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We are still at the point in our Bible stories where it is all true and some of it might have happened and some of that might have happened just as it was written maybe.

But this is our sacred story and so it is still true.

Once upon a Time some 3,000 years ago, David sat in his home. It was not just any home. It was the home built for a King in his newly established City capital of Jerusalem. It was a Palace built in the style of other neighboring palaces, Just for David by the neighboring King of Tyre. There was a portico an entrance hall and a throne room, a courtyard and sleeping quarters. It was made with the best Stones. Hewn from the Earth and cedars cut and delivered from Lebanon.

From one and David could overlook the rest of the city, the city that he had made the most important place as he united these disparate tribes into a single unified Nation.

Maybe as he overlooked the city, he remembered how they got there from Abraham looking at the stars and awaiting a child to Joseph saving the people and his own family from when they were slaves in Egypt to when they gathered at the base of Mount Sinai to hear from Moses who heard from God of the promise that God would be with them and the relationship that they would have together. From that desert wilderness to settling the towns, to agriculture, to war.

Maybe David thought of a Time before when there was no King in Israel and everyone did what they thought was right in their own eyes. And of course that wasn’t always a good thing. Would Joshua and the judges be called and rise up among the people and set the community right? And the times before there was a king, things had gotten real bad

Maybe David thought of Samuel and the story. Samuel would tell of his mother who longed for Samuel to be born and came every year to the Tabernacle to bring him the clothes she had made for him throughout the year. And maybe he thought of Saul who had been anointed by God through Samuel to be king had once had been a friend to David and then an enemy to both. There weren’t fewer wars as it turns out in Israel once there was a king

I wonder if David remembered what it felt like when Saul anointed him, placed the oil on his head and declared that he would one day be the king of this land and its people.

And maybe as he looks down that hill and across the past he felt the weight if the responsibility and the toll of all that violence, maybe he turned his back on the window and breathed a cleansing breath as he looked at his home or his Palace. Maybe this made it all worth it.

Of course if he looked out the other way, further up the hill was a tent

David lived in a palace. God lived in a tent.

This was no ordinary tent. This was the Tent of Meeting. This tent was a replica of the one that accompanied the Hebrews in their wilderness wandering. It was a rectangular tent in the style of a Mesopotamian House of God. In front of its eastern facing entrance, there was a stone altar with horns and bronze basin. Inside the tent was the sanctuary which was furnished with lit menorahs, incense, and a table for shewbread. Then, just beyond a large curtain embroidered with stars and angels, in a room only the high priest could enter, was the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was flanked by two cherubim whose wings met and formed the mercy seat: the LORD’s throne on earth. It was a special tent, but there was no getting around it: the King lived in a house while the LORD lived in a tent.

And maybe David felt bad that his home was so Grand and God lived in a tent. Maybe in the most cynical view he thought if he built a house for God and controlled where God lived, made it stable and not transient, then God would owe him, then he could control God

And if I were to give you the unofficial Rose translation of this part of scripture, David gets some sort of bug in his ear And starts hyper fixating on how he needs to build God a temple. He starts making plans and of course he goes to his primary political advisor. The prophet Nathan Samuel is dead and he brings up this idea. Maybe casually like he doesn’t have a pile of notes in the side of his room with plans. He says, “Nathan I’m going to build God a house” and Nathan says okay. Yeah whatever. God seems to love everything you do so whatever.

Kind of seems like everyone is the problem in this text. David for thinking humans or he could build a place for God to live and Nathan for not taking it to God.

Who is not willing to be left out of this discussion?

If he was truly honest with himself, King David didn’t like the tent because it seemed so impermanent. The tent was a constant reminder or the transient nature of this unseen God of desert wanderers. Housed in a tent, the LORD went from Sinai to Egypt, then back to Sinai again. At every stage in their journey, the Israelites packed the tent up and set it up at a new location. In David’s own lifetime, the LORD’s tent had moved from Shiloh to Gilgal. And here the Ark was in a new tent on top of Mt. Zion. Who’s to say the LORD wouldn’t move again? As long as the LORD was in a tent, David felt, their relationship would be tenuous. After all, the LORD’s presence had left Saul; why shouldn’t it eventually leave David?

But perhaps if King David built a proper House of God, like the other nations had, then the LORD would stay with him forever and bless his reign.

One evening David was having these very thoughts. He stood on the roof of his house with his prophet, Nathan. And as they were looking into the distance at the tent of meeting, he finally said what was on his mind: “Here I am in a house of cedar and the Ark is in a tent…”

That night in the certainty of his plan, David slept so well.

Nathan did not.

Bloodshot and blurry eyes. Nathan approached David the next day saying God spoke to me last night and David, excited and certain about his plan asked him about it. What did God say about my plan to build the home?

He said well no. Thank you. No thank you. I do not want you to build me a house no thank you

And I have to wonder what David thought… you don’t have to wonder what Nathan thought David was thinking because he jumped in with oh wait, wait. There’s more God wants… to build you a house, a dynasty and a legacy.

“Yes! Your family line: the House of David! He said: The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. And though I may discipline him, I will never abandon him as I abandoned Saul. He is the one who will build a house for my Name… Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”

And I wonder if David was disappointed or sad or relieved.

Thousands of years after David, here we are. There is no temple, twice the Hebrew people had to learn what it means to be people without a home for God. Twice they had to come to terms with the fact that God was not contained in a single building, no matter how beautiful the house or how well intentioned the builder.

Which is the tradition that Christianity grew out of, a people without a temple, without a House for God. The earliest days of the church, the followers of the way would gather in homes, in worship spaces honed from stone, in cave like structures. You can tour many of the early churches in Rome, there are excavations of the earliest spaces of Christian worship under the churches built in the 4th century–the 4th century churches built when Constantine made Christianity legal and the shift from small underground movement to political tool began.

