Year B, Advent 4: A House for God

Year B, Advent 4
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:46b-55
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

Preaching with St. Francis Episcopal Church


David wants to build a house for God.
It seems like the least one could do, right?
God, has, after all,
handpicked David from the midst of a muddy field
Where he was busy tending sheep
And placed him as King over all Israel
so that he might shepherd God’s people instead.
God has delivered David
from the peril of his enemies
God has given David strength,
abundance, and security.
And what kind of gift does one give for all that?
What do you get for the God who has everything?
A house, David thinks, would be appropriate.
David wants to build a house for God.

The story that we read from second Samuel this morning
Comes just after David has been anointed as King over Israel.
Jerusalem has been made the capital
of the newly United Kingdom
And the Philistines have been defeated in their last move
of resistance.
In a wave of riotous celebration
David takes a company of thirty thousand
And marches into the new capital
With the ark of the Lord in procession.
David dances wildly, half-naked, before the Ark
Passing out parcels of meat and figs and bread to his new subjects along the way
and at the end of his parade,
settles into his new cedar-panneled home,
where we find him in the beginning of this mornings lection.

When I read this passage from Samuel,
I imagine that it is night,
and that is is raining.
I imagine David, wild-eyed, and out of breath
worn out from celebration
wet with rain
Storming into his new palace, still singing songs of victory.
But something troubles him.
While he dries by the fire
In the comfort of this grand home
He can see the Ark of the Lord
the very seat of God’s divine presence
outside; protected by little more than a tent,
virtually exposed to the elements.
“See now, I am living in a house of cedar,
but the ark of the Lord stays in a tent.”
He says to the court prophet, Nathan.
Nathan understands his meaning,
what better way to show that God is with this people
Than to display the magnificence of God
in the earthly glories of a beautiful house.

Now, the “house” we are talking about here,
Will eventually be the Temple built by
David’s son, Solomon.
This structure will be the key location
In what we refer to as Temple Judaism,
a biblical Jewish movement in which worship of God
is focused toward the singular location
of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.
A truly magnificent architectural achievement
An earthly realization of sacred space.
This is the Temple that was destroyed during the
Babylonian captivity and exile of the Jewish people
Only to be rebuilt and destroyed again by the Romans.
The Temple Jesus caused such a stir in after his triumphal
Entry into Jerusalem
The Temple whose only remaining fragment
Of its Western Wall is still venerated today-
the place where Michael took all of our written prayers
On his trip to Israel.
A house, King David imagines, that will be worthy
Of all the great works God has done for him.

We know a thing or two about building God houses ourselves.
From the time Christians first got the official Roman
seal of approval
We have been offering up elaborate architecture
to the greater glory of God
The Haiga Sophia in present-day Istanbul, for instance
Has a dome perforated by windows -all the way around
And when the sunlight comes pouring through them
It looks as if the dome is floating in heaven itself.
even while grounded here on Earth in its foundations [LOOK!]
or take St. Peter’s in Rome:
a 448 foot high man made cavern whose ceilings
are tiled with such fabulous mosaics
that you cannot help but crane your neck
to look outward and beyond yourself.
We delight in capturing something of divine transcendence
In an actual physical space we can enter.
Colonnades arc up and over
Making stone look as if it could plant roots
And grow toward the sky.
Glass of every color transforms light into a holy dance
Glazing trails across the marbled floors.
Stepping into a well-built church
Can take your breath away
It can hold you in its sacred hush-
Because the best architecture manages to capture
something of the INFINITE
in a finite space.
Even an old country church can have this effect:
Wooden pews creak beneath the weight
Of generations
Steeped in prayers of promise and hymns of praise.
Even the storefront ministry
With its fluorescent lights and folding chairs
Speaks to the urgency of its mission.
And Even if you find greater peace
in a starbucks or a shopping mall
The modern mega-church manages to convey
All this and more as an appropriate dwelling place for the Lord.

