The Giver Becomes the Receiver
Sermon
Light in the Land of Shadows
Cycle B Sermons for Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany, First Lesson Texts
Object:
The text for today lifts before us Yahweh's choice of the family of David as the vehicle for God's divine gift to humankind. Yet the message marked a transition in David's status. According to the passage, David wanted to build Yahweh a "house." He proposed to do what all self-serving rulers in that ancient world would have done. Much of Israel's worship life was well established at that point. The tent which housed the Ark of the Covenant was a recognized institution. A conviction began to emerge that God dwelt within this tent in its Holy of Holies. King David wanted to build a divine residence of cedar which would contain the Holy of Holies.
Nathan originally blessed this idea. But God changed God's mind and offered a second opinion. The temple would be built by David's son, Solomon. Instead, Yahweh would make David himself the "house" of God by guaranteeing his embodiment concretely in this man's family and dynasty. What a transition. The achiever, the one who wanted to give the gift to God, became the receiver of God's gift. The "Davidic idea" became fixed in the imagination of Israel and is to this day in Advent remembered as initiating the coming Christ.
One of the amazing aspects of the Bible is its honesty. The sordid aspects of human experience are included with the positive aspects. Human failure and human triumph comprise the environment for God's revelation. The guilty and the guiltless find their way into the pages of this chronicle of God's revelation to humankind.
The scriptures use the example of David's desire to do something for God to teach us all a lesson about patience, waiting, and freedom. The changed mind after David's quick conclusion points to a particular character of the God of the Bible. This God is a come-and-go God whose dynamism cannot be settled or confined to one place. Unlike every other god, this God needs no house, wants no house, and has no house. At a deep level the housing project denial points toward David's love for God. Daniel Day Williams is correct: "Love always makes itself vulnerable by willing the freedom of the other."1
The love David displayed toward Yahweh and Yahweh's freedom was no small matter for that time and place.
In preliterate and simply-structured societies, religion played a unifying role in life. The village was a self-contained society in which all rituals and symbols were religious ones. "The religious" was not relegated to one aspect or activity of life, distinct from the other aspects. Speaking of the religious and the nonreligious or secular as two different dimensions of life would have been foreign to a preliterate society. To live at all was to live within a religious community with clearly defined rites of passage on the journey home. Every major event in life, from pregnancy and childbirth to the cutting of the first tooth, puberty, the first haircut, marriage, and vocation carried religious rites of passage like clear signposts along one's ultimate journey home.2
A wholeness of outlook characterized the civilization of David's time. The private and the social were not separated from one another. Religion tended to unify or support all elements of life, both social and individual. David's recognition that God needed no house was a fundamental aspect of his being allowed the honor of the "Davidic ideal" which ultimately produced the Christ child. Only as David was willing to "let go" of his desire to bring a gift to God and let God bring the gift to him, was the revelation made complete. The text is more than a rhetorical inversion. It is a powerful message for today's Christian. We, too, are called to let go and let God bring God's gift to us.
Do you remember your first day of school? It was one of life's great separations. Perhaps your parent drove up the circular driveway of an elementary school. You perhaps clutched her hand as tightly as possible as you passed legions of strangers on their way to the classroom. You stood at the door and, perhaps, she literally had to push you in. The classroom probably appeared to be the most foreboding room you had ever entered.
Looking back, that time of "letting go" of mother's hand was a necessary step. It was indeed the time to "let go" and enter another experience. Life is essentially a series of separations. We let go of certain experiences in favor of other experiences. Friends are gained and then we are separated. Sometimes couples marry and at other times they separate. Sometimes our "letting go" involves places: we leave our hometowns; we leave our schools; we even leave our churches. Sometimes we let go of roles or patterns of relating. We let go of our roles as parents, as children, as students. Sometimes we even "let go" of attitudes and beliefs. In those moments of "letting go" we come to realize how intensely loyal we are to the people, the places, and the attitudes which have shaped us.
Letting go is a necessary part of life. The Bible is full of separations. Abraham and Lot separated so each could live and multiply. In the newly-found freedom as humans with a mind of their own, Adam and Eve had to separate from the Garden of Eden. In the book of Exodus, God told Israel: "I have separated you from all the people that are on the face of the earth" (33:16). David was told to let go of the idea that he controlled God's housing needs. Jesus himself was separated from his family and his family's business. In order for the early church to be more than four little families meeting together in upper rooms to remember Jesus, those people had to separate and trust God to come among them in God's own freedom.
