2007-11-18 - "David and Jesus: Part 1"

"David and Jesus: Part 1"
A royal lineage rooted in faith
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Text: 1 Samuel 16:1-13

I do not know if there is factual evidence to support my views, but I think the Christmas season begins earlier and earlier every year! On a late October day when it was 19 degrees Celsius outside, I went into a well-known restaurant that sells chicken and has “festive specials” and there was a Christmas tree in the foyer. I was bemoaning this fact to the waitress, who I happen to know is from Eastern Europe and a very devout Christian, and she exclaimed, “I am embarrassed when I walk into work on days like this!”

My goodness! Soon they'll start celebrating Christmas in Muskoka in July!

Recently, someone gave me a copy of a newspaper article related to a comment I made in a sermon. I mentioned that a woman ahead of me at a drive-thru had paid for my coffee. Lo and behold, a week later there was an article in the Globe and Mail that read: “Pay it backwards! If you are in line behind the coffee angel your bill will be a big zero!”

I thought to myself, “Yes, this is good news! There are other people who are benefiting from the gift of grace.”

Next Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, when the Christian Church celebrates the sovereignty of Jesus. We will be celebrating this meaningful day with hymns, music and a taizé service. I thought, “If the world is going to promote Christmas early, we are going to have the message of Advent - the coming of Christ the King - early, and we are going to be talking about gifts early, why not prepare ourselves spiritually for Advent, which prepares us spiritually for Christmas?”

There can be no better way of doing this than to look at the relationship between two biblical characters: David in the Old Testament, and Jesus in the New Testament./p>

In many ways, all of these things come together when we understand the relationship between David and Jesus. We have to begin by looking at David. Today's passage contains the narrative of David's calling. To understand his anointment as king, we need to appreciate the context in which it occurred. Israel was at its lowest ebb. It was a time of moral, social and political dejection. We read in the Book of Samuel that the Philistines had become a great political force - a menace - and they were taking over the whole area. They had captured the icon of Israel's relationship with God, the Ark of the Covenant. Furthermore, the nation of Israel was divided between Israel and Judea and these two almost separate entities couldn't agree or work together. They had no desire to be a unified force.

The Israelites were dejected after being defeated in battle. They thought having a king might solve all their problems - a monarch could unite the nation and lead them into battle. You know the old phrase, “Be careful what you ask for - you might get it!” Well, they got it, and his name was Saul. Saul was a failure as a king; his avarice and corruption displeased God. The people of Israel needed a new king because Saul (who eventually was defeated in battle and took his own life) was not the king God wanted. With all this in mind and Saul still the monarch, enter stage right David. What is fascinating about David's story is how he became king.

God appointed Samuel, a judge and great leader, to find an authentic king to replace Saul. Samuel was worried and scared. He wondered what would happen to him if he appointed another king. Would he lose his life? In faith, Samuel set about the task and was told to appoint one of Jesse's sons.

Eliab, the first son, was strong, full of physical prowess and looked like he would be a great king. But God said, “No. I have looked at his heart and he is not the one.” The second son, Abinadab, looked like the right person, but God said, “No. He is not the one.” He went on to Shammah, the third son in line, and another very physically strong, attractive person. Still, God said, “No. He is not the one.” Samuel interviewed seven of Jesse's sons, but none of them were right.

Then Jesse said, “I do have a younger son, but he is a shepherd, he is out in field and he is weak. He really isn't that important, but I suppose I could go and get him if you want.”

Samuel said, “Go and get him.”

Jesse brought his youngest son, David. Samuel looked at David and saw his ruddy complexion and red hair, which was considered attractive at the time. But it wasn't young David's outside appearance that really caught Samuel's attention; it was that he had a good heart. God was also concerned primarily with what was in the heart, so Samuel took David to one side and anointed him as the new king. What a bold and a brave thing! David was chosen by God, even though in appearance, age and stature he didn't seem like the right king. But God knew what was in his heart, and knew he was the one who could unite a divided kingdom and keep God's covenant with Israel.

From a New Testament point of view, this is important because David's lineage traces to Jesus. As we will see next week, the New Testament writers picked up that lineage. God had made a covenant with David that his age, his lineage and his people would know no end. In Jesus, the eternal nature of David's reign was maintained. More than that, Jesus was of the lineage of David, the King of the Jews, therefore he cannot be removed from his Jewish context, though some have wanted to do so. Finally, Jesus was born of earthly, ordinary lineage. He was not a mythological figure, but a figure of history within the Jewish tradition. The relationship between David and Jesus symbolizes an unbroken umbilical cord.

