“God’s Covenant with David” 2 Samuel 7:1-17

The prophet Isaiah once said that God’s way are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. Often these are quoted words, especially in times of trial. But when we take then from the bigger picture and apply them to our personal life - then they become no less true, but much harder to swallow. So it was for David. David has been at this point in his life and in the life of Israel when everything seems to be coming together. He has been on conquests that have made Israel’s name great. He has ascended to the throne. And he is looking around and realizing that his life is really good. But then his thoughts go to the ark of the covenant This ark had been with the Hebrew people from the days of Moses. It continued markers from their journey from the wilderness into the promise land. The stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. Aaron’s rod. A pot of manna. All of this was placed in this chest that was made of wood and covered in gold that was carried from place to place and went before them in battle. Then in camps it was placed in a sacred tent called the tabernacle. The ark of the covenant, for all of its importance, still dwelled in the tabernacle, while David was living in a place of grandeur. And that didn’t sit well with David, so he decided to construct a temple to put the tabernacle in - a house for the Lord. David told Nathan, his prophet, the plan. We will remember Nathan from the time that he called David out for his reckless behavior towards Bathsheba and Uriah. In that instance, Nathan was correct in his words calling David to account. But in this instance, his words of blessing to “Go, do all that you have in mind, for the Lord is with you” - well, they were wrong. God didn’t waste any time letting Nathan know that he had misspoke that blessing. That same night he gave a word to Nathan to go back to David with a question: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? God goes on to state that he cannot be contained in a house of human hands. God never asked for a house like the one David lives in to be built for him. God’s ways are not our ways. But God doesn’t leave it there. He essentially said to David, if we were going by human standards, you would not have been king. But I, the Lord, took you out of the pastures where you were tending sheep and I have anointed you to this position. All that you have done is because of me, not the other way around. I would like to think that David’s intentions were noble and full of honor for the Lord. He felt bad that he was surrounded by blessings while the Lord seemed to dwell within a box and a tent. He wanted to do something for God. But I also wonder if what God is saying to David points out something even deeper as well. Sometimes when we, or David, want to do something grand for the Lord, don’t we also end up honoring ourselves through those actions? Sometimes what we do to try to point to God, comes right back around and points to us, when looked at through human ways. What it boils down to is that mind of the Lord is not like our and God is not captive to our human expectations. I want you to take a moment to think. Has there ever been something that you really wanted to do to honor God, only to have it fail spectacularly? In some instances, I believe because it simply isn’t the right. time. Other times, the Lord calls for us to come try again. But still other times, our wonderful thought and plans were not in line with God’s will. They were not what God required of us. On the flip side, sometimes there are plans that come to you that are from the Spirit. They were not of your own mind. In fact, they make no sense in light of human reason yet we are obedient to follow them anyway. As a result, they are blessed wildly beyond anything we would have expected. God’s ways are not our ways. But God didn’t stop with simply saying that he did not desire a house; God went on to say that he would form a house for David. An everlasting house for David’s descendants. But even that isn’t in earthly terms. For we know that David’s dynasty will fall about 400 years after this covenant. Does that mean that God was not faithful? By no means! Because God wasn’t talking about a covenant to preserve the monarchy. God was talking about a promise, the promise - to send a Messiah to set the people free. Which we find in Jesus, who is from the house and lineage of David. There is so much richness, my friends, for us in this short section of scripture. But I want to lift up three things in particular for us today that all relate back to that statement from Isaiah that God’s thoughts are not are thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways. First, God’s presence cannot be confined to one place. While we call the church building the house of the Lord, God is not only within these four walls. God’s presence is with us everywhere. It is us who fall to recognize God’s presence, not God who fails to be present with us. Second, this covenant that God was making with David wasn’t just with him. It was an eternal covenant with eternal ramifications. While David may have been thinking small, as tends to be our human way, God was casting a vision for redemption through God’s own Son coming to set us free. And that eternal promise is still changing hearts and lives today. The question is really how are we sharing that? Because sometimes I think, we too, get caught up in thinking small. In our ways and thoughts. We think that hearing of God’s salvation is contained to this place, when really we are sent out to live into God’s salvation offered to us through Jesus every single day. Are we living as people of the promise? Lastly, even though David could not understand all of this, God’s grace still laid the foundation. In Methodist speak we call that previent grace - the grace and love that came before. Before we even realized that we needed it. Maybe before we even knew God. Certainly while we were still caught up in our thoughts and ways. Yet, God even during that time, made a way for us out of no way, through Jesus Christ. David’s life was changed through that covenant long ago, but friends so was ours. What would have been lost if David would have simply went through with what he had planned. And what is lost today if we insist on our own plans instead of God’s? “For my thoughts are not your thoughts  nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” Amen.

