From Rooftop to Valley and to Heaven Again!
Sermon
WIND THROUGH The VALLEYS
Sermons for the First Third of the Pentecost Season
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.
This nursery rhyme tells the story of King David of our text. Those who live in the crowded cities, surrounded by privacy fences, can easily imagine how it happened. Of course, it is not proper to set up a stepladder against a privacy fence to see what it is the neighbors are grilling for their cookout. It is impolite to peer into their home to watch them, or to sit on top of the fence or wall to observe someone sunbathing! David knew that! It was customary for people to walk on their roofs in the cool of the evening. Many did. But to make one's business what took place in the private courtyard of another was wrong!
King David was a man with strong desires. Many of them worked out for the good of the nation and its people. Many of them God used in his plan of salvation. Some of them David used to construct a whole kingdom around him. But some of them brought him down from rooftop to valley!
It was not wrong for David to have more than one wife, as it would be now. It was considered acceptable for him to have concubines. In fact, he had a large harem. But it was not for him to desire another man's wife! It was not for him to commit adultery with her! It was not for him to make Uriah drunk and send him home to make it appear the child was his! It was not for him to arrange Uriah's murder! By giving these orders to those of his staff foolish enough to do them, he was setting the stage for a way of life that would plague him and his family for the rest of their days! His daughter, Tamar, would be raped by his son, Amnon. Another son, Absalom, would murder Amnon, and then conspire to depose his father from the throne. Still another son, Adonijah, would also try to make himself king. All this came to David after his fall from the rooftop; and "All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put him together again."
There is something refreshing about this story being in the Bible! The writers included the seamy side of David's life. They did not cover up the sins of their great men, even of their "anointed of God." They did not touch-up the picture, but left a part of it black and ugly. They left it real. It is too easy to over-elevate great people. It is easy to create folk heroes. It is easy for those of us in the church to emphasize goodness and virture, to the point that some think we are a people of perfection rather than a fellowship of failures.
One of the weaknesses of today's church is that it does not make clear that it's members are sinners! Instead, by all appearances, it looks as though church were only for the best people in town. We say everyone is welcome, but there are those who are not sure whether the church is really willing to get soiled with their dirty lives. They are not sure they are wanted. By our failure to make clear who we are and what we are about, we are pushing away from our doors the people who need our message and who need our help.
There is more here. When we fail to make it plain that those who gather in our churches are sinners, we make it hard for those who come to be honest! Those who are present tend to share the street side of their lives, when, really, they should also be exposing their back alleys! The church is to consist of people with whom we can walk down the alleys and valleys of life. Where is the gathering of God's people that welcomes the child abuser or the lesbian? Where are they who accept, even upon their return to the community after imprisonment, the shoplifter and the murderer? Where is there room in a Christian community for the street walker and the dope pusher? Where is there a religious home for troubled families and sick people? And why is it that it is David's kind of sin, a sin of sex, that gets so much attention? Is it because it finds its common denomintor in us all? The outward act, the incident, is what gets in the gossip column and in the gossip papers that beg to be purchased at our check-out counters. But there are many more mental sins and sins of desire and of the heart that come before and after the "davidic" incidents. Of these sins we are guilty! We are all guilty and, for this very reason, we need a community that will accept us.
From somewhere, this story of an experiment is making its rounds. The experiment took place in a college psychology class over the duration of the course. The instructor arranged to have someone come to the classroom door with a note that read only, "You have been found out." It was given to a predetermined student. Before the class period was over, the student got up and left. Over the time of the course, every person in the class received the note, unknown to the others, and nearly every one left before the end of the class period. Conscience needs little prodding to make us feel guilty.
We share in the common experience of guilt because we share the experience of sin. We have all been thrown off our self-made mountains, our pedestals, our rooftops, and privacy fences to the valleys of remorse and repentance. Why, then can we not more openly admit our sins and faults? Why must we worry about being rejected by others, when we share the same problems they have? There is something wrong in a Christian congregation that seldom joins in the confession of sins, liturgical or informal. There is something wrong in the home where there is no confessional. Christians ought, first and foremost, to be supportive people to those who confess their sins. A well-known hymn holds before us the ideal:
We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.
