Reflections on Worship, August 3

It is no secret that Sunday morning was a bit of a challenge for me, since I do not function very well on limited sleep. So I must confess that my memories of the morning as a whole are a little cloudy. I do recall feeling about two steps behind all morning and quite slow on the uptake. Happily, the point of worship is not to assess my mental sharpness, but rather to worship God, so in the grand scheme of things such challenges are mostly irrelevant.

Overall, I thought the service was pleasant and uplifting -- though, of course, I may not be the best judge of that. As always, it was good to have Brooks with us, working his magic. The presentation of the needlepointed Christ by Jane Henry's son Tom was moving, and yet another reminder of the enduring witness of our brothers and sisters (and forefathers and foremothers) of faith. We should find ways to celebrate such things publicly more often -- it's good for everybody.

But mostly today I have some reflections on Sundays sermon. Aside from the fact that it ran on quite a bit (needless to say, the internal clock was obviously on snooze), I am comfortable with what was said. I wish that there had been more time to explore some practical applications of the lessons that grow out of the establishment of Jerusalem as the earthly "city of God." But I felt strongly that without really sketching the fuller circumstances of David's decision, such discussion would have been either cliched or suggested completely out of context.

The single significant omission in Sunday's sermon was that I forgot to point out that the tension between rural and urban religion was even present in the 2 Samuel passages, not simply throughout the prior history of Israel. As David is dancing in the procession bringing the Ark of the Covenant to its new home in Jerusalem, his wife Michal (daughter of Saul) watches in disgust, thinking that he is acting like a low class person rather than a well-bred king. When confronted, David says simply that he was dancing for joy in the presence of God, which is certainly true of David the religious man, and that the opinions of humans are of little import, which is certainly less true for David the political leader. Even here, though, the tensions of class in religious practice -- which are always present in the life of a city -- are present in the story.

But there were lots of omissions in the sermon because I discovered just how rich these two chapters of 2 Samuel are, particularly in light of our larger study. Scripture is immeasurably rich, which means that there are always multiple approaches one can take in studying the Bible's implications and lessons, but I found much more than I expected in these chapters, which meant that I had to leave some things out.

The most important of these things that I intentionally overlooked in the sermon is that David commits the same "mistake" that Saul does in conflating religious and political authority in the kingdom. When he brings the Ark of the Covenant to its new home in Jerusalem, David personally offers the burnt offerings in the new Tabernacle and distributes the food from the sacrifices among all the people present.

And what happens? Does the priest arrive to chastise David for his actions? Does the prophet come to tell him that God's favor has been removed from him? Do the people react with horror at David's chutzpah? Not at all. Everybody is happy and thinks that this is a perfectly normal thing.

This is not the first time that the rules have been different for David than for everybody else. When Saul sacrifices on behalf of the people before battle, Samuel reads him the riot act and cannot contain his personal chagrin. When David sacrifices on behalf of the people in the new capital city, everybody goes home with leftovers and nobody says anything.

As we will learn, the man after God's own heart can get away with almost anything, including murder (mark your calendars now -- Bathsheba's only two Sundays away), and not lose God's favor.

Mind you, it is not the case that the religious authorities have lost their separate authority, as will become abundantly clear as David butts heads with the prophet Nathan in the upcoming weeks. There really is a separation of church and state, which we will see that David ultimately respects. But it does seem to be an uneven playing field.

There are several possible explanations for this discrepancy in how Saul and David are treated. On the one hand, it is possible that our scripture writers -- or more likely, their editors -- know how the story ends and are filling in the theological details. If God were behind Saul, this argument goes, his descendants would have ruled Israel for generations; since they did not, Saul must have crossed God in some way. On the other hand, David's family did rule for generations, so God must have been behind them and their actions. And so, in 20/20 hindsight, these similar actions are viewed very differently.

But such logic avoids the more frustrating implication, that God really does treat Saul and David differently. This is a painful thing for us to consider, I think, because we all like to think that God treats us all equally. But human experience sometimes suggests otherwise, often rather cruelly. Some people live and some die. Some live well and others less so. Some feel the ravages of disease or "fate" more fully than others. This is the central issue, I think, in theodicy -- the question of why God allows human suffering: the challenge is not that there is suffering, but it seems rather random. Practically speaking, we understand why someone who smokes cigarettes for forty years develops lung cancer; however, we don't understand why there are some people who smoke cigarettes for forty years who do not develop lung cancer.

There are no easy answers to this very large issue. But I think, overall, that the examples of David and Saul suggest that even though they did many of the same things, they were very different men. I truly believe that they were both men of great faith, who both had instances where they slipped in their faith. But David (again, the poet-king) seems more soulful than the chiseled warrior king Saul. And that seems to make a difference. Our challenge is to understand what that difference might be and how (or even if) it matters for our lives.