1 Samuel 1: 12-20    Galatians 4:4-7    Matthew 1:18-25

 

There are some expressions of human suffering so terrible that the pulpit can mention them only with fear and trembling, in view of the fact that sitting in the pew are those who are suffering the anguish under discussion. One such anguish is childlessness. I have been a pastor now for 32 years, and I have concluded that there is no anguish like the anguish of childlessness.

If it is less than wise for me to discuss this publicly, what I am going to say next is even more foolish, since it may be pilloried as sexist. I think that while it is husband and wife together who are childless, women suffer more, and suffer in a way that is difficult for men to understand. When Hannah was tormented by her childlessness her husband, Elkanah, no doubt heartbroken himself over their infertility, no doubt near-frantic at his wife’s inconsolability, and no doubt clueless as to what to say next; Elkanah finally blurted out, “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1 Sam. 1:8) No, he wasn’t more to Hannah than ten children. He was her husband; she was his wife. But she wasn’t anyone’s mother. Wife is categorically different from mother! Elkanah was her husband; he couldn’t be more to her than ten children; he couldn’t even be more to her than one child.

Today, in this Advent season, we are going to look at four childless women — and at four children (sons) whom the world will never forget, as it will never forget their mothers.

I: — The first we shall look at is Sarah. She was to be the foremother of all God’s people. God had promised her and her husband, Abraham, descendants as numberless as the sands on the seashore. Before there can be numberless descendants, however, there has to be one; yet Sarah was childless. It’s difficult to believe in God’s promises, isn’t it, to keep on believing year after year!

Then Sarah was told she would conceive. She laughed. Being told, at her age, that she would conceive was as ludicrous as my being told that I am going to be the next middleweight boxing champion of the world. Laughter befits the ludicrous.

But Sarah did conceive, and gave birth to Isaac, the Hebrew word for “laughter”. Now it was easy to believe in the promises of God.

Or was it? For the day came all too soon when her faith in the promise-keeping God was tested. Her husband was told to offer up their son Isaac as a sacrifice to God; Isaac, their son, their only son.

Their dilemma was this. God had promised numberless descendants within the household of faith, generation after generation. Two things were needed for the fulfilment of the promise concerning the household of faith: people who were descended from Abraham and Sarah, and people of faith who were descended from Abraham and Sarah. If Ab. and S. obeyed God and offered up Isaac, then their faith was intact but their descendants were snuffed out. On the other hand, if they second-guessed God and preserved Isaac, then descendants were guaranteed (biological descendants), but in their second-guessing and disobeying God faith was snuffed out — with the result, of course, that there would be no descendants of faith.

In other words, if they obeyed God in faith, the promise was null and void since there would be no descendant. If, on the other hand, they disobeyed God in unfaith, the promise was null and void since there would be no descendant of faith. Regardless of what they did, the promise was null and void — when all the while they had been called to faith in the promise-keeping God. So what were they to do?

With unspeakable anguish of heart they elected to obey God and trust him to keep his promise to them even though they couldn’t see how God was ever going to keep his promise! Rather than second-guess God and try to sort out for him what he couldn’t seem to sort out for himself, they elected to trust God and trust him to sort out for them what they couldn’t sort out for themselves. And so with breaking hearts they trudged up Mount Moriah, knife in hand, determined to trust God to fulfil his own promise in ways beyond their imagining — only to find that a ram had been provided for the sacrifice.

God has made many promises to us. One is that the powers of death will not prevail against the church. But right now the powers of death seem to be prevailing against the church. So what are we going to do? We can trust God to keep his promise, in ways that we can’t see at this moment; or we can second-guess him. We can continue to hold up the gospel, even though it is steadfast allegiance to the gospel-message that seems to keep contemporary secularites out of the church, or we can develop a new message, a new attraction, new entertainment, new gimmicks — all of which we hope will keep people here even as the gospel has long since gone. So what are we going to do?

Ten times per year I am asked why I won’t approve of raffles or other games of chance for church fundraising. Wouldn’t a raffle bring in truckloads of money? (And everyone knows it takes truckloads of money to maintain any congregation.) Wouldn’t a raffle get us past our chronic financial squeeze and let us concentrate on other matters? Concentrate on what other matters? Certainly not on the gospel, because by the time we got around to the raffle the gospel would have been long given up. What answer would Sarah give to us, even as she wept over Isaac?

A friend of mine, a pastor in Montreal, “locked horns” with his congregation (the conflict ended in his dismissal) over the Sunday morning prayer of confession; confession of sin. They told him they didn’t believe they were sinners; at least they weren’t sinners in the real sense of the term. Furthermore, in an era of declining turn-outs on Sunday morning they needed to attract upwardly mobile young couples. How were they ever going to do this as long as the pastor told “wannabe” social climbers every Sunday that they were sinners? What would Sarah say to all this? We know. She was willing to give up the son she had awaited for decades.

Sarah trusted God to keep the promises he had made, even though she couldn’t see, at this minute, how it was all going to work out. Sarah trusted.

II: — Hannah longed for a child so ardently and prayed so intently and wailed so incoherently before God that her clergyman, Eli, thought she was drunk. “Put away the bottle!”, Eli rebuked her. “I’m not drunk”, Hannah had said, “I’m troubled; I’ve been pouring out my soul before the Lord.”

And then it happened. A child. Samuel. “Samuel” is a Hebrew expression meaning, “His name is God.” What an unusual name to call a child! But before Samuel was born Hannah had consecrated him to God. She didn’t give him up to death as Sarah had done before her; nevertheless in the profoundest sense Hannah gave up her son unconditionally to the service of God. “As long as my son lives”, Hannah had cried, “he is lent to the Lord.” (1 Samuel 1:28)

Samuel became a prophet, one of those uncompromising truth-tellers who made politicians and rulers wince when the truth was made public. Samuel anointed Saul the first king of Israel. Upon witnessing Saul’s disobedience, however, Samuel deposed Saul and anointed David king. Plainly Samuel wasn’t one to waste time.

