Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 23, 2000, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

II Samuel 7:1-14; Ephesians 2:12-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

He saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
-Mark 6:34

     Someone asked: Where in the New Testament is the most convincing proof that Jesus was really the divine Messiah and the holy Son of God? And one person responded by quoting this very verse: He saw the multitudes and had compassion on them. The implication being that no ordinary mortal could possibly feel compassion for the common mob of humanity after getting a good look at them in the act of being themselves. Therefore, this proves that Jesus was very different from the rest of us, or at least from me.

     Another person, and this one was a minister, said that he found it a useful pastoral discipline to take a seat in any large airport for a while and watch the throngs of people trudging by, repeating to himself the question, "Did Jesus Christ really die for them?"

     I sort of like that way of contrasting myself or ourselves with the Messiah. It makes me feel more OK about being what I am and not being what I'm not. Also it suggests that I'm not alone - that the world is filled, maybe even the church is filled, with people who aren't much like Jesus. Hallelujah for solidarity among us sinners, and hallelujah to Jesus for redeeming us anyway!

     Now you know there's something wrong with that approach, don't you? You may not be able to put your finger on it exactly, but you recoil inside at the idea that the entire work of salvation belongs to God working in and through Jesus, and we have no part at all to play in the drama - all we have to do is relax and let Jesus catch us on our way down to hell and carry us up to heaven.

     Well, of course that's very bad theology, even though there seem to be any number of Christians who subscribe to it.

     So maybe you prefer this rather different attitude that we find in King David. He's a very successful king. He's ruddy, he's handsome, he outperforms all his older brothers, he slew Goliath, he conquered all his enemies, he threw the riff-raff out of Jerusalem and made it a holy city for Israel, he's vastly superior to King Saul in every way, he sings, he dances, he's a poet, he plays the lute or harp or ukulele or something, women throw themselves at him, he lives in a nice mothproof palace built of cedar - and he sits there in his palace, on his throne, in the bosom of his adoring people, and he gets to thinking about things, and he decides it's high time for him to give God a helping hand. God should have a house too, a house maybe even as big and as grand as the king's palace, and it's his job to build God's house. Noblesse oblige, and all that. It's a lot more congenial picture of oneself in relation to God, isn't it? Sort of like we're in a partnership with God to make everything turn out good and true and beautiful.

     So David floats the idea to the resident prophet, Nathan, and Nathan says it's a no-brainer. He just knows God will love it, and he tells David to go ahead. But the Lord ambushes Nathan in his sleep that night and gives him a restraining order to serve on David: I don't want a house. Even if I did want a house, you wouldn't be the one to build it. This is the problem with setting yourself up as God's helpful partner: It tends to get you into humiliating situations. The prophet's name, Nathan, means gift from God. I wonder if David considered him much of a gift.

     So here we have a dilemma: Does God require our cooperation and assistance in getting God's work done, or are we so badly fallen from grace that all we can do is make things worse, and it's all that God can do to save us from ourselves? Go sit in an airport someplace and watch people and ask yourself that question.

     Jesus himself gets caught on the horn of that very dilemma in today's Gospel. He and his twelve helpers have been doing God's work, healing, teaching, ministering to all kinds of people, both Jews and Gentiles, and the word is getting out, and people are flocking to them in all kinds of desperate need, and Jesus finally says to his disciples, Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while. We're not indispensable. We can take a break. But then he sees how the crowds of needy people chase after him, and they're like sheep without a shepherd, and he has compassion for them, and he changes his mind. He and his helpers are indispensable after all.

     Well, if he can't make up his mind, how are we supposed to get it right? And what are Jane and I in particular supposed to make of this Gospel on the very day before we go on vacation? Exact same thing happened three years ago, too, and I'm getting a little paranoid about it. What's God trying to tell us?

     I guess it depends to some degree on where you see yourself in this story. Are you one of those sheep without a shepherd, or are you one of Jesus' little helpers? Be careful before you answer. It's a trick question. The Gospel is full of trick questions. But they are not there to outsmart you and make you look silly, even if they do all of that. They are there to get you to think outside the box, or both inside and outside it at the same time.

     David wanted to put God in a box. A nice box, to be sure. A big box. A grand, expensive, beautiful, totally awesome box. But God didn't want to be put in a box. And we have this two-hundred-and-two-year-old box in which we gather to find God, and God doesn't want to be put in this box either. It's not big enough for God. And if we're serious about being God's people, it's not big enough for us either. It's a good box. We should treasure it. We should put it to good use always. But it's not big enough to contain the goings-on between God and God's people. For that you need the whole world.

     The whole world is God's house, a house not built with hands, not our hands at least. Built rather with God's hands - that's why we call it the Creation!

     So where then do we fit in the picture? The perennial human question, which we're always arguing with ourselves and each other and God about. But we heard a pretty fine answer a little while ago. We are members of the household of God. Members in the sense of structural elements, timbers, the beams and joists of a house. It is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Human structure on a human foundation. The whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Exactly what David wanted to build, only he had the wrong materials in mind. He didn't realize that he and his people were the stuff of which it was being made.

     So there it is: We have no business appointing ourselves as God's colleagues or partners in the fulfillment of God's purposes. Every time we do that, it brings us either to tragedy or to comedy, shipwreck or circus, or both. But we are not just the passive beneficiaries of redemption either; we have an assignment. We are clay that can be molded into bricks, we are lumber that can be cut into timbers, more or less useless by ourselves and downright dangerous in combination against each other, but in the right hands, in the right hands we can be fashioned together into one quite solid and durable and good and even lovely thing, a house for God.

     So let's have no delusions of our own indispensability, because only God can think that way without being delusional, and you saw what happened to David when he began to think God needed him. Let's take no credit for whatever God may have done or be doing among us. Let's have no assuming that our thoughts are God's thoughts, and we should pursue and proclaim them accordingly.

     God isn't depending on us to make good things happen by being all that we can be. We are depending on God to make us all that we can be, so that good things can happen in and through us. Strangers and sojourners become citizens and saints. Dividing walls of hostility get broken down. One new humanity in place of two or three or God knows how many. It can happen. It can happen here. Pray that it will.
Amen