David, we are told in our first reading, danced before the Lord! And if we are to believe his wife, he was really rather over-enthusiastic about it, especially given what he was, or was not, wearing! But what is happening, and what is this story all about?
Well, to answer that question, we need
to go back some forty or fifty years, right to the story of Samuel in
the Temple. Now, we call it the Temple, but it wasn't the Temple
that we think of in Jerusalem, the one that Jesus chased the
money-changers out of from. In fact, it wasn't in Jerusalem at all,
but in a place called Shiloh. It
was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided.
The
Ark had been built very soon after the Israelites had left Egypt. It
was a box of acacia wood, gold-plated, and richly decorated. You can
read about it in Exodus, if you've a mind to. It was designed to be
carried, but you didn't ever touch it – it had carrying-rings
through which two acacia-wood poles were pushed, and they were a
permanent fixture, apparently. The Ark travelled with the Israelites
during their wandering in the desert, and when they stopped, it had
its own special place in the inner room of its own special tent.
Only the priests were allowed to look at it – when it travelled, it
was covered up with hides or material, and only the priests were
allowed into the inner room of the tent. When the Israelites reached
the promised land, the Ark was taken to Shiloh, and it looks as
though a more permanent home was made for it, although we're not told
when, or by whom. And it did still occasionally go with the
Israelites into battle!
The
Ark contained the tablets on which Moses had inscribed the ten
commandments. Hebrews tells us it also contained a jar of manna and
Aaron's staff that had flowered. But the thing about the Ark was
that it was not only a sacred object in its own right, it also
represented God.
Anyway,
we rejoin the story in the days of Samuel, when Eli was the priest in
the Temple.
Back then, being a priest was something
that only certain families could do;
and if your father was a priest, you
usually were, too.
It’s actually only within quite
recent history that what you do with your life isn’t determined by
what your father did, and back then, you followed in your father’s
profession,
and if your father was a priest, as Eli
was, then you would expect to be one, too.
Unfortunately, Eli’s sons were not
really priestly material.
They abused the office dreadfully –
taking parts of the sacrifices that
were meant to be burnt for God alone,
sleeping with the women who served at
the entrance to the temple.
I don’t think these women were
prostitutes –
temple prostitution was definitely a
part of some religions in the area,
but I don’t think it ever was part of
Judaism.
These women would have been servants to
Eli and his family, I expect,
and considered that service as part of
their devotion to God.
And perhaps, too, they helped people
who had come to make sacrifices and so on.
Whatever, Hophni and Phineas, Eli’s
sons, shouldn’t have been sleeping with them,
and they shouldn’t have been
disrespecting the sacrifices, either.
There had been a prophecy that the Lord
would not honour Eli’s family any more, and that Hophni and Phineas
would both die on the same day,
and a different family would take over
the priesthood.
Eli had tried to tell his sons that
their behaviour was unacceptable, but they hadn’t listened, and one
rather gets the impression that he had given up on them.
He was
not a young man, by any manner of means.
And
then Samuel hears God calling in the night, and when he answers, this
is what God has to say. It was not a message of encouragement and
reassurance, such as you might expect, but this:
“See, I am about to do something in
Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.
On that day I will fulfil against Eli
all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.
For I have told him that I am about to
punish his house forever,
for the iniquity that he knew, because
his sons were blaspheming God,
and he did not restrain them.
Therefore I swear to the house of Eli
that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice
or offering forever.”
There will be no escape for Eli;
he could, and should, have stopped his
sons from being blasphemous,
from disrespecting the offerings of
God’s people,
from sleeping with the temple servants.
I get the feeling Eli has rather given
up, don’t you?
When Samuel tells him what the Lord has
said, his reaction is simply,
“It is the Lord;
let
him do what seems good to him.”
And
sure enough, there was a battle with the Philistines, and because it
was going rather badly, the elders decided to have the Ark brought
from Shiloh because it would give heart to people and tell them that
God was with them. Big Mistake. The Ark arrived, and all the
Israelites shouted for joy. The Philistines were rather disconcerted
by this, so they decided to attack again – and things went horribly
wrong. About thirty thousand men were slaughtered, including Hophni
and Phineas, and the Ark was captured! Eli, too old, too blind and
too fat to fight, was so horrified when he heard the news that he had
a heart attack or stroke and died. It wasn't so much his sons'
deaths, but the loss of the Ark.
