A Place For God

When I was in Pittsburgh working on my Doctor of Ministry program I noticed dozens of huge, impressive, mostly brick churches - which are if not exactly empty, certainly not filled to bursting. It’s worse in Europe, of course. How many of you have been to places like Notre Dame in Paris or Westminster Abbey in London? They’re often full, but usually with tourists, not worshipers. England is actually in much better shape, religiously speaking, than most of continental Europe. There’s one 12th century church in the City of London, just across the street from Lloyds of London, which has standing room only lunch time services. And of course there’s St. Peter’s in Rome, which attracts thousands of the faithful all year ‘round. But it’s interesting to note that when I was in Rome, a little more than 15 years ago, two of the women in my tour group wouldn’t attend worship there. They were really offended that so much had been spent on the art and architecture that could have gone to the poor. And that begs a question: Would Presbyterians - and Methodists - and Catholics - and Baptists - and Pentecostals - make a more profound impact on our world if we don’t spend so much time and effort on those wonderful buildings?

There seems to be something almost irresistable about building churches.

We see that in today’s passage from the life of King David. Let me remind you a little of the history of Israel up to this point. After being begged and badgered by the tribes to have a king like the other nations, God told the prophet Samuel to anoint the Benjamite Saul to be Israel’s first king. Saul was just the kind of person everyone thought should be king. He was a famous soldier, tall and handsome and impressive. And he had some victories. But they went to his head, and he stopped listening to Samuel when his orders from God conflicted with his ambition, and actually let the Ark of the Covenant slip into the hands of the Philistines. During this time, as you probably recall, David defeated the Philistine giant Goliath, and soon became more popular than King Saul, and Saul went mad with jealousy, and started chasing David around the country trying to kill him. Well, eventually Saul is killed and David inherits the kingdom. He unites the tribes, consolidates the kingdom militarily, gets the Ark back and conquers the Jebusite capital Jerusalem and makes it his own capital.

So there he is, flush with victory, and sitting pretty in his brand new palace, made of the finest cedar from Lebanon, and it occurs to him that there’s one more thing he has to do. He needs to build an even bigger and better house for God. So he goes to his court prophet Nathan and says, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." Nathan finds this perfectly reasonable, why, it’s what any obedient servant of God would want to do, after all God had done for him. So he says, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you."

But Nathan spoke too soon. That very night, God came to Nathan and said, “Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?"

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has never been tied down to one place. All the other gods of ancient Mesopotamia were local deities, belonging to this mountain or that river or this line of kings. But this astonishing desert God claimed authority over all those local godlets, and furthermore could not be anchored to a single place.

Instead, God has an alternate plan. But before he lays it out for David, he rehearses a little more history. God reminds David that his presence among the Israelites has never depended on staying put. The whole point of having a tent instead of a temple is that they could take it down and move it when God told them to get up and go. Furthermore, everything that David has came from God in the first place. Didn’t God pluck David out from an obscure family in Judea, and promote him from shepherd to king? Hadn’t God always been with David, even when the Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines? God does not NEED a place. If he did, God would take care of it. The Psalmist reminds us that God doesn’t depend on our gifts: "If I were hungry,” says God to the people, “I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. [Ps 50:12] And besides, He has something better in mind.