Getting back to David, there was a problem. A lot of people today have problems with the whole idea of a monarchy, and the same was true in Israel. David was, in a sense, God's vice regent. The king was the anointed one (look at the language) and some people feared that too much power could be put in too few hands - that one person could rule too powerfully.

Just this last week, a very good friend of mine in Nova Scotia, Rhinehart, lost his father, who grew up in the Czech Republic under Soviet rule. He spoke out against them and had to flee the country in 1962. Like so many others throughout the ages, he could attest to the tyranny of sovereignty and a totalitarian power like Stalin when too much power is placed in too few hands. The same problem occurs with the divine right of kings. A 17th century theory that the monarch could rule by divine fiat - divine grace and power - led to the rule of the Stewarts and Carolines and the promotion of the idea that monarchs had all power given to them by God.

And so we wince! We hear of God appointing a king and think, “Hold on a minute now! We're democrats and there is a problem with this.” Too much power in the hands of one person worries us. But - and this is key - there are times when God appoints someone. In this particular case, he appointed a monarch to unite people. This was one of the three poignant things David did that have an impact on our church and our lives.

Monarchs can do good things or bad things. They can seize power and use it for their self-aggrandizement, or like David, they can use it benevolently to unite people. Sometimes unity has its problems. I read a lovely phrase once: “The reason mountain climbers tie themselves together is to keep the sane from going home.”

Think about it! Sometimes difficulty can lead to forced unity, which is a form of bondage. Unity can have a negative side and constrain. But it can also do great things, like take on tyranny and defeat wrong.

I read an incredible story in National Geographic a number of years ago about the Arctic wolf. In it, David Mech described their power. When a pack of wolves comes across musk oxen, the oxen face great danger - particularly when they have calves. So the adult musk oxen circle the calves with their faces toward them. This way, they can use their powerful hooves against any approaching predator. The Arctic wolf is smart enough to know you don't mess with the hind legs of an ox! However, Mech said he observed one of the most devastating things he'd ever seen when one ox broke from the circle and the wolves attacked. The oxen scattered and the calves were destroyed. Without unity, there is potential for destruction.

I think that was the case with Israel. With the northern and southern kingdom divided, the powerful Philistines just came on in. It is also the same for any church. If we do not have a head that holds us together along with fidelity to that head, unity of the spirit and heart, and a sense of a common purpose and a common Lord, then there is danger of division, segmentarianism and sectarianism. When that happens, David would tell Jesus' followers: “Maintain your unity.”

The second thing David brought was integrity. David was not perfect! All we have to do is look at the story of Bath-sheba, and the problems with Abigail and Absalom. David's story is not clean; it is often not pretty, and David is not perfect. You can try to keep up your appearances all you want, but the point this text makes so clearly is that God seeks what is in the heart.

I thought about that this summer. I don't know about you, but every time I drive across the border from the United States into Canada, I feel guilty. It must be some hang-up from my youth. I always feel I must be doing something wrong. I start to perspire; I look as guilty as heck! And I say, “Yes, officer” and “No I have nothing to declare, officer.”

The last time I crossed the border, the customs officer asked, “Do you have anything to declare?” I said, “No.” Then I realized I had a bottle of wine in my trunk that had been given to me by my brother-in-law, and I tried to fumble my way through. Perhaps because I was in a hurry (my dog was seriously ill and I was worried and frantic) I answered, “Um, actually, I might. I'm just not sure.”

The officer asked, “Do you, or don't you?”

I said, “I don't know.”

Well, that is the worst thing you can say! Finally, he looked me in the eyes, realized I was in distress, perspiring profusely, and let me cross the border. I think he saw my passport and that I was wearing my clerical collar, and felt sorry for me.

Outward appearances are not always perfect. So it is with life, and so it was with David. The irony is that whoever wrote First Samuel made it abundantly clear that David was ruddy, good-looking, strong and had physical prowess - so he did have external attributes. Still, the writer emphasized that it was what was in David's heart that mattered.

I have just read a book by Barbara Killinger, a member of our congregation, titled Integrity. In it, she writes about lies and truth. She says telling the truth is important because it is a sign of integrity. So often I feel that we play just a little loose with the idea of integrity. But this passage tells us so clearly that God sees what is in the heart. God knew David loved him.

