On Being a Little Suspicious

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
David gathered all the young men of Israel, thirty thousand in all. David and all the men with him set off and went from Baalah of Judah in order to bring up from there the ark of Elohim which is called by the name of Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim. They set the ark of Elohim on a new wagon and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzziah and his brother, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new wagon and they brought it from the house of Abinadab which is on the hill with the ark of Elohim on it and Uzziah's brother walked in front of the ark. Now David and the whole house of Israel were dancing with all their might before Yahweh with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, castanets and cymbals...
So David went down and brought the ark of Elohim from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing. When those carrying the ark of Yahweh had taken six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fatted calf. David danced with all his might before Yahweh. David wore a linen ephod. David and the whole house of Israel brought up the ark of Yahweh with shouting and the sound of trumpets.
Now, as the ark of Yahweh came into the city of David, Michal, daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw the king, David, leaping and dancing before the Lord and she despised him in her heart.
They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and offerings of well-being before the Lord. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings a and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, and distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes.

There was a time when I thought God was calling me to get a PhD. I went back to school at UVA and began to study philosophical theology, which, if I do say so myself, is about the most obscure degree you can get. There are not many want ads in the paper asking to hire philosophical theologians.

As part of my preparation for that degree I had to take German. So the first course I took in going back for my degree was a short summer course in German. Our teacher was a native German speaker and the entire class consisted of us struggling through several German texts while she guided us like some expert puzzle master. The whole intent was that we should READ German, so we didn't have to worry about pronunciation or writing. All we had to do was to ask questions of a text - to try to figure out how the words went together and what their significance was.

Now none of this is really new because this is also my favorite way of reading the Bible, too. Have you ever had this experience? You read a passage from the Bible and it is so strange-sounding, so foreign to your experience that you have to go back and read it again. Sometimes you find yourself saying, "It can't really say that, can it?" And sometimes it does.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the Bible is sometimes so foreign to us that it's like reading in another language, even though it's in English (assuming you're reading an English translation - if you've got the original, it IS another language). But this foreignness of the Bible is only natural when you consider that it is a very old book, 3,000 years old in some places. It was written by people who lived in very different times with very different social customs. And it's only when we take the time to enter the world of the Bible that we can sometimes see what's going on. That's why interpretation is still the responsibility of every responsible Christian. Every generation has to find the key that will unlock the pages so that the Bible can live.

So this morning I want you to help me do some detective work with the Bible and the passage we read from 2 Samuel. We've been hooking up with the stories of David for several weeks now - David and Goliath, David’s lament at the death of Saul - and today we read this strange little story that almost nobody has heard of - the story of David entering Jerusalem with the ark of God.

But you've only heard a piece of the story so far this morning. The lectionary, a list of Bible readings which I tend to follow, gives us two portions of the story and leaves out some in the middle and some at the end. Now let me warn you about that. Whenever somebody tells you, "I'm going to read selected verses from 2 Cauliflower chapter 13," you need to be suspicious, because those verses are in there for a reason and the reader is leaving them out for a reason. Hopefully they're only being left out so that the reading doesn't go on for hours and hours. But today, we need to be very suspicious, and I'll tell you why.

OK - first let's recap what's going on. The first part of the reading is 2 Samuel chapter 6 verses 1 through 5. David has become king following the death of Saul. He has managed to keep the tribes of Israel united, despite the fact that he is a southerner and the northern tribes don't get along too well with the south. I know, I know. Believe me, it was a problem in ancient Israel, too.

But David recognizes that to stay united the tribes need a new, neutral site as their capital. So he chooses the recently-conquered city of Jerusalem in the hill-country right near the border of the north and the south. A stroke of political genius. All he needed was a symbol to bring into the city - a symbol that would unify the people. What he needed was the Ark of the Covenant.

Now we tend to think of this as a very important symbol for our ancestors in Israel. After all, Raiders of the Lost Ark wouldn't have been nearly as successful a movie if the thing Indiana Jones was looking for - the ark - weren't so valuable. It was important. The ark contained those stone tablets given to Moses on the mountain top in the wilderness - those tablets with the 10 Commandments. Maybe you've heard about these.

Anyway - a very important thing, but somehow it had been languishing away in somebody's basement for several years before David decided to bring it up to his new capital city. Well, maybe not a basement, but it was an out of the way place. In the Bible story, the last time we've seen the Ark of the Covenant is after a disastrous defeat for the Israelites at the hands of the Philistines. The only reason the Israelites got it back then is that God's presence was so overwhelming that it caused the Philistines to break out with hemorrhoids. (You think, I'm making this up, don't you? 1 Samuel chapter 5. I'll get you reading this Bible yet!) Anyway, when the Philistines had had enough of this they sent the ark back to the Israelites and they had stuck it in the house of Abinadab who lived on the hill.