“God Answers Hannah” 1 Samuel 1:9-11, 19-20; 2:1-10

This week I have been playing around with a bit of a controversial thought, but here it is - I think one of the worst things we can do in scripture is jump right to the happy ending. What do I mean by that? When we only look to the ending of scriptural stories that satisfy us, we miss so much of the breadth and depth of what God is trying to reveal to us. 

Case in point - the story of Hannah. 

If we jump to the end of Hannah’s story - we find that a woman who was barren goes on to have a son who would be part of the turning point of the story of Israel. Praise be to God! But when we take time to sink into Hannah’s full story, we see that there is more for us to find out about both this woman and about the God we worship.

Hannah was married to Elkanah. Only she was not Elkanah’s only wife. She was one of two. The other wife, Peninnah, was bearing all of the children in the household. In other words, Hannah was barren. As if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, Hannah was barren in a day and time when women only had one purpose - to bear children, and more specifically, to bear male children to carry on the family legacy. 

All of this left Hannah feeling broken. Angry. Inadequate. Filled with sorrow. 

A few months ago, I took a course offered in our annual conference entitled, “Shared Sorrow: A Faith Community’s Response to Grief and Mourning.” Here’s a list of some of what folks can experience in grief and mourning: numbness, guilt, loneliness, sadness, anxiety, emptiness, vulnerability, fear, yearning, anger, pain, bitterness. The list goes on and on. But those are just some of the words that encapsulate what Hannah is feeling in today’s scripture passage. She is in a place of darkness. Even though she was the preferred wife of Elkanah. Even though everything else in her life seemed to be going well. There was a deep ache within her soul.

A deep ache that Elkanah couldn’t fully understand. He tired to comfort her but his words missed the mark. They rang empty to her. It would be like us going up to someone who is grieving and saying things like “At least…”, “God always takes the best first.”, “God needed another angel.” Or “God gives the most difficult battles to the strongest warriors.” We may mean these statements as something to bring comfort, but they often do more harm than good. 

One day, in the midst of a party, Hannah was so overwhelmed that she simply left and went to present herself to God. Only she walked right past the priest, Eli, in doing so. She totally ignored the way things were done in order to throw herself down before God in prayer. 

Her words were pretty. She didn’t come offering a sacrifice or even a petition. She came to the Lord presenting herself, in all of her brownness and vulnerability and made a vow - if you give me a male child, he will be yours, God. 

What would lead Hannah to pray such a thing? It was an intertwining of so many things in her life. Her humiliation at the other wife’s fertility. Her honesty to God. Her disgrace at a place and time when her worth in society was based off of bearing a child. Her anguish. 

But also her belief and dependance upon God. Hannah didn’t believe that God was some far off cosmic force. No, God was intimately involved in the lives of his people. He cared about them and what happened to them. So she came to the one who loved her most and just poured her heart out in prayer. 

Friends, sometimes we need to do the same thing. When we are at that place of utter despair and brokenness, all of the fancy phrases and proper postures in prayer go out the window - as we simply throw ourselves down before the one who loves us most and pour out our hearts.

The Biblical word for this is lament. When we have a hard time putting our suffering into words, we just come before God and cry out in despair. Paul in Romans even says that sometimes words just aren’t going to cut it, and the spirit intercedes for us when all we can do is groan. 

