gift. We are never the ones to identify the terms of that giftedness.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(This sermon relies very heavily on Emphasis in www.Sermonsuite.com . Unidentified quotes above relate to this source.)