9th Sunday After Pentecost

 2 Sam 7:1-14a

I feel like I have been a bit remiss this summer.  Here we decided we should read the David narratives together in worship and then we have basically ignored them all summer.  Now the story is almost complete and we have barely talked about them at all.  But today we are going to take at least this one day to experience this story because I love David.  I actually wrote my master thesis on the David narratives in Samuel and Chronicles.  I studied under the great Ralph Klein and have probably spent more time studying this section of the bible than any other.

David, alongside maybe Peter, is probably my favorite biblical character because he is so very human.  He makes mistakes, he does shady things, his love life is a mess, his family is a mess, he lives, he laughs, he sings, he dances, he is truly one of us.  And God loves him.  And God favors him and cares for him even when he makes catastrophic mistakes.  And when he does, God corrects him and guides him and forgives him and lets him start again.  So if David, messy flawed David, and God can figure this out, can stay in relationship, can love each other despite everything maybe there is hope for you and me too.  In fact that was sort of the point of my thesis, David as literary type, an example of the hope of repentance and forgiveness for the people of Israel while in exile.

And this passage, this section right here from today is the heart of it all, the place where God explains how he dwells with his people and establishes his covenant with David.  Man, sometimes I wish we could all read this passage in Hebrew together because the Hebrew is fantastic in here.  There are all these subtle little plays on words and words that rhyme and words that have double meanings with the shepherds and the houses and everything.  But alas.  Even in English this passage is still great.

Basically, David has come to the end of his very long, complicated and messy rise to power.  He has definitively established his kingship and moved his capital to Jerusalem.  Now he thinks, like all great kings he should build a great temple to his God.  Which the prophet Nathan initially agrees is the logical thing to do.  But he was wrong.  Because Our God is different.  God reminds them that he is not like other ancient gods.  Our God is a God that dwells among his people.  That moves about with his people, that stands by them in times of trial and strife.  All through their long time wandering in the dessert and the long path of settling in the promised land, God stayed living among the people of Israel and that hasn’t changed.

Instead God offers this incredible and startling reversal to David.  David say he will build God a house of Cedar for him to live in and then in this really astonishing bit of Hebrew God comes back and says that “the Lord with make you a house”.  But this house the house the Lord will make isn’t of wood or stone but of people an unbroken line of followers that continues to this day.  God chooses to dwell not in buildings made by human hands but in the hearts of those who love him.  That is where the covenant promise lies.

And indeed, David’s son Solomon did eventually build a physical temple in Jerusalem as a place to gather the people together in worship, but that temple did not last forever, neither did the one that followed, neither did or will any of the other great religious buildings of the earth.  Because that is not the promise that God made.  God indeed promises to dwell with his people, to establish the kingdom of God forever. But in our hearts.  God promises that we will be his children and he will be our father, forever.  Through every generation, a promise made universal in Jesus Christ.  And this has profound implications for how we think of ourselves as church.   

I think it’s just fantastic that this Sunday is the Sunday that we decided we are going to worship outside in a tent.  I wish I could say that I carefully planned it this way but alas I am not actually that clever.  But here we are back in the tabernacle, worshiping a God who is profoundly mobile, who moves around among his people, who prefers the freedom and flexibility of a tent to a great imposing temple.

A few weeks ago, we talked about what it would mean to be a church of weeds not cedar.  Well maybe today it is time to think about what it would mean to be a church in a tent not a temple.  Because a church doesn’t need a building to be a church.  FedUp, All.together and the Church at Crossroads are all prime examples of this reality.  Which is not to say that church buildings are bad or unimportant.  They are wonderful places to gather people together, to show the majesty of God, to provide beauty and constancy to worshipers, to provide space to serve the community.

But the church is not a building.  The church is people.  The house that God chooses to live in, isn’t wood or stone, it’s in our hearts.  God chooses always to dwell among his people.  Inside, outside, wherever they may be.  Which also means that everywhere we go and everything we do is still church.  The church is not a place that we go for an hour or so a week, it is something we carry with us.  When we go about our lives, when we go out in the community, when we love and serve others, we are being the church.  We are and always will be the dwelling place of God.  The place where he chooses, lovingly, freely, willingly to live.  Even when we sin, even when we stray, even when we approach Davidic levels of epic failure to live up to God’s standards, God chooses to remain with us, to keep the covenant, to stick with us.  To help us, to guide, us and to let us start again.  And so that is the good news that we share.  Whether we are gathered around the Lord’s Table, gathered around a picnic table, gathered around our kitchen table or scattered around the world.  Amen