But
you don't capture the Ark with impunity! The Philistines took it to
their capital, Ashdod, and put it in the Temple of Dagon, only to
find that the statue of Dagon had fallen down before it, as if in
worship. And the next day, they found the same thing had happened
again, only this time the statue was in pieces. And the townsfolk
began to get ill, so after seven months the Philistines said they
would send it back. Only how? Any couriers they sent with it would
certainly be killed out of hand. So they decided to load it on a
cart pulled by two cows, and allow the cows to take it where they
would, assuming that if the Ark wanted to be back with the Israelites
the cows would take it to the nearest Israelite town. They also put
some gold treasure in a separate box and sent that, too. And, sure
enough, the cows went straight to the nearest Israelite town. And
eventually the Ark settles down in a place called Kiriath-Jearim,
which is about 15 kilometres from Jerusalem, and a man called Eleazer
the son of Abinadab is consecrated to look after it.
And
the years go by. Saul is anointed king, and then David. The wars
with the Philistines continue. David and Saul fall out. There are
all sorts of adventures and battles and sadness and misery, and some
happiness, too. And now, at last, we come to today's reading. David
has now conquered Jerusalem, the City of David, and has decided to
move the Ark there, too. So they all go down to Baale-Judah, which
appears to be another name for Kiriath-Jearim, and the Ark is put on
a new cart to be brought home with great rejoicing. But then, and
this bit was omitted from our reading, something dreadful happens –
the oxen pulling the Ark stumble, and someone rather thoughtlessly
reaches out his hand to steady it. Now that is what you simply
didn't do with the Ark, and the man, called Uzzah, fell down dead on
the spot. David is very worried, and thinks, well, maybe I'd better
not have the Ark in Jerusalem with me if this sort of thing is going
to happen, and he leaves it in care of a man called Obed the Gittite
for about three months. Until, that is, he learns that God has
richly blessed Obed for taking care of the Ark, and he decides that,
after all, it can come into the city. And so we see him leaping and
dancing before it, bouncing all over the place and, just possibly,
showing a little more of himself than perhaps was polite. Whatever,
his wife, Michal, was most embarrassed on his behalf – imagine the
King behaving like that! And to round off the story, when David gets
home at the end of the party – because of course, when the Ark
arrived, there was a huge party – Michal says rather snottily, “Oh
my, look at this great king exposing himself before all the
serving-girls.” And David said, “It was before the Lord, who
anointed me King, and bother the servant-girls!” And Michal,
apparently, remained childless, although whether that's because she
was actually barren or because she and David didn't go to bed
together again, I'm not sure. David did, after all, have lots of
other wives and concubines.
So
anyway, that's the story, and some of the background, but what does
it have to say to us today? How is it relevant?
I
think it's about sacredness, and about whole-heartedness. The Ark
was a sacred object. David would have liked to have built a proper
temple for it, but God said no, and in the end it was his son,
Solomon, who did so. But wherever the Ark was, it was in its own
inner room, and it was the most holy place. Only the High Priest
ever went in there, and he would always take blood with him, so the
letter to the Hebrews tells us. And, of course, Hebrews reminds us
that it is Jesus who is our great High Priest, and the Holy of Holies
on earth was only a copy, a shadow, of the real one in Heaven. And
because of Jesus' sacrifice, we can enter with boldness into God's
presence.
The
Ark was a sacred object, and nothing and nobody unclean could touch
it. It's long since vanished – after all, it was no longer
necessary once Jesus had been raised from dead, and you may remember
that when he died, the curtain covering the entrance was torn in two.
But when it was there, it was a real, and present, symbol of God's
presence, and you touched it at your peril. It does serve to remind
us that God is holy, and we who are his people need to be holy, too.
We can't achieve holiness, wholeness, if you like, by ourselves, but
only through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. But because
we are now bound by the New Covenant, rather than the Old, we can
enter God's presence with boldness. But we do well to remember, at
least some of the time, that God is holy.
And
the other thing is about whole-heartedness. David danced before the
Lord with all his heart. He didn't care that his hair was all over
the place, and his face was red and sweaty, and his loincloth had
slipped. He was worshipping the Lord, honouring the One who had
brought him from being a humble shepherd-boy to one of the most
powerful rulers in the region. David was very far from perfect, as
we know, but he never, ever forgot what he owed to God, and he
worshipped God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength.
And
we? Do we remember what we owe to God? Do we remember that Jesus
came to be one of us, to live among us and share what it's like to be
human, and to die for us? Do we worship God with our whole being,
forgetting to be self-conscious about what we are doing, focussing
solely on God?
David
danced before the Lord. Do we?
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