Samuel grew up in the town of Ramah and lived in Ramah for the rest of his life. “Rama” has a familiar ring these days. Rama is a town near Orillia; Rama is one more site of the provincial government’s protracted disgrace: casino gambling. What do you think Samuel would say if he were to visit the Rama casino? What do you think he would have said (or done) if he had gone to Casino Rama on opening day several summers ago when the parking lot was crammed with milling children, neglected, while their parents (chiefly single moms), were inside squandering the money they keep telling us they don’t have? What would Samuel have done when the public address speakers kept pleading with mothers to go to the parking lot and take charge of their children — all to no avail?

The province of Ontario will sell anyone a return GO-rail ticket (Toronto-Rama return) for only $29.95. Plainly the ticket is heavily subsidized. The government (the tax-payer) subsidizes the poorest people in our society to squander their money on a set-up rigged in favour of returning six billion dollars per year to the provincial governments of Canada. The day the Ontario government introduced state-sponsored casino gambling (Windsor) it eliminated all funding to psychiatric programs for gambling addicts.

What do you think Samuel would have done? King Saul had cozied up to a foreign king who was tormenting God’s people in Israel of old. King Saul had kept the best of this foreign king’s livestock in order to enrich himself even though he had been told he must not profit from the foreign ruler who had brutalized God’s people. Samuel had come upon Saul at that time and had said, “For personal gain you have cozied up to the fellow who tormented your people? You aren’t fit to be king, Saul, and as of today you are deposed.” And then Samuel had slain the foreign king, Agag.

So what would Samuel do in Rama today? We can only guess. But we needn’t guess in one respect. We know for sure that Samuel, distraught at the spiritual declension in his people, would have pleaded with God until the sweat poured off him as it was to pour off Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Samuel would have pleaded with God concerning a government so conscienceless and a people so stupid and a greed so shameless. A heartbroken Samuel would have pleaded until he was hoarse. To be sure, Samuel had deposed Saul and slain Agag; but this wasn’t the sort of thing Samuel did every day. Then what did Samuel do every day? He had a reputation for being a tireless intercessor. He would have interceded with God for his people every day. When he looked out over the broken-down, soft-headed, hard-hearted people of Israel, meandering like sheep without a shepherd and following whoever was making the biggest noise, Samuel cried to the people, “Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” (1 Sam. 12:23) A fierce prophet in public, in private Samuel was the intercessor whose tear-runnelled cheeks told everyone what he was doing when no one was around to see him doing it.

III: — Elizabeth and Zechariah had been childless for years. Then they learned they were to have a child: “Yo-chan”, “gift of God”. Their child would be a prophet; not any prophet, but a prophet “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, Luke records.

Elijah wasn’t merely Israel’s greatest prophet; Elijah was the end-time prophet. Elijah was to come back when the Messiah was at the door. Elijah was to prepare the people to meet the Messiah.

Jesus himself insisted that John the Baptist was Elijah all over again. John had been sent to prepare the people for Jesus.

What was the preparation? What is it, since John still prepares people to receive the gift of Christmas?

(i) “You’ve got to make a U-turn in your life”, thundered John, and so we must. And we had better be sincere. If our “repentance”, so-called, is nothing more than a calculation designed to get us “fire insurance”; in other words, if our “repentance” is just one more expression of our endless self-interest; if it is anything other than horror at our sin and anything less than a repudiation of it, John will say to us what he said to the fire-insurance phonies of his day: “You nest of snakes, you slithering creeps; you are revolting. Get serious while there’s time to get serious.”

(ii) The second item in John’s agenda of preparation: “Put your life in order. If you are truly repentant inwardly, your life must display integrity outwardly”. Those whose occupations give them social clout (like police officers and military personnel) must stop brutalizing people; those whose occupations give them access to large sums of money (like accountants and bankers) must stop lining their pockets; those who hoard money and ignore the human suffering around them had better open heart and hand and home. Inward repentance must issue in outward integrity.

(iii) The last aspect of the preparation John urges: “Don’t linger over me; look away from me to my cousin. Don’t stop at listening to me; hear instead my younger relative. He is the one appointed to be your Saviour and Lord in life and in death!”

When John announced he was preparing the way of the Lord many responded. Many more did not. Among the latter was Herodias, Herod’s wife. John looked her in the eye and said, “First you married Phillip, your uncle Phillip, no less. Then you ‘fooled around’ with the man who is currently your husband. Then you had your daughter dance like a stripper in order to inflame a crowd of half-drunk military officers. You, Herodias, are incestuous, adulterous, and a pimp all at once. It’s an abomination to God; you yourself are a disgrace; and the stench of it all looms larger than a mushroom cloud.”

What happened next? Everybody knows what befell John next. Elizabeth had to make that sacrifice required of all the mothers we are probing this morning; she too gave up her son for the sake of the kingdom.

IV: — And then there is Mary. While Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth had become pregnant through an extraordinary intervention of God, there was no suggestion of anything other than ordinary intercourse and ordinary conception. But it was different with Mary, and different with her just because her Son was to be different; Mary’s conception was unique just because her Son was unique. Isaac was a patriarch; Samuel and John were prophets; but Jesus was — and is — the Son of God incarnate. Isaac and Samuel and John pointed away from themselves to God; Jesus pointed to himself as God-with-us.

Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus indicated over and over that to worship him was not idolatry. He persisted in using the formula, “I am” (“I am the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, etc.) when he knew all the while that “I am” is the self-designation of God. He agreed with his enemies that only God could forgive sin — and then proceeded to forgive sin himself. He admitted that the law of Moses was divinely authoritative — and then went ahead and announced its definitive meaning. Everyone knew that God alone is judge; whereupon Jesus announced himself to be the judge and insisted that the final criterion for all of us would be our attitude to him.

