Let’s be honest.
Today, after this election, half of the nation is not feeling so great,
and the other half, they’re feeling pretty good. And likely four years from now, the same
thing will happen then too. And that’s
ok. It’s good, even. Who
wouldn’t want folks to have strong feelings about what they believe, what they
desire, including what they desire for this nation?
But what do you do with those feelings when things
don’t go the way you want? This question doesn’t just apply to an
election, it applies to life. And how
you answer that question makes a huge difference in the life you will have. In life, things will happen that you don’t
want to happen. Nothing in life goes
the way you want it every time, heck, not even most of the time. So when that happens, how do you need to
react? In this strange, even disturbing
story, God gives you the answer. God
shows you how peace, even fulfillment can happen in a world where so many things
don’t go your way. So let’s listen and
hear what God has to say.
When life doesn’t go your way, how do you
respond? How do you face those
situations in a way that leads to life and peace rather than resentment and
fear? In this story God tells you. God warns you that the more you try to
control your world, your relationships, even God, by anger and assumption the
more you move away from what God calls your life to be. Life comes not when you assume and separate
but when you learn to listen and to love.
As this story begins, David has come up with a
terrific idea. As the new king of
Israel, he wants to bring the Ark of God home.
But the ark, this symbol of God’s presence, this gold plated box that
held the Ten Commandments with two angels sculpted on top, it had been left in
this small town on the border of Israel for years. So David thought. What better way to show my commitment to God
then by bringing the Ark to Jerusalem? But
let’s just say, things did not go the way he expected.
It starts out well.
He pulls together his whole army to march it in. He gets a nice cart to put it on. But then the cart hits a pothole. And poor
Uzzah just reaches out to steady it, to keep it from falling to the
ground. What does God do? God strikes the poor guy down. Talk about killing the parade. God zapping some poor schlub will do it every
time.
Now, when people hear stories like this, they think. This is why I hate all this religious stuff. You’ve
got these awful stories of a trigger happy God who strikes down people willy
nilly. And frankly this is what David
thought. He walked away from the ark,
and from God. The whole experience
turned him off so much that he didn’t even leave the ark with an Israelite
family. He pushed it on some poor
foreign family, figuring, let God zap those folks.
But did David make the right move? Did God just strike down poor Uzzah for no
reason? What
is really going on here?
To figure that out, you need to understand what
David didn’t do. When it came to the
ark, God had given a whole set of rules on how to treat it. You didn’t put the ark out where anyone
could see it. In fact, on only one day a year, Yom Kippur, could
anyone see it, and even then, only one person, who would go in as a
representative of the people. And if
you ever had to move it, you literally covered it up. You did not even touch it. Instead the ark had little rings on either
side. And
Levites, who God had specifically set aside for this task, would insert poles
into the rings, and carry the ark on their shoulders.
Yet does David do any of that? No. He
manhandles the thing onto a cart. He
puts it on display for everyone to see.
And instead of getting Levites to
carry it, he recruits the two sons of Abinadab, the guy who had been keeping it.
Now you might be thinking. Ok, so what?
Why is God so uptight about the rules?
It’s because the rules have a purpose.
They carry a profound message about God, about life. And if you don’t get that message, then it
leads in a direction that will hurt, even destroy you and others.
Early this past Wednesday morning, an important
ritual began. Hillary Clinton called
President elect Trump to concede. Then Trump issued a call to unity, words of
admiration for his opponent, and a promise to represent every American. The next day, Clinton followed it by a speech
to her supporters asking them to support the President elect. And four years ago, pretty much that same thing
happened, and four years from now, it will happen again. Those rules aren’t written down, but
everyone knows they exist. Now why do we
do it that way after every Presidential election? Are we just not imaginative enough to come
up with something different? Are we too
uptight, too rules focused to do it any other way? No, we know that these unwritten rules are
bigger than us. They’re about making
sure that power, tremendous power moves peacefully. They’re about showing stability and strength
not simply to our citizens, but to the entire world. And the
stakes of not doing that are simply too high to play fast and loose with those
rules, even if they are unwritten.
And here the stakes are even higher. Imagine if you go out to eat with someone,
and before you can get a word out, they go ahead and order for you. They explain. This is what I like to eat,
and so that’s what I think you should have.
You’d likely be thinking. How rude! He better be picking up the check.
At a deeper level, David does exactly this with God. He assumes that since he is now the King he
can handle God anyway he chooses. He
probably didn’t even take the time to find out how God wished the Ark to be
handled. David figured he’d do it the
way he wanted. Right from the beginning,
David was acting as if the Ark of God was something to be manipulated to show
his connection to God, to bolster his standing as the king. He was making a dangerous assumption about
his relationship to God. He assumed that
God was someone he could control, that he could use however he wished. And God
knows. If this pattern of arrogance
continues, it will destroy not just David.
