Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · November 22, 2009

Litany of Praise and Invocation

From Psalm 132  

We remember David and the hardships he endured,

how he could not rest until he found a place where God would be honored.

            Rise up, O God, and find your place among us

            and lead us to where we are found.

The Lord of the universe is not imprisoned by stones,

in houses made with human hands,

            but lives in the hearts of those who love in return,

            in the covenant of life, knowing the wisdom and power of God.

Let us lift our thankful hearts to God:

            Eternal and ever-present Creator,

there is no shadow of turning without you.

Planting and growing, harvest and sharing,

Your bounty, provision, and glory are thine!  

And we shall come rejoicing!

           Amen.

Old Testament Lesson

2 Samuel 23:1-5

Now these are the last words of David:

The oracle of David, son of Jesse,

   the oracle of the man whom God exalted,

the anointed of the God of Jacob,

   the favorite of the Strong One of Israel:

The Spirit of the Lord speaks through me,

   his word is upon my tongue.

The God of Israel has spoken,

   the Rock of Israel has said to me:

One who rules over people justly,

   ruling in the fear of God,

is like the light of morning,

   like the sun rising on a cloudless morning,

   gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.

Is not my house like this with God?

   For he has made with me an everlasting covenant,

   ordered in all things and secure.

Will he not cause to prosper

   all my help and my desire?

Message

Is Not My House

Tim Carson

The Church has a calendar, but it’s not in sync with anything else. It doesn’t match the Solar, Lunar, Chinese, Mayan, or Roman calendars or our familiar twelve months of January through December. Though some of its high holy days have been strategically placed in order to eclipse nature observances like the Spring Equinox or Winter Solstice, it has its own inner logic. National holidays are not included. Neither are fun things like St. Paddy’s or Valentines’ Day. It does include the story of Jesus and the story of the Church. It is meant to be running in the background of Christian life like the soundtrack to a movie.

Most of all, the Christian calendar has to do with telling the Christian story over the course of a year. The chapters of this story are swathed in changing colors to cue us where we are. Next Sunday, we begin this yearlong story with Advent, the season of wakeful anticipation for Christ’s entry into the world. We celebrate that entry with the Nativity, which is closely followed by the season of lights, Epiphany, in which we tell the story of the visit of the Magi, the light that goes forth to the whole world. During the season of Lent, we reflect on the way of Jesus into sacrifice and our own way along side of him. Holy Week and its Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter escorts us through his passion, death, and resurrection. Forty days later, we celebrate Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit to the Church. And then there is that long stretch of so-called ordinary time in which we contemplate what it means to be a Christian, to be the Church in the world, running with Jesus.

Finally, we arrive at the end of the yearlong story, which is today. It’s the last day of the year. It’s the last Sunday before we turn over the calendar and start telling the story all over again. And they call this day Christ the King because, by now, if you’ve been on the ride during the last year, there’s no good reason that Jesus shouldn’t be reigning in your heart and in the heart of the world.

In the middle of Christ the King, this last hurrah before the baby Church year begins again, the tradition takes us back to another king, to King David. And it isn’t just any part of David’s story. What we are given is David’s swan song, his last musings and hopes, the speech before he gets the gold watch. It is all of his last musings, his hopes. It is his final speech. What do you say when it’s time to say your last thing? What would you say?

Do you remember the story of Randy Pausch and his last lecture? He was a professor in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. A lot of professors will give “the last lecture,” usually a kind of summa in which they present what they consider to be the most important aspects of their work. The difference with Pausch is that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So when he gave his “last lecture” he was a relatively young man, and he chose to focus not on academia, but rather what makes for good living. One of his observations, for instance, was this: “We can’t change the cards we are dealt, only how we play the hand.”

Anytime someone is giving the “last lecture,” the listener can’t help but ask, “What wisdom would I share if I knew it was my last chance?” That adds urgency, doesn’t it?  

And so this is David’s last lecture and, of all the things, he could have chosen to share there is one that is most important to him. David said that a good leader must rule justly, and that ruling is best done in respect and awe for the living God. When that happens, he said, it’s like a beautiful, sparkling sunrise when the rays hit the dew in the morning, and it sparkles. It fills the whole world.

He states the ideal, of course. And speaking the ideal is the point when speaking your last words. But then David posed a question that I can only believe was directed at himself as much as to those around him: “Is not my house like this?” In other words, he dares to measure himself by his own ideal. “Is my house, my life, my reign achieving the same things that I have shared? And anybody who knows David also knows that the answer to that question can only be “yes and no.”

Of course, David was Israel’s favorite son, the youngest of his brothers to be chosen, anointed, and called. From harp to slingshot, he led his people into Jerusalem, the dancing warrior-king, singing his songs of praise. He was the favorite son. Yes. But as to his house and its justice, it had not flourished in some uninterrupted progress. His family history was littered with indiscretion and tyranny, whole branches of the family tree had broken off, lost forever, and his years were clouded by setbacks, revolutions, grief, and disappointments. He suffered the indignity of exiting with his kingdom in perilous position, much less viable than earlier in his reign.

