Sermon for July 21, 2024
Proper 11: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Our children's time this morning was from the book Where Are You Hiding God? by Elisabeth Zartl. You can hear the story in the following video:
Where Is God Hiding?
A little girl wants to know where God is. That is a question that you might have asked yourself sometimes, especially when life seems to be uncertain, stressful, lonely or sad.
It reminds me of the conversations with my mom when she wanted me to go with her, insisting I couldn't stay alone in the house. "I'm not going to be alone!" I would reply. "God is with me!" Needless to say, this argument didn't always work.
The message conveyed in Elisabeth Zartl’s book can be described as "Immanence" in theological terms. In simple terms, it means that God is present and active within the universe and in our lives. God is close to us, involved in the world, and accessible. This signifies that God is not distant or detached but is intimately involved in our everyday experiences. God does not watch from a distance but is one of us.
Theology also tells us that God is "transcendent." This means that God is above and beyond everything in the universe. God exists outside of time and space and is greater than anything we can imagine. This signifies that God is not limited by the physical world and is completely independent from it.
If I were to ask Artificial Intelligence to create an illustration that represents these ideas, it might come up with something like this.
The vast, starry night sky signifies God's transcendence, while the warm, glowing light around the person sitting in meditation symbolizes God's immanence.
Why are these two terms important to understand not only where God is, but who God is? Understanding the transcendence and immanence of God is crucial because it shapes our perception of God's nature and presence. Recognizing that God transcends all our human limitations means that God is beyond any boxes we might create. It reminds us that God cannot be confined to a specific place, ideology, or group. Instead, it's more valuable to keep asking where God is and who God is, and to attentively seek God's presence in our daily lives. This ongoing quest allows us to experience God's constant and dynamic presence, God's immanence, rather than being certain that God is confined to a particular place or aligned with a specific belief or group.
Let Me Build a House for God
In our Old Testament passage for today, we see a successful King David contemplating whether he should build a house for God. Some people interpret this passage as King David being pedantic, wanting to reflect his own greatness by building a grand temple for God. However, Gennifer Benjamin Brooks suggests that David's intention may stem from gratitude. She says that one indication of this is David seeking the wisdom of the prophet Nathan and obtaining his approval for the building project. If we consider this project as an act of gratitude, then God’s response to David’s proposition becomes puzzling and difficult to understand.1
According to David’s understanding, God has been living in a tent, which has symbolized God's presence with God's people for centuries. However, God’s response is not puzzling if we consider God's needs rather than our own. Patricia K. Tull reminds us that God does not need to be housed by humans. “God is free from the trappings of power, free to roam, free to tread lightly.”
She says, “It will not be David who establishes God, but God who will establish David.”2 God does this not for David’s sake, but for the sake of God's people, to “plant them, so that they may live in their own place and be disturbed no more, and evildoers shall afflict them no more” (v. 10).
The Mysterious Ways of God
God’s ways are always mysterious. We might have symbols to remind us of God’s presence, but God will always be more than human-built symbols or temples. Even though the Old Testament states that God has chosen “one people,” the New Testament expands this understanding through Jesus Christ. When speaking about Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that in Jesus’ flesh...
“he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” (Ephesians 2: 14-16)
William Placher, a theologian born here in the United States, has said that the language of modern theological thought has tended to domesticate transcendence. Maybe we have tipped the scales toward immanence too much. I believe that God is among us, that God deeply cares and love us… but God is not one of us.
Rebecca Burton Prichard, who quoted Placher states that:
When the mystery of God is tamed, when the Holy One resides in our neighborhood, we come to claim divine sanction for our thoughts and actions. “Most of us have causes we believe in with some passion. We like to think that God is on our side. It is therefore tempting if we are told that we can design God to fit our specifications.” Just so, the walls we build with words tend to exclude grace and to shore up our own feelings of control and dominance, giving us a false sense of security. 3
And when we develop that sense of security, that sense of certainty, when we determine who God favors, who God blesses, who God chooses, who God cares about, that is when we get into trouble and we stray from God’s purpose and God’s will in Jesus Christ. Trying to fit God into a house makes us the owners of a homeless faith.
Live in Uncertainty
The other day I was watching a trailer for a movie called “Conclave”. A conclave is a special meeting of cardinals in the Catholic Church to elect a new pope. It is based on a book by Robert Harris. When I heard the last words on the trailer, I had to find the whole quote from the book. While presenting his homily, Cardinal Lomeli, who is the member of the Vatican staff responsible for managing the conclave says these words.
“My brothers and sisters, in the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?’ He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. (Harris, Robert. Conclave: A novel (pp. 93-94). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)
My prayer today for myself, for us, and for this country and the world, is that our faith can live with and thrive in uncertainty and doubt. That it may continue to seek God, even when we find it difficult to understand. My prayer is that we embrace the mystery of God, resisting the urge to confine God to our limited understanding or to define God's agenda. God is not watching us from a distance, nor is God just one of us, and I am okay with that. We need faith. But our faith must be placed in God's will, not our own. In God’s nature and not our nature or on any nature imposed by human beings. Continue to seek God with curiosity, with humbleness, with a sense of awe and a delight for mystery. Who knows what we will find and what God will establish for us.
[1] Gennifer Benjamin Brooks, Ernest and Bernice Styberg Professor of Preaching and Director of the Styberg Preaching Institute Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-16-2/commentary-on-2-samuel-71-14-4
[2] Patricia K. Tull, “Exegetical Perspective (2 Samuel 7:1–14a),” in Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Additional Essays, vol. 34, Feasting on the Word (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 4–6.
[3] Rebecca Button Prichard, “Theological Perspective (2 Samuel 7:1–14a),” in Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Additional Essays, vol. 34, Feasting on the Word (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 3.
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