Mary was unique just because her Son is unique. He — he alone — is the world’s redeemer. He has to be the world’s redeemer just because the world cannot generate its own cure. Every time the world has attempted to generate its own cure (there have been two notable instances of this in the 20th century alone, one in Russia and the other in Germany), it has left the world worse. The cure for a world gone wrong has to be given to the world. History cannot produce the saviour of history; history’s saviour has to be given to it. And if the current talks about “world government” give rise to some kind of international mega-sovereignty, then we shall have to learn all over that humankind’s attempt at self-sovereignty issues in self-annihilation. For precisely this reason Jesus Christ has been given to us — not produced by us — as the world’s sole sovereign and saviour. And if we are ever so foolish as to try to program any form of the superhuman we shall have to see — again — that all such attempts issue in the subhuman. Humankind cannot generate humankind’s redemption. Our redeemer has to be given to us. This is what Mary’s virginal conception is all about.

Mary learned what it was all about the day she was told she would bear Jesus, “Yehoshua”, “God saves”. On the same day she learned that a sword would pierce her heart; a sword would pierce her heart as surely as a spear and nails would pierce her son.

Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth. Each offered up her son. Mary offered up hers too. Mary gathers up in herself all that her sisters knew before her.

Isaac, Samuel, John. The Lord Jesus whose birth we celebrate in this season gathers up in himself all that his brothers knew before him. Yet even as he gathers up them all in himself he is so much more than they. He himself is God’s incursion into human history, and for this reason he himself is the action of God saving us.

Because our Lord Jesus is himself the action of God saving us, he is unique. His mother’s uniqueness testifies to his uniqueness. Rightly, then, did Mary cry, “Henceforth all generations will call me blessed.”

We too are eager to call her blessed, for we too have been blessed in her Son. We have been blessed pre-eminently in the Son’s resurrection from the dead. In that kingdom which his resurrection established the wounded hearts of Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary have already been healed. In that selfsame kingdom your heart and mine — wounded and broken, savage and self-contradictory, devious and disconsolate — whatever our heart-condition it is to find its cure in him who has been given to us to do for us and in us and with us all that will redound to the praise of his glory and the splendour of his kingdom.

                                                                           Victor Shepherd     

December 2002

 

392 Hark, a Herald Voice stanzas 3&4

390 O Come, O Come stanzas 3&4

391 On Jordan’s bank stanza 2

415 O Come, Let Us Adore Him stanzas 2&5

 

1 Samuel 3:1-10      Romans 5:1-5

 

I have never looked upon the Sunday School as babysitting. I have never regarded Sunday School as a means of keeping adult worship free from distracting sights and sounds. On the contrary I know that Jesus Christ can surge over and forge himself within the youngest hearts and minds. For this reason I pray for our Sunday School teachers every day. After all, what can be more important than having a youngster awakened to God by God himself as the boy Samuel was three millennia ago? (I Samuel 3:1-10) I long to see our Sunday School children “arrive at real maturity — that measure of development which is meant by`the fullness of Christ’.” (Eph. 4:13 JBP) One aspect of such “real maturity” is to know the love of God. I want our children to have first-hand acquaintance with the God whose nature is love. (I John 4:8) I want our children to find themselves startled and awed and overwhelmed at the love God has for them, for others, for the entire world. I want them to come to know, together with the maturest saint, that the tidal waves of love that wash over them repeatedly are but a ripple in the seas of love that will remain inexhaustible eternally. Through our Sunday School I want our children to know — and keep on knowing — the love for them that streams from the heart of him whose love is undiminishing and undeflectible.

I: — First of all I want our children to know that God so loved the world; so loved the world that he gave himself for it in his Son; gave himself without hesitation, without calculation, without qualification — just gave himself — gave himself up, for us all. (John 3:16)

To know that God loves the world is to know that God loves those who don’t love him; don’t love him at all; hate him, in fact. Everywhere in the writings of the apostle John “the world” consists of the sum total of men and women who are hostile to God; and not merely hostile to God individually, but united in a semi-conscious conspiracy to resist him and mock him and repel him. And this is what God loves with unrelenting constancy and consistency. In other words, God loves to death what you and I would long since have given up loving out of frustration and anger, given up loving for reasons that make perfect sense.

The history of humankind is the history of our repudiating that which is our sole good: God. The history of humankind is the history of our preferring our fatal sickness of selfism to him and his healing love for us. Adam and Eve — whose names mean “humankind” and “mother of the living” (respectively) are awash in blessing upon blessing; unalloyed blessing, unconditional blessing, with nothing to mar their blessedness or even put it at risk. What do they do? (What do we all do?) They cast aspersion on the goodness of God and endeavour to prove themselves God’s equal. Yet despite this outrageous effrontery God refuses to quit on humankind, so incomprehensible is his love.

Noah, together with his family, is delivered from the flood, in the old, old story, in order that God might begin anew the fulfilment of his heart’s desire: a holy people who are the faithful covenant- partners of the holy God. And what does Noah do upon his deliverance at the hand of God’s measureless mercy? He gets drunk! The irreverence, the ingratitude, the culpable stupidity of his response is mind-boggling.

Undiscouraged in his quest of a holy people for himself, God liberates his people from degrading slavery, brings them through the Red Sea, and acquaints them with his will (their blessing!) at Sinai. Or at least he tries to acquaint them with his will, tries to press his blessing upon them. But they will have none of it, preferring to caper around a hunk of metal oblivious to their self-induced spiritual infantilism.

The prophet Hosea swears he hears God say of these people of perverse heart, “Lo-ammi, lo-ruchamah!”: “Not my people, not pitied.” Then Hosea knows he has heard God say in even clearer, louder voice, “Ruchamah, ammi!”: “Pitied — loved — and therefore my people still.”

I trust no one here this morning misunderstands the unrelenting intransigence of the human heart, its wilful blindness and deafness, its irrational folly. Remember, when the apostle John speaks of “the world” he means the sum total of unbelieving men and women hardened in their defiance of God and their disobedience to his will for them and their disdain for his gospel. So unimaginably senseless is the depraved heart of humankind that it will even despise the gospel, its one and only cure!

In our age of ascendant secularism we nod knowingly and say that secularized people are indifferent to the gospel. They are indifferent, to be sure, but such indifference is never mere indifference. In the face of a love that pleads and entreats, such indifference is nothing less than defiance. We must never agree with those who cavalierly suggest that secularized people are ignorant of the truth and righteousness of God. They are ignorant, to be sure, but such ignorance is never mere ignorance. Their ignorance of the truth arises from a suppression of the truth; their ignorance of God’s righteousness arises from a repudiation of righteousness. Truth is suppressed until it can no longer be discerned; righteousness is repudiated until it can no longer be recognized. Indifference to and ignorance of a gospel that is wrung out of the Father’s heart and displayed in the Son’s anguish; this is not mere indifference and ignorance. This is nothing less than contempt.