The ark was important to Israel because it was the place where God chose to be present among the people. It was considered God's traveling throne and when Israel held the ark they were blessed. The ark had accompanied them through the Jordan River after all those years wandering in the desert. The ark had been with them as they conquered the Promised Land.

But the ark was also considered holy and not only holy but powerfully holy. Holiness in the Old Testament implies being set apart and full of God's presence and God's presence is so great that human beings can not stand to be close to it. When Moses talked to God on the mountain, the people were told not to touch the mountain. When Moses asked to see God, God only allowed Moses to see the back, because God's face was too glorious and holy. And the ark was holy as well.

But somehow, in the midst of wars with the Philistines and intrigues in the palace, the ark had been neglected. So David decided to bring it up to Jerusalem, the new capital city of the new Israel. And that's where we began reading. David gathers thirty thousand men. They get a new wagon and place the ark of God on the wagon. Abinadab's sons, Uzzah and Ahio, were guiding the cart on the journey. David made a big spectacle of the procession. He danced along with all the attendants and they sang and there were lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and castanets. It was quite a festival as they left the house of Abinadab for Jerusalem.

Well, that gets us through verse five. Now the lectionary has us skip down to the second half of verse 12 where it says, "So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing". Sounds like just a continuation of the story, doesn't it? David is dancing with the instruments in verse 5 as they head to Jerusalem, they're rejoicing in verse 12 as they head with the ark to Jerusalem. The same big happy parade, right?

Wrong. Anybody else wonder with me how the ark got from the house of Abinadab to the house of Obed-edom? I know they're both long, unpronounceable Hebrew names, but they ARE different. Well, the answer is that there was a death along the way and this is actually the second parade. See? You miss all the dramatic stuff if you're not suspicious.

What happened in those verses that the lectionary skips is that the new wagon has to go over a threshold along the way and Abinadab's son, Uzzah, who is walking along beside the ark, reaches out to steady it and ZAP! - He is struck down on the spot. Now I know this sounds harsh. After all, the ark might have fallen if Uzzah hadn't reached out to hold it. But, remember this is holiness and Uzzah had reached in where mortals should fear to tread. It's very difficult for us to understand, but the holiness of God, the presence of God with that ark was so great that it could not be casually approached. Those who came to it needed to be ritually prepared. Uzzah and his brother were not just carting around a wooden box - this was the ark of the Lord.

But if it makes you feel any better, David didn't understand any better than us either. He was angry and more than a little upset with God. He was even afraid of God and he thought to himself, "How can I take care of something as dangerous as this ark is?" He was also probably thinking, this is really putting a damper on the parade and how's it going to look to take this ark into my new capital city under a cloud?

So he calls off the parade. He finds somebody who'd be willing to take the ark in, who happens to be Obed-Edom the Gittite. And he leaves it there for three months. He probably would have left it there a lot longer than that, too, except that he got the word that Obed-Edom the Gittite was being blessed by God because of his hospitality of the ark. Obed-edom was increasing in wealth. Obed-edom, a Gittite for crying out loud!, was getting the blessing David sought. So he orders up another parade and heads out once more to bring the ark up to Jerusalem. But, of course, you wouldn't know this if you weren't suspicious.

But this is not just an entertaining, and strange, interlude. Perhaps the preparers of the lectionary were trying to protect us from some real ugliness, but we really can't understand God or David without this interlude. David, who was so pious and so trusting in God as a twelve-year-old fighting Goliath, had grown up to be a complicated adult. At times he is daring, dashing and devoted to God. At other times he can be opportunistic, deceitful and even devious, as we see in the episode with Bathsheba. Politically he was nothing but successful. As a man of God, he is sometimes faithful and sometimes forgetful. In this case it seems that God is merely a tool to him, and the ark is an instrument that is useful when it seems to bring blessing and useless when it seems to bring a curse. David, it seems, can take it or leave it. And at any rate, the narrator keeps referring to Jerusalem as the "city of David" - not the "city of God."

God, on the other hand, appears in this missing passage more forcefully than anywhere else in the whole chapter. God is the holy one of Israel - the God who is so powerful that he demands full attention - or else!, as poor Uzzah found out. God refuses to be set aside or used for political games, even if they are the games of God's chosen king, David. God will be God, blessing whom God wants to bless, and continually calling for the love of God's people.