God has given our human personality many weapons with which to encounter life and find the way home at the end of it. We possess fight and flight responses, administrative ability, anger, ego, temperament, grief reaction, and the like. These characteristics sometimes make it difficult for us to simply let go and wait for God to be God.
The Bible tells us that right after he was baptized, Jesus Christ faced the greatest temptation of his life. He had just realized that he was the Messiah. He was at the point of beginning his ministry. Satan tempted him to try to live his whole life in a moment's time. Satan promised him instant accomplishment of his ministry. Listen to the account: "The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, 'I will give you all their authority and splendor ... so if you worship me, it will all be yours' " (Luke 4:5-7). Just like that, promised the devil. Instant achievement. No waiting. No having to grasp the slow wisdom of the world. A shortcut, just for the taking, in an instant, was held forth. But who was deceiving whom? The devil was merely offering to Jesus in a shorter span of time what would ultimately be his anyway. God had promised Jesus that achievement from the very beginning at Bethlehem. The devil was merely offering Jesus something he was already promised. But the devil did offer it to him in an instant. That was the difference.
We moderns often find ourselves unable to let go of our need to be in charge and allow God to bring to us the gifts God wants to give. The late L.D. Johnson used to contend that one of the bizarre facts of life is this one. The more religious people become, the less patient and comfortable they become with the mystery and freedom of God. Those who consider themselves very religious tend to point their finger at us and claim God is this or God is that. The freedom of God is the heart of all religion. You'd think the closer you got to God the more overwhelmed you would be by the awesomeness and indescribable nature of God. You'd think the closer you got to God the less clear-cut would be your expression of God.3
David's ability to step back and let God provide him with the same gift he wanted to give God was an impetus of inversion that was reflected in the grand gift to come. No greater ruler ever commanded the Israelite people. David was depicted as God's personal choice to lead the chosen people. He unified the two nations of Israel and Judah. He was impetuous, aggressive, charismatic, manipulative and, above all, a great administrator. He removed the last vestige of Canaanite power in the land.
But when David allowed the inversion to take place, when he allowed God to give him the gift, he established a process which foreshadowed the coming Christ. Kings normally give gifts. They do not receive them, especially from God. Consider the images used by the descendant of David, Jesus the Christ, to provide this same wonderful good news.
Jesus washed with water. Whether it was the smelly feet of the disciples or his own baptism, he showed that this image was definitely a change. He took a towel, wrapped it around himself, and washed the smelly feet of his disciples. That was, indeed, out of sync. Everyone knows that disciples wash their master's feet. The proper image is of a religious leader like our society's Pope in Rome sitting on an altar with a huge canopy of gilded bronze ringed in Renaissance splendor by the Swiss Guard in their scarlet and gold. That's image projection at its finest, is it not? Everyone knows that winning coaches have coliseums named after them, author books, do television commercials, and have swimming pools in the shape of their school's mascot. Messianic coaches do not go into the locker room after the game, take out towels and basins of water, and start washing the smelly feet of their players. Yet this crazy son of God would do just that. That's a powerful image, one must admit.
Secondly, Jesus gave suppers with bread and wine to show that his new life was a brotherhood or sisterhood. That, too, is an image that shocks us. Banquets are given in honor of great people; great people do not give banquets for the poor.
Jesus touched people with his hands -- whether they were lepers or diseased or dead, like Lazarus. He touched people society would not touch. What a reverse image projection that was! Most of the societal projection of a great religious leader is the number of important people the leader touches -- the winning coach, the Hollywood actor, Miss America, the converted infamous criminal, the bestsellers. Not Jesus! His hands touched those that society would not touch.
This strange process of inversion which makes us the receiver of a gift from God is the essence of our Advent hope. Advent recognizes a transition in our status as worshippers of God. We are now the receivers of the ultimate gift: God in Christ comes to make us the house of his dwelling. This notification is as heady for us as it once was for this precarious tribal chieftain named David. There is no greater joy that can be promised us.
