Monday, July 23, 2018


The White Tiger
A Sermon on 2 Samuel 7:1-19a
By Griff Martin
For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
On The Ninth Sunday Following Pentecost
July 22, 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. 


The words of the Anglican priest and poet R.S. Thomas: 

It was beautiful as God
must be beautiful: glacial
eyes that had looked on
violence and come to terms
 with it; a body too huge
and majestic for the cage in which
it had been put; up
and down in the shadow
 of its own bulk it went
lifting, as it turned,
the crumpled flower of its face
to look into my own
 face without seeing me. It
was the colour of the moonlight
on snow and as quiet
as moonlight, but breathing
 as you can imagine that
God breaths within the confines
of our definition of God, agonizing
over immensities that will not return.

R.S. Thomas names it by metaphor, comparing God to a caged tiger in a zoo, a pet we get to see every so often. What he is naming might be one of the key battles in our life: the battle of divine freedom and our nasty little addiction to control. It affects everything from our calendar to our prayer life to how we parent to how to do our jobs to how we worship to how we create. This tension affects probably every area our life. 

We love to think we can control things; we fool ourselves into this. A lot of it is in our minds based on what we believe we know. Listening to NPR recently, I heard a physicist interviewed talking about a recent discovery. And discovery might not be the right word because his discovery was more a discovery of all that we do not know. He began talking about dark matter and dark energy, which directly control the expansion of our universe and make up a great deal of matter. Dark energy accounts for 73% of the total universe. Dark matter accounts for 23% of the total universe. Add them up, this means that these two properties account for 96% of the universe and we know very little about these two things.

What we do know about the universe accounts for only 4% of all matter. This means there is roughly 4% of matter that we understand, or think we understand because often even that 4% is up for grabs. For instance, a new discovery of a particle which moves faster than the speed of light, ultimately so fast we might say they travel back in time, largely undoing some of Newton’s laws. So even the 4% of the universe that we think we have figured outmuch of that is still up for question.

All to say, we know very little.

All to say, we control very little.

But that does not stop us from trying. And it did not stop David from trying.

It started with what appears to be a rationally good idea: create something for God. David is in a pretty good place when this text startsthere is no fighting, he is King, he has the City of David, he has his family, he has the Ark of the Covenanthe has it all. And he knows that this is not his own doing. 

So one, day walking around and seeing all that is his, he has this idea that it’s absurd that he has all thisa house of cedar, but the ark of God simply lives in a tent. There is nothing permanent about it, it is not well protected, it does not have creature comforts. 

And so he desires to build God a house. Of course, there is that other nagging question, that maybe he does this out of guilt because of his own comfort; making God as comfortable as he himself was might be an easy out. I think it’s a trap we know, as well. If we can make God comfortable like us, well, we get to stay comfortable and lose the guilt.

In worship that feeds our souls, in hymns that we like because they make us feel good, in the Scripture passages where we find safety, in the prayers that lift us up, doing church ways that help us and are convenient… we find comfort here, so God must find comfort here. Let’s build God something permanent….And again, it’s not just how we do church; it’s how we do everything.

That tension is all over thisDivine freedom and our nasty little addition to control.

David, who is now entirely sold on his idea, races to Nathan to tell him about it. He talks about the plans, what it will look like, how much God is going to just love it (as if that is our job to judge what God loves). Nathan is actually pretty sold on the idea: “Go do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you.”

And those words right there, “Go do all that is in your mind.…” There’s a warning for us. 

Here are my trigger warnings: When I think of something and I can immediately write a detailed plan for how we are going to get there and what this looks like and there is part of me that says, “oh, and people will just love you at the endthat’s dangerous. It’s what Abby calls “clipboard mentality Griff,” which means I have a plan and I am ready to go and I can’t wait for God to bless it and I will be very hard to stop.

And that order is all out of line and there is only one thing to help…. Go and do all that is in your mind…. If it’s in our mind and not God’s mind, we best stop right there and make sure the two are in sync. It’s called prayer, and we are nothing without it. 

