2 Sam 7.1-11,16, Luke
1.26-38
We probably all feel we’ve
all seen quite enough of the inside of our own homes this year. Some may have
enjoyed having time to do some clearing out and home improvements, though I
gather that there’s been a lot of bodged DIY for the professionals to sort out
later…For others, though, it’s been a real challenge. Some have had to try to
live, work, and maybe educate children as well, in homes that are overcrowded,
inadequate or unsafe. Others have felt isolated and lonely.
This year has shown us how
much home matters, for good or ill, and how important it is to feel comfortable
there – something far too many people are denied. A home doesn’t just provide
physical shelter from the elements, but, if all is well, emotional security too.
We should be able to feel we belong there, whether we live alone or with
others. It should be a place where we can be ourselves.
In today’s Old Testament
reading, King David has just built himself a house, a splendid house of cedar
wood. He’d started life as a little shepherd boy, probably living out on the
hills with the sheep some of the time. As a young man though, he’d often been
on the run, hiding with his band of guerrilla fighters in caves, or having to
seek shelter with others because King Saul saw him as a rival. But now, after
Saul’s death, he is king. He’s captured the city of Jerusalem and made it his
capital city. After all that turmoil and placelessness, David has found his
place. He is finally “settled in his house” as the reading says.
But then he has a thought. He
has a fine dwelling, but what about God? Ever since the Israelites had first
been led into the Promised Land many centuries before, after their escape from
Egypt, the people have worshipped God in what was basically a tent. It was a very fine tent, richly festooned with
blue, purple and crimson curtains, with cherubim worked into the them according
to the instructions given to Moses about its making in the book of Exodus. But
it was still a tent. It was the kind of thing that nomadic people used, not
those who had settled into a land of their own. It might have been fine when
they were wandering in the desert, but surely this couldn’t be right now,
thought David. God deserved better than this.
So, David sent for the
prophet Nathan and asked him to talk to God about it. God’s answer surprised
David. God was actually perfectly happy in a tent, thank you very much, close to
his people, where they are. That’s where he wanted to be. He didn’t want a
house of cedar. Eventually he got one anyway – King David’s son Solomon built
the first Temple, and very splendid it was – but this story makes it plain that
it wasn’t God’s idea! The building of the Temple had far more to do with the
human desire for prestige on the part of this fledgling nation than it did with
God. It was the kind of thing proper nations had, and they wanted to be seen to
be a proper nation.
But God’s was not bothered.
The only “house” he was interested in was the royal house of David, the line of
kings he wants to lead the kingdom, so that it would be a source of blessing
for its people and for the world. He
wanted to “make a place for my people Israel”, not a place for himself. The
whole earth was God’s home. He could be “at home” wherever he chose, with
scruffy shepherd boys or magnificent kings.
In our Gospel reading, set
many centuries after David, God declared that he was “at home” in the womb of a young woman
from the backwater town of Nazareth, who found the courage to say “yes” to God’s
plan. It was a strange sort of home for the Lord of Creation but that was all
of a piece with the way God worked, through those who are least and littlest.
He would go on to be at home in places where there seemed to be no room for him
– a manger would be fine for his cradle. He would be at home among disreputable
tax-collectors and prostitutes, rebels and lepers. He will be at home even on a
cross, and in a tomb, in the darkness of death. Everywhere we find ourselves,
every human situaion is also a place where we can find God, perfectly at home,
waiting for us, keeping us company there.
There is a way of telling the
story of the Bible which says that when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit
and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, a great gulf opened up between them
and God, which was only bridged by the cross of Christ. You can even make a
neat little diagram of it, with God on one side of this spiritual Grand Canyon
and us on the other with the cross laid between the two. Personally I don’t
really buy it, though, because when I read the Bible I don’t see a God who withdraws
into some distant heaven in a horrified huff when Adam and Eve make the wrong
choice. It seems to me that when they leave the Garden, God goes out into the
wide, wild world with them, popping up all over the place, making himself
known, appearing to his people in many different ways. He speaks to people
through angels, or mysterious strangers like those who wander into Abraham’s
encampment to tell him that his wife is going to bear the son they’ve waited so
long for. He speaks to them from burning bushes, in visions and in dreams to
guide them or comfort them or challenge them. He leads them through the desert,
as a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day. He’s never far away from those
who have their eyes and ears open. It may feel to us as if there’s sometimes a
gulf, as if he’s absent, but I think that’s our perception, not his reality. He’s
at home in his creation, at home with us, just as he always has been.
This year, as I’ve said, we
have probably got to know our homes very well. That can be a good thing,
because it has given us the chance to discover that our homes, whatever they’re
like, are also God’s home, that he is present in them with us, whatever we feel
about them. He is the God who is where we are, who, in Jesus “became flesh and
dwelt among us,” as John’s Gospel puts it.
As you listen to these words
you may be a wide variety of places. Some will be in church when they hear them,
others will be at home listening on the podcast or video. The message of these
readings is that God is there, wherever we are physically. But that’s not all,
because he’s also with us wherever we are spiritually and emotionally. We might
be contented and full of faith today. Or we might be downhearted, disappointed,
doubting, indifferent, afraid…
Wherever we are, physically,
emotionally and spiritually, these readings remind us that God is there too.
He’s not afraid of our feelings, as we might be. He’s not shocked or
disappointed by them. He is Emmanuel, God with us, always at home, wherever we
are.
Amen
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