The third thing David brought was faith. If God sees what is in the heart and God is unseen, this implies that God is inextricably involved even though we don't always see His hand at work. It was that very faith that allowed Samuel, at great cost, to anoint David, knowing he could lose his life because of Saul's ill-will. Because of faith, he reached out and chose David even when there were others who seemed more appropriate. It was in faith that David became the great anointed King of Israel and united the kingdom. It was in faith that Jerusalem was restored to its rightful place as the centre of the nation. It was in faith that the worship of God was placed at the centre of everything. In David and Samuel, we see faith in an unseen God at work.

I read a wonderful story in the London Observer about a family of mice living in a large piano. Every day, wonderful music filled their home. They thought, “Isn't our home harmonious? It is a wonderful place to live!”

The mice were comforted by the thought of a great, unseen player - someone up above who made the beautiful music. They thought about this great player with a sense of wonder.

One day, a mouse decided to find the music's source, so he climbed out of his home and finally came upon some wires. As he ran along them, he noticed they made different sounds. The mouse went back to everyone and said, “Wires are the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that tremble and vibrate. We must revise all our old beliefs.”

None but the most conservative mouse could believe any longer in the Unseen Player.

One of the cynics thought, “We'll see about that!” So he climbed even further. He found hammers with lovely felt tips and watched them bang against the strings. So he went back and told everyone, “It is hammers that give us the beautiful sounds in our home.”

This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth.

But the Pianist continued to play.

For David, the beautiful sound was made by God, and he had no idea where his monarchy would eventually lead him. Next week, we'll find out! Amen.

At this time of the year, on the island of Bermuda, there is usually a great scent in the air. The Easter lilies that are distributed throughout Easter are being prepared; the oleander has a particularly sharp, pink hue; the hibiscus bushes are starting to bloom; and there is a faint smell of cedar in the air after the moisture of winter. I used to love Bermuda at the end of February and, when I woke up this morning here in Toronto, I loved it all the more! It seemed that the winter was dying and everything was bursting into life. Bermuda, at the end of February is well nigh a paradise. I remembered going to school at this time of the year. The school that I went to was similarly a little patch of paradise. I attended Warwick Academy on Middle Road, an ivy-covered school with large porticos and a magnificent quadrangle with a fountain in the middle. Along the side of the building going down to the ocean there was a field on which we played sports. Lining it were oleander bushes and poinsettias. At the very end, the soccer field dropped off to a road and a beach where, after school, we could go swimming in the harbour. It was paradise.

But I remember one particular day, early in the morning. As was normal my colleagues and I, in uniform had gone up the front steps and entered our classroom. We opened the windows in order that the particularly warm February breezes could blow into our room. The shutters were open, the windows were open and our text-books were open to the study of Latin. All of a sudden there was the most terrible sound. It is not a sound, thank God, that I have heard before or since, but, upon hearing it, it was unforgettable. All the students and our teacher ran out of our Latin class and down the steps to the front of the school. There we realized what had caused the thud: A beautiful pink bus had struck one of our class-mates and killed him instantly. A few days later there was a memorial service. I certainly don't remember any of the hymns that were sung. I do remember that we sang our school hymn, Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus. I know that our principal said some kind words and a local clergyman gave a message. The only thing that I remember on that day was the sound of his brother's voice. His brother had flown in from Tufts University in Boston where he was studying. I don't even remember half of what he said about Brian, but this I do, he said: "I will never lead my life in the same way again." In the midst of paradise, the inexpressible had occurred. In the midst of paradise, the inexplicable had occurred. The only response that Brian's brother had was that his life was now forever changed. He would never again live it in the same way. This sums up for me the expressions that we find in the Book of Job.

Job has gone through the full gamut of life: He has gone from a man who had success, who had it all, who had a wife, a family, children, farms, wealth and health, to a man who was to lose it all; a man who in the midst of it had questioned God's sovereignty and divine purpose and will. Now finally, Job comes to the reality of what he should have learned all along. Through this suffering he would never live his life in the same way again; for indeed Job had reached the point where, after he had been instructed by his friends, after he had wrestled and debated with God, he realized that in fact God, in the midst of all of this, is still sovereign; that there is an immediacy to God's presence, even in the midst of that suffering; that as a result of it he must repent in dust and in ashes.

In many ways the story of Job is the story that all of us need to go through in order to mature so that we do not live our lives in the same way; so that when we face our own suffering, or the suffering of others, or whether we are simply asking about the nature of suffering in the world, if we go through it as Job went through it at the end we never live life in the same way. So I want to look then at how Job's suffering changed Job's life, irrevocably and forever.

