Make me a
house? God scoffs. A house? What kind of house will hold the Almighty? What
house, pray tell, can contain me?! You want to make me a house but
you know what? I’ll make you a house. A house not of brick and mortar, a house
that matters; a line—a legacy—that will last forever. A house!? Pfft.
There’s something wonderful in God’s response to David.
It’s interesting, because God makes a covenant with David even though it doesn’t
seem at first to add anything to the covenants made with Abraham and Moses.
They still have the promise of land and a future and descendants, but now God
hints at something better, something eternal, and it all has to do with this
misstep David has in wanting to build God a house.
Quick history lesson. Actually, this requires me to
flash-forward a little bit. If this were a movie we’d have a dramatic
underscore that shows what’s coming. Solomon, David’s son, builds the temple
and maintains the line of kings. It seems, for a moment, that God’s promise
really is about a physical building. But then the kingdom divides. There’s Israel
and Judah, the line of kings breaks apart; eventually, it fails completely. The
Jewish people are conquered by Babylon and the reign of kings over Israel and
Judah comes to an end. We know, looking back at history, that the eternal
throne of David cannot be the promise here; not if it’s an eternal one. There
has been no king of Israel since the Babylonian captivity.
So, what happened? Why did God make an eternal promise
with people who can’t keep their heads on straight for a week? This is just
about the one way human beings are consistent: We are brilliantly reliable
messers-up. No good thing in history ever lasts very long, and certain things
are just fated never to work out. Vikings fans know what that’s all about. Cubs
fans are testing that hypothesis at the moment. Among the many hilarious tweets
from the Cubs pennant winning victory last night was one that read, “Cubs fans:
This feeling you’re experiencing is called elation. Don’t worry, it will go
away.”
Realistically,
people disappoint. It’s what we do. We are the people who are freed from
captivity in Egypt only to turn around a couple weeks later to worship a golden
calf and then complain to Moses about the quality of the food while wandering
in the wilderness, wishing we could go back to the loving slave-masters in
Egypt.
People are reliable at messing up. I mean, not that you
and me mess up any more than others, but that’s not exactly tremendous
consolation. And yet, in spite of all of this, God works through people. And
that’s the astounding thing about this covenant with David. This covenant puts
a tremendous amount of trust in flesh-and-blood people to live in response to
the promise. God’s faith in us is astounding and surprising and ultimately
foolish unless—UNLESS!—there’s a bigger plan in the works here; unless the
house that we’re promised is not the temple in Israel, unless the son of David
is not Solomon, or not only Solomon.
Then—then—we are getting somewhere. Then, this covenant with David is not about
human things that never follow the law very long, and it isn’t about politics
in Israel, or a really big, impressive temple. Instead, it’s about the way that
God is going to turn the world upside down and send his son, his only son, into
the world. Then—oh boy!—we’re getting somewhere with this covenant.
This covenant with David is beautiful because it is
multi-faceted, and it is finally realized in Jesus. David couldn’t have known
it. Solomon wouldn’t have known it. Israel didn’t know it. They saw it as their
chance to hoist the trophy, to be the kingdom that rules over all other
kingdoms, but God didn’t want that; at least that wasn’t God’s endgame. Sure,
in the meantime it was OK for Israel to have some power, but political power
never lasts and it’s rarely good for anybody to have too much of it. The throne
that will last forever can’t be a political one; it can’t be a government with
all its tendency toward corruption, it can’t be dependent on the leadership of
a man or woman (because, let’s face it, David was just as shady as any of the
rest). If David is the representation of what a good leader looks like God help
us with the rest. No, the kingdom of God was built on the back of the only one
who could take it, the son of God who we know in Jesus Christ.
You
think you can build me a house? Says God. I’ll show you a house!
There’s this great scene that’s recorded in the Gospels
of Matthew, Mark, and Luke where Jesus goes up on the mountaintop along with
Peter and James and John, and up on the mountain he becomes transfigured,
glowing white. Elijah and Moses appear to him at which point Peter jumps to the
conclusion that what it needed is to build a house of worship on that location.
In fact, he wants three houses—one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah—which
sets the stage for one of the great interjections in biblical history. A cloud
comes over the mountain and God booms down his best Morgan Freeman impression:
“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Peter is obsessed with recounting
history, even when he has the living Christ in front of him. You don’t build a
church when you have Jesus in front of you! This is the tension our church
lives in. We have the fulfillment of the kingdom, and it’s not in holy shrines
or pilgrimage sites or gaudy temples. Those can be nice and meaningful, but if
you have the choice between a holy house or the son of God, choose Jesus.
That’s the kind of thing that happens with Israel. Sidetracked by the temple,
they lose track of their commitment to living as people of God.
You think you can build me a house? Says God. I’ll
show you a house.
One
more story. Eugene Peterson, in his book, The
Pastor, wrote about the long-term building project that his Baltimore
church undertook in the 1960s. He talked about all the momentum and inspiration
that accompanied the process of building a new church building, about how
excited the members of the church became about this project that would allow
them to move out of the basement of another facility and into a hand-crafted
vision of their ideal worship space—a place of their own. So, after years of
work they finally fulfilled this vision and the people celebrated, but within
months Peterson noticed that several of the families who had been instrumental
in the process of building this new church were no longer showing up on Sunday
mornings. So he reached out and met with them and heard a variation of the same
thing over and over again. They said, “We really did it, didn’t we? ... We sure
have put our mark on the neighborhood, haven’t we? I’ve never been part of
something this significant in my life. Thanks for getting me in on it.” And,
yet, the result was that they no longer felt a need to be at church on Sunday
morning.
There
are many lessons that can be drawn from this. One is that we tend to
erroneously put more emphasis on the product than the process; that the house
that we want to build is never as grand or as worshipful as we want it to be;
that the secret to getting people involved in church is not about offering them
a place that is just comfortable or only meaningful, but it is about offering
them a purpose, and as Christians that purpose is the way of the cross. It is
life and death and resurrection, and it is figuring out how to help people tap
into that purpose in their own way in their own lives. That’s the church. The
building is only useful insofar as it helps people tap into that purpose.
So,
when God sent Nathan to David with this new promise it was about two things,
neither of which David could know at the time. Firstly, the promise was about
Jesus, whom God would use to establish his throne forever. And secondly, it was
about the church. The house was about relationship; it was about
flesh-and-blood. This is what the church is about, too. Not a building but a
people. And a people who find purpose in relationship with one another, but
most importantly relationship with this God we know now in Jesus Christ. That’s
what it’s all about.
So,
if you’re looking for purpose, if you’re looking for hope, if you’re looking
for a reason to live in this crazy world, then look no further than the
gathering of people, like yourself, sinners—surely—as David was a sinner. Yes,
look to one another—to the process, not the product—because the end results we
leave to God. We can’t know what’s coming. We can’t figure out God’s big
picture. But we can know that together we are one church, one body, an image of
Christ for one another.
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