So that's the situation when we get to the ark's entry into Jerusalem. There is more dancing and singing and music. There are sacrifices to God and it all ends with David putting on the short linen outfit of a priest and blessing the people in the name of God while doling out gifts of food to all the people around. A wonderful ending in verse 19. The people go to their homes and you can just see them saying to themselves, "Yes, this David is going to be alright. Cakes and raisins for everybody. He's alright."

But the chapter doesn't end there. And neither does the story. Only the lectionary has you stop with the easy, happy ending. Remember - be suspicious. There's more here.

You do get a hint of what's to come in verse 16. That verse tells us that someone is watching this parade from a distance. Someone is not down among the crowd receiving the blessings and the goodies from David. Verse 16 says that "as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David (there's that reference to David's city again), Michal, daughter of Saul (the former king), looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart." Wo - now this is harsh! She despised him? It gets even worse when I tell you that Michal was David's wife!

What could cause this animosity? Well, you'd never know from just that one verse. It's only when you hear the rest of the story, (as Paul Harvey would say), that you understand what's going on. Verse 20 tells us that David returned home after the sacrifices to God in order to bless his household. But Michal comes out to meet him, and, as if to remind us what's important about her, she is described again as the daughter of Saul - not as his wife. So maybe the fact that David has taken her father's place has upset Michal.

But what she goes on to say is that David has embarrassed himself by putting on this skimpy loincloth outfit that the priests wore and dancing up and down in front of his maidservants like any old exhibitionist would. So perhaps it is David's lack of dignity that is disturbing her. That's what she says. Maybe the unspoken claim is that her father Saul would never have done something like this.

David seems to take it this way and he goes on to say to her that his dancing was not to display himself before the people, but to honor the Lord. "I danced for the Lord," he says. Then to rub in his position a little more he says, "You know, the Lord, who chose me instead of your father and all his household and made me prince over Israel. My maidservants do not hold me in contempt because of this dancing, but they honor me."

The next verse, verse 23, tells us of the complete silencing of Michal. "Michal the daughter of Saul had no child until the day of her death." If that nasty argument with David never got resolved, you can understand why. The atmosphere had definitely turned sour and the irony is that David, who was coming home to bring a blessing to the household, ends up with a curse - and his household was never at rest for his whole reign. If David thought he could control God's blessings by bringing the ark into the city, he certainly failed.

So the last scene in the story is not the contented walk into the sunset full of the blessings of the day - cakes and raisins and a glorious king. The final scene is of emptiness and strife. The only figure who stands uncompromised is God. Though God's story is often told through very fallible human beings - God refuses to be controlled or contained.

The God we come to know in Jesus Christ is one that we often talk about in soft ways because we like to think of Jesus as open and accepting and warm. Which is exactly how we are supposed to picture him. God does reach out to us.

But the story of the ark reminds us that God is also a wild and holy God who cannot be contained. But…God chose to be contained. God chose to come among us in Jesus Christ despite the fact that God is beyond every created being. One writer I read recently talked about wondering how painful it must have been for the God who created the universe to come to us in human form. God comes to confront us and to challenge us to be transformed and in doing that God won't be limited to the sweet sentimentality of a Hallmark greeting card. God will call us to confront that wild and holy spirit within us that calls us to something beyond ourselves.

The danger for us is that we have lost all sense that the words we invoke for God refer to actual holiness. Because we want so desperately for the world to make sense on a horizontal level, we have given up on the vertical level. Transcendence is a word we have lost hope in so that God seems to be more a term or a concept than an actual being overwhelming the universe with God’s presence.
There was a movie a few years ago about tornado chasers in Oklahoma. In Twister a scientist's girlfriend accompanies him on her first tornado chase. After a close brush with the funnel cloud of the tornado she looks at him and says, "When you said you were a tornado-chaser, I thought it was just a metaphor."

Well, in our day in age, to be known as someone who really believes in a God who is wild and holy and who wants to change us, is to be a tornado-chaser. When it stops being a Sunday morning thing and starts being an every day thing – this Christianity stuff seems a little too out of control to the rest of the world. When your faith stops being a socially acceptable thing to do, it’s a little too dangerous. When you try to change your life and change the world to reflect what God wants it to be, it’s a little too uncomfortable to the world around us. God is no longer a metaphor.
But if we downplay the faith we have….if we forget how powerful God really is…well, then we might as well be like David, content to let God languish in Abinadab's basement or Obed-edom's closet. If we only talk about God in here on Sunday, maybe God will stay locked up and unable to disturb our lives.

But God cannot be contained. And Obed-edom's blessings will never be ours until we take the risk of seeking the living God. Scary? Yes. But David, confused and conflicted as he was, did it dancing. So can we. If we're just a little suspicious of the too-easy endings, and a little more open to the God who wants to meet us and change us…forever. Thanks be to God.