Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
“The God at the End of .Com”
2nd Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 — preached at Foundry United Methodist Church July 11th, 2021
I am always amazed at the richness and depth of Scripture. You can return to a passage over and over again and, invariably, each reading raises more questions than it answers. Fresh examination of our most beloved passages brings new insight and deeper dialogue with every encounter.
Contrary to popular belief, Scripture is not a roadmap which always lays out clear boundaries and mile markers for a to-scale spiritual journey. Nor is its prophecy a predictive panacea, or cure, that explains away our uncertainty about the future .
It is rather, I think, a divine invitation. In its words, we meet God at the intersections of our collective past, the present, and the future to receive God’s word for us right now. In it we recognize and remember that God shows up, over and over again at the intersections of our faith and doubt, our hope and fear, our joy and our sorrow. And when we accept the invitation to meet God at those intersections // new joy and abundant life often await us around every corner. As we meet God today where our story intersects with that of David, Michal and the people of Israel, let us pray:
Come Holy Spirit, Living Light of Love, and illuminate our lives anew. Grant us fresh grace, so that as we ponder the possibilities of your leading through THESE words, we might receive and welcome their comfort and challenge. Take the humble offering of this preacher and make of it what it needs to be so that—whether through me or in spite of me—you might be glorified, your people edified, and together we might draw a little closer to Your Kin-dom come. Amen.
It was a new day in Israel! The people were turning the corner of a past rife with internal division, political anarchy, and war with the Philistines. These changes culminated in the return of the Ark of the Covenant—the physical representation of God’s power, presence, and preference for the people of Israel—to the center of their social awareness as it is escorted out of obscurity in backwater Balle- Judah and into their new capital city of Jerusalem.
What unfolds, on the one hand, is prime political theater. David represented a radical change in leadership from his predecessor, King Saul. A popular military hero with a keen sense of how to rule, he threatened familiar institutions and power structures, along with those who benefited from them. By intertwining his kingship with the unifying religious symbol of the Ark, David appeals to the peoples’ religious devotion and offers proof in his procession, into HIS capital city, that his reign and leadership are blessed by God.
But, while there are certainly political motivations for David’s decision, the ark of the covenant is no mere political symbol. Sincere and raucous joy accompany its arrival in the city. The Ark, after all was proof that God was with them even as they turned the corner toward a new way of being Israel together. Proof that God was able to take moments of unprecedented change // and leadership from surprising and unexpected places // and new rituals and ways of gathering together and make of them opportunities for healing, hope, and wholeness.
David is one of the Bible’s more complicated figures. A egomaniac with a seemingly insatiable bloodlust and a penchant for pursuing his own best interests most of the time. But here takes advantage of a strategic opportunity to usher people into the healing presence of God following decades of communal trauma. And his reckless joy, his willingness to literally dance like a fool in front of his people, abandons assumptions about how a king should behave and invites people to consider new ways of recognizing and responding to God’s presence.
Whatever David’s political motivations, the Spirit of God moves in them and maybe in spite of them, creating much needed space for people to remember, recognize, and embrace the hope of God’s abiding presence, the true source of their strength and joy.
In his dancing David becomes, a conduit and conductor of hope, his ecstatic joy an invitation for everyone watching to recognize the presence of God in their midst, and to celebrate, even when it means risking what is familiar and comfortable as we do.
Like so many of you, I’m anxious for the day that this sanctuary again swells with the sounds of “To God be the Glory” and cries of newborns freshly washed in baptismal waters. For chance to be with one another and return to the sacred space we share on the corner of 16th and P. Yet, even as we prepare to re-enter in person worship on Wednesday of this week, my mind can’t help but regularly return to the earliest days of the pandemic.
I remember the fear and anxiety we faced, unsure of how we would remain connected to God and one another, let alone our sanity. Questions and confusion were common; about the science, about our safety. Questions about what online platforms we should use and what happens when they aren’t failproof? We all wondered how, and I’m guessing at multiple points doubted we could, stay socially and spiritually connected using technology designed for workplace? Would our neighbors file a noise complaint by the time we start singing the fifth verse of ‘O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing” at our dining room table. Could we find God in the isolation? Could we find God at the end of .com?
Like the Ark’s arrival on the streets of Jerusalem all those years ago, this season has opened to new paradigms for being the people of God together. We have been led by choir members who recorded audio tracks and then lip synced videos, all while trying to listen to themselves and a recorded piece of music for our virtual choir pieces. We have been encouraged by teachers and preachers and new members who, because of this virtual format, have joined our us in worship and learning from hundreds of miles away.
We were nourished and nurtured by folks like Rosa, who packed communion cups and wafers in Ziploc bags and small group leaders who showed up faithfully, even when they were Zoom-weary, to create space for support and prayer. We were challenged by our Confirmands, who refused to join The United Methodist Church without challenging its complicity in harm and injustice, and comforted by voices who reminded us over and over again that it was ok not to be ok—and then gave us the space for that to be true.
Like David so many of you have stepped into this season and risked being made a fool—as we figured out how to mute ourselves and watched our best laid virtual plans fall apart when our wifi signal just wasn't strong enough.
And somehow, often despite our expectations, we found the presence of God was with us. Not just in our sanctuaries or familiar rhythms and rituals, but with us in the silence and stillness of the stay-at-home orders so many at first feared. In the closets and quiet spaces where we lifted praise and lament and listened for the voice of God. In flowerbeds and lush, loamy vegetable gardens that would never have been tended if we weren’t working from home and bowls of water and boxes of supplies we used to adorn our home altars.