It will destroy the nation.
So God delivers a wake-up call to David’s pride through
a tragic death. In that death, God is
first saying to Uzzah. “You want to
make sure this holy object doesn’t fall to the ground? What makes you think that the ground isn’t
holy, since I made it? What makes you
think that your hands are holier, that your hands have any right to handle the
things of God?” And God is saying to David. “Don’t you ever think you can handle me, that
I am someone you can control to get your way.”
The rules I’ve given, rules you’ve arrogantly ignored, make that reality
crystal clear.
And just to emphasize the point, God not only doesn’t
zap anyone in the foreigner’s house where the ark resides. He showers blessing upon blessing upon them. And when David hears that, something
changes. He moves from anger to
curiosity. Who is this God who zaps an
Israelite, but then blesses an outsider? David had first assumed he could
handle God any way he wanted. Then he
had assumed that God is so arbitrary he can’t relate at all. But now he is finally asking, rather than
assuming.
Too often people never get past David’s first
reaction. When what they ardently
believe is right doesn’t go their way, they get angry, and their anger leads to
assumption. They assume that they are
on the side of right, and therefore whatever blocked their way can’t be. And so like David, they separate themselves.
They turn away rather than turn towards.
But when David sees this God acting contrary to how
he assumed God to be, he gets curious.
And his curiosity leads to insight.
He reads the rulebook. We know
that by how things go the second time around.
This time he makes the appropriate sacrifices. He wears the appropriate garments. He lets God set the agenda not David.
And strangely this honoring of God’s ways doesn’t
limit David, it liberates him. He dances
before the Lord. He makes lavish
sacrifices. He showers delicacies on the people.
But one person sees this, and doesn’t understand at
all. His wife, Michal, the daughter of
Saul, the former king, is appalled.
After all, as the king’s daughter, she knows how a king in the ancient
near east is supposed to act. And she
knows. This is not it. A king has to be separated from the people, set
above them as a god. He can’t be running
through the streets dancing, giving everyone cakes. That’s ridiculous.
In her anger, she assumes that David has done it to
glorify himself, and to embarrass her.
And when David comes home, she lets him have it. Now
David tries to explain. He tells
her. “Don’t you get it? This wasn’t supposed to be me. But God, out of his sheer grace, picked me to
be king. What else can I do but
celebrate? And dignity? Forget about dignity. I lay down everything for God. I will even be humiliated for him. And while you may not see my lack of dignity
for what it is, others will.” And then
the story ends with these enigmatic words, that Michal had no children until
the day of her death.
Now, at first I thought. God is judging Michal for her angry
words. But is that it? Or is God letting us know that David still
has a lot to learn. Yes, Michal got
angry and lashed out. But David does the
same. He even throws in a cruel jab about how he has
become king over her father, now tragically dead What
an irony. David has in some sense gotten
his way. He has brought the Ark to
Jerusalem. But in his self-righteous
pride, he still gets caught up in anger and assumption.
And so David
and Michal both angrily make assumptions about the other. And instead of seeking to understand, they
separate. And what results? Their marriage has no fruit. It dies before it has hardly begun.
Things haven’t changed so much. I see people reacting like that all the time. When things don’t go their way, they get
angry. Now that anger could lead them
to ask questions. Instead it usually
leads them to make assumptions. They don’t
seek to understand. They just walk away
instead. And so marriages get wrecked, friendships get
wrecked, community gets wrecked, even Christian community. And in these difficult days, that sort of
anger and assumption can wreck our nation too.
But let me be honest, I don’t just see other people
doing it, I see me doing it. And whenever I do, it makes a mess. How many here can say they haven’t done it,
might even be doing it right now? How
easy it is to self-righteously assume you’re the one in the right, and anyone
who disagrees is in the wrong? How
easily you can fall into angry separation rather than simply seeking to
understand someone? But how do you break free of that? How do you find the power to move past anger
and separation? How do you come to a
place where you truly seek to understand, to even love those who see things profoundly
differently than you do?
You turn to another King, a King who could have
turned away in anger from those who turned away from him, but instead turned
towards them in love. When they refused
his ways, he didn’t separate. No, he
left his Kingship behind to become their friend, even their servant instead. And out
of his great love, he gave everything for them, even his life; his very
existence, to bring them home. And
the more you let this King love you, the more this King will free you. Jesus will free you from the
self-righteousness that leads you to see so easily other’s wrong but be so
blind to your own. He will fill you
with a loving anger that leads you to not only seek justice, but to seek to
understand and to love, even as Jesus has understood and loved you. And in the wonder of his humble grace, you
will find a freedom to trust even when you don’t understand. In his unwavering faithfulness, you will find
a hope that can withstand the most perplexing disappointments. And in his extravagant love, you will find a
confidence that will lead you to know that no matter what happens, his love,
his infinite, unstoppable love will always have the last word.
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