____________
1. Daniel Day Williams, "The Vulnerable and the Invulnerable God," Union Seminary Quarterly Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, p. 225.
2. Some of the material in this sermon has been previously published in Harold C. Warlick, Jr., Homeward Bound (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Co., 1991) and is used by permission.
3. As quoted in L.D. Johnson, Moments of Reflection (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1980), p. 39.
Nathan originally blessed this idea. But God changed God's mind and offered a second opinion. The temple would be built by David's son, Solomon. Instead, Yahweh would make David himself the "house" of God by guaranteeing his embodiment concretely in this man's family and dynasty. What a transition. The achiever, the one who wanted to give the gift to God, became the receiver of God's gift. The "Davidic idea" became fixed in the imagination of Israel and is to this day in Advent remembered as initiating the coming Christ.
One of the amazing aspects of the Bible is its honesty. The sordid aspects of human experience are included with the positive aspects. Human failure and human triumph comprise the environment for God's revelation. The guilty and the guiltless find their way into the pages of this chronicle of God's revelation to humankind.
The scriptures use the example of David's desire to do something for God to teach us all a lesson about patience, waiting, and freedom. The changed mind after David's quick conclusion points to a particular character of the God of the Bible. This God is a come-and-go God whose dynamism cannot be settled or confined to one place. Unlike every other god, this God needs no house, wants no house, and has no house. At a deep level the housing project denial points toward David's love for God. Daniel Day Williams is correct: "Love always makes itself vulnerable by willing the freedom of the other."1
The love David displayed toward Yahweh and Yahweh's freedom was no small matter for that time and place.
In preliterate and simply-structured societies, religion played a unifying role in life. The village was a self-contained society in which all rituals and symbols were religious ones. "The religious" was not relegated to one aspect or activity of life, distinct from the other aspects. Speaking of the religious and the nonreligious or secular as two different dimensions of life would have been foreign to a preliterate society. To live at all was to live within a religious community with clearly defined rites of passage on the journey home. Every major event in life, from pregnancy and childbirth to the cutting of the first tooth, puberty, the first haircut, marriage, and vocation carried religious rites of passage like clear signposts along one's ultimate journey home.2
A wholeness of outlook characterized the civilization of David's time. The private and the social were not separated from one another. Religion tended to unify or support all elements of life, both social and individual. David's recognition that God needed no house was a fundamental aspect of his being allowed the honor of the "Davidic ideal" which ultimately produced the Christ child. Only as David was willing to "let go" of his desire to bring a gift to God and let God bring the gift to him, was the revelation made complete. The text is more than a rhetorical inversion. It is a powerful message for today's Christian. We, too, are called to let go and let God bring God's gift to us.
Do you remember your first day of school? It was one of life's great separations. Perhaps your parent drove up the circular driveway of an elementary school. You perhaps clutched her hand as tightly as possible as you passed legions of strangers on their way to the classroom. You stood at the door and, perhaps, she literally had to push you in. The classroom probably appeared to be the most foreboding room you had ever entered.
Looking back, that time of "letting go" of mother's hand was a necessary step. It was indeed the time to "let go" and enter another experience. Life is essentially a series of separations. We let go of certain experiences in favor of other experiences. Friends are gained and then we are separated. Sometimes couples marry and at other times they separate. Sometimes our "letting go" involves places: we leave our hometowns; we leave our schools; we even leave our churches. Sometimes we let go of roles or patterns of relating. We let go of our roles as parents, as children, as students. Sometimes we even "let go" of attitudes and beliefs. In those moments of "letting go" we come to realize how intensely loyal we are to the people, the places, and the attitudes which have shaped us.
Letting go is a necessary part of life. The Bible is full of separations. Abraham and Lot separated so each could live and multiply. In the newly-found freedom as humans with a mind of their own, Adam and Eve had to separate from the Garden of Eden. In the book of Exodus, God told Israel: "I have separated you from all the people that are on the face of the earth" (33:16). David was told to let go of the idea that he controlled God's housing needs. Jesus himself was separated from his family and his family's business. In order for the early church to be more than four little families meeting together in upper rooms to remember Jesus, those people had to separate and trust God to come among them in God's own freedom.