God was on the end of—I’m loathe to admit it—many a group text and long, lingering phone call. God was in the chat rooms where we celebrated sacred moments and grieved what was lost. God was in backyard baptisms and clear plastic baggies that became conduits of God’s living love at communion.
We have witnessed and remembered these last 15 months what is possible when we’re willing to risk doing the unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or unexpected for the sake of opening our hearts and lives to Spirit’s leading. That God’s presence is ever-available and dynamic, moving not only in familiar modalities, but also through new ad unfamiliar technologies and ways of being Church so joy, hope, healing, and—sometimes, maybe most of the time—just plain old survival was possible. We’ve learned, and re-learned, and been reminded that God is with us, always, even at the end of .com. And because of it lives have been changed. Communities have grown. People have fallen headfirst into God’s love. Deepened their capacity to love one another. Even as we’ve done all of this in an unfamiliar, often uncomfortable way, the world has been changed because we accepted the invitation and took the rest.
Sandwiched into this Scripture story of celebration is another story, single line about David's wife Michal. Michal was the daughter of King Saul and betrothed to David when he was first anointed by Samuel. Before he was king, she risked her life to save David’s when he earned the ire of her father, was forcibly married off to someone else to enrage David, and is then ripped from her home following the brutal death of her father and brother to be remarried to the newly anointed King David.
While today's reading only says that she saw David’s dancing and despised him in her heart, a few verses later we encounter a painful exchange between David and Michal about his dancing. She upbraids him for his unbecoming behavior, suggesting that it waas self-serving and un-kinglike. We have to be careful before we assign mal-intent or ill will to Michal’s behavior. Perhaps, after years of being passed between kings and pretenders to the throne, she realized David’s actions were risky and threatened her stability and security. It’s possible she’d simply seen the politics of power corrupt one too many people that she loved and had no more capacity to put up with David’s pomp and circumstance and BS.
The trauma and violence inflicted on her as the daughter of a dead despot and wife of an emerging demagogue was profound. It’s no wonder she wasn’t ready to join the party! She was grieving. She was, I imagine, braced for impact, not ready to embrace joy. David, who a few moments before had created space for people to encounter what God’s presence could do, missed the moment. He dismissed her. Demeaned her arguments. And abandoned her as he danced the merry band around the corner and into what came next. Michal’s place in scripture terminates here, and we’re told she died without children The implication is that she was abandoned by David as he moved into this new season of Israel’s history without her.
I wonder if this brief encounter, informed by but left out of today’s lectionary reading, offers us a cautionary tale of how we turn the corner of this pandemic season. David’s ecstatic dancing reminds us how important it is to seize every opportunity to open space for others to encounter the living, healing presence of God after 15 months of deferred trauma and grief—even when it risks what we’re familiar or comfortable with. Michal’s story asks us to explore our unexpressed grief and trauma and the ways the keep us from recognizing God’s presence in our lives—even in unexpected places and from unexpected sources. She invites to remain open to the possibility of healing and hope it offers, and challenges us to help others do what David did not for her. Together, they remind us that God shows up in both our ecstatic joy and overwhelming sorrow.
And that its easy to leave folks behind if we insist that it’s our way or the highway. In the end, they both seem miss the point and an opportunity for them turn this corner together: that God shows up.
And that’s really the point of this story, isn’t it? God shows up, whether in the Ark of the Covenant or the wild dancing of David or Michal’s profound pain and fear. God shows up in our anticipation and celebration, when we’re ready to move full steam ahead into the possibilities of what comes next and as when we’re mired in profound grief and sorrow . God shows up even as we cling to our pre- conceived notions and assumptions of what is and is not proper, or when our intentions or motives might not be the most pure, when we’re lost in grief and ensnared by fear.
Spirit—as the story of David, Michal, and Ark proves—is always revealing herself in new ways, moving in unexpected places, and opening up fresh opportunities for people to recognize and receive the promise of God’s abiding presence and love. It may not come in behavior we deem becoming or in packages we prefer, but nevertheless the presence of God enters into the midst of our moments and movements, interrupts our expectations, and invites us to be free. All we have to do is answer the invitation.
We are invited together, as Foundry Church, as the body of Christ to be for others conduits and conductors through which they can experience the profound joy and abundant life God desires for all of us. To risk hope and receiving joy even as we feel lost in fear and awash in grief. To be open to peoples pain and fear as we re-enter life together—even when we aren’t— and to remain present as a source of comfort until they’re ready to embrace joy. To challenge our preconceived notions and assumptions about what proper, right or acceptable in such encounters, and to risk being made a fool for the sake of others’ opportunity to know and experience the liberating love of God.
Today’s reading reminds us that we have a profound opportunity as we turn this corner, together, to continue creating space where people can encounter God’s liberating love. Our role isn’t to be gatekeepers carefully deciding and defining for others the “right” way to find that or the appropriate methods by which they will . Nor is it to shame others into joy. Our job is to show up, together, again and again and remain open to how God might meet us when we do—so that no one, as we enter into this new season—gets left as we go.
As we stand at the intersection of where we've been and what comes next we are faced with a crucial question: Will we embrace and celebrate the new ways and means we have known God’s love, grown in faith, healed from old wounds and discovered new dimensions of discipleship? Will we risk discomfort, distaste, and even foolishness for the sake of extending to others the life giving presence of God?
Will we meet one another wherever we are—ready to dance or still braced for impact—and work, and witness, and wait with each other so that together we might be a conductor of joy, a conduit of hope, living love through whose light the whole world is set free.
The choice, my beloved, is ours. Let us choose well. Amen.
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