O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
Do you remember the commutative property of math? I had to look it up to make sure I had the right name for it and was remembering it correctly. It’s a simple bit of logic that says that since 2+1=3 that 1+2 also equals 3. Essentially, the order of the numbers doesn’t matter. And it’s a helpful mathematical property because it means that we don’t always have to add things in the same order to end up with the same result. And we know that property is useful in many other aspects of our lives. While we may have preferences about the right ordering of things, it really doesn’t matter if you put the salt or the pepper first on your baked potato. I’m sure there are thousands of examples that we can come up with to further show that in a lot of situations, the order of things doesn’t matter much.
And
while that might be true for math, it’s simply not true for faith. The order of
things makes all the difference when it comes to the gift of grace. Grace
always, always, always comes to us from God without any prior earning,
deserving, or asking for it. Before the heavens and the earth were created, God
loved. Scripture tells us that even while we were in the womb, God knew us.
Before any of us were Baptized, we had already been loved by God from eternity.
God’s gracious love always comes first in the equation of faith. It’s when we
forget the primacy of grace that we get into trouble.
A
place that’s easy to see this in the Church is how we understand what worship
is all about. A word that you hear me use to talk about what we do is “liturgy.”
I prefer the word “liturgy” because it makes it clear that God is the one from
whom all blessings flow. In some traditions, they refer to what happens on
Sunday mornings as a “service,” which makes it seem like it’s a chore, something
that we have to do. And while it’s true that obedient service to God is
important, it is always a response to grace, not a precursor to it. Other
traditions speak of “Sunday worship.” Again, worship is not a bad thing because
it reminds us that God is God and we are not. But we gather not because God
needs to be worshiped, God is just as much God even if we neglect to praise
God. But the word “liturgy” really helps us to get the order right.
Perhaps
you’ve heard that “liturgy” means “the work of the people.” Simply put, that’s
wrong. It’s a pervasive thought that liturgy means something that the people of
God come together to do. I even used to think that’s what it meant. But it puts
us in the role of the subject instead of the object that is acted upon. And in
true faith, God is always the subject. Instead of meaning “the work of the people,”
liturgy actually means “work for the people.” In ancient Greece, a leitourgia
was a public office or duty performed voluntarily by a wealthy person for the
benefit of society. So, a liturgy could have been something like a gymnasium or
financing a theater company. This is what liturgy is all about – a benefactor
providing something that the people need but do not have access to on their
own. And this is what Sunday is all about.
To
be fair, the reason why “liturgy” is sometimes spoken of as “the work of the
people,” is as a helpful corrective to a misunderstanding of liturgy as the “work
of the clergy.” The only person that conveys grace in God. The only person that
is not disposable in worship is Jesus. But in order to make that point, we
ought not to lose the graciousness of what liturgy is all about – God’s work
for us, not our work for God. In the liturgy, God gathers us, even if through
technology during a pandemic, and gives us a story, a community, an identity, a
mission, and symbols and Sacraments that sustain us in the life of faith.
This
understanding about the order and direction of things is essential to reading
the passage this morning from 2 Samuel. The quick way to tell if we’ve got
things in the right order is to consider who the subject of the verbs is. If it’s
us, then we would do well to remember the words of John the Baptist – “He must increase,
and I must decrease.” It’s a lesson that King David had to learn. As the
passage picks up, we find him sitting in his house of cedar – which is quite a
big deal. Maybe you’re watching this liturgy in a room that has wood paneling –
what’s so fancy about that? Well, in ancient Jerusalem, which is more or less
surrounded by desert, getting cedar wood was a big deal. It had to be imported over
long distances well before there was anything like modern shipping practices.
So King David is living the life of luxury in his fancy house and was able to
rest because the enemies of Israel had been defeated.
He
then has the idea – maybe I should do something nice for God, after all, I’m
living in this fancy house and God is still living in that tent he’s been
living in since we left Egypt so many generations ago. The Ark of the Covenant was
seen as the earthly residence of God. And so the Ark was always treated with
reverence. Even as the people wandered through the desert from Egypt to Israel,
they made sure that God’s dwelling place was as holy as it could be given their
migratory existence. Now that things were more settled, it seemed like God
should get something more permanent and so David proposes to build a house for
God, something like what would eventually become the Temple. The word in Hebrew
for this house is bayit, and it will be important to keep that word in
mind.