Lament is something that we don’t talk about enough today. Even though we know, deep down, that we need space to lament, no one taught us how. No one gave us permission. No one made space for us. 

But Hannah comes right before God with her lament and lays herself bare. 

And here’s the thing we miss, Church. Hannah’s lament - laments in general - are also a radical act of hope. They come from a place of trusting God. In utterly depending upon God alone. 

And Hannah’s prayer was answered. She conceived and bore a son whom she named Samuel, saying “I have asked him of the Lord.”

Then in the tradition of Miram at the defeat of the Egyptian army and what would become the Magnificant of Mary, Hannah starts to pray. This is sometimes called Hannah’s prayer or Hannah’s song in our scripture today. And Hannah starts to make declarations about who God is and what God is about. Hannah takes no credit for her conception. She doesn’t give her husband any credit for her conception. She gave all go the glory to God. 

But she didn’t just claim God’s power and might in the miracle in her life. She claimed it in all sorts of places where people experience victory. Not their victory, Hannah would quickly say, but the victory of the Lord. That is why she sang her song of praise. And that is why we praise today. 

Friends, its so easy to read Hannah’s story and skip right to this part. But I think we need to sit in the mourning in order to fully appreciate what God had done. I think we need to use Hannah’s story to explore our own broken hearts and places of deep longing in order to be reminded that God hears. 

And for those of us who may not currently be in a season of mourning, we still need this story to remind us of the compassion that is at the heart of God. The comfort that God brings. The comfort that we are called to share that doesn’t come from telling people not to be sad or just to get over something deeply wounding, but instead sitting with them in moments of honest prayer. 

In order to get to the praise, sometimes we need to get through, Church. In order to get to the place of making meaning of the grief we had or have, we need the freedom to cry out in lament to God. 

Because whether we are in the valley or on the mountain top - God is still God. God is still the God who cares about us. Who loves us. Who lets us come before him in honest prayer. If we just skip to the happy ending, we can trick ourselves into thinking that the power in this story comes from the miracle, when really, the power comes in a God who was present all along. 

Friends, I don’t know what’s on your heart today. But I just want to give us space to cry out to God. To come to the God who knows you and loves you. To come and just sit in the arms of God. Know that the alters are open. Will you come? Amen. 