Wouldn't the church be a much greater power in the lives of people if we could admit to one another, "I am a continual liar; I am a jealous husband; I am an alcoholic; I am a cleptomaniac; I am foul with my mouth; I am rude to my children; I am selfish with my money. I have cheated, stolen, and I hate my job. I hate myself for all this. I want to do something about it; God help me!"
Couldn't the Christian community be much more a support group to sinners who repent? Might we not better put arms around each other rather than point fingers? We are all fragile and breakable. We all live in glass houses. "All the King's horses and all the King's men" cannot put us back together, but God can! And he will! That is the message to be heard and shared among the people of the church.
If we could reduce our Christian faith to just a few words, or two basic ideas, what would they be? Some children might say, "Church and Sunday school," or "Be quiet and listen." Others might say that the message of the church is clothing drives and stewardship drives, or pray and pay! But the two words that best describe the message of the church are "sin" and "grace." Sin is that which is wrong with us, and grace is that which God does about it. Sin is that which makes us like King David and everyone else, even the great ones among us. Grace is the great and divine love of God which sent Jesus Christ into the human family. Sin is that which ruins our lives. Grace is the power of God that helps us live through the consequences of our sin, even as David endured the death of the child born to Bathsheba. Sin makes us, out of our own feeling of guilt, point fingers at each other. Grace lets us point all of our sins to Jesus as he hangs upon the cross. Sin brings us to the pits of the earth. Grace lifts us to heaven again.
Jesus, the one who stemmed from the family of David to become the Savior of the world, is God's answer to all who walk the tightrope of privacy fences and fall on the other side. Jesus js the one who, by his Spirit, calls us to faith, so that the goodness and mercy of God become stronger than the totality of our sins. Jesus, as a fully human person, lets us admit our humanness to God and one another. We can admit what we really are. The story of David is a great story, not because of what he did or didn't do, but because of what God did for him. David is important in biblical history because of God's action. When he fell off his rooftop into the valley of despair, as he writes of it in Psalm 51, it was God who picked him up again.
God will do it for us. Broken into as many pieces as we might be from our falls into sin, God picks us up and pieces us together in the firm and bonding love of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and brings us to heaven again!
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.
This nursery rhyme tells the story of King David of our text. Those who live in the crowded cities, surrounded by privacy fences, can easily imagine how it happened. Of course, it is not proper to set up a stepladder against a privacy fence to see what it is the neighbors are grilling for their cookout. It is impolite to peer into their home to watch them, or to sit on top of the fence or wall to observe someone sunbathing! David knew that! It was customary for people to walk on their roofs in the cool of the evening. Many did. But to make one's business what took place in the private courtyard of another was wrong!
King David was a man with strong desires. Many of them worked out for the good of the nation and its people. Many of them God used in his plan of salvation. Some of them David used to construct a whole kingdom around him. But some of them brought him down from rooftop to valley!
It was not wrong for David to have more than one wife, as it would be now. It was considered acceptable for him to have concubines. In fact, he had a large harem. But it was not for him to desire another man's wife! It was not for him to commit adultery with her! It was not for him to make Uriah drunk and send him home to make it appear the child was his! It was not for him to arrange Uriah's murder! By giving these orders to those of his staff foolish enough to do them, he was setting the stage for a way of life that would plague him and his family for the rest of their days! His daughter, Tamar, would be raped by his son, Amnon. Another son, Absalom, would murder Amnon, and then conspire to depose his father from the throne. Still another son, Adonijah, would also try to make himself king. All this came to David after his fall from the rooftop; and "All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put him together again."
There is something refreshing about this story being in the Bible! The writers included the seamy side of David's life. They did not cover up the sins of their great men, even of their "anointed of God." They did not touch-up the picture, but left a part of it black and ugly. They left it real. It is too easy to over-elevate great people. It is easy to create folk heroes. It is easy for those of us in the church to emphasize goodness and virture, to the point that some think we are a people of perfection rather than a fellowship of failures.
One of the weaknesses of today's church is that it does not make clear that it's members are sinners! Instead, by all appearances, it looks as though church were only for the best people in town. We say everyone is welcome, but there are those who are not sure whether the church is really willing to get soiled with their dirty lives. They are not sure they are wanted. By our failure to make clear who we are and what we are about, we are pushing away from our doors the people who need our message and who need our help.
