Sermon: God at the Center
October 20th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 6:1-5; Psalm 150
Two weeks ago we read the Ten Commandments and the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This was the Word of God given to God’s people as a gift at Mount Sinai. These words, engraved on two stone tablets, were placed into a special box, a chest, called the Ark of the Covenant or the Ark of God. When God’s people were on the move, the Ark was carried ahead of them on two long poles. When they were camped or settled, the Ark rested inside a special tent, called the Tabernacle. In some mystical but very real way, the Ark held God’s presence among His people. It functioned as something of a throne for God, this chest containing God’s Word. It brings new meaning to the description of Jesus at the start of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”(Jn.1:1) Before God became incarnated, living among us as a person, in Jesus, God became incarnated in the Words of the commandments, living among His people in the Ark.
There’s that newly discovered book of the Bible that tells us another chapter of the story of the Ark, the book titled “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Or maybe that was a movie… In any case, you might remember the scene when the Ark is rediscovered after being lost and the Nazi officers open it. They lift off the ornate gold cover and are initially dismayed for the chest appears to contain just sand. One officer even reaches in to grab a fistful. But then the power of the presence of God rises up out of the Ark and swirls around the cave. It destroys the men who sought to capture it and rob it, who treated the Ark so disrespectfully. Now Indiana Jones and his leading lady are tied up nearby, and Indiana Jones whispers, “Don’t look at it! Shut your eyes, Marianna, and don’t look at it, whatever happens!” By respecting the power and presence of God in that way, they survive to fight another day. But of course, that is jumping way ahead in the story of the Ark… back to the real story.
When the Israelites entered into the Promised Land, the Ark went ahead of them, parting the waters of the Jordan River. The Tabernacle is set up with the Ark inside in Bethel for a time. It’s mentioned next in the Bible in the book of 1 Samuel, the Ark is in Shiloh, when the young prophet Samuel is serving as an apprentice to the High Priest. A few years later, when a battle against the Philistines isn’t going well, the leaders decide to harness the power of God in the Ark, taking it out onto the battlefield. Instead of winning the battle, Israel loses. The Ark is captured by the Philistines. But the Ark causes such a problem to them – devastation, plagues – so pretty quickly they send it back.
Meanwhile, the Israelites have insisted they needed a king, so Samuel anoints Saul as their king. It doesn’t go so well: Saul is impatient, he doesn’t follow the directions of God or God’s prophet Samuel. He goes into fits of rage when things don’t go his way. He becomes intensely jealous of a young man named David who fights bravely for him in his army and is a close friend to his children. David tries to soothe Saul with music, but things get more and more dysfunctional. The situation devolves to the point that the nation divides in a civil war – there are the Saul-backers and the David-backers.
I want to be careful not to draw too close an analogy to political events today, but our own political divisions and leadership failures certainly come to mind as I read this story. Life is messy; with the messiness going beyond just politics, creating divisions in families, divisions in the nation, crises in international relations. There is chaos to many aspects of life – economic, security, religious. The ripple of dysfunction goes out to impact people in Syria, in Yemen, in many parts of the world.
But getting back to ancient Israel: God withdraws support from Saul and has David anointed king, but it takes a while for the people to accept the truth of Saul’s selfish heart and recognize the new leadership. Part of the problem is that to many in Israel, David seems like a very unlikely king; today we might say he has poor electability. David comes from one of the weaker, less prominent families, his training was as a shepherd (of sheep), he was one of those artist/musician types, he was a youngest child,… lots of strikes against him. But none of that mattered to God, all that mattered was that David loved God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength.
Which brings us to the start of the reading for today: Saul has died (actually he killed himself rather than facing the humiliation of defeat) and his sons who try to take over after him have been killed, there is such chaos that finally the people are ready to recognize David as king over the whole nation. And suddenly there is an opportunity for something different – for unity, for peace, for joy, an opportunity to bring God to the center of their lives once again. The people recognize David as their brother, saying, “We are your own flesh and blood.” They recognize his leadership ability, and that he has been specially called to shepherd and lead God’s people.
David seizes this opportunity to bring God to the center of life for the whole nation, in both symbolic and concrete ways. His first decision is to bring the political life of the nation to a new center. During the civil war, David had been based in Hebron, in the south. The reading starts by telling us all the tribes came to David at Hebron. But David makes an important gesture of compromise and unity by deciding to move the capitol to Jerusalem, further north and more central for all the people. But as I’ve said, life is messy! David has to conquer the city first. This is the story told in the rest of ch.5 that we skipped over. It takes courage, the willingness to take risks to follow where God leads.
Once Jerusalem is established as the national center for all of Israel, David announces that they will now bring God to the center of the center. He gathers 30,000 young men for the mission of bringing the Ark, that presence of God, into the center of Jerusalem. Again, life is rarely as simple as we wish; life is messy. Our reading ends right before the next messy part. One of the oxen pulling the cart with the Ark on it stumbles. The Ark starts to slip, and Uzzah instinctively reaches out to stabilize it. And, like those Nazis in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, he dies on the spot because of his irreverent act.