It changed three things in Job The first is that it changed his view of faith. There is a wonderful moment at the very beginning of the Book in Chapter I, Verse 9, where Satan comes to God and baits Him. He says: "I wonder if Job will still worship you if he has nothing to gain." Now, in this, Satan had put his finger on one of the Achilles' heels of the faith of many people; namely, that we enter into a relationship with God with a quid pro quo. We enter a relationship with God on the assumption that, if we do so, everything in our lives from that moment on will run smoothly. I hear this every day in some of the TV evangelists. They are selling a bill of goods to people. Once you strip away all the hype, once you strip away all the verbiage and the quotes from scripture, there is one thing that is often underlying it all. They believe that faith is a guarantee to, for example, financial security, or it's a guarantee that a marriage, that was formerly on the rocks, will now be full of sunshine and light and peace; that the children that you formerly had that were rambunctious, rude and irreverent, will now be submissive, kind and holy; that your body will never experience pain again; and that you will live in paradise with a beautiful waft of oleander leaves coming over your head. If you buy into this faith, and if you subscribe to this faith, just think of the great panoply of blessings that lie before your very eyes. My friends, is it any wonder that, with that degree of false teaching, when people who have committed themselves to Christ find in fact that their marriages require work; that their children are not always holy and blessed; that their body is not always strong; that their bank account is not always overflowing; that paradise is not always before their eyes; they actually then begin to question the sovereignty of God?

Indeed, there are many people all around us who are the victims of that false teaching. It pervades every day when people say to me time and time again: "Why is it that although I believe in God these things are happening to me and I must suffer."

I once ran into a young man who was telling the story of a minister who was trying to grab the attention of his congregation. He did so by issuing the following challenge in a sermon. He said: "Do you know that every single member of this congregation is eventually going to die?" And for extra impact, he repeated the question: "Do you realize that every single member of this congregation sooner or later is going to die?" Well, there was an old man sitting in the front pew. He began to giggle and laugh. So the preacher looked down at him and said: "Excuse me, why do find this funny?" The man looked up and said: "Hey, I'm not a member of this congregation."

Slightly selfish, don't you think? But that's exactly how the view of God often is. It's selfish, it's self-centred, it's What can I get out of this God? not the commitment that I have to this God who will forever be with me. And that kind of false view of faith is so often prevalent; that feeling, that self-centred core that many of us have that treats God as if God is somehow a commodity on the shelf to make our life sweet. Job had to learn as he traveled with God through his sufferings that that is actually an erroneous view of faith. Faith is much deeper than that. That was born out of his understanding, I believe, of the second thing: He developed a new view of God.

Job, you see, had been listening to his friends. We visited them the first week: Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, the great philosophers and theological thinkers. They had only one formula, remember: the formula that if you are a good person, good things will happen to you and if you are a bad person, bad things will happen to you. And so, when Job has bad things happening to him, he has a crisis, not of faith in God, but he wonders about himself. He wonders, therefore, if God is just. He wonders whether or not he is righteous. He enters into this great period of introspection and guilt and eventually anger. Because ultimately, what Job wanted to do in response to those friends was to fully understand God and to have a package deal that would allow him to understand everything that would ever happen to him.

I am reminded of a man who was in a former congregation of mine and who was a voracious reader and a spiritual seeker. He spent most of his time reading books about God and he was always charging around trying to get people to tell him what he should believe and do. Nearly every week he was in my office wanting some new book from the shelves in order that he might be able to finally understand God. In fact, for hour after hour, week after week, he spent most of his time behind the desk, reading, absorbing. And one admired him on one level: He was really trying to understand God; to grasp Him at the very depths of intellect, and at the very depths of theology. The only problem was that the more he continued on his search, the more depressed he became, until finally one day I intervened. I said: "You know, isn't it about time that you just put your books away; maybe even stopped going to church and listening to me for a while? (Not, by the way, that I am recommending that here, let it be understood.) I challenged him: "You know, in our church, there is a Food Bank, maybe you should go and work there. Our church supports a homeless shelter, maybe you should volunteer there. Our church has a pastoral care committee: Why don't you go and hold someone's hand and sit beside him on a bed?" Unfortunately, the young man did not want to do that and I suspect somewhere in that town, even to this day, he is sitting behind the desk, trying to figure God out from the books.

