August 9, 2009
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Ephesians 4:25-5:2; 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

This week's story about King David of Israel is an episode that occurs earlier than the story about David and Bathsheba that we read over the past two weeks. It came up in the lectionary earlier in July and one of our guest preachers chose not to follow the lectionary then, so I chose to pick it up now as it is one of my favorite stories about King David. It's kind of interesting to read this now, after the David and Bathsheba story, because these two episodes show such different sides of David...or do they?

Of course, this morning's story comes at a different time, early in the reign of King David. He had only recently established Jerusalem as the royal city. And in today's reading, David is going to get the Ark of the Covenant from the home of a man named Abinidab where it has been for 20 years and will bring it to Jerusalem. The Ark is a symbol of the reality of the presence of God with the people of Israel. The Ark was with them as Moses led them to the Promised Land. It was also with them at Shiloh, the religious capital of Israel during the time before there was a king while Israel was guided by Judges. The Ark contained the two stone tablets upon which were inscribed the Ten Commandments...but the Ark was more than a container of the Law – it was a holy object with which significant power was associated.
Significantly, when Israel gained its first king, the Ark was left behind – this tells us that the king was truly a secular leader, unlike the judges who had ruled with religious authority, but did not have the political clout of a king, especially internationally.
The first king of Israel, Saul, ended up being a disappointment to God, who eventually had repented of anointing Saul as king. He had sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem, where he met the 8 sons of Jesse, and anointed David, the youngest, to be the next king. But David did not immediately assume that royal authority.

First, he established his military reputation, most famously in his encounter with Goliath the Philistine. This was followed by a volatile relationship between David and Saul. Saul was unaware of David having been anointed by Samuel to be the next king, and initially Saul enjoyed David's music, and kept him around. David became best friends with Saul's son Jonathan. David grew in his military skill and Saul gave his daughter Michal to David as a wife. However, Saul began to see David as a threat, and he planned to kill David. But Michal saved David, pretending that he was ill in bed, and letting him escape through the window.

Eventually David became king after Saul killed himself during a battle, and afterwards David established Jerusalem as the royal city. And now, David takes many troops to get the Ark and bring it into Jerusalem, reuniting the religious center of Israel with its political center. As they bring the Ark into Jerusalem, David is wearing an ephod – the undergarment of a priest. His wearing the ephod shows that his bringing the Ark to Jerusalem is a religious action, and that he intends to govern Israel as a people of God. The procession into Jerusalem is a great celebration with music and dancing, and David leads the joy – listen for the word of God: [read 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19] The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
David is thought to be the writer of most of the Psalms – our book of prayers to God. As you read the psalms, the depth and range of them is striking: some express praise to God or hope in God, but others express anger or despair. They are an intimate portrait of honesty and dependence on God. If they are indeed authored by David, or if the psalms are representative of David's faith, then David is indeed a person of passion and authenticity before God.

And this story has long been one of my favorites: the picture of David, setting aside pretension and the trappings of royalty to dance in the sheer joy of his trust in God, and his gladness in establishing Jerusalem as a religious center – I am touched by his passion for God, and the unfettered joy of that passion.

But passion and authenticity make some people uncomfortable. David is leaping and whirling in his joy – not wearing royal garments or royal dignity, but dancing with abandon in his underwear (in a scene reminiscent of Tom Cruise in the 1983 movie Risky Business, except of course that in the movie, Cruise is alone in his home when he is dancing in his underwear). And as Michal watches David, she feels contempt for him. But David feels a deep joy before God, and also feels a deep connection with the community as he is celebrating, and gives raisin cakes to everyone present. It seems a little odd to us -- “raisin cakes for everyone! And I'm buying!” but it seems to be part of the party mood. And this is the best kind of celebrating in the Biblical model – joy in God that is lived out as joy in community.
So why do I say that this story may be, in some ways, consistent with the story of David and Bathsheba? In both stories, we see David living by his passions, unconstrained by what other people may think. Now we can see some obvious differences – in today's reading, his passion is a good thing – it's for God and connects him to the community, whereas in the case of his affair with Bathsheba, his passion is for his own pleasure, and it leads him to damaging the community. But often our flaws are the shadow side of our strengths – think of the professional athlete who competitive drive leads him to excel, and then that same drive leads his to use steroids. Perhaps some of you have watched the TV show Monk, about a fictitious detective who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. His sensitivity to the smallest detail makes him attentive to details that others miss – but his sensitivity also creates anxieties that make his life unmanageable. For many of us, perhaps for most of us, our greatest gifts also carry the seeds of significant challenges.

And conversely: what we think of as weaknesses may be strengths. I remember when I was just starting college, and a young woman who had been my first real best friend killed herself. Betty and I met in the 8th grade when my family was living in Washington DC for a year, and we had remained good friends after my family moved back to Pennsylvania. I had always looked up to Betty – she had so many of the good qualities that I seemed to lack – she was more organized than I was, and she was so self-sufficient. When she killed herself I was not only filled with grief, but with anxiety: if Betty couldn't make it, how would I? But as I learned more about Betty, I came to see that her independence was actually a weakness, and my need to connect with others was a strength that she did not have.