God has given our human personality many weapons with which to encounter life and find the way home at the end of it. We possess fight and flight responses, administrative ability, anger, ego, temperament, grief reaction, and the like. These characteristics sometimes make it difficult for us to simply let go and wait for God to be God.
The Bible tells us that right after he was baptized, Jesus Christ faced the greatest temptation of his life. He had just realized that he was the Messiah. He was at the point of beginning his ministry. Satan tempted him to try to live his whole life in a moment's time. Satan promised him instant accomplishment of his ministry. Listen to the account: "The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, 'I will give you all their authority and splendor ... so if you worship me, it will all be yours' " (Luke 4:5-7). Just like that, promised the devil. Instant achievement. No waiting. No having to grasp the slow wisdom of the world. A shortcut, just for the taking, in an instant, was held forth. But who was deceiving whom? The devil was merely offering to Jesus in a shorter span of time what would ultimately be his anyway. God had promised Jesus that achievement from the very beginning at Bethlehem. The devil was merely offering Jesus something he was already promised. But the devil did offer it to him in an instant. That was the difference.
We moderns often find ourselves unable to let go of our need to be in charge and allow God to bring to us the gifts God wants to give. The late L.D. Johnson used to contend that one of the bizarre facts of life is this one. The more religious people become, the less patient and comfortable they become with the mystery and freedom of God. Those who consider themselves very religious tend to point their finger at us and claim God is this or God is that. The freedom of God is the heart of all religion. You'd think the closer you got to God the more overwhelmed you would be by the awesomeness and indescribable nature of God. You'd think the closer you got to God the less clear-cut would be your expression of God.3
David's ability to step back and let God provide him with the same gift he wanted to give God was an impetus of inversion that was reflected in the grand gift to come. No greater ruler ever commanded the Israelite people. David was depicted as God's personal choice to lead the chosen people. He unified the two nations of Israel and Judah. He was impetuous, aggressive, charismatic, manipulative and, above all, a great administrator. He removed the last vestige of Canaanite power in the land.
But when David allowed the inversion to take place, when he allowed God to give him the gift, he established a process which foreshadowed the coming Christ. Kings normally give gifts. They do not receive them, especially from God. Consider the images used by the descendant of David, Jesus the Christ, to provide this same wonderful good news.
Jesus washed with water. Whether it was the smelly feet of the disciples or his own baptism, he showed that this image was definitely a change. He took a towel, wrapped it around himself, and washed the smelly feet of his disciples. That was, indeed, out of sync. Everyone knows that disciples wash their master's feet. The proper image is of a religious leader like our society's Pope in Rome sitting on an altar with a huge canopy of gilded bronze ringed in Renaissance splendor by the Swiss Guard in their scarlet and gold. That's image projection at its finest, is it not? Everyone knows that winning coaches have coliseums named after them, author books, do television commercials, and have swimming pools in the shape of their school's mascot. Messianic coaches do not go into the locker room after the game, take out towels and basins of water, and start washing the smelly feet of their players. Yet this crazy son of God would do just that. That's a powerful image, one must admit.
Secondly, Jesus gave suppers with bread and wine to show that his new life was a brotherhood or sisterhood. That, too, is an image that shocks us. Banquets are given in honor of great people; great people do not give banquets for the poor.
Jesus touched people with his hands -- whether they were lepers or diseased or dead, like Lazarus. He touched people society would not touch. What a reverse image projection that was! Most of the societal projection of a great religious leader is the number of important people the leader touches -- the winning coach, the Hollywood actor, Miss America, the converted infamous criminal, the bestsellers. Not Jesus! His hands touched those that society would not touch.
This strange process of inversion which makes us the receiver of a gift from God is the essence of our Advent hope. Advent recognizes a transition in our status as worshippers of God. We are now the receivers of the ultimate gift: God in Christ comes to make us the house of his dwelling. This notification is as heady for us as it once was for this precarious tribal chieftain named David. There is no greater joy that can be promised us.
____________
1. Daniel Day Williams, "The Vulnerable and the Invulnerable God," Union Seminary Quarterly Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, p. 225.
2. Some of the material in this sermon has been previously published in Harold C. Warlick, Jr., Homeward Bound (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Co., 1991) and is used by permission.
3. As quoted in L.D. Johnson, Moments of Reflection (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1980), p. 39.
