Sermon from July 23, 2006

Here is the sermon I delivered at Gilmore Park United Church in Richmond, British Columbia yesterday morning (7th after Pentecost). I think it turned out pretty well, though it doesn't follow a clear homiletic pattern that I can see. Maybe it follows a pattern that I'm developing for myself. If that's the case, then it's emerging gradually and I'll have to see a few more examples of it before I can extract the principles of it.

Once again, I ended up extemporizing a fair bit of the sermon, adding material and expressing some thoughts in different ways than appear in the written version. So I am making this caveat: the manuscript is not the sermon. It is the visual cue that gives the sermon its structure and flow; the sermon is what is spoken and heard, not what is written.

"Is 'sin' a four-letter word?"
July 23, 2006

2 Samuel 7:1-14a

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.’ Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.’ 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? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’ Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: 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. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, 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 for ever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.

I was eighteen when I heard the call to ministry. We refer to it as “hearing” the call, and sometimes it is a lot like hearing. I think it has something to do with the parts of our brain that are involved... like the call of God is something that needs to be interpreted before we can understand it. Sometimes it’s interpreted in the “hearing” part of our brain, I think. Other times we might have a vision, and I guess that’s a case of the call of God being interpreted through the seeing part of the brain. That’s my guess.

But when I was eighteen I heard the call of God, to go into the ministry. And I agreed. I made a commitment, that I would go where I was led. BUT! I said, you have to give me time. I’m not ready to pursue this fully, I said. I was eighteen, for one thing. But also, it was kind of scary. So I kept it to myself for a while. And then I moved slowly on that end of things for quite some time.

I couldn’t get away from it, though. Not that I really wanted to... but I did sort of wish that I could delay the call. Just sort of put God on hold until I felt more ready to move in that direction. I tried. I tried all the tricks I knew to avoid the call... voice mail... call waiting... *69... I screened those calls for a long time. But I had already made a commitment. And that was my personal experience of God’s dogged persistence.

I had already made a commitment. But in some sense, that didn’t matter so much. You see, I had heard the call, loud and clear. And even that is enough. Once you hear the call, whether it seems like hearing, or like seeing, or like feeling, or I suppose it could seem like smelling or tasting but I don’t know what that would be like... once you hear the call, whatever it might be, whether it has to do with vocation, as in my example, or maybe it has to do with relationships or other behaviours... once you hear the call, your options are limited.

It seems to me that we have at least two options: we can try to be faithful, or we can try to pretend we didn’t hear. I guess I tried to mix the two: I agreed to be faithful, but not right now. But I did agree, and eventually I had to live up to that.

But sometimes I think I had a good idea with that approach. Because once I agreed to be faithful to the call (and once God’s dogged persistance had broken through my avoidance methods) I had to keep listening for the darn thing. As soon as you answer the call once, the phone starts ringing off the hook, let me tell you. It’s not like you’re given a mission and then allowed to do your work... God is a micro-manager, I guess.

So I find it helps to check with God before I do anything new, or big. Like, you know, building a temple. Now, to be fair to David, he did take some steps along those lines... he checked with Nathan, which I guess is the next best thing to checking with God. But back when Saul died, David didn’t have Nathan around, and so when he thought he should maybe go to Judah, he checked with God directly, and that worked out pretty well. But this time, he has a prophet handy, so he just asks him. And Nathan says, “Dude, you’re the king. Go for it.”

Then Nathan gets a late night call on the hotline. And God sets up a covenant with the house of David.

Ancient Israel had something called a “covenant history”, which they recorded in their Holy Scriptures. You’ll recognize the language, I’m sure. God made a covenant with Adam and Eve when they left the garden. God made a covenant with Noah after the flood. God made a covenant with Abraham and Sarah, that their descendents would be numerous and would prosper. God made a covenant with Moses and the entire people of Israel, and that’s the one we probably think of most often, if we think of it at all. God said, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. I will be your God, and you will be my people.” That sentence is at the heart of covenant theology. Everything else that came out of that experience, like the book of Leviticus, is commentary and reflection on that single understanding. “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

And now, that covenant language is used to establish a direct relationship with the house of David. Do you see how these other covenants are echoed in this one?
“I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
“I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep...”
To Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation...”
To David: “the Lord will make you a house...”
“I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
“I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me.”

The son of David who builds the temple is Solomon, who has not yet been born at this point. So what we have here is a covenant moment, in the covenant history of Israel.

Covenant is an interesting concept, I think. It seems to me that often we connect covenant with the idea of a contract. Party A will do thus and such and Party B will do this and the other, and if either party breaks the contract there are penalties and it can be rendered null and void. And the scriptures support this understanding, too. Did you notice how today’s reading ended halfway through a verse? The verse in its entirety reads, “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings.” So this covenant, the way it’s written, includes punishment for sin. (By the way, I don’t really read Hebrew, but I’m resourceful enough to know that it could also be translated, “I will rebuke him with the tribes of men, with the plague of the sons of Adam.” But either way, it includes punishment for sin.)

Which becomes problematic for us. We have a hard time with the idea of punishment for sin, don’t we? I think Gilmore Park is a bit unusual in the United Church, because in a lot of places I might feel the need to apologize for even bringing sin up in a sermon... even here, I need to explain what I mean by it. Which means it’s probably very important that we talk about it and at least try to figure it out.

We have a hard time with the idea of punishment for sin. And it goes deeper than a dislike of pain or discomfort. It’s not that we want to sin freely without consequence. It’s something about the sense of retribution, that goes against our ideas of what God is like and how God behaves. That there is a Criminal Code of Heaven like there is a Criminal Code of Canada, where the punishments are laid down next to the definitions of crimes...

So how do we deal with this question of sin? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that folks who are in church on a morning like this one, a sunny morning in July, are at least somewhat aware of the presence of sin in their lives. If you’re aware of sin in your life, how do you define it? How can we reconcile our own awareness of our sin with our definition of God?

You might have your own understanding of sin already worked out, and that’s great. I’ve been helped by a writer named Gordon Jackson, who wrote a book called Creating Something of Beauty. For Jackson, sin can only happen within the dialogue of covenant.

Sin can only happen within the dialogue of covenant.

And God’s covenant isn’t like a contract. God’s legal system isn’t like our legal system. There is no tit for tat. There is no bargaining. God does not say, “If you remain faithful, then I will also.” God’s covenant starts with God’s faithfulness toward us, as a revelation of God’s character. “I am the Lord, who brought you from following the sheep.” What is left up to us, is our response.

Once we hear the call, our options are limited. We can be faithful, or we can pretend we didn’t hear. And God’s covenant talks about that as well. I’ve been trying to listen to the call for quite a few years now, and I can tell you this: in my experience, the worst times in my life are the times when I didn’t follow it. And the best times in my life are the times when I did. And the scripture makes that clear, I think.

Sin is only possible within the dialogue of covenant. But it is only within the dialogue of covenant that we find the blessings that come with living well, and being what God would have us be... if we can only trust that when God is calling, it’s always good news.