“The Golden Calf” Exodus 32: 1-14

I have a fear when it comes to exploring this text together. That fear was captured so well in one of the Kindergarten Sunday school classes I taught in college. We were talking about the Golden Calf and how the Israelites took their gold and made a statue to worship and one of the little boys asked, “why in the world would they do that?” My fear is that we won’t be able to put ourselves into this story. My fear is that we never understand why in the world the ancient Israelites would do this, and as a result we will be unable to examine our own hearts as well. I’m hoping that by naming that particular fear and laying it out before you, that we can ask God to open up our hearts as we explore this text and show us those areas that we need to turn from as well. With all of that said - the story of the Golden Calf. For a prolonged time, the people of Israel have been in the wilderness and they have come to trust the leadership of Moses. Now, they may not often act like it. They may tell Moses that things looked a lot better back in Egypt, but they still followed him. They still trusted him to bring them a word from the Lord. They still looked at him for leadership and guidance. But now, Moses has went off to the mountain to commune with God, and the people are looking around and don’t see an earthly leader. At least not an earthly leader like Moses. Fear starts to grip at their hearts and they start to wonder who they can trust. Who will bring them a word from the Lord. Who will lead them. So they turn to the second in command, Moses’s brother Aaron, and start to beg him to make them a god. Something to worship. Something to follow. Something they could see to put their trust in. Aaron gets a lot of criticism for this moment, and perhaps rightly so, but the truth it that he was thrust into a position that he was unprepared for. People were looking to him to lead in a way that he never had experienced before and it is almost as if he froze. Almost as if all he could do was give in and give the people what they wanted. What they were demanding. Aaron starts collecting the peoples gold and forming them into an image of a calf. Imagine how frightened the people of Israel must have been to give up what they were adorned with. Maybe something of value to them or to their family. And just handing it over to Aaron to be formed into something else. Aaron then not only said that this golden calf was their new God, but said that it was the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt. And that they would offer sacrifices to this new calf-god. Ironically, Moses is up communing with God and receiving the 10 commandments - these markers of what the new nation of Israel would be guided by and known for. One of which is have no other Gods before me. And down below that is exactly what the people were doing - forming another god - with a small letter ‘g’. God demands the Moses go and stop what is happening. While it may be hard for us to think about handing over our jewelry in order to form a new god in the shape of an animal - the truth is, like the Israelites, we turn away from God when we get fearful more than we would like to admit. For some folks, when the going gets tough, the first place they turn isn’t God, but their bank accounts. Or their 401ks. Or their job. Or their relationships. Think back to a few months ago when we were in the thick of the COVID-19 crisis. I think some of you know that pastors are expected to serve in some way, shape, or form with the larger denominations, because that is where our membership lies. Where we live into our vows. For me, that service comes in the form of being the chair of the Board of Pension and Health Benefits for the annual conference. In that crisis moment, I don’t know how many meetings I had about pensions. People were afraid. Afraid that nothing was going to be left for them. It’s that same type of fear that lead people to buy more food at the grocery store than they could ever need, toilet paper for a stock pile. Some would say this was thinking ahead, but when I looked at that situation, I saw folks putting their faith in things. As if when they would accumulate enough of a certain item, then they would be protected. Now am I saying that those things aren’t good. No. They are good gifts from God. But we get in trouble when we try to give the gift priority in our lives over the gift giver. When we put our hope and faith and trust not in God, but instead make things and people into mini-gods in our lives. And these certainly aren’t the only idols we have seen over the last few months. Or the idol of putting ourselves ahead of others. Of thinking that we are more important than another person’s life, so our desires must be met first. Me and mine. Or the idol of testing God. Or saying that your ways are God’s ways. Or… or…. Or…. I was reading a book this week that put this issue into a new perspective for me. It was a picture challenge relating to the 10-commandments, in which people were asked to take pictures of the things that they had made into idols in their lives. What struck me most was the wording. It’s not if you made something into an idol in your life, because the truth is that we all make idols from time to time. But this challenge was a call to search your heart, acknowledge it, and repent as you handed it over to God. Part of human nature is that we crave security. We crave someone or something to put our trust in. But if we are people of the Word, then the only one we should be putting our trust in is God alone. Only sometimes we fall short. Sometimes like the ancient Israelites impatience and fear take over and we stray from God. We start to look for our security elsewhere. Remember that fear that I stated at the beginning of this sermon - that we wouldn’t be able to put ourselves into this story. I hope now as we approach the end, that fear is unfounded. I hope that we take time in the coming hours and days to reflect on what draws us away from God and what we put our hope and trust in, in God’s place. Friends, none of us are immune. None of us is any better or worse than those ancient Israelites long ago. I’m going to invite us now to take time to reflect on the idols in our own lives. Come and confess before the Lord. Amen.

“The Promise of Passover” Exodus 12:1-13; 13:1-8

At my last appointment, one of the things I did to intentionally engage the community was to serve as a volunteer chaplain at the state university. I led Bible Studies, had an intern, and had a time when people could just come chat with me. But perhaps what brought me the most joy was planning worship. We would have special services throughout the semester, especially during the season of Lent, when students and faculty would come together to be fed on the Word. It still brings me a sense of awe to think about the rooms where people came to meet and worship God. 

One particular worship service that I participated in wasn’t one that I had to plan or even one that I led. It was led by a group of Jewish students, who graciously offered the university an opportunity to come together and celebrate a Passover Meal. 

Friends, if you have ever celebrated a Passover Meal, it is not something you quickly forget. It is the bedrock of our Jewish brother and sisters faith - that God brought them out of Egypt and led them into the Promised Land. 

But what made that particular celebration of Passover special is that it was in the midst of the Christian Holy Week. In the midst of a time when we come together and also remember. Remember how Jesus gave his life for us, died our death and rose again all for our sake. 

