HELMETS, HOUSES, HOPES July 23, 2006 Elizabeth B. Andrews Minister for Congregational Care, Fourth Presbyterian Church Psalm 145 2 Samuel 7:1–17 Mark 5:30–34, 53–56   Thinking about worship at the church she attended, Annie Dillard once wrote, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? . . . We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares.” If our faith were only about God’s power and greatness, we might, with fear and trembling, consider such equipment—if we would presume to come before God at all. But there is more—as there is always a “more” to God: there is God’s love, God’s grace and care and nearness in our lives. Both/and. And so tonight we listen to two stories that are the lectionary texts for this Sunday—the piece from 2 Samuel and the verses from Mark’s Gospel—and we find that the stories have something to say, each and in combination, about the mysterious and marvelous both/and of God’s power and love, awesome might and abundant goodness, in the words of our psalm.                                                                                                             First David, the youngest son of Jesse, the one who all those years ago, back when the prophet Samuel came to Bethlehem looking for the youth that God had sent him to anoint as Israel’s king, had been out watching the sheep as his older brothers were brought before the old prophet; David, the one who was sent for as an afterthought. This David has become the hero king and finds himself just now in the sweet moment of savoring his success. God has been with him, good to him; God has led him, given strength, victory, spirit, and David has sung God’s praises in the songs he has composed. As John Vest brought the story last week, David has united two kingdoms, taken a city that will be his capital, and with great fanfare and rejoicing, brought the Ark of the Covenant, that Holy of Holies, to rest in his city. Now David looks around.                                                                          He is settled comfortably in his house, enjoying respite from battle. And it occurs to him, why should he be living in a house, when the Ark of God is in a tent? He will build a house for God! Seems only right—in fact, an expression of faithfulness, of gratitude—and his advisor, the prophet Nathan, agrees at first. But in the night, the word of the Lord comes to Nathan, an oracle, a message for David: “Not so fast, there.” The word, the voice both of terrifying thunder and whispered familiarity—both/and. The voice that spoke the universe into being, that called to Moses from the burning bush and said “I AM.” The voice that sets oak trees whirling and splits cedars, that spoke to Job from the whirlwind and reduced him to awed silence: “Remember who I am and what I have done!” And the voice with the dry, affectionate irony of George Burns in his role in the movie Oh, God ! A house? Did I say I wanted a house? All this time, since I brought the people out of Egypt and moved about with the people, all those years in the wilderness a tent has been good enough for me. A house?! Did I ask for a house? You’re going to build me a house?! I’m going to build you a house!” A play on words. And an astounding commitment: The “house” God will build is a dynasty, a rule that will extend from David to David’s son Solomon and beyond: I will not take my steadfast love from him. . . . Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever. The promise of God’s unconditional love, faithfulness, hesed, of the continuity of God’s activity through this particular house and kingdom into the future that God is opening out, in response to this word, David suspends his agenda—for the time being, anyway—to sit in amazement and humility before the Lord.                                                                                              This word, this oracle as delivered by Nathan—what does it mean? Why is it so crucial to the biblical story? First, it is a covenant, a promise not just of God’s presence with the people, but of solidarity with David and his family, as our scholarly friend Walter Brueggemann explains, and is thus appropriated as a mix of genuine faith and as means for claiming and legitimizing the political power of the regime. Good news, bad news, both/and. “The combination of faith and interest,” as Brueggemann comments, “always keeps faith close to the realities of public life. The shapers of these texts spoke and believed as if God had to do directly with issues of power and justice, politics and economics. The text keeps our faith close to the decisive human realities” and at the same time, that faith is thus “vulnerable to all sorts of subsequent ideological use and manipulation.” Both/and indeed, as in our own day.               Second, the promise made to David is for time to come and becomes the basis for hope in the Jewish tradition and later in the Christian community among those who trust God’s work to become visible within the historical process.       So God’s power and love have to do both with the command “Remember who I am and what I have done” and an invitation “Watch and see what I will do.” Quite a story, then, and in combination with our story from Mark, still a call for memory and hope, caution and commitment. Generations and generations later, like David, born in Bethlehem, comes Jesus. In the pieces from Mark’s Gospel we heard a moment ago, Jesus has invited his disciples to a time of retreat in a deserted place, and yet there is to be no respite, because crowds follow and flock to be near him. And the text says, “He had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Here is the embodiment of that ancient promise, of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, the hope of Israel from the house that God established: not in a fine palace or sanctuary, but out in the wilderness—again the wilderness—the good shepherd himself, the Prince of peace.                                                     The people gather, and they keep coming, until there are nearly 5,000 of them: ordinary people whose lives are hard, and he looks upon them with compassion. He gives them teachings that fill their hearts and, after that, food to sustain them—real food, more than enough for them all. And after a night of more miracles and mysteries that confound his disciples, more crowds, flocking, hopeful, “bringing the sick to wherever they heard he was” and they “begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”                                                                                     Here is God’s steadfast love and faithfulness in the flesh—Jesus, tender and responsive, not remote from but in the midst of life’s hard realities and human needs.                                          The inseparable mix, the both/and,in those ancient stories, in the times when they were first told and still in our time: With the assertion of Almighty God’s power and presence and whatever comes of that, in what Brueggemann noted as the inevitable combination of genuine faith and interest, there’s bad news. Surveying the contemporary political scene, the power struggles here at home and in the ongoing bitter and complex conflicts in the Middle East, we grow weary, even weep at the bad news. Everywhere we turn we find those who claim God’s presence and then are tempted to exploitative and self-serving manipulations or to violence in the name of righteousness. If God’s presence is tied to particular political agendas, get out the crash helmets, for if we go that route, we’ll need them. We’ll need crash helmets not to defend ourselves from God but from the tragic consequences of human efforts to claim or tame or co-opt the Almighty God, who will not be confined to any human agenda or self-serving house of cards.             And still there’s the good news, the insistence that God’s presence is tied to hard realities of people’s lives. Thousands of years later, like those people in the wilderness, we too draw near with our hungers—for meaning, for sustenance, for hope, with our own pieces that need healing. And we seek out the one who embodied God’s power and purposes and come into that presence. No need for crash helmets, after all, nor defenses, but for humility, acknowledgment of our own vulnerability and limitations, pain and sorrow, dependence and need. And we are met with compassion. The Almighty One who says, “Remember who I AM and what I have done”is also the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for us and invites us to this table, saying, “Do this, remembering me.”                                     The feeding and the healing are for us, too. And as we are able, with gratitude, to respond, maybe we trade in our crash helmets for hard hats—for construction work—as our lives become less concerned with abstractions or self-interested constructs than with meeting real needs of God’ s people. If we think about building houses for God, we may work with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity nearby or farther afield, as some of our members and colleagues are doing right now in Honduras. Some of us may not be able to do that kind of heavy lifting, but we can lift our voices, lift hearts. We do what we can to work at building connections, too, in neighborhoods, in outreach, in partnerships with other communities of faith, to heal hurts and divisions, to offer hope in the midst of the hard realities. We give ourselves for whatever use God can make of us, give what we can to be part of the future that God will be designing—with both power and love, awesome might and abundant goodness. Amen.