There is more here. When we fail to make it plain that those who gather in our churches are sinners, we make it hard for those who come to be honest! Those who are present tend to share the street side of their lives, when, really, they should also be exposing their back alleys! The church is to consist of people with whom we can walk down the alleys and valleys of life. Where is the gathering of God's people that welcomes the child abuser or the lesbian? Where are they who accept, even upon their return to the community after imprisonment, the shoplifter and the murderer? Where is there room in a Christian community for the street walker and the dope pusher? Where is there a religious home for troubled families and sick people? And why is it that it is David's kind of sin, a sin of sex, that gets so much attention? Is it because it finds its common denomintor in us all? The outward act, the incident, is what gets in the gossip column and in the gossip papers that beg to be purchased at our check-out counters. But there are many more mental sins and sins of desire and of the heart that come before and after the "davidic" incidents. Of these sins we are guilty! We are all guilty and, for this very reason, we need a community that will accept us.
From somewhere, this story of an experiment is making its rounds. The experiment took place in a college psychology class over the duration of the course. The instructor arranged to have someone come to the classroom door with a note that read only, "You have been found out." It was given to a predetermined student. Before the class period was over, the student got up and left. Over the time of the course, every person in the class received the note, unknown to the others, and nearly every one left before the end of the class period. Conscience needs little prodding to make us feel guilty.
We share in the common experience of guilt because we share the experience of sin. We have all been thrown off our self-made mountains, our pedestals, our rooftops, and privacy fences to the valleys of remorse and repentance. Why, then can we not more openly admit our sins and faults? Why must we worry about being rejected by others, when we share the same problems they have? There is something wrong in a Christian congregation that seldom joins in the confession of sins, liturgical or informal. There is something wrong in the home where there is no confessional. Christians ought, first and foremost, to be supportive people to those who confess their sins. A well-known hymn holds before us the ideal:
We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.
Wouldn't the church be a much greater power in the lives of people if we could admit to one another, "I am a continual liar; I am a jealous husband; I am an alcoholic; I am a cleptomaniac; I am foul with my mouth; I am rude to my children; I am selfish with my money. I have cheated, stolen, and I hate my job. I hate myself for all this. I want to do something about it; God help me!"
Couldn't the Christian community be much more a support group to sinners who repent? Might we not better put arms around each other rather than point fingers? We are all fragile and breakable. We all live in glass houses. "All the King's horses and all the King's men" cannot put us back together, but God can! And he will! That is the message to be heard and shared among the people of the church.
If we could reduce our Christian faith to just a few words, or two basic ideas, what would they be? Some children might say, "Church and Sunday school," or "Be quiet and listen." Others might say that the message of the church is clothing drives and stewardship drives, or pray and pay! But the two words that best describe the message of the church are "sin" and "grace." Sin is that which is wrong with us, and grace is that which God does about it. Sin is that which makes us like King David and everyone else, even the great ones among us. Grace is the great and divine love of God which sent Jesus Christ into the human family. Sin is that which ruins our lives. Grace is the power of God that helps us live through the consequences of our sin, even as David endured the death of the child born to Bathsheba. Sin makes us, out of our own feeling of guilt, point fingers at each other. Grace lets us point all of our sins to Jesus as he hangs upon the cross. Sin brings us to the pits of the earth. Grace lifts us to heaven again.
Jesus, the one who stemmed from the family of David to become the Savior of the world, is God's answer to all who walk the tightrope of privacy fences and fall on the other side. Jesus js the one who, by his Spirit, calls us to faith, so that the goodness and mercy of God become stronger than the totality of our sins. Jesus, as a fully human person, lets us admit our humanness to God and one another. We can admit what we really are. The story of David is a great story, not because of what he did or didn't do, but because of what God did for him. David is important in biblical history because of God's action. When he fell off his rooftop into the valley of despair, as he writes of it in Psalm 51, it was God who picked him up again.
God will do it for us. Broken into as many pieces as we might be from our falls into sin, God picks us up and pieces us together in the firm and bonding love of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and brings us to heaven again!