And in the face of it all God stands loving. Nothing can get him to stop. His love cascades ceaselessly; his love also infiltrates undetectably. Both are needed — both the torrent and the infiltration — if the calcified human heart is to be softened and wooed and won. Hearts are softened and wooed and won. The most stunning miracle of all is that people do come to faith and obedience and love of him.

The most stunning miracle that a child in our Sunday School will ever witness is the miracle of her own coming to faith; the most astounding development to amaze any of us, young or old, is the beginning of one’s own heart to beat in time with the heart of God. Nothing less than the love of God — both its “Niagaroid” torrent and its undetectable infiltration — is needed to remove us from the category of “the world”. It is as God loves “the world” that we are released from “the world” as we are made children of God by faith.

I want our Sunday School children to know that love of God which brings them and others to faith.

II: — Even as God’s love for us does this it continues to do something more: it continues to pulsate within us, with the result that we are little by little transformed in the midst of life’s unavoidable pain. Paul begins his first paragraph in Romans 5 (Rom.5:1-5) with the ringing reminder that we are justified by faith; that is, we are set right with God by clinging to the crucified one. Paul ends the paragraph by affirming emphatically that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit; has been poured into us and now fills us up. What happens in the middle of the paragraph between the ringing reminder and the emphatic affirmation? Suffering; suffering is what happens in between.

Because of our righted relationship with God, because God’s love fills us to the brim, our sufferings are never bare sufferings. Our sufferings, undeniably difficult, don’t render us desolate. Our sufferings are now the occasion of our endurance, and endurance of character, and character of hope (hope being our confidence that it all ends in our being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory).

When Paul speaks of endurance he doesn’t mean that we hang on grimly by the skin of our teeth. “Endurance” is a military term borrowed from the Roman army. Soldiers exemplified endurance when (i) they remained steadfast, (ii) they remained steadfast just because their commanding officer had acquainted them with the purpose of the battle and its unavoidable suffering. The soldier could remain steadfast — could endure — just because he knew how crucial the struggle was.

When God’s love floods the heart of those who have been set right with God through faith, suffering produces endurance; i.e., suffering produces steadfastness in those who know why it is necessary to keep up the struggle. Such endurance produces character, maintains the apostle. The Greek word Paul uses for “character” is DOKIME; literally it means refinement. He has in mind the kind of refining that a smelter does. A smelter subjects metallic ore to intense heat and pressure. In this process of intense heat and pressure base elements, worthless elements, are purged away; what’s left is a precious metal that is both valuable and attractive. Refining is a proving process that results in what is proved being approved. We who are set right with God through faith and flooded now with God’s love; we know the ultimate outcome of our suffering, endurance and refining; the ultimate outcome is “hope” — being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory.

Before I leave this point I want to make sure we understand something crucial. When Paul speaks of God’s love flooding us he is speaking of experience: immediate, visceral, palpable experience. He is not speaking of an idea, the idea of God’s love. We always tend to reduce concrete spiritual realities to mere ideas: we unconsciously reduce God’s love to the idea of God’s love. Odd, isn’t it, but we never do this with our suffering; we never reduce pain to the idea of pain. We can’t reduce pain to the idea of pain just because our pain is too real! After all, what is more immediate, less deniable, than pain? Paul’s point is this: in Christians what is more immediate, less deniable, than God’s love? God’s love flooding us is as immediate, visceral, palpable as our pain is piercing us. As God’s love surges over our pain, suffering yields endurance, endurance character, and character the confidence that one day it will all be taken up in the splendour of God’s glory.

I want our Sunday School children to know this when they are 30 years old or 45 or 60 years old.

III: — Lastly, Paul prays that the hearts of the Christians in Thessalonica will be directed into God’s love (2 Thess. 3:5 NIV); farther into God’s love, deeper into God’s love. Is this possible? Are we not at this moment either “in” God’s love or not “in” his love? To be sure, either the love of God is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold, says the apostle John, or else “the world” is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold. Of course! Either we are united to Christ or we are not; either we are “in the right” with God through faith in his Son or we are “in the wrong”. Nevertheless, even as believers are “in” the love of God, we can always move farther into God’s love, go deeper into it. We can, we should, and Paul prays that we shall.

In 1964 I came to know that Maureen loved me. She loved me then. She loves me now. To say that she loved me in 1964 and loves me in 1996 is not to say that nothing has happened in 32 years. Each year has found me moving deeper — and deeper still — into her love. Just when I think she loves me so much she couldn’t love me more, I discover that there are reservoirs of love in her that I never guessed and before which I can only marvel — and love her yet more myself.

Several months ago I did something that did not cover me in glory. In fact I was ashamed. It haunted me. I said nothing. Maureen knew something was wrong but didn’t guess what. Finally I told her. Now I know Maureen well. (Remember, we have loved each other since 1964.) Because I know her well, and because of my shameful misadventure, I expected her to react in any combination of the following: she would be hurt, she would be angry, she would think ill of me. Contrary to everything I expected from the woman I already knew so well she said only, “It took a lot of courage for you to tell me what you have.” It was obvious to me that as well as I knew her, knew her love for me, I didn’t know her and her love as thoroughly as I thought I did. More to the point, as deeply as I had lived in her love for years, that moment found me moving into her love yet again, deeper into a love that was plainly greater than anything I had known to date.

So it is with our life in God. As much of his love as we have known to date; as deeply in his love as we are at this moment, it is still the apostle’s prayer that our hearts be directed into, farther into, God’s love for us. So vast is God’s love for us that we can only plunge deeper into it, and deeper still, until we are astounded at it, then lost in it, thence to find ourselves, with Charles Wesley, “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

I don’t expect our Sunday School children to grasp now all that I have said in this sermon. I merely want the door to be opened for them, the seeds to be sown, the truth declared, the child’s first steps encouraged. Then when they are older and they are acquainted with the intransigence of “the world” plus the anguish of their own suffering and above all the fathomless depths of God; when they are older they will newly apprehend every day the love wherewith God loves them, loves an unbelieving world, and loves his own people yet deeper — always deeper — into himself.

