August 2, 2009
Changing the Subject - 2 Samuel 7:1-17
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI have often wondered, as much time and effort and frustration as we put into these things, what would happen if this microphone quit working. From my perspective, this headset that I’m wearing looks like a bumble bee is about to land on my lips. You can tell when it doesn’t work. And, I found out the hard way one day in Matthews, that you can also tell when it does work but it’s not supposed to work. I sang a solo at Matthews, unbeknownst to me, when I forgot to turn my mic off. We’re dependent on these things now. They have changed the way we speak and the way we sing. And yet, the greatest orators in the world, Edward Everett, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Paul, & Peter, never had microphones. I would love it if we could sell these things at the next garage sale, but, if the truth be told, if they quit working, we’d almost have to cancel church.
And I wonder what would happen if we ran out of paper one day and weren’t able to have worship bulletins. How would you know what hymns to sing and what prayers to pray and what creeds to recite? And yet, I think it would be one of the coolest things if there was nothing but thin air between us and God on Sunday morning instead of these bulletins. The printing press, after all, is a fairly new invention in the life of the church. We worshipped for centuries without bulletins. We even worshipped without printed hymnals or Bibles. There was a time in the church when the only person in the entire community who could read was the pastor, and he would read in worship on Sundays and people would simply listen to and be penetrated by Holy Scripture. But now, if we ran out of paper and lost our bulletins or hymnals or printed Bibles, we would almost have to, again, cancel church.
And, while we’re at it, what would we do without a sanctuary? Imagine having church by a river, where we could have a few baptisms, and hear (without microphones) the Gospel. Or, imagine if we worshipped in your home, and if we turned your old living room into a Temple, and your old breakfast table into the Lord’s Table, and your own cereal bowl into a baptismal font. Imagine that. Early Christians didn’t have to imagine that because that’s what they did, every Sunday. Sanctuaries didn’t come around until three hundred years after Christ. I love this sanctuary. Don’t get me wrong. It is beautiful and fitting and holy. It is God’s house, without question. But God’s Kingdom does not rest on any sanctuary, or bulletin, or microphone. As great as technology is and promises to be, we can use it sometimes as a way to keep God in his place, in the sanctuary, and in his time, on Sunday morning, when in fact, if God is sovereign, every place is God’s place and every time is God’s time.
At this point in 2 Samuel, King David could finally get some rest. Goodness knows he deserved it, and needed it. He had spent decades running from Saul. After Saul died, he spent another decade consolidating power in Israel. And then he spent a few years whipping the Philistines, all of which before he turned 30. And now here he was, at relative peace and comfort. He knew that he had God and God alone to thank for that. So he decided, with the approval of his chaplain, Nathan, to build God a house. This whole time, David observed, even after God had built David this mighty dynasty, the Ark of God still rested in an old Army camp. No, David protested, it was time to build God a house, a Temple that was commensurate to all that God had done. The prophet Nathan agreed.
But God had different ideas. God said he didn’t need a house, thank you very much. He had never had one before, clear back from the time he led Israel out of slavery. So why would he need one now? “I took you from the pasture,” the Lord told Nathan — referring to David. “I took you from following the sheep to be prince of my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will” (notice how many times he says “I” and how he goes from past to future) “make for you a great name… I will appoint a place for my people Israel and I will plant them, so that they may live in their own place… I will give you rest from all your enemies… The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.” God is the subject of all those sentences. David isn’t going to build anything because God has already built it. David is not the subject. David may have had good intentions, but he was stretching it. David is not the subject. God is the subject.
What if God did not depend on anything at all that we did? What if there was no way that we could usher in the Kingdom of God because God himself had already ushered it in? What if the subject of the whole world was not us at all, and not what we did, or what we thought, or how we voted, or where we lived, or how we dressed, or what we did for a living? What if “we,” in the grand scheme of things, did not matter any at all? And what if only God mattered in everything, and we only mattered because God mattered and said that we matter? What if the question that we often hear, “What Would Jesus Do?,” was a moot question? It is when you think about it. “Would” implies that Jesus is not here. But Jesus is here. So what if the real question is, “What is Jesus Doing?”
What if, as the Psalmist said in today’s Psalm, that there was no place in the whole world where God was not? What if, even in the very depths of human sin and depravity, even in the darkest places God was there? Even as messed up as we all are, and even as messed up as we have made this world become, it’s still God’s world, and we are still God’s people. In fact, the Apostle Paul even refers to us — all of us — as God’s Temple. We aren’t building God anything. God has already done all the building. God has already built the house, and God is in the house, and so are we.
I am in a running group that meets at 5:30 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. On Wednesdays, we do speed work, or sprints. They consist of 800 meter sprints with 200 meter cool-downs. We did seven this past Wednesday. As you can imagine, they’re a bit taxing, especially before the rooster crows. This past Wednesday we had a new person come to our group. Somehow or other this particular person found out that I was a pastor, which always makes for an interesting conversation. She respected me and what I did, she said, but she just didn’t buy it. She was agnostic, she said. She didn’t deny God’s existence, but there was just no way to know for sure, according to her. I discovered that on one of our 200 meter cool-downs. And then, after another 800 meters on our next 200 meter cool-down, she said, “I only have one question for you.” I knew what it was going to be. It always is. She asked, “If your God is sovereign and good,” (ya’ll know where this is going) “then why is there so much pain in the world?” “You expect me to answer that,” I observed, “when my heart is beating so hard that I’m about to vomit and before another 100 meters.” “Yes,” she replied. “Have you read the book of Job,” I asked her. She said she had and it didn’t do it for her, which was fine because I’m not sure that’s what Job is about anyway. “My initial response then,” I said as I was catching my breath, “is that I ultimately cannot answer that question. It’s a mystery. But I will say that, God enters our suffering and will not forsake us there.” Jesus proves that. “So God suffers with us,” she asked. “That’s interesting. I haven’t thought about that,” she said. And then we ran 800 more meters and changed the subject.
This whole world is God’s house. Even in its darkest points and places, God is there struggling with the rest of us, because it’s God’s house and God loves this place. Sure this world is messed up and we are messed up. The newspaper is full everyday of the world’s pain and problems. That we can even read the newspaper and watch the news and then sleep at night indicates just how messed up this world is and how twisted we are. But God has built this place. This is God’s house. And God has made some promises to us. God is here with us, in our problems, in the aftermath of our sin, in our pain, in our unemployment, in our illnesses, in our losses, and even in all of our futile efforts to act like we’re God ourselves. God is not going to abandon this place. We would, but we are not the subject. God is, and thanks be to God, God always will be.
We have a beautiful sanctuary here, and I’m proud of it. More than that, I believe that God is proud of it. And, yes, we’re going to keep printing bulletins, and working on the sound system even if it makes my hair fall out. We’re going to treat this time, Sunday mornings, and this place, 9401 South Tryon Street, as the holy time and place that it is. And, while we’re at it, we’re going to keep going on mission trips, and having Sunday school classes, and youth groups, and children’s ministries. But all of that is a response. None of that is an initiation. God has done the initiating. God has already built his house, and it’s a beautiful house. Just look at it. Look at those pictures from outer space of the earth. That’s a small fraction of it. And look at your neighbor, and look at yourself. We’re all a little malfunctioning, but we’ve got God’s face plastered all over our bodies. We are not the subject at all, even though we often act like we are. God is the subject, and we are the object of God’s unending and eternal love. God has invaded this place. The Kingdom has come, Jesus tells us all over the Gospel. God has built a beautiful, beautiful house and has graciously invited us to come and stay awhile. So may we do just that, here this morning, and out there every morning, in every situation, in everybody we meet.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
