A Bigger Table

A Bigger Table

A Sermon on 2 Samuel 5:1-10

By Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On The Seventh Sunday Following Pentecost

July 8, 2018

Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God, for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

My acting career failed because of my struggle to improvise. You all know from my sermons I am a person who likes control; I love a manuscript and knowing where we are going. Which is not always possible in acting…. It was my high school’s production of Little Women and I was playing John Brooke. During a pivotal moment when one character dies, I was to take my cue when a fellow actor wandered in from stage left, crying and holding a blanket to let the audience know what had just happened. This fellow actor was lost in another conversation off stage and forgot his entrance. So, I just stood there for a long time, not knowing what to do until I had (what I thought was) a genius idea – and I just looked at the other actor standing on the stage with me and said, “I think it all went bad,” and then began my character’s grief as I exited the stage leaving him all alone with a very confused audience. Something had certainly gone bad, even if they could not name it.

I feel like that it was our lectionary reading of the text does this morning…it leaves something out and we have a “I think it all went bad” moment.There are two ways to read this morning’s text. One can follow the lectionary which has us begin with verses 1-5 and then pick up again at 9-10; in this read, one is omitting 6-8. And I have to say, it makes a much prettier sermon – a much easier sermon, and that sermon would have allowed me hours upon hours of uninterrupted rest this week. But alas, it creates this “it all went bad” moment. Something happens but we don’t have the details. The other way of reading this text is to follow a more narrative approach and just head straight into the troubled waters and not skip verses 6-8, which is what we will do this day. Just to make sure you did not miss what was just read, let me again read those verses – the ones the lectionary nicely omits. 

“The king and his men marched to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, “You will not come in here, even the blind and the lame will turn you back”—thinking, “David cannot come in here.” Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion, which is now the city of David. David had said on that day, “Whoever would strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates.” Therefore it is said, “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.”

It’s not hard to see why we would want to skip that, is it?

Deep breaths, together here. Because we are going to engage the full text. Think of this as reading Scripture more along the lines of reading our history with Ta Nehisi Coates as our guide, or think of this as Scripture according to Howard Zinn, A People’s History of Israel. It’s learning to read history and see both the beautiful and the brutal. 

Because surely, by now we have learned what happens when we choose to read history in a selective manner; when we choose to look at history through the lens of “only the good parts.” If we don’t look at the ugly, the messy and the brutal we are doomed to repeat the ugly, the messy and the brutal. Surely we see this today, don’t we, in an era where racism and bigotry seem to make the front page of the paper more often than not? When, as a country, we are ever divided? It’s a result of reading a selective history and not the full history, which includes our mess. It’s a result of reading selective Scripture and not the full text, which includes our mess. 

This week I have kept the opening words from one of my favorite novels, The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman close by me as a guide, of sorts: “Memory is a willful dog. It won’t be summoned or dismissed but it cannot survive without you. It can sustain you or feed on you. It visits when it is hungry, not when you are. It has a schedule all its own that you can never know. It can capture you, corner you or liberate you. It can leave you howling and it can make you smile.”

I am going into this text today demanding that we be liberated, because I believe being freed from the chains of exclusive thinking and liberated into the open table of Jesus Christ is the most important work of the church this day. 

Our text begins with David’s coronation of sorts. Saul has now been killed and it is finally time for David to be made king. David’s kingship begins with something rather unlikely and, just a reminder of some basic Bible history, at this point Israel is a divided kingdom: the Northern Kingdom and the Southern kingdom. And David’s time as king begins with those Kingdoms coming together. The North and the South want to be one again; what was once divided is ready to unite. And that is worthy of celebration.

Of course, there is one problem: where will be the seat of power? It needs to be somewhere close to the center of the North/South divide. A place of unity, but it also needs to be a place that will be a stronghold; a place that others will not be able to easily conquer. It has to be Jerusalem, which is currently occupied by the Jebusites. 

And Jerusalem is a strong city. In fact, it’s such a strong city that is appears, according to the text, that the powerful in the city actually use the blind and lame as the city guards, using them as expendables, putting their life on the line. Which would make it a sin of the Jebusites except Scripture mentions that David, too hates the blind and the lame, and that once he has victory in the city (which, we just assume means complete conquest and a lot of unnecessary violence), he himself says the blind and the lame have no place in his city. 

And that is all followed up with in Verse 10: “David became greater and greater for the Lord God of hosts was with him.” And THIS is the world of the Lord?

What do we do with that? How is it that David – who has just slaughtered the blind and the lame, just excluded the blind and the lame from his city – he now becomes greater and greater?  And God is with him? This is like discovering the Night’s King is the good king or Putin is really Prince Charming.

Thank God this is not the end of this story in our Scripture history. This is a morning we have to keep reading.