                                                                   Victor A. Shepherd     

September 1996

Sunday School Teachers’ Dedication, 1996

 

1^st Samuel 16:6-13               Luke 2:8-11

 

“Once in Royal David’s City”: it’s one of my favourite Christmas carols.  Every time I sing it I recall the heart-warming and heartbreaking complexity of David’s life. David: born to be king. Jesus, David’s Son: born to be the king.

I: — Some people might say that the title “king” was all that David and Jesus had in common.
David, after all, was a military hero; Jesus never once threw a spear.

David had a lethal streak in him.  When he suspected that people were plotting against him, he assassinated them first. No one, however, found such a streak in Jesus.

David played power politics, and played power politics with consummate skill.  Jesus never had the chance, and wouldn’t have played political games in any case since his kingdom, he told Pilate, didn’t originate in this world.

Then what did David and Jesus have in common? They both had simple, uncomplicated rural backgrounds.         They were both country fellows, brought up far from the intrigues of the big city. David was a shepherd-boy. Jesus grew up in the home of a self-employed handyman, in Nazareth , a one-horse town light years from the sophistication of Jerusalem , the big apple.

In addition, both David and Jesus were what I call “earth creatures.” They put on their trousers one leg at a time, and didn’t pretend anything else. Their humanness, down-to-earth and earthy at the same time, was always up front.         They lived life exuberantly, affirmed life ardently, celebrated life boisterously, and everywhere relished a good time.

Jesus, we know, spent more than a little time partying. In fact he was accused of overdoing it. “A glutton and a drunkard” his enemies hissed at him.  Not only that; Jesus partied with the “wrong” people, the folk who sat loose to religious convention and moral custom.  When uncomprehending people asked Jesus why his disciples didn’t fast in principle, why his disciples didn’t mope around with sour faces and sunken cheeks, Jesus replied, “The bridegroom’s here.         My followers are at a wedding reception, not a wake.  Furthermore, Mr. or Ms. Questioner, why aren’t you in here partying with us instead of holding yourself aloof and forfeiting our good time?”

David was like this.  When the Philistines, who had captured the Ark of the Covenant, had finally been routed and the Ark of the Covenant returned to Jerusalem , David rejoiced. The Ark of the Covenant symbolized God’s never-failing presence with his people, Israel . So exuberant was David that he began to dance. He danced with such ardour, such utter self-forgetfulness, that his kilt flew up and he accidentally exposed himself.  The servant girls tittered at the preposterous spectacle of their king cavorting like a university student in a victory parade following the football team’s triumph.

Michal, David’s wife, was angry and embarrassed and disgusted – especially disgusted – all at once.  Michal, it must be remembered, was the daughter of King Saul.  She was a blue-blood, born to the aristocracy.  She always knew her husband to be low-born, but had married him anyway on account of his talent. Now he was behaving like a fourteen-karat oaf. She felt he had behaved un-aristocratically.

David had, and he couldn’t have cared less. “I was dancing before the Lord”, he tried to explain to his acid-tongued wife; “It was before the Lord that I danced.”   Years later Jesus would turn on his detractors, “When the king and his kingdom are here, are my friends and followers supposed to be sad sacks?”

David and Jesus had ever so much in common.  Both were winsome. Both attracted followers. Both drew to them those who would follow them anywhere.

 

II: — Blind Bartimaeus knew this. Bartimaeus had learned that Jesus was in the crowd.  “Jesus, Son of David”, Bartimaeus had called out.  A few days later, in the last week of his earthly life, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on a flea-bitten donkey, and the crowds had called out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.”

Son of David.  In what respect was Jesus the son of David?  Spelled with a lower-case “s”, “son of” is a Hebrew expression that means “of the same nature as”.  When people hailed Jesus as “son of David” they were saying that he mirrored David in several respects.  “Son of David” spelled with an upper-case “S” means “messiah”. Jesus is David’s son in both respects, both little “s” and capital “S”.  Jesus is David’s clone in many respects; and as David’s clone in the profoundest respects he is the long-promised messiah.

Bartimaeus knew this.  So did the crowds who hailed our Lord on Palm Sunday.  What did all such people expect from Jesus?  What are we expecting from him now?

 

[1] People then and now expect deliverance. The name “Jesus” is the English translation of the Greek “Iesous”, which Greek word translates the Hebrew “Yehoshua.”   “Yehoshua” means deliverer, saviour.  We all want deliverance. We all need it.

David had been no armchair dreamer.  David had done something. After his death there had intensified in Israel a longing deeper than the child’s longing for Christmas Day, a longing for the day when a clone of David would appear, and more than merely a clone. For David’s greater Son would deliver Israel from any and all who afflicted it. In the course of delivering Israel , David’s Son would bring righteousness and prosperity and contentment, everything the Hebrew word “shalom” gathers up, everything the bible means by “peace”.  All of us want, more than we want anything else, righteousness in the sense of right-relatedness everywhere in life; we all want prosperity not in the sense of riches but in the sense of richness; we all want the contentment born of God’s blessing.

In my own life I can find grounds to praise God for deliverance. If no one else is aware of what those grounds are, that’s all right, since there are aspects of the personal history of all of us that we do well not to advertise. At the same time, I’m aware that the Deliverer or Saviour hasn’t finished his work within me, and therefore like Bartimaeus of old I continue to cry out for the Son of David.

My heart aches for people who are habituated to anything distressing, whether chemical substance or character defect or psychological preoccupation or injury-fuelled resentment – anything. My heart is one with those who shout, “Don’t hand us a pamphlet or tell us to read a book or ask us to take a course; just tell us where there’s deliverance.” However much some of us relish intellectual subtleties, deep-seated habituations don’t yield to them. Where thinking is concerned we relish subtlety; where habituation is concerned we crave plain, simple release.