Now, Nathan knows prayers well, and that night God speaks to Nathan, and God is not in sync with this plan to build God a house. God’s words: “This is God’s word on the matter: You’re going to build a ‘house’ for me to live in? Why, I haven’t lived in a ‘house’ from the time I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt till now. All that time I’ve moved about with nothing but a tent. And in all my travels with Israel, did I ever say to any of the leaders I commanded to shepherd Israel, ‘Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?’

It’s God’s gentle way of reminding David that sometimes what we want to do for God might very well be a distraction from what God is already doing and wants us to join in on. And note that join in – more often than not, God is already dancing and is inviting us to join the dance, not to make up and lead a new one.

And that might very well be the question that we need to sit with this morning. That question seems to get to the very heart of that tension in divine freedom and our nasty little addiction. What are we so intent on doing, so passionate about, so full-steam ahead on and that we truly believe it’s the thing God wants from us… and yet, it might also be a distraction from what God is already doing and wants us to join in on?

So Nathan receives this word and takes it straight back to David. He is not fearful of the political revenge, the power dynamic at play. God has spoken and that is all that matters to Nathan. 

And Nathan carries these words to David and David hears them and then verse 18: “David the king went in and sat before the Lord.” 

Maybe that is the picture of humility. Maybe that is the only way to approach the divine freedom and control tension: to go in and sit before our God. 

It’s one of the things the Big Book teaches us about addiction. There is no recovery program worth its salt that does not start with letting go, with powerlessness, with going and sitting before God. 

To let go of all your good ideas, your perfect plans, the way things have always been, the design you have created. Sitting before God means releasing all of that.

For instance, we are about to enter into a time of discernment here at the church about worship as we celebrate Louise and Bob and their gifts. We know that the next step is crucial to worship here at First Austin. How many of us have gone and taken that and sat before our God? Or have we spiraled into fears and control, which looks like emails and gossip?

Or the coming discussion of CBF and what our role is in a fellowship that no longer looks like usthat is not going to be an easy conversation for us and we know it’s crucial. How many of us have gone and taken that and sat before our God? Or have we spiraled into fears and control, which looks again like emails and Facebook posts?

And again, it’s not just church; this affects how we do our finances, how we parent, how we live with our partner, how we calendar, how we work….It’s whatever the Spirit is bringing up in you right now, and if She is not bringing something up, then you are not paying attention because this struggle is the human condition…because everyone in this room is fighting this battle. So whatever that is in your life, how many of us have gone and taken that and sat before our God? Or have we spiraled into fears and control, emails/Facebook posts and plans?

To sit before God, not to go to God with our plans, but to sit and listen… and to wait until we know not what we are doing but what God is doing.

Isaiah 43:19: “See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not see it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.”

It was the1988 Dodgers vs. Oakland A’s series game one. The batter’s name was Kirk Gibson who was pinch-hitting for the Dodgers. Gibson was not supposed to play this game; he had injured both legs at a previous game and had a stomach bug. In fact, much of the game he was not even in the dugout with his team. In the 9th inning, the Dodgers had someone on first and 2 outs. The coach took a chance and put Gibson at bat. Gibson hit a homerun, winning the game. Many believe this homerun was the momentum shift that the Dodgers needed to win the series that most believed would be an A’s sweep.

This has become a fairly well known clip because of what happens in the parking lot at the time of the homerun. If you pay close attention, you see taillights go onpeople who had left the game early, probably to beat the traffic, thinking the game was over and the A’s had won. They leave early but, like all of us, turn the game on the radio as they leave the ball park. And of course they miss what will amount to one of the greatest plays in baseball history. All because they thought they knew what was going to happen and they left the game early. How many of us have left the game because we already knew what was going to happen?

God is doing a new thing today and we need to be part of thatbecause if we are not, we are nothing more than a distraction. And the world we are currently living in has no room for any more distractions.

So may we join God in the new thing that God is already doing.

Amen and Amen. 

--
Rev. Dr. Griff Martin
Senior Pastor
First Austin: a baptist community of faith

*artwork: Thinking Outside Pandora's Box, by Tim Parish, 2008


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