That is not the way that God is known. God is known in the concrete nature of human existence. God is known by an act of trust. God is known by an act of faith, like Abraham who steps out into the unknown. God is known and revealed in our encounters with one another. God is known and seen through the power of the Holy Spirit who goes forward in our daily lives. But too many people want to try and figure God out first and then live a life of faith, rather than live a life of faith and then find out Who God is. The problem with Job's friends was that they had a philosophy and a theosophy, but they did not have a theology which is predicated on the revelation of God. Job finally learns that.

The great Old Testament scholar, Gerhard von Rad, in his great work on the Old Testament, once said that the greatest and most dangerous words that are in the whole Book of Job are when Job says God must do this. And Job realized, and Job woke up, not when he had determined God's place in the world, but when Job was determined to understand that his place in the world was determined by God. He changed from being egocentric, full of himself, wrapped up in his own definitions of God, to becoming theocentric, understanding the central place that God's sovereignty has in his life. That is why, at the end of it all, he wrote the following: "In the past, I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen You with my own eyes." When Job broke out of his obsession with himself, he finally could see Who God truly was.

But that was the result of a third thing: that Job had a new view of suffering. Job suffered greatly: He had lost everything; he was shattered. But in the midst of all that, he changed. He changed from someone who, at the very beginning, was quite certain about things; who had a faith wrapped up; who knew what he was going to do: a man who had everything, including a sense of his own righteousness. But when he faced suffering, he changed. There was a mystery to it all and, in that mystery, he became full of faith. He had been certain, all right, in the beginning. He had a package deal. It all seemed very nice and neat, but suffering caused him to turn to faith, because suffering ultimately leads to fiducia, trust. What Job didn't have in the beginning, Job had at the end. What Job had at the beginning was a self-sufficiency. What Job had at the end was trust, trust in God.

There are many places throughout the Bible where a similar view is expressed over and over again. It is there in the Book of Isaiah; it is there in Psalm XXXVII: When people face the fact that the formula that Job's friends had is changed; when it seems that those who are the oppressors are succeeding and those who are the innocent are suffering; then, in the midst of that, something else is learned about God. It is summed up beautifully in Psalm XXXVII: "Don't be worried on account of the wicked; don't be jealous of those who do wrong." "Be patient and wait for the Lord to act; don't be worried about those who prosper or those who succeed in their evil plans. Don't give in to worry or anger; it only leads to trouble. Those who trust in the Lord will possess the land." You see, my friends, Job was not known for his patience so much as he was for his sense of endurance. Job was not a godly man in a true manifestation of the word. He became a faithful man who understood that, even in the midst of his sufferings, God went with him.

Just recently I picked up again the book on Mother Theresa entitled No Greater Love. This is one of the books that maybe my friend should have read right from the word go and maybe stopped reading any more. It's a wonderful expression of suffering. Listen to these words of Mother Theresa: "In twenty-five years in Calcutta, we have picked up more that thirty-six thousand people from the streets and more than eighteen thousand have died a most beautiful death. When we pick them up from the street, we give them a plate of rice. In no time, we revive them. A few nights ago we picked up four people. One was in a most horrible, terrible condition, covered with wounds full of maggots. I told the sisters that I would take care of her while they attended to the other three. I really did all that my love could do for her. I put her in bed, then she took hold of my hand. She had such a beautiful smile on her face and she said only: Thank you. Then she died. There was a greatness of love. She was hungry for love and she received that love before she died. She spoke only two words, but her understanding love was expressed in those two words. In a New York home we have have a home for AIDS patients who are dying from what I call the leprosy of the west. On Christmas Eve I opened this house as a gift to Jesus for his birthday. We started with fifteen beds for some poor AIDS patients and four young men I brought out of jail because they did not want to die there. They were our first guests I made a little chapel for them. There these young people who had not been near Jesus could come back to him if they wanted to. Thanks to God's blessing and His love their hearts completely changed. Once, when I went there, one of them had to go to the hospital and he said to me:" (and I want you to listen to these words) "Mother Theresa, you are my friend and I want to speak to you alone. So the sisters went out and he spoke. And what did this man say? This was someone who hadn't been to confession or received communion and in all those years he had nothing to do with Jesus, but he told me this: You know, Mother Theresa, when I get a terrible headache I compare it with the pain that Jesus had when they crowned him with thorns; when I get that terrible pain in my back, I compare it with Jesus when he was scourged; when I get the terrible pain in my hands and feet, I compare it with the pain Jesus had when they crucified him. I ask you to take me back home, for I want to die with you. I got permission from the doctor to take him back home. I took him to the chapel. I have never seen anybody talk to God the way that that young man talked to Him. There was such an understanding love between Jesus and him. After three days, he died."