The Son of David has been appointed the deliverer of everyone. There is no addiction to which he isn’t equal.         If the community that he forms around him (i.e., the church) loses sight of this truth or simply loses confidence in him, parachurch groups quickly proliferate around the church.  These parachurch groups always feature a program as simple as it is effective. And the members of these groups can always point to people who have been delivered. These groups are a frequently-needed reminder that deliverance is the principal reason the church is in business.

We mustn’t think that only the substance abuser is habituated, like the booze-crazed or the cocaine sniffer or heroin injector.   Scripture speaks of subtle habituations, subtler to be sure yet every bit as deadly, from which many more of us need to be delivered: envy (what has a firmer grip on us than envy, and what is deadlier for us and others?), enmity, backbiting, gossip, slander, mean-spiritedness, stinginess, chronically negative thinking.  Just to contemplate the list (albeit partial) that scripture brings forward makes us realize that we don’t need religious fine-tuning or psychological finessing.  We need nothing less than deliverance.  In coming to church today we’ve come to the right place, for the Son of David has been given to us for just this purpose.

 

[2]         When Bartimaeus and the crowd around him; when you and I and so many more hail Jesus as Son of David we are expecting something in addition: we long to see justice done. Despite the brief but disastrous episode concerning Bathsheba and David’s shocking treatment of her husband Uriah (David, you will recall, when infatuated with a woman who happened to be another man’s wife, and when tempted to take her displayed the culpable stupidity that we all display when temptation turns reason into rationalization; David arranged to have Uriah murdered so that he could have Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife); despite his indefensible collapse David implemented and enforced justice in Israel in a way that Israel hadn’t known before and wasn’t to know after. The poor were protected (always the first responsibility of an Israelite king). The widow, the orphan, the resident alien – in other words, the most vulnerable people, the marginalized, any who were at risk because utterly defenceless – all these people had a resolute defender in King David.

On the other hand, those who fleeced the widow or exploited the poor or grew rich by grinding someone else into the ground – these people learned that this king couldn’t be bribed, wouldn’t be compromised, and remained formidable at all times.

We all long to see justice done.  The cry for justice that goes up from the dispossessed of the world is still a cry inspired largely by David and the Son of David.  Who has been at the forefront of the protests against injustice in Africa, in Latin America, in South Korea ? Christians.  What is the one institution that that all tyrants attempt to suppress? The church.  Who were the people who startled us Canadians several years ago with the near-hopeless struggle of so many fellow-Canadians?   The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Who established Mississauga ’s food bank? (It’s the model of food banks throughout Canada , and it distributes food every year whose market value is $12 million.)  Children of David, children of the Son of David.

Everyone is aware that while segments of the church led the campaign for the abolition of slavery, other segments of the church campaigned to retain slavery.  In other words, the church didn’t speak with one voice on this matter. Still, the gospel that the church cherishes transcends the church and therefore can always correct the church. And the church’s gospel has certainly inspired the cry for justice.  To speak of the gospel is always to speak of him whose gospel it is, Jesus Christ. Christians can’t consistently embrace Jesus Christ and deny justice to their fellows.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred in Nazi Germany for his opposition to Hitler, pleaded for justice and stood with those deprived of it.  For this reason there is now a plaque attached to the tree in Flossenburg from which he was hanged.  The plaque doesn’t read, “In memory of one who dedicated himself to social justice.” It reads more simply yet more accurately, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.”

King David was renowned for the justice he enacted. We who cling to his greater Son are ever looking to Jesus Christ for that justice which we must now do ourselves.

3]         There’s one more reason why we, like the ordinary people in Jerusalem before us, have hailed Jesus as Son of David.  We know that David was an ordinary person from an ordinary family in an ordinary town – and was wonderfully used of God.  We are ordinary too. We aren’t ashamed of our ordinariness, because we have learned by now, I trust, that people who don’t own their ordinariness are highly dangerous. (More on this in another sermon.) Ordinary as we are, and unashamed of it as well, we too want to be used of God.  We don’t pretend we’re outstanding and don’t even aspire to be outstanding. But neither do we want to live and die without being used of God.  We know we can be, and are going to be, just because God has always used the most ordinary humans – like David of old, like the Son of David.

Moses – he was the child of a despised minority.  Moses had a speech impediment as well: he stuttered.  He remains the most formative figure in Israel to this day.

   Rahab – was a Canaanite woman who hid Joshua’s spies in her home and afforded them hospitality. Rahab was a prostitute. Rahab is written up in the heroes of faith in the book of Hebrews.

          Amos – “I don’t belong to that clique of religious professionals who forge careers for themselves by saying what people and the politicos want to hear”, Amos thundered.  “I’m just a cowboy.” Amos was a prophet whose searing word can still penetrate the hardest heart.

   David – a shepherd boy who found Saul’s armour cumbersome and went out to face Goliath with his slingshot. His own people had said to David, “Don’t be foolhardy: Goliath is too big for you to hit.” “If he’s that big”, David had replied, “then he’s too big for me to miss. Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

   Jesus – so very ordinary that people smirked, “He can’t be much; nothing significant ever comes out of Nazareth .” Yet used of God as no one else can be just because he alone is Emmanuel, God-with-us.

I’m aware of two features of us that we often think will preclude us from being used of God.  One is our psychological quirkiness; the other is our sin.  David had both. So have all Christian leaders, not least of whom was the leader of the 18^th Century Awakening and whose stamp is found everywhere on the English-speaking church and society since him: John Wesley.  Wesley could communicate with the lowest-born even as elsewhere he often appeared peacock-proud. Sin?  Quirkiness? Wesley, hugely deficient in self-perception, was often laughably unwise and sometimes dangerously unwise, especially in his relations with women.  Yet who has been more tellingly used of God?  The truth is, all God’s servants are quirky and clay-footed.

We long to be used of God ourselves.  As spiritual descendants of David and his Son we know we’re going to be.

 

To speak of David and the Son of David, as we have this morning, is to suggest that only one generation separated the two men.  In fact David and Jesus are separated in time by 1000 years.