This
though is where God draws the line and says “No, I am the subject of the verbs,
not the object of your actions.” God makes it quite clear that the tent is
working out just fine for divine purposes. And God reminds David about the
nature of their relationship “I took you from the pasture, from following the
sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you
went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for
you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.” Notice who the
subject of all those verbs is: God.
David’s
enemies being vanquished? That’s not due to the army of Israel, but God’s
providence. David living in a nice house? That has to do with God’s will for Israel,
not David’s leadership ability. David having a name that we remember to this
day? That’s not about David’s great legacy, but rather God’s great use of David.
And so God retorts – when have I ever complained about the tent? When have I
ever asked for a house? When have I ever needed anything from you?
As
we are on the cusp of Christmas, this is an important reminder that God shows
up anywhere and everywhere. In the beginning, God was content to be in the wind
that hovered over the face of the waters. In the Exodus, God was there in the
pillar of cloud and fire. Before the prophet Elijah, God was not in the mighty
wind, not in the tremendous earthquake, not in the blazing fire, but God was
content to be in the sound of sheer silence. As St. John tells us, God was made
flesh in the child born to Mary. St. Paul says that our bodies are the temples
of the Holy Spirit. The medieval monk Isaac of Stella writes that God now
dwells in the tabernacle of the Church. The great 20th-century
theologian Karl Barth noted that God can show up in Russian Communism, a flute
concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog – and we do well to listen to God
if he really does show up in those places.
We
cannot pin God down or tell God where God is or is not allowed to be. I always
find it comical when people complain about taking God out of our schools, or
any other place in society. Since when does the Creator of all that is need an
invitation to show up anywhere? The flaw in that sort of thinking is that it
puts us as the subject, but the verbs always belong to God. God will show up where
God wants to and how God wants to.
God
is great because God is God, not because we call God great. But God has no need
for greatness, rather God intends to bestow greatness upon us. As God tells
David, “Moreover the Lord declares
to you that the Lord will make you
a house. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your
throne shall be established forever.” And that word for “throne” could also be
translated as “dynasty,” and it’s the very same Hebrew word that I pointed out
earlier: bayit. David intended to build a house, a bayit, for
God. But God says, “No. Let’s get the order of this relationship right. I’m
going to build you into a house, a bayit.” And this is full of grace. Two
times in this unconditional promise, God makes it clear that this bayit,
this kingdom shall stand forever.
Speaking
of a kingdom that is full of grace, we turn to the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel
to Mary of Nazareth. This is the fulfillment of God’s promise to forever establish
a kingdom of David’s house, as Gabriel says, “He will be great, and will be
called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord
God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign
over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” God
is up to amazing things and continues to be the subject of the verbs and the
first cause in the equation of grace.
In
the wonderful Chronicles of Narnia series, CS Lewis writes an allegory for
the Christian faith with the great lion named Aslan as a Christ figure. There
are points in the novels though where no one has seen Aslan in quite a while,
and many even doubt his existence, suggesting he is merely a fairy tale of yore.
But then things start to happen, wonderful and mysterious things, that have no
explanation. And the refrain of faith is “Aslan is on the move.” Well, that’s what
Gabriel is announcing to Mary, and to us: God is on the move.
But
as we’ve seen, God is untamable. God does not come only to the places where we
tell God to go, but God goes everywhere God chooses to. Sometimes, yes, God is
a problem solver who brings justice, mercy, and peace into our world. But
sometimes God is the problem bringer. Just ask Mary about it. Here was a young girl
betrothed to an honorable man, Joseph. And instead of blessing her marriage or
making her rich and famous, God gives her a child out of wedlock. And yet Mary
is such an example of faith for us – in her fiat, her words of “Let it be with
me according to your word” she shows us what the order of faith is. She does
not resist God as the subject in her life, she does not resist the movement of
grace, she does not complain “This is not a part of my plan” because she
realizes that she is a part of God’s plan.
Consider
how today’s Collect began: “Purify our conscience, Almighty God.” That’s a
prayer asking for God to come into our lives and make problems for us in disrupting
our norms, in correcting our priorities, in reshaping our wills. Now, if we
know ourselves well enough, we’ll admit that is a tall task – for our sinful
and imperfect lives to become a mansion in which God will dwell. What makes
this possible though isn’t our willpower, not our discipline, not our commitment,
but rather the fact that “Nothing will be impossible for God.”
Turning again to CS Lewis, in Mere Christianity he uses the following metaphor: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. And He intends to come and live in it Himself.” With Mary as our example, may our response to God’s grace breaking into our lives ever be: Let it be with me according to God’s word.