But to get to these early churches, you walk through a new church, sometimes there are multiple excavations, multiple layers, the newest church is usually still very old. Usually beautiful.

More than one church that Constantine had commissioned was torn down and rebuilt by another emperor. I’m sure it was because of the state of the building, not a belief that somehow the building being beautiful said something about who they were as an emperor. Said something about God’s relationship with them. Would make God love them more.

We can throw a lot of shade at particular churches, denominations, ancient ones, and ones like us. I was part of a church that has beautiful Tiffany leaded stained glass windows. Those windows were important to the ones who commissioned them, had them brought in, and are part of that church today. But do you know what you have to do with leaded glass windows? Every 100 years or so you have to re-lead them, because glass isn’t actually a solid and not re-leading them, will lead to the windows becoming damaged. Makes you appreciate our normal windows.

Any church building, any part of a church building can become… an idol… a stand in for the Divine. Can go from being something that points to God to being where we think we would find God. Of if we build the best, the biggest, the most, God will want to be here.

Or maybe it’s that any building is what is needed to worship God, to be the church. We have a building, so God will come, and maybe even God will do what we ask.

But again, that’s kind of a circle view why people make the decisions they make when they’re putting together church. There are a lot of ideas I have about what God might need from me: maybe a really intergenerational worship, that young people want to stay in; a new church parking lot; political advocacy and protests; leadership training; convincing more folks to be on a committee; increasing our mission activity; evangelizing; convincing some of you to serve on committees.

It’s wild to think that that God needs anything from me. Which kind of runs counter to what we often say in church–we are God’s hand and feet in the world, but does God need us to do or make anything? And do we think if we do enough, then God will love us, accept us, bestow upon us health and riches, will have people pouring through our doors… ?

In our home, along with people, we have this cat and this dog. Now the cat is fluffy and fuzzy and I dreamt of having a cat that would curl up on my lap while we watch TV or read a book…that is not this cat

It’s not completely fair, I feed her and I give her head scratches. I tolerate when she sneezes on me, yet no snuggles

The dog on the other hand, I give her food and I take her places and scratch her head and snuggles. She will curl up on the couch. She likes to be a little spoon.

I think sometimes we think of relationships as transactional like if I put a good call I’ll get something good out of it. Talk about brownie points that people earn.

And maybe that’s what David did. What happened between him and God? If I built you this Temple, you will get me.

Or maybe we could say that’s what happened with God and Hannah. She told God that if God gave her a son she would give him back. But also maybe the difference is Hannah did that in conversation with God and David just decided on his own.

The question that God has Nathan ask David could be read as David, do you think you are the one who’s going to build me a house or David, do you think you, a human are going to be able to build me, God a home?

Almost like God is saying: there is nothing you have that is going to be more than what I can do for you. There is nothing you can make that is going to even the score, or make me do something different.

What if God just said, “No Thank you. I don’t want what you can do. I just want to be in a relationship with you. I just want to know you and you to know me.

What if God is still saying, “No thank you.”

In 1960, when Jane Goodall began observing chimpanzees in Tanzania, she would watch them from great distance. But knowing she needed to get closer, she began to feed the chimps so that they would let her stay close and take notes. She would find a chimp and hold out a hand full of red palm nuts, carefully bowing her head and not making eye contact, lest the chimp feel challenged and become hostile. Then, if they accepted her offering, they would take the palm nuts and eat them, and she would observe them for a while.But the chimps were always guarded around her and she could never be sure if they were acting as they would if she weren’t there. Goodall, recalls that it was a chimp named David Graybeard who first lost his fear of her and accepted her.

She named him David Graybeard because he was jet black with a silver patch of fur just below his mouth. And because he was the shorter, best friend of the large Alpha chimp she’d named Goliath.

One day, Jane Goodall was observing David Graybeard and he disappeared into a tangle of vegetation in the jungle. She followed, expecting that she had lost him and would have to find him another day. But when she came to a clearing, David Graybeard was sitting there waiting on her.

Jane Goodall saw a red palm nut on the ground, so she picked it up and held it out to him.

Then David Graybeard turned his head away, to indicate he didn’t want the palm nut.

But she held out her hand again.

This time, he took his hand and swept the palm nut out of hers. Then, with the same hand, he gently squeezed hers while maintaining eye contact.

Jane Goodall knew from observation that a gently clasped hand was a chimpanzee’s way of offering reassurance. But she had only ever seen them do that to other chimpanzees. In this moment, she felt that David Graybeard was reassuring her of his acceptance of her. Non verbally, he was communicating to her that he didn’t care about the food she could provide, but only wanted her company.

From then on, Jane Goodall knew she was accepted by one of the chimps who would truly be himself around her. David Graybeard also gradually brought other chimps around to meet her and she was eventually accepted by the whole group. Her life among them began with a single expression of grace. To this day, Jane Goodall refers to David Graybeard as her favorite chimpanzee.

When David heard what God had to say through Nathan, he got up, left the comfort of his palace, and walked to the Tabernacle, to the tent of meeting and met with God, who did, it seems, spend time there, even if it wasn’t God’s home. David went to a place where he had met God before and trusted God would show up.

I don’t think God needs anything from us. I think relationships have… responsibilities, things you do because of the relationship, but what if it’s not figuring out what we think God needs, but being with God.

Not to throw in a topic at the last minute, but it’s like missions–we can’t go into a community, or we shouldn’t go into a community and tell them what they need, what they need to be well, or whole, and we ought not tell them how to get there. We need to be present, in relationships, hear their stories, and maybe, a need will arise organically for those with the need.

Maybe that’s all God wants too. Maybe it’s not about the building, or the windows, or the lights. Maybe it’s just about showing up, being present, slowing down, listening.