As we hear his words, and his wondering about his own house, we can only feel the deep reservations he carried. But embedded in this reservation, this doubt about his legacy, is also an awareness that he lives by a covenant deeper than his performance, that his only real claim is found in the claims of God upon him, and that even when he didn’t embody the ideals of justice and righteousness, his God did.

His only hope, a hope found in his last words, is that somehow, and not due to any merit of his own, the sun will break forth in the morning because the grace and goodness of God prevails even when we don’t. That’s his last song, and it is haunting and sobering at the same time, a cautionary song as the Church turns over its calendar one more time.

In Lisa Scottoline’s short story, Killer Smile, she answers a friend’s question about her core faith by saying, “I believe in justice. And I believe in love. And in not getting over it, because that’s too much to ask of a human being. Getting over it is the wrong thing to want, anyway. You should never expect to get over it; the best you can hope is to push through it. And you go on. Your past becomes a part of you; you just fold it into the bread dough and keep rolling.”

We shouldn’t try to get over our fondest, deepest hopes, even when we haven’t fulfilled them. If we have the courage, we cast a vision for the best that can be and then dare to ask ourselves the question: Is not my house like this? Well, partially, yes, but completely, no. He is us; David is. And like David, we shouldn’t try to get over it or forget it just because we haven’t achieved it. Instead, we roll it all into the dough.

This summer, I passed through the Denver airport. Artists have created a breathtaking Native-American mosaic in one of the terminal floors, and the cultural symbolism of this mosaic includes an intricate pattern of arrows that fly out from the center, all heading different directions. But passengers walking through the terminal came to that design in the floor and mistakenly thought that the arrows were airport direction signs. Believing the arrows pointed somewhere, they started following them. It sent them to bathrooms, to a wall, and to dead-end corridors. Whole groups of people ended up wandering around in circles trying to follow the arrows to nowhere.

It got so bad they had to station airport personnel by the mosaic to help people not follow the arrows!

In a world where we travel by faith and depend on the grace of God to lead us, it is not unusual for us to misread the signs and head the wrong way. But ever so often, there is a faithful one standing there, a wise mentor, someone sharing his or her last words or best words, who say in one way or another, “Not that way, but this way.”

Reinhold Niebuhr said that only people who walk humbly in this world will be able to face its beauty and terror without being either swept away by its beauty or being crushed by its terror (Justice and Mercy). David draws that connection for us when he says that the justice of the king is safeguarded by a humble walking before the awesome God.

It is humility that tempers us, and not only the humility that comes with knowledge of our failings. This is the humility that accompanies our awareness of limits, our smallness in the face of a huge, complex, and mysterious universe. If our knowledge is like a little island in a vast sea of mystery, the growth of that little island never depletes the sea. In fact, the growth of our little island only increases the shoreline along which we may encounter even more mystery still. (Chet Raymo, When God is Gone Everything is Holy, Sorin Books, 2008).

The more we know, the more we don’t know. Humility is what allows the person to walk through life in awe of God and to safeguard justice.

Have you thought of what words will be your last? And will you dare to inquire about the gap between what you profess and what your actual life is: Is not my house like this? Be consoled, friend.  All of our stories are unfinished, and our ideas about how life should have been are unfulfilled. But that’s exactly the point and why they end up being David’s last ones – precisely because there is always more than his own life that makes life worth living.

I don’t know if you have read Mary Karr’s memoir, Lit (HarperCollins, 2009), but if so, you’ve taken a harrowing autobiographical ride. The sailing is not easy, and she is in the running for the most dysfunctional family of the century. Her life is a violation of almost everything that she counts as good and worthwhile. And her faith was hard-won, the result of a stroke of grace that seemed impossible. This is grace that stands out by everything around it. And when she comes to the end of her story, she shares her own last words. And they are these:

“There are days when through my fear and egoism, I shake my fist at the sky, afterward feeling silly and worn out as a toddler who has just had a temper tantrum. Every now and then, we enter the presence of the holy, and we deduce for an instant how we’re formed in what detail the force that infused every flower specifically runs through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential…It can start you singing as the lion pads over to you, its jaws hinging open, its hot breath upon you. Even unto death” (385-86).

And so the end of the story: an unfulfilled dream for ourselves and for the world. Perhaps that is the best and only way it can be. For somewhere in the longing we share with King David, some vision of justice, and peace continues to shine like a bright morning and pours down like rain on parched ground. The lion breathes his hot breath on us. In the distance, do we see the shadow of another son of David who may fulfill our last words when we could not? Now wouldn’t that be an end to the story: O Come, O Come Emmanuel… Hosanna to the son of David.

Let us pray. By grace, O God, we roll it all into the dough and go on, living by justice and a dream for your peace yet unfulfilled. So, we hope in the One who is yet to come. In his name we pray, Amen.

Benediction

Now go forth with thankful hearts,

thankful because the God of all grace has come among you. 

Amen.