Holy Home Improvement
Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
My first apartment after moving out of my parents’ house was in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. It was quite a change from the manicured lawns of suburban Connecticut. My “front yard” was the rear entrance to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, while my “back yard” was the Lincoln Tunnel. If New York is the city that never sleeps, then my apartment was the proof.
This was 1995. Gentrification was just getting underway, so it was not uncommon to find various illegal activities taking place in the bus parking lot next door. Like Dorothy in some perverse version of Oz, I thought, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Connecticut anymore.”
The apartment was on the top floor of a five-story walk-up building (not ideal for lugging a drum set). It was a railroad-style layout, meaning all the rooms were connected in a row. The front door opened into the living room, which was my room. To the left was the bedroom, which belonged to my friend Jeff. To the right was the kitchen (which was so small that we kept the refrigerator in the living room). And further to the right was the bathroom, which was a hazmat scene that was best avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Despite the many inconveniences, aggravations, and occasional perils of both the neighborhood and the apartment, living there made me feel that I had arrived. I was twenty-four years old and living in the greatest city on Earth, a place of endless creativity and possibility. There was nowhere else I would have chosen to be.
I lived in that apartment for three years. Eventually, as I traded up into bigger and better living spaces, each time I’d experience that same feeling of having arrived. By the time I was in my mid thirties and was feeling well established in my career, Sandy and I had purchased a home of our own. No more apartment living. Now we had three floors and a garage. It felt as though we were finally settled. This was it.
That’s how David is feeling in today’s reading. We’re told that he is now “settled in his house.” He has defeated all his enemies. He has unified the kingdom. Job well done, David! Put your feet up, pat yourself on the back, and smell that cedar. (If you’re wondering about the cedar, there aren’t a lot of trees in Israel, and cedar was an expensive building material.)
With all his good fortune, David is feeling magnanimous. He tells the prophet Nathan that he wants to do something for God. “Here I am living in a splendid house of cedar while the ark of God sits in a flimsy old tent. That’s not right. I need to fix this. I want to build a house for God that is worthy of the Lord. What do you think, Nathan?”
The prophet responds, “You know what, my lord? That is a great idea! Go and do all that you have in mind for the LORD is with you.”
Let’s get some quick historical grounding. At this point in Israel’s history, the temple in Jerusalem had not yet been built. The primary worship space—the resting place for the ark containing the Ten Commandments—was a tent—a large, impressive tent, as far as tents go, but a tent.
Yet what it lacked in stability it possessed in mobility. When Israel wandered through the wilderness for 40 years, the tent moved with them. When Israel settled in the promised land, not yet a unified nation but a loose association of tribes, the tent moved about within their territories.
But now Israel is one nation, a kingdom with their own king. And as that king, David thinks it’s time to build a permanent structure. It’s time for a little—actually, a major—home-improvement project for God. David wants to replace the tent made of fabric with a temple made of stone.
What a wonderful idea! What could be more fitting? Surely, God will be pleased. The prophet Nathan sure thinks so, but then we read in verse 4: “But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan.” Now, until this moment, the narrator of 2 Samuel had been referring to David as “the king”:
“Now when the king was settled in his house….”
“The king said to the prophet Nathan….”
“Nathan said to the king….”
But listen to how God refers to King David when addressing Nathan: “Go and tell my servant David….”
In other words, God is saying, “Did I ask you to build me a house?
My servant David. God wants to remind David of the nature of this relationship. While David may be king, he is first and foremost a servant of the Lord. Yes, David has proven himself a courageous fighter and a capable military leader, but David did not defeat his enemies single-handedly. As verse 1 plainly states, “the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him.”
Whether acknowledged by David or not, God has been watching over and working in his life, not only on the battlefield but even from the day he first drew the Lord’s favor as a boy, when from among all of his brothers, he was selected as the future king, even though physically he was the least impressive. David had lost sight of, or had never seen, God’s hand upholding him.
This is human nature. It’s so easy to remember every wrong done to us while ignoring or forgetting every blessing that we’ve received. We keep a running list of every complaint, every grievance, every inconvenience, every slight we have suffered, everything that didn’t go our way. But we ignore the countless mercies and blessings that we receive daily. Every healthy breath we take. Every beat of our heart. Every sunrise. Every cup of coffee.
We’re not unlike the Israelites in their wandering through the wilderness. They complained to Moses that God had rescued them from Egypt only to allow them to die in the desert. They were sick and tired of eating manna, never mind the fact that they were being sustained with food from heaven day after day while traveling through a barren desert! It’s like that old joke: The food here is terrible. Yeah, and the portions are too small.
Not only has David lost sight of the fact that he is a servant of the Lord, he’s also been presumptuous in thinking that God would want a massive temple built in (presumably) God’s honor. From verses 6 and 7: “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?”
In other words, God is saying, “Did I ask you to build me a house?” Implicit in that question is another question: Why does David want to build a house for God? For whose glory, God’s or his own? And for what purpose? To honor God or to domesticate and confine God?
Whether or not a temple made of stone stands in Jerusalem, God is with the people.
The tabernacle had symbolized God’s ability to move about freely with and among the people, to come and go as it pleased the Lord. But a permanent house for God, even if a material improvement, could put God in a box, so to speak. It could suggest that God is contained, confined, domesticated. This is the lure of idolatry, placing the divine in the material world.
Building an impressive stone house for God could also suggest that God is more concerned with external things than with internal things, more concerned with walls of stone than hearts of stone. That is something the prophets will continually warn against, the sin of supplanting mercy with sacrifice—righteousness with ritual. The most pious religious ritual is robbed of meaning—and even becomes blasphemous—when it is disconnected from mercy.
This tension between exterior and interior worship is a lesson that Jesus will teach the disciples when they visit the temple in the days before he is arrested. From the Gospel of Mark chapter 13:
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (Mk. 13:1-2).
Whether or not a temple made of stone stands in Jerusalem, God is with the people. That is a lesson not only for David but for the church. It’s a message that the church needs to keep in mind as the number of church closures continues apace. A church closing is like the death of a loved one, as those of you who came from Stony Point can attest. A house of worship is filled not only with pews and a pulpit, it houses memories…of baptisms, weddings, and funerals, Christmas pageants, communal dinners, and the occasional memorable sermon. A church closing leaves an open wound.
But it also brings with it possibility. Now, I’m not some pollyanna singing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow (although I did hear that song a few hundred times last fall as the youth theater group practiced it over and over). What I am is a student of Scripture, and what I see in passages like the one before us, is a God who is always moving one step ahead of the people—and always leading them in unexpected but ultimately beneficial ways.
In this passage God in effect says to David, “You’re not going to build a house for me, David. I’m going to build a house for you.” Verse 12: “Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house.”
God isn’t talking about building a bigger and better house of cedar for David. This is not a house for David but the house of David, because from David’s house will come one who will secure David’s kingdom forever, and not only David’s kingdom but the kingdom of God.
And part of that kingdom is the church. Now, what the church will look like in the future, I don’t know. I imagine in some ways it will be different than what we’re used to. We may become much less reliant on traditional brick and mortar buildings like this one, which, as I’ve learned from personal experience, can be rather expensive to maintain. Nonetheless, whatever becomes of our houses of worship, the house of the Lord will stand because its foundation isn’t set in any ordinary rock but in the living stone of Jesus Christ.