Skip ahead to 2 Samuel 9 and the story of David and Mephibosheth. David is now king and he wants to know if there is anyone from Saul’s family left that he can show kindness to. And there is – it’s his closest friend Jonathan’s son, and here it is: “There is still a son of Jonathan who is crippled in both feet.” And David has promised Jonathan to provide for his offspring. Imagine Mephibosheth’s fear: David who has killed most of his family, David who hates the blind and the lame…and David is suddenly calling him to come stand before him. And when he gets there David says to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness.” And he gives him a tremendous amount of land, providing for him just as he promised Jonathan he would. And then this line, “and you shall eat at my table regularly.” Wait, what? That is not part of the promise he made to Jonathan. He would provide for him; there was no promise of a place at his table. Somehow it seems that David, who previously hates the blind and the lame, now has set a place at the table for a lame man.

And then David, who is instrumental in bringing about and building a temple for God, really creating the religious future for Israel… and skip ahead to Isiah where the loss of the very temple is being mourned, and a vision of the next temple is laid forth, and Isaiah says it will be a house of prayer for all people – No exclusions. Could this be part of a seed David planted?

And then skip ahead to the days of the Gospel where the phrase “the blind and the lame” tends to always involve miracles and grace; where the blind and the lame are some of Jesus’ favorite folks. Getting close to the new Jerusalem we so badly need.

So what changes? 

Once again, I think we have to dig deep into the text, starting with “David became greater and greater for God was with him.” That might not be the best translation of the Hebrew there. Some scholars do much better work with that text and translate it as such: “David proceeded from that moment with a longer stride and a larger embrace since God was with him.” 

Additionally, I think there is a long, long pause between this horrible massacre of the blind and the lame and this horrible practice of exclusion and verse 10. A pause we need to know. I think it’s a time of resurrection and vision – David finally saw God’s dream.

And I think two important things happened to David in that time of pause.

I think he sat in his own filth and history. I think he sat in his ugliness and exclusion and realized that the things he had done were awful and things he had to change. Things had to change because no good could come from what he had just done, that a future built on practices like that would not build anything worth building. I think he looked in the mirror long enough to know that something different was due – something like having the blind and the lame sit at his own table, not to save their lives, but having them there to save his own life.

And I think it was possible because God was with him and our God is ever the same – and by that I mean our God is constantly adding places to the table, constantly opening the circle wider, constantly finding more ways to include…a God who is as big as God can be. And you can’t be with that God without opening your own arms and table. 

I can’t excuse David’s deeds in this passage (and I don’t want to), but I can look at the bigger narrative and ask what we can learn. We can look at the bigger narrative and see that somehow David got to a place where he did not demand exclusion for the blind and the lame, but opened up his very table to the blind and the lame. We see a Scripture which insists that we listen to the song and cry of Isaiah demanding a plan of worship for all people and a Jesus who knew no boundaries. 

We entered this very space today under a banner which I think is a calling. It hangs on the front of our building: “All People, All People, All People.” I have not made it a secret how much those words mean to me and the work of being your pastor; and I have not made it a secret that I believe we do really good work with those words in certain realms, and we fail miserably in others. 

I continue to have folks come to my office that feel marginalized here in our community because of a political or theological difference, because of a different interpretation, a different vote, a different news source, a different way of worshipping. Sure, this morning none of us sitting here might be struggling with exclusions towards the blind and the lame or towards certain races, but don’t allow our pride in that to blind us to who we do exclude. 

And exclusion is exclusion is exclusion, just as injustice is injustice is injustice. 

You see, the only barriers that I believe should keep folks from sitting at our table, the only boundaries I hold are 1) being open minded, and 2) being loving. If you can do that, then pull up a seat here at First Austin. We might disagree and we might never not disagree, but we can love and listen, and in doing so I believe we can heal this broken world. 

We have work to do. 

And it’s the same work as David.

We need to begin by sitting with our own ugliness and exclusive tendencies. Who is that we tend to write off? Who is that we tend to show no grace? Who is it that we tend to act as if they don’t belong? Who do we exclude from the table? And we all have someone in our hearts there, and we need to sit with our ugliness, even if we have never said it aloud but say it in our hearts. Because facing it is how we change. 

And we need to pray with everything we got that God, that bigger God who just keeps getting bigger, will be present with us and name the places where we need to open our arms and our lives wider, to mirror the very embrace of our God. 

It’s the very call of the Gospel, a Gospel which culminated with God’s arms as wide open as possible; the very words of our Jesus who said to us (in a modern translation), “Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

To live and to walk with a longer stride and a larger embrace: that is the call.

The Durham Cathedral is home to the shrine of Saint Cuthbert. If you have ever been to this cathedral, you will notice there is a strange black marble line running down the floor. When the Cathedral was built, this line represented the stopping point for all women. They were welcome only so far into this worship space. Past this line was for males only.

This line still exists in the church today as part of its history. Women can cross the line and the worship center is shared space between both genders. 

The line is simply history, a really horrible part of our Christian heritage.

One of my favorite authors writes the following about this line: “I believe that the day that marble line was laid, God wept. And I believe that every time we cross a line like that, God dances.”

All people, all people, all people….Cross lines so God can dance… Longer strides and larger embraces… This is how we save the world. 

Amen and amen. 

*artwork: Peace Dove, Illustration by Michel Streich, michelstreich.com