Passover and our celebration of Holy Communion are intimately linked. 

So I can think of no better text to gather around this day than the story of the first Passover, found in Exodus. Especially as we join our brothers and sisters around the world in celebrating the Lord’s Supper on this, World Communion Sunday. 

But before we get to Exodus, Chapter 12, we have to go back. Have you ever been with someone and you realize that you entered in half-way through a story? They are getting to the crux of what they wanted to say - but you had no idea how they got there or why the story they were telling is important to them? It’s a little bit like that when we start with the Passover story. So let’s take a step back. 

The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. They were being driven harder and harder by the oppressive hands of those who enslaved them. And they found themselves crying out to God for deliverance. God sent Moses to them, someone who was raised by the Egyptians but was a Hebrew, to deliver them from the Pharaoh. God also raised up Moses’s brother, Aaron to help communicate the message God was sending them with - to let God’s people go. 

Pharaoh went through cycles where he would turn Moses away only to find himself and his people afflicted with plagues. He would say that he changed his mind, only to never actually let them go. And this cycle repeated itself over and over and over again until we get to the moment in today’s scripture passage. 

The people of Israel were instructed to take a lamb for each family, and slaughter them all at the same time. They were to paint the blood from the perfect lamb over their doorposts and lintels of their homes as a sign. A sign for God to pass over their homes when the final plague would come - the killing of the firstborn in each household.

They were then instructed to eat the lamb in a certain manner. 

This is what became known as the Passover meal. This is the beginning of the flight of the people of Israel from Egypt to the Promise Land. 

Did you notice that what the people of Israel come together and celebrate is the beginning? They are celebrating the meal that came even before their liberation because it is a turning point in their story - a turning point in their history. 

Year after year after year they came back and had this celebration. Why? To teach their children, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ To teach their children their story. 

Friends, we, too, have a story of liberation that we tell our children. A story that helps us be anchored and remember - the story of Jesus’s final meal with his disciples. The Passover meal. But as he celebrated it with them, he took it and gave it new meaning as he took the bread of the meal and said, “This, this is my body given for you. Do this is remembrance of me”. And taking one of the cups used to celebrate this holy meal, he gave it a new meaning as he proclaimed, “This is the blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Rituals are important, friends. Gathering around the table is important. Telling the stories over and over and over again, passing them down for generations is important. 

But perhaps is what is most important in these particular stories is telling anew how the symbols - the passover lamb and unleavan bread, the cup and the bread - point us to the story of God. A story that we may not always understand, because parts of it remain a mystery to our human perception, but an important story none-the-less. 

Because the symbols point us to remembering the deliverance of God. 

The grace and salvation and hope that come from God alone. 

Friends, sometimes we need a reminder of that deliverance. Sometimes we need a tangible way to remember the mercy of God, especially when times are hard. This past Holy Week was one of the hardest of my life, and I know many pastors that shared that sentiment. It was hard because we could not imagine how we tell the story of what happened on that Holy Thursday when Jesus shared his final passover meal with his disciples, without sharing in these symbols - this bread and this cup.

But as I was reflecting on how hard that was for me, I was equally struck by how hard it must have been for our Jewish brothers and sisters to not be able to join friends and extended family around the table to share in the Passover Meal. 

At times when we cannot share in our rituals - how do we remember the deliverance of God? We keep telling the story! At times when it seems like the foundations of the world are sharking - what can we do? We can re-member. We can be the people who boldly proclaim that while we may not be able to remember together in the ways we are used to - we are still a people of the story. A people who tell it over and over and over again. 

But here’s the thing my friends - the story - the story doesn’t end with the Passover meal or with the Lord’s Supper. Passover led to the Promise Land, The Lord’s Supper led to the empty tomb and the statement that we celebrate this meal until when? Until we feast together in the Heavenly Kingdom. 

Symbols help us tell the story, but they aren’t the story itself. They may not even be the storytellers. Friends, we are the storytellers. The question is - what story are we telling? Amen.