Message from the Moderator: April 2016

Our Story, Our Song: Crown and Conceit

Rhonda Pittman Gingrich, Moderator

Throughout the Biblical Story, God repeatedly reminds the people to remember the Story. As God’s people, it is important for us to remember and tell God’s Story and to sing the songs of our faith—in good times and in bad times—so we don’t forget who we are and whose we are. When we forget who we are and whose we are, when we fail to remember and tell God’s Story and to sing the songs of our faith, we run the risk of allowing our identity and lives to be shaped by the prevailing stories of society. God’s Story must not simply be remembered (recited and heard), it must be re-membered (pieced together and retold ways that connect intimately with our lives), understood, and embodied.

So as we continue to move through this year, I invite you to join me in an ongoing exploration of the overarching Story of God and God’s people—a story that continues to unfold through us today. To provide structure for this journey of remembrance and reflection, I am drawing on God’s Story, Our Story: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible by Sean Gladding. So grab your hymnal and your Bible and join me in exploring the Story that reminds us who we are, whose we are, and who we are called to be and become.

Sing: Let the whole creation cry (Hymnal: A Worship Book, 51)

Read: 2 Samuel 7-8; 11-12; 1 Kings 1-3; 6; 9:1-9; 11-12; 2 Kings 21-25; Isaiah 1; 51-52; Jeremiah 1-2; Ezekiel 7; 34-37; Micah 4-7

We pick up our story this month during what was arguably the Golden Era for the Israelites.  David—who along with his son Solomon are remembered as the greatest kings in Israelite history—continues to rule over the Israelite people. Under David’s leadership, the conquest of Canaan was finally completed and the kingdom is united.

David chose Jerusalem as the political capital of the united kingdom because of its geographic location between the northern and southern regions. But David wasn’t satisfied with building a political capital; he also wanted to make Jerusalem the religious capital of the kingdom, proudly leading the procession as the ark of the covenant was carried into the city. After building a lavish palace for himself, David determined that God should not dwell in the simple tent that still housed the ark; he wanted to build a temple. But speaking through the prophet Nathan, God declined: “Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever…(say) ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’” (2 Samuel 7:7) And yet, God once again responded to a need to meet the people where they were and promised David that his offspring would continue to rule after his death and that his son would ultimately be allowed to build the temple that David so wanted to build.

While David is remembered as one of Israel’s greatest kings, he was not without his faults. It might be easy to think of David’s affair with Bathsheba as a personal sin. However, all sin is social in nature because at its heart, sin is breaking relationship—with God, with another human being, or with the created world. The social consequences of David’s sin serve as a stark reminder that when we sin, we do not hurt only ourselves, we also hurt those around us. David never again experienced the genuine peace and unity he had fought so hard to secure. For the remainder of his rule, the Israelites experienced conflict—internal and external. Even the transfer of power to Solomon was contested.

Eventually, however, the rule of Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba, was firmly established. In an act of selflessness and humility, Solomon asked God for one thing when he assumed the throne: wisdom to govern. “It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this” (1 Kings 3:10). So not only did God give Solomon great wisdom, God also gave Solomon what he had not asked for: riches and honor. Solomon became known throughout the world for his wisdom and under his rule, the Israelites experienced forty years of peace in the midst of both political and economic prosperity.

In the fourth year of his reign, Solomon began to build the Temple—a project that took seven years to complete. Make no mistake, the Temple was a magnificent and extravagant structure. A fitting dwelling for God, the King of Kings, the Ruler of Heaven and Earth? Perhaps. But I can’t help but wonder what was lost in building the Temple and redefining religious practices around the Temple.

Our God created the heavens and the earth. Can anything we build to “house” God ever be as resplendent as the cathedral of nature which God built? Why do we feel the need to “house” God? Why do we even want to try to confine God—who presence and activity is so expansive God chose to self-identify only as “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14)—to a “house”? When God dwelt in the Tabernacle, God moved and dwelt among the people, leading them with the Cloud of Presence. But unlike tents which are portable, Temples (and Cathedrals and church buildings) are stationary. “What is lost when we can no longer pull up stakes and move where God leads us? Do we shape a building only to discover it begins to shape us? Do we become more invested in the building than the God the building is for?” (Gladding, 127) Do we use our resources to sustain a structure rather than to undergird God’s mission? I think these are still important questions with which we must wrestle.