Rachel Naomi Remen is a physician and professor of medicine at UC- San Francisco. She is also the author of two books: Kitchen Table Wisdom, and My Grandfather's Blessings. The first book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, contains a beautiful chapter on judgment. Let me share some of it with you. Dr. Remen writes: “The life in us is diminished by judgment far more frequently than by disease. Our own self-judgment or the judgment of other people can stifle our life force, its spontaneity, and natural expression. Unfortunately, judgment is commonplace. It is as rare to find someone who loves us as we are as is to find someone who loves themselves whole.” And she explains further: “Judgment does not only take the form of criticism. Approval is also a form of judgment. When we approve of people, we sit in judgment of them as surely as when we criticize them. Positive judgment hurts less acutely than criticism, but it is judgment all the same and we are harmed by it in far more subtle ways. To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary....It makes us unsure of who we are and of our true value. This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we give others....Some people spend enormous amounts of time considering the impression that their words and behaviors create, checking how their performance will affect their audience, playing always for approval....We have changed ourselves into someone that the people who matter to us can love. Sometimes we no longer know what is true for us, in which direction our own integrity lies. We surrender our wholeness...It is only human to trade wholeness for approval. Yet parts we disown are not lost, they are just forgotten. We can remember our wholeness at any time.” I would add that when we are oriented to approval, we get lost in our relationship with God, thinking of it as seeking God's approval, when all along we have God's love.

Michal seems to be lost in that quest for approval – she is ashamed of David's exuberance, and in subsequent verses, she criticizes him saying, essentially, “What will people think?” So her focus on approval not only keeps her from joining in the celebration, it undermines her love for her husband. She is giving up so much by giving in to judging. It separates her from others and prevents joy.
We have a choice. We aren't enslaved to the fears or the feelings we have. Our other reading reminds us of that. Paul writes to the Ephesians, in part: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ...Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear...Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love....”
We have choices – we can be angry, but we can also choose not to act on that anger. Rather than nurturing our anger and acting or speaking from it, we can choose to release the anger, and to center ourselves in God, to remember that we are beloved children of God – we can live in love.

Does this contradict what I said a minute ago about accepting ourselves? No, not really. We can accept ourselves while not being captive to our impulses, our fears, our angers, our judgments.

This is not easy – it is simple in some ways, but not easy. We so easily fall into an attitude of judgment toward others or ourselves. It can be hard to stay in that place of freedom, that place where we know we are loved, that place from which we can love ourselves and others. Instead, we ruminate over the things we are angry about, which often come from the ways we judge others, or the ways we have found ourselves judged. That word, ruminate, may hold the key for us. It actually describes the way a cow eats. Cows will chew the same clump of grass over and over – they eventually swallow it, when it becomes partially digested, and then then regurgitate it, and chew it again. This is how our anger or hurt becomes sin – something that damages relationships. Someone says something that makes us angry – and we replay it, reflecting on it, responding to it again and again within ourselves. We choose to chew on the anger, and pretty soon we are considering what we'd like to have said, or what we hope to say next time. We are living in our anger, rather than living in love.
This is one of the places where prayer really can make a difference, where it can make us different.

When we choose to rest in God's love for us, instead of ruminating over judgments of ourselves, we are choosing a deep freedom in which we may find that wholeness that Dr. Remen described. And this is where the contemplative prayer that I talk about so frequently can be very helpful. Instead of just asking God, in prayer, to help us to be more aware of being loved and expecting that to magically happen, we can sit for 20 to 60 minutes in silence, allowing ourselves to relax, and to let go of our conscious thinking in order to rest in a deeper consciousness, that shared consciousness that flows through all life. As we rest in God, whether or not we have any sense of God's presence, we find ourselves more deeply relaxed, and that deep rest also helps to free us from our fears and insecurities, and frees us to live out of the deep center in which we find ourselves loved and free.

This practice of repeatedly letting go of our own thoughts, our own busyness, to contemplatively rest in God, also helps to free us from our need for control – and frees us for joy. When we realize that we have choices, it's easier to accept those dimensions of ourselves that feel unacceptable. Some people find the practice of contemplative prayer difficult to begin. Last winter, some of us were meeting for contemplative prayer each week, and I hope we'll resume this fall – look in the September Post if you are interested, or talk with me about it. I started praying contemplatively when I was in a Quaker high school and experienced an hour of silent worship each week, but I have learned things since, that have made it more accessible, including realizing that it doesn't always feel like a rich experience in the moment.

I saw a t-shirt which read “I do not intend to tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at my death.” YES! Let us embrace life with zest, zeal, authenticity and joy. Let us not fear our own judgments or the judgments of others, but let us instead be embraced by the love of God, let us be healed by that love. In seeking that healing, that wholeness, we can learn from the authenticity of David – perhaps his ability to be so honest with God in prayer is what led him to be able to be so present to his own joy in dancing before God. If we find this kind of authenticity in prayer difficult, of if we are struggling with letting go of our own negative thoughts, we can learn by reading the psalms, or reading the prayers of others. Ted Loder has written prayers that I sometimes find helpful in my own reaching for God – let me close with one of his today, and we'll follow it with two minutes of silence. Let us pray:

Gentle me,
Holy One,
into an unclenched moment
a deep breath
a letting go
of heavy experiences,
of dead certainties,
that, softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light, and open to the mystery,
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,
entranced by the simple,
and filled with the joy
that is you.

Amen.