WE, are a God-house building people

And David, just as well as us, in our loftiest aspirations
wants to build a house for God.
A mighty, grand, beautiful house,
Maybe even with David’s name emblazoned right across the front of it
In Memoriam
House.
And the only problem
Is that God doesn’t want one.
Or, perhaps, more accurately,
the house God wants, is David himself. [Big Pause]

Before even a single night passes from David’s plan
The word of the Lord comes to Nathan
and is swiftly delivered to his servant David’s door:

“Will you be the one to build me a house?”
God asks.
“Will you be the one to build me a house to live in?
All this time I have traveled up from Egypt
Among my people Israel in a tent and a tabernacle
And have I ever once asked for a House to live in?
No!
What is more, I will make a House of YOU
It is MY saving work that will contain YOU”
NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

And in an instant,
as David receives this word of God
for the gift that it is
a new relationship,
A new covenant is born.
A covenant in which God’s people are taken in promise
Not in the same old patterns where
Disobedience is punished with abandonment
And forgetfulness is corrected with wrath
But in a new promise of steadfast, everlasting love
even in the face of the great human failures to come.
In David, God will bear anew
Generations will come
And come, and come
and even in ONE bewildered carpenter
STAND for us
to greet our own Christ-child in his meek estate.
David will give his life to be this Household of God.
David will become many, yoked to God by chords of love.
And even in their exile,
Even in the ruin of the very temple David dreams of,
They will remember this covenant
and fight to know themselves
Not as a people punished
But as keepers of God’s steadfast love.
This Household, not of stone
But of souls will be the one
To bear God’s holy name.

But what of us?
Will we be the ones to build God a house to live in?
This time of year
Reveals our frustrations at such attempts
More than any other.
We are, all of us, in the midst of great efforts
That might have at some point
been well intended for the greater glory of God.
We all take jobs or start projects
We all make big plans
To create some outward show of our love to one another
To our neighbors, to our families, and to God.
We have all, at some point,
Run into the house as wide-eyed and alive as King David
With a great new idea for what we’re sure God wants of us.
And we all know what it is like to have those efforts buried
In the mundane details that life requires
Shot down by the armies of To-Do Lists, cutbacks
Bureaucratic Requirements and Comities
that seem bent on killing dreams.
I intend my own work to be a kind of house for God
Teaching kids from low-income families
Because it seems like what I’m called by God to do
But if you had seen me last week
You would have seen a very disgruntled young man
Trying to cajole a crowd of sneezing, jittery four-year olds
Into a jumbled mess of carols
That looked like a far cry
from the Holiday cheer it was meant to inspire.
Where does it all far apart?
When do our calendars get too full
When do our resources get spread too thin
At what point do the households we intend to build up for God
Start creaking beneath the weight of their own
Hasty assembly?
Somewhere, I think
between the trips to Friendly Center
and the rehearsals and the practices
Somewhere in the diners and the parties
and the correspondence we haven’t tended to
Somewhere in the faculty cutbacks we had to weigh
Somewhere in the pile of papers
that threatens to outgrow the angel ivy on our desks
SOMEWHERE in the places
Where all this becomes so automatic
that we forget what we were building for
It all falls apart.
And then, and only then [Slow down, end]
When we get so tired of it all
maybe then we will be ready
To hear God say “no”
To All the big plans we’ve made-
As he welcomes us instead
into the House he has prepared for us.
And maybe, when we can hear that welcome
It will sound something like the song
Of an unsuspecting virgin mother
Praising the God she has found magnified in her soul.

If we have ears to listen then
We might hear of a new house
Where the proud are scattered in their conceits
And the lowly lifted up-
We might hear of a new house
Where the full are sent away
And the hungry filled with good things
We might hear of a new house
Where our room is right next to Edward’s
who is recovering from a drug-related prison term
and its accompanied repatriation
And also happens to share a place setting with us
At the welcome table down the hall.

If we have ears to listen then
We might hear news that tells us in the midst of a recession even
In the midst of an economic downturn
That threatens to unsettle the lives we’ve made
Good news even here that as long as we have flesh and bones
And a spirit of life within us
We have all the building blocks we need
To be built into mighty towers of dwelling for our God.

We might hear the Good News
That whether we are on the way down
Or already at the bottom waiting for our help to come
We are somewhere in God’s new world.
That even in the midst of our gradual exile
From all the affluence
and security we
thought we had stored up for ourselves-
Even as we watch the temples of our best ambitions
Get disassembled stone by stone
We have a covenant to remember
And bodies and souls to give
To the construction of something new.

David wants to build a house for God,
and so he gives his life.
Mary wants to build a house for God,
and so she gives her soul- in song, and in birth.
And we, eyes drawn toward the Giver of All Gifts
Hearts Full of Thanksgiving
Gather here
In this community
To be a House where God will dwell.

So as we end this Season of Preparation
And await the dawning of our Lord Among Us
Let us open all the shudders
All the windows
All the doors
That the light may come pouring in
And lift us all high beyond
where our necks can crane to see
as if we were floating in Heaven itself
built up and grounded from the Earth.