It seems incredibly unfair. Unfortunately, the leaders (David included) had not taken their responsibility as seriously as they should have. They have not informed themselves of the proper way to handle the Ark, to handle power. The Ark was never meant to be transported on a cart pulled by oxen, it was to be carried on poles by the priests. They have not obeyed God’s instructions or taken the steps required to safeguard their people. And as is so often the case in this world, the innocent pay the price of the leaders’ failures. David will go on to fail in some pretty spectacular ways, but he will also learn from his mistakes, he will seek forgiveness from God and be granted that forgiveness. He will move on from failures to again love God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, restoring God to the center of his life.
Three months after the ox cart mistake, David tries again and completes the task of bringing the Ark into Jerusalem and putting it at the center of national life. 2 Samuel 6:12-15 reads: So David went with rejoicing to bring the Ark of God to the City of David, Jerusalem. When those who were carrying the Ark had taken 6 steps, he made sacrifices to God. And David danced before the Lord with all his might, wearing a priestly garment. So David and all the people of Israel brought up the Ark of God with shouts of joy and the sounds of trumpets.
Life today seems a far cry from life in ancient Israel. Which made me wonder, what does it mean for us to put God at the center? What does it look like for us to place God at the center of our lives?
It begins in small ways, I believe; and it starts at home. For David it began at home in Hebron before going to Jerusalem. David began by forming his own heart with prayers and songs. He prays, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”(Ps.51:10) He sings, “It is good to praise the Lord, proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, to the melody of the harp.”(Ps.92:1-3) We, too, can form our hearts by reading from the Psalms, praying and singing those same words, every morning, every night. We can tune our harp, our radio, our CD player, our Pandora to play songs of praise throughout the day, forming our hearts and keeping God at the center.
Establishing a personal devotional life enables us to then bring that God-centered heart into our relationships with others. David brought reconciliation and unity to a divided people. The Apostle Paul teaches the church that discipleship means we are given this ministry of reconciliation, of bringing people together, of bringing people together with God (2Cor.5:18-20). We know that Jesus longed for this, praying for believers “that they may be one as we are one, Father, I in them, you in me; so that they may be brought to complete unity.”(Jn.17:23) We are to bring God to the center of our lives as we interact with those around us, setting aside differences, seeing our common humanity, our bond as children of the One God. What we have in common with one another is so much more important than our differences. Bringing God to the center means seeking unity around that center.
But life is messy. Not everyone will welcome reconciliation, not everyone will be willing to set aside personal gain for the welfare of the community as a whole. Seeking unity may involve risk – the risk of allowing God to shape our hearts with His Truth, of speaking out for that Truth, the risk of going places we have never gone before as we respond to God’s leading. David had to take risks to win Jerusalem; and also as David, the messiness of life means we will make mistakes. But don’t allow the messiness or the fear of failure to push God out of the center of your life. Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life, wrote, “When God is at the center of your life, you Worship; when He’s not, you Worry.”
When God is at the center of your life, you Worship! Isn’t that exactly what we see in David’s life? And isn’t that what you came here this morning to do – to worship God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength? The practice of passionate worship is one of the hallmarks of a vibrant, fruitful, growing church. Worship comes first in our mission here at First Baptist Delavan: to worship God, and to practice, encourage and teach discipleship.
Passionate worship is entering into God’s presence with overflowing love, with unashamed eagerness. It is the confident expectancy that Christ will meet you here in the worship, in the prayer, in the Word, in the fellowship. Passionate worship means we offer our best to God in this hour, our undivided attention. It means we make this hour of worship a priority in our lives, and if, for unavoidable reasons, we are kept from the Sunday service, we don’t allow that to keep us from worshipping God where ever we are, with another community of believers, or with nature, allowing God’s Spirit to draw us into God’s presence.
A book I am reading about the practices of fruitful congregations explains that to understand the meaning of worship we have to look beyond what people are doing in worship, to see with the eyes of faith what God is doing in worship. “God uses worship to transform lives, heal wounded souls, renew hope, shape decisions, provoke change, inspire compassion, and bind people to one another.” (Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, pg.34) There is power in worship for in worship we encounter the very presence of God.
The “Raiders of the Lost Ark” story ends with the Ark of God’s presence and power being relegated to a crate rolled away into storage in a massive warehouse. Indiana Jones final words are, “They don’t know what they got there.” Let us not put God in a warehouse. Don’t let the messiness or the fears in life allow God to be sidelined. But decided again today, that God will be in the center of your life. Invite Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Dance, lead you in the dance of worship, the dance of life.
Someone has said, “Dance as if no one is watching.” I would say, Dance as if only God is watching!
Closing Song: “Lord of the Dance”
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