David and Bathsheba had a child, their first. A son.   They had great hopes for the child.  But the child died in infancy, breaking their hearts.

One thousand years later a child was born who fulfilled their hopes in ways beyond their wildest dreams.         This child wasn’t merely a great king, not even the best king.  This king is King of kings just because he is the Son of God.  Having been raised from the dead, the can never die.  Alive, he greets us this morning, and therefore we hail him with undiluted, unreserved joy.

And it’s all because of what happened once in Bethlehem , once in Royal David’s City.

 

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Advent 05

1 Samuel 17:1-58 

Many adults tell me they don’t like the story of David and Goliath. They say that the story is too violent, too bloody, too indelicate for sensitive children. (I have noticed, however, that those who object continue to read fairy tales to children, which tales are never delicate.) The story of David and Goliath is violent; so very violent, in fact, that one feature of the story never appeared in the flannelgraph lesson when I was a little fellow in Sunday School. While the flannelgraph lesson always depicted David slinging his stone at Goliath as the giant fell on his face, it never depicted what happened next: David ran up to Goliath, pulled out the giant’s sword, and cut off his head. It was only when the Philistines saw David brandishing Goliath’s head that they fled. It wasn’t merely that Goliath was defeated definitively; the Philistines were made to behold their leader defeated.

Yet for every adult put off by the story there are a hundred children who relish it. Children delight in the thrill of an exciting adventure; they are enthraled by the story of a slender teenager trouncing an enemy giant; they “light up” when they learn of the courage and strength and skill of the shepherd boy who deals with marauding bear, then marauding lion, then marauding giant as the story crescendos to a climax.

Myself, I’m fifty-three years old, fifty-three going on thirteen. I love the story, however indelicate the fastidious may find it.

 

I: — The story begins, “Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle.” The simple beginning tells us that Israel, the people of God, are immersed in conflict yet again. In fact they’re always immersed in conflict. Of course they are: conflict riddles life. The only way to avoid conflict is to retire from life; or at least retire from facing the injustices that riddle life, the falsehoods, the betrayals, the duplicity, the victimizations. If, however, there is any truth in us, any integrity; if there is any courage in our heart, any fire in our belly, then we can’t retire from the injustices and falsehoods and victimizations that riddle life, and therefore we can’t avoid conflict.

When John Wesley was a sleepy clergyman concerned only with churchly niceties he knew no conflict at all. When, however, at age thirty-five, he felt his “heart strangely warmed”, knew that God’s mercy possessed a sinner like him, knew that the gospel was now etched so very deeply into him; from this point on he was immersed in conflict every day: conflict with church-authorities, conflict with civic authorities, conflict with magistrates and mobs and even fellow-ministers. What had he done to provoke this? He had upheld the biblical insistence on holiness, “holiness of heart and life” as he put it. Wesley knew that by God’s grace all who cling to Jesus Christ are transformed within and thereafter spend themselves to transform the society without. This fosters conflict? Yes. There are many who don’t want individuals transformed within, since such transformation rebukes their own spiritual inertia and innermost corruption; there are many who don’t want society transformed without, since they profit from the society the way it is. Despite the conflict that dogged Wesley for the next fifty years, he never backed away from it.

To insist that such conflict is inevitable is not to say that we are pugnacious and forever looking for a fight. Nor is it to say that we have a chip on our shoulder; nor to say that we are paranoid. It is, however, to step ahead soberly, circumspectly, wisely — yet boldly too — aware at all times that conflict is inescapable.

I have long been interested in the plight of the chronically mentally ill. Therefore I was appalled only two months ago to learn of a development concerning a Parkdale boarding house that accommodated schizophrenic people. Everyone was told that the home was being closed temporarily for alterations. The residents, now dislocated, were sent to assorted small towns in southern Ontario, where immediately they were disoriented themselves, noticed by others, made to know they were unwelcome, and told they had better “check out” even though they had no means of getting out and nowhere to go. They were immediately deemed to be a public nuisance and a drain on the resources of the small towns. Hostility greeted them at every turn. Needless to say, the ill people themselves were frightened and anxious. The boarding house owner had lied unscrupulously in order to get rid of the schizophrenic tenants instantly. (Making alterations gives an owner the right to evict tenants instantly.) As the story unfolded, there were no alterations undertaken, the residents were never coming back, the small towns would be months (if ever) developing resources to look after such people — and all of this because the boarding house owner had learned quietly of a real estate “scheme”, a “flip” of some sort, that would enable her to make windfall gains immediately. No illegality had been committed. But neither had the right ever been done.

Now imagine someone who is outraged at all of this deciding to do something about it, or at least to try to do something about it. Can you imagine the conflict? With city authorities, with Queen’s Park politicians and civil servants, with angry residents in the now-burdened small towns, with hospitals that would see the same sick people again and again but without room to admit them. Can you imagine the size of the conflict generated around only a handful of people who represent only 1% of the population? (Yes, only 1% of the population is schizophrenic.) As soon as we attempt to do the right, conflict is inescapable.

Goliath didn’t represent only himself; he represented the entire Philistine forces when he shouted, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day!” Those who array themselves against the gospel, against the truth the gospel embodies, against the justice the gospel enjoins; all such people “defy the ranks” of the people of God. Of course there’s an extraordinarily noisy spokesperson here or there, but the noisy spokesperson is merely the mouthpiece for hordes just like him.

 

II: — What did David do in the face of the Philistine raving? How did he respond? David turned to his fellow-Israelites, all of whom were shaking in terror, and said matter-of-factly, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? Who is this jerk, anyway?” Goliath was massive; everyone knew that. Goliath was as mighty as he was massive. Before him the Israelites quaked just because he was so huge. “He’s too big to hit!”, they despaired before David. “If Goliath is that big”, replied the shepherd boy, “then he’s too big to miss!” Everything about Goliath that immobilized the ranks of Israel merely motivated David.

David tried on Saul’s armour. It was too cumbersome, and David laid it aside. “It’s not `me'”, said David, “I’m not Saul. I have to be myself.” Whereupon David went forth ridiculously underequipped, others thought, even as David knew he was sufficiently equipped just because his equipment befitted him. He had to be himself.