Further, we cannot ignore the manner in which Solomon built the Temple and other structures designed to centralize and fortify his authority (a palace, a wall around the city, the fortification of cities strategic to national security, garrisons, and huge storage complexes). Solomon completed all of these massive building projects through conscription. The remaining original occupants of the land were enslaved and the Israelite people themselves, who had cried out to God and were delivered from slavery, although not considered slaves, were required to leave their families, their land, and their livelihoods to work on Solomon’s projects one month out of every three. There is disturbing irony in the fact that Solomon relied on forced labor to build a Temple for the God who promised salvation and deliverance from slavery in all its forms. The seeds of conceit were planted.

When the Temple was complete, God once again appeared to Solomon, pledging presence, prosperity, and peace for all Israelites, and continued authority for the house of David, if only they will keep God’s commandments. But with the renewal of the covenant came an explicit warning: “If you turn aside from following me…but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut Israel off from the land that I have given them; and the house I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight; and Israel will become a proverb and a taunt among all peoples” (1 Kings 9:6-7).

Unfortunately, Solomon, despite his great wisdom, did not heed God’s warning. Remember the conditions God laid out for the kings of Israel: in addition to remaining faithful to their God, they were not to build up a standing army, not to enter into covenant treaties with other nations through marriage (which related directly to faithfulness to God since these foreign wives often maintained their faith in other gods and brought with them their own religious practices), and they were not to amass wealth. Solomon defied all of these conditions: he bartered his wisdom for wealth (1 Kings 10:23-25); he built up a fleet of ships and chariots and built garrisons to house the army that protected his wealth; and married many foreign women who eventually turned his heart to other gods (1 Kings 11:1-4).

While the Israelites were not immediately overpowered and cast into exile, with Solomon’s death the era of peace and prosperity came to an end. When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam came to power, the people rebelled against the heavy burden of conscripted service under his father. But Rehoboam turned a deaf ear to their pleas for deliverance, setting the stage for internal conflict and subsequently the end of a united kingdom. As God had promised, David’s house continued to rule over the tribe of Judah, but ten of the remaining tribes pledged their allegiance to Jeroboam. A long succession of kings followed, each seeming to stray farther from God’s commandments than his father before him. But even then, God did not abandon the people. “God sent prophet after prophet—Elijah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah—to call the people back to covenant faithfulness (Gladding, 141). Recalling the words of George Bernard Shaw, the prophets both saw things as they were and asked why and dreamed things that never were and asked why not, and eloquently articulated these God-given visions. But to no avail. In their conceit, the people broke every commandment, thinking that because God’s presence dwelled among them in the Temple, nothing could happen to them. Eventually, both parts of the divided kingdom fell and the people were carried away into exile.

We are not immune to such conceit. Are we guilt of becoming so comfortable with an economics of affluence that the suffering of those around us—suffering we may have even inadvertently helped create—goes unnoticed? Are we guilty of adopting a politics of oppression which ignores or even silences the cries of the marginal? Are we guilt of creating a “static religion in which God has no other business than to maintain our standard of living, and whose prophets we try to silence when they speak words we do not want to hear”? (Gladding 131)

Amidst an unending barrage of fear-based election year political rhetoric, worldwide unrest rooted in experiences of injustice, and deep theological divides in the church, it can feel as if we are experiencing exile, living in a dry and barren land, wondering where God is in all of this. But just as the exiled Israelites held onto hope, we too must hold onto hope—hope rooted in the story of our God. God’s Story—Our Story—is a story of a God of unconditional love and grace, a story of a God who promised, and promises, to remain faithful to the covenant even when we are not, a God who seeks to deliver the whole world from that which enslaves, and a God who has consistently called God’s people to partner in that mission—all of which is embodied in the Resurrection.

This month, as we embrace the promise of the resurrection—in the coming of spring and as we move more fully into the liturgical season of Easter—may we take the time to honestly identify and confess our own conceit, may we embrace the hope that God remains present and faithful within us and among us, and may we renew our covenant with our God, faithfully seeking to inspire hope in others.

Sing: Lift every voice and sing (Hymnal: A Worship Book, 579)