Who Will Build the Temple?

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 2: 11-22 and 2nd Samuel 7: 1-14a Sermon Title: Who Will Build the Temple? Preached on July 22, 2018 Recently I took our girls to see the Incredibles 2. It’s a new animated movie out, and we all liked it a lot. Seeing a movie is a good thing to do on a summer afternoon. You have to pay $20.00 for popcorn, but it’s a fun thing to do. Before the main attraction, before the Incredibles 2 came on there was an appetizer movie. A short cartoon to get us warmed up that had a genuine impact on me that I want to tell you about. It featured a lonely woman who took her time to make her husband the most delicious steamed dumplings for their lunch. She made them for him with painstaking care. She made the filling from fresh ingredients, folded the dough around it with beauty and precision, then steamed these precious dumplings and she set them on the table before her husband who scarfed them down in seconds while never taking his eyes off the TV. Then he’s off to work and the lonely woman eats her dumplings in lonely silence, when strangely her last dumpling comes to life. A dumpling is the perfect food to make into a baby too – this dumpling baby had fat, doughy cheeks that the lonely woman pinched. Eventually the little dumpling sprouted arms and legs and could move around, and that meant that the lonely woman was no longer alone. She took her dumpling baby out to grocery shop. He went with her to tai chi in the park and having this dumpling to love and care for and feed made the lonely woman happy. But then the dumpling boy grew, and he saw some boys playing soccer in the park and didn’t want to do tai chi any more. He wanted to play soccer. This is where the problem began, because the lonely woman didn’t want her little dumpling playing soccer. She wanted to keep him close by her side, so she jerked him back. You can see where this is going – the lonely woman loves her dumpling and doesn’t want him going anywhere or getting himself hurt, but the dumpling wants to grow up. Eventually he goes out, comes back home with a tall, blond girlfriend. The dumpling tells his human parents, “We’re getting married.” When the lonely women protest by stomping her foot and crossing her arms, the dumpling and his blond fiancé try to storm out. But before he makes it out the door the lonely woman scoops up her dumpling boy and eats him. That was a dramatic twist. Only it didn’t end there. Maybe you can imagine that in this cartoon, the dumpling that the lonely woman doted over, was a stand in for her real son. The cartoon went on to tell us that as her human son grew up he pushed her away too, and the more he pushed the tighter she tried to hold him close, until eventually he ran off. That happens sometimes, we choose to cling too tightly and lose control rather than accept the reality that people will fight to be who they are and against who we want them to be. So, maybe you haven’t carried around a dumpling or taken it to tai chi, but have you ever wanted to hold close someone who was pushing you away? Maybe this cartoon was a little strange, but it reminded me of the day I dropped Lily off at Kindergarten. That day, and only that day, the impulse to homeschool was strong. I dropped her off. She didn’t want to go. She was so little, and after leaving her in her classroom, where I’m sure she was perfectly happy, I made it back to the car and sat in the driver’s seat and cried. It was awful. But maybe like me you can relate to the impulse to scoop up a little dumpling and never let her go because letting kids grow up is so painful. Loving someone and having to let them go – there’s just nothing easy about it. And allowing people to be who they are rather than who we want them to be or being who we are despite the pressure to be someone else – none of this is easy. Though these are all challenges that are a part of our life together – both in families and in a community. Such challenges were in David’s life too. Consider David’s father, who was supposed to call all his sons to see the Prophet Samuel that he might pick one to be the king, but his father left little David out in the field, because sometimes it’s hard to allow your children to be who God calls them to be. Then there was this conflicted relationship David had with King Saul. Saul who loved David until he got too big for his britches and stepped out of Saul’s shadow to become king himself. So often there’s the conflict – a projection cast on a loved one of who we think they ought to be – and when the boy grows into a man or when the dumpling exerts a little independence, what happens inside the heart and mind of those who want the dumpling to stay at arm’s length? Last week we heard about his wife Michal who despised David in her heart – why? Because David turned out to be the kind of king who danced rather than the kind of king that she expected him to be. So, as it was with David, so it is with us, life is full of human relationships with push away and pull back. A dance of childhood loving closeness one minute, exerting adolescent independence the next, and today we see that King David’s relationship with his God was not so unlike his human relationships. Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” What does David want to do here but build the Lord a house. To keep God close by. This is a kind thought, a loving gesture, but have you ever been given a present that the giver wanted to give more than you wanted to receive it? A knew a man in Tennessee named David Locke. Mr. Locke used to say, “Always accept what someone gives you, because sooner or later they’ll give you something that you actually want.” That’s one way to think about it, but that’s not how God thought about it. David wants to build God a house, but did David ask God if God would like one? No. There’s two kinds of unwanted gifts. There’s the unwanted gifts that people give you because you need them, and you don’t know it – like nose hair clippers. Husbands – if your wife gave you nose hair clippers it’s because you need it, and I know you didn’t ask for it, but you should accept the gift for your own good. Then there’s the other kind of unwanted gift – the kind of gift that’s been wrapped in a motive. The kind of gift that says more about the person giving it and their hopes for who you’ll be than their understanding of who you actually are. How many little girls woke up to find that Santa had brought them a tutu instead of the pocket knife that they asked for? How many mothers opened up an Instapot on Mother’s Day and wanted to use it for target practice? These gifts often say more about who the giver wants you to be than who you actually are – and that happens because it’s hard for some people to let the ones who they love be themselves. For years I had to go to dance recitals for my sister, who really did ask Santa for a tutu because she loved to dance, and I remember that every once in a while, a group would come on stage that had a boy in it. That whole group of girls and one boy, and I remember my mother saying, “the bravest person in this auditorium is that boy’s father.” She said that because allowing someone who you love to be who God created them to be takes strength. And allowing God to be who God actually is rather than who we want God to be takes strength as well. It takes a particular kind of strength that we call faith. So, now comes the real story. The life lesson: But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? Whenever I have moved about among the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” God never said, “It sure would be nice to have a solid roof over my head.” God never said to David: “Look at you, resting easy, and I’m in this old tent.” It wasn’t like that. God was happy that David was settled in his house, but God didn’t want a house of his own – that was what David wanted God to want. David, like all of us, has this problem of projection. He was limiting God according to his image of God. He was boxing God in, according to his perception of who God was and what God wants. Again – this is normal enough, but it’s dangerous, because mothers have to let their little dumplings grow up and be who they were created to be. A husband has to listen to his wife so well that he knows her – that he’s heard what she fears, that he knows what she worries about, and can be reasonably sure of what she likes and doesn’t – so then he can buy her what she actually wants and not what he wants her to want. And the same is true for our relationship with God. We Christians – we have to listen to God. We have to conform to his will – because God will not conform to ours, though so often we will try to get God to or will speak as though God always takes our side. We must remember that while God is always with us, God does not support all that we do. God is not just along for the ride. Last week I saw a picture of a black Labrador retriever. These dogs are known to be compassionate and loyal, and below the picture was the heading – Man’s true best friend and below that was a test to prove that statement, “men, if you want to know who your true best friend is, lock your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car for an hour. Then let them out and see who’s happy to see you.” That’s funny – but you shouldn’t put your wife in a trunk. You shouldn’t put your dog in a trunk either, and you definitely shouldn’t try to put God in the trunk and take God along for the ride regardless of where you are going. Bumper stickers used to say, “Jesus is my co-pilot.” Remember those? Then a counter bumper sticker came out, “If Jesus is your co-pilot than you’re in the wrong seat.” Sometimes we just want God to go along with us and bless our ride regardless, but what if we’re going in the wrong direction? What if God is calling us to turn around? What if God doesn’t want us to build him a house? Preachers have that problem. I was preaching at a camp meeting a few years ago. We were outside, cars parked all around. And I thought I had this great sermon about how God often speaks through interruptions. Well, someone’s car alarm started going off and interrupted my sermon. I gave a frustrated look in the direction of the perpetrator. An embarrassed man turned the alarm off, finally, so I could continue with what I wanted to say. Then it went off again, and again we waited while he turned off the alarm. Then I continued, but when the alarm went off for a third time I finally realized how well I was proving my point that God interrupts but we just keep on going by refusing to be interrupted by God’s divine interruption. You know – we want to build God a house, but what if God doesn’t need one. We want our children to change, but what about the change that needs to occur in us? We sing “God Bless America,” but God cannot bless our every endeavor – for so much of what we do is contrary to God’s Word. Too often we only want God to support what we’re doing already – we look to Scripture, not for challenge but for affirmation - but is God’s Word not a refiner’s fire? If only we weren’t so resistant to being refined. It reminds me of one story of how Columbia Theological Seminary got started. The great Presbyterian Churches of the Antebellum South used to send all their fine pastoral candidates up to Princeton Seminary in New Jersey for training. Problem was – they’d all come back abolitionists. Rather than listen to what these preachers had to say, rather than hear the truth – that God calls us to see our brothers and sisters not as property – we just built a seminary in the South where we wouldn’t have to hear it. Does God need us to build him a house? Does not God need us to instead listen to his Word and be changed by it? And will God not freely give greater blessings than we could ever dream of should we be so bold to change according to his divine will? The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” Let us always remember, that unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor, labor in vain. Amen.