“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? Why do you Israelites cower like whipped dogs in front of this overgrown oaf?” David’s boldness wasn’t born of arrogance; it was born of confidence in the presence and power and providence of God. David knew that God’s people have nothing to fear really, nothing to fear realistically before the forces of those who oppose Truth.

Thirty-five years ago this month I went off to university. I was going to study philosophy. My minister shook his head sadly; not only did he fear for my spiritual life, he assumed that I had as good as succumbed already to the atheism of the philosophy department. He asked me why I was going out of my way to have my faith strangled at the unholy hands of philosophers. My older cousin had gone to university ahead of me and had studied medicine. Medicine was deemed a “safe” discipline for Christian students; after all, in the study of medicine there wasn’t the head-on assault on faith that there was deemed to be in philosophy. It was suggested that I should study medicine too. I spent five glorious years in intense study of philosophy. Do I strike you as someone whose faith philosophy has strangled?

My friend Fr. Edward Jackman studied philosophy too (albeit several years ahead of me since he is older than I.) Jackman is the brother of the former Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, Hal Jackman. The Jackman family are old Ontario Methodists, and therefore United Church people since 1925 (with one exception, Edward, who is a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican Order.) Jackman took several philosophy courses from my friend and former teacher, Emil Fackenheim. Jackman tells me that Fackenheim brought him to see that the profoundest philosophical questions point to God. Please note: we do not survive and thrive among threatening giants by fleeing the giants; we survive and thrive among giants by facing them.

Where David and his people spoke of “giants” the apostles and their hearers were to speak of “principalities and powers.” The principalities and powers are the “isms” and ideologies and institutions and images that distort the truth and twist individuals, groups and nations. The principalities and powers are whatever cosmic forces there might be, whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial. The principalities and powers are anything and everything that misshapes hearts and minds so that individuals and groups become the contradiction of what they were created to be. The apostles attest everywhere that Jesus Christ has conquered the principalities and powers. In his death and resurrection he has defused them, deprived them of their capacity to define us ultimately and misshape us eternally. In his letter to the church in Colosse, Paul says not only that Christ defeated the powers; he says that having defeated them Christ displayed them as defeated. Not only was our Lord victorious over them; in his resurrection he flaunted his victory.(Col. 2:15) Now you understand why David not only defeated Goliath but displayed the head of the giant. While God’s people are most certainly freed and vindicated in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, God’s people must also be seen to be freed and vindicated.

By anticipation David lived in the realism of Christ’s victory and of that victory flourished; by recollection you and I live in the realism of the selfsame victory. But live there we do, as surely as did the shepherd boy of old.

 

III: — A minute ago we saw that David couldn’t fight with Saul’s armour; nevertheless, David had to fight. Of course David would have preferred peace over conflict; he knew, however, that peace is won eventually not as giants are denied but as giants are dealt with. Therefore David had to fight.

Yet even as David fights he declares, “The Lord saves not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord’s.”(1 Sam. 17:47) Since the battle is the Lord’s, the Lord alone supplies victory. Knowing this, declaring this, David nonetheless goes forward himself to face Goliath. Human weapons do not win the Lord’s battles; still, human weapons are the only weapons humans can wield. Then wield them we must even as we know that the battle is the Lord’s.

Fourteen hundred years after David had defeated Goliath, Augustine wrote, “Without God, we cannot; without us, he will not.” Both men were expressing in their own way the truth that Jesus Christ had impressed upon his disciples on the eve of his victorious death: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”(John 15:5) When Jesus insisted to his followers, “Apart from me you can do nothing” he never meant that you and I should therefore do nothing! On the contrary, in one and the same pronouncement he tells us both that apart from him we can do nothing and that our “doing” should always be bearing fruit and glorifying God. He tells us both that apart from him we can do nothing and that we must never be idle or useless. The battle is the Lord’s, even as David himself must contend.

God’s people have always known this. William Wilberforce gave fourteen years of his life in tireless efforts to end the slave trade. He suffered dreadful abuse for his efforts, but he never quit. He spent fourteen relentless years before he saw slave-trading abolished. But what about those slaves whose lot wasn’t improved by the abolition of slave-trading just because they were slaves already? Already they were the degraded possession of slave-owners. They weren’t going to traded, but neither were they going to be freed. Whereupon Wilberforce spent the next twenty-five years of his life in order to see slave-owning abolished. Thirty-nine years of his life? His entire adult life! But he never quit. Just because Wilberforce knew the battle to be the Lord’s he knew too that he himself couldn’t shirk the battle.

Wilberforce saw the outcome of the battle. Others do not see it, yet are certain that those who follow them will see it. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were faithful ministers of the gospel and leaders of the English Reformation during the reign of Queen Mary Tudor (also known as “Bloody Mary”.) To no one’s surprise Queen Mary had them executed. At the site of the execution, as the wood that was to burn them at the stake was ignited, Latimer, the older man, said to young Ridley, “Master Ridley, …we shall light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” The gospel-light that Latimer and Ridley radiated has never been put out in England. The two men contended valiantly in that battle which is always the Lord’s.

 

IV: — The last point in the sermon today takes us from 1 Samuel 17 (this entire chapter has to do with David and Goliath) to the first verse of 1 Samuel 18. We are told that “the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved David as his own soul.” In the wake of David’s courageous contention with the Philistine giant David was graced with a soul-friend, Jonathan. David was given a friend so intimate, so caring, so helpful, so exquisitely vibrant that the intimacy and intensity of the friendship were beyond words. Because the God who added such a soul-mate to David’s forthrightness is the same God who watches over his people now, any of us will be accorded no less.

I should like to say a great deal about this, but the sermon-hour is spent. An exploration of soul-mate sensitiveness will have await another sermon on another day. For now it is enough to remember that Jesus Christ has defeated the principalities and powers; not only defeated them, but displayed them as defeated.

One thousand years before the advent of Jesus, David foresaw it all, did what he knew he must in the fiercest conflicts, and was content to know that the battle, and therefore the victory, is everywhere and always the Lord’s.

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd
September 1997