The Lord will make you a house

The Lord will make you a house

Ser­mon preached at Enmore, 4^th Sunday in Advent, 24^th Decem­ber 2017

Read­ings: 2 Samuel 7.1–11.16; Romans 16: 25–27; Luke 1. 26–38

You may be won­der­ing, what on earth, is the rel­ev­ance of today’s Old Test­a­ment read­ing for this final Sunday in Advent. Over the past three weeks our O.T. read­ings have been from the proph­et Isai­ah. Each of these read­ings has car­ried an Advent theme-they have all looked for­ward to the com­ing of the Mes­si­ah and the new era he will ush­er in. But today we find ourselves back in 2 Samuel and we have read about King David’s desire to build a house for God. What are we to make of this?

First, some con­text. In a stun­ning polit­ic­al move King Dav­id has estab­lished him­self as the King not just of the south­ern tribes of Judah and Ben­jamin but of all the tribes of Israel. He has con­sol­id­ated his pos­i­tion by mak­ing Jer­u­s­alem his cap­it­al. Fur­ther­more he has brought the Ark of the Cov­en­ant, the sym­bol of God’s pres­ence with his people, into the city. Jer­u­s­alem is now the reli­gious and polit­ic­al heart of the nation. Hav­ing crushed the hos­tile sur­round­ing nations by his mil­it­ary prowess he has had time to build a hand­some palace for him­self and the roy­al entour­age. Hav­ing settled him­self in some lux­ury he looks around and notices that The Ark of the cov­en­ant is housed in a tent. He then hits on the idea of build­ing a temple where the Ark can become the focus of wor­ship. David’s decision to build a temple is doubt­less a mix­ture of genu­ine piety and his self- serving desire to increase his legit­im­acy as ruler of all Israel. He shares his thoughts with the Proph­et Nath­an who gives rap­id assent to the idea.

But at this point God inter­venes. Through Nath­an, God reminds Dav­id that everything he has achieved has been made pos­sible by God’s help and pro­vi­sion. Dav­id owes everything to the God who took him from fol­low­ing sheep to being prince over his people, Israel. Hav­ing put Dav­id in his place God then tells Dav­id that he doesn’t need a temple. A res­id­ence lim­its God’s free­dom-hitherto God has been happy to travel with his people and even though they are now settled God refuses to be tied down. Later, of course God does allow Solomon to build a temple but it is argu­able wheth­er in the end the temple was a help or a hindrance to God’s people.

God rejects the idea of Dav­id build­ing him a house but he then does some­thing com­pletely unex­pec­ted. God tells Dav­id that he, God, will build him a house. This oracle is built around a play on the Hebrew word ‘house’ which can mean a temple or a dyn­asty. YHWH goes on to make the extraordin­ary declar­a­tion that the house or dyn­asty of Dav­id will be estab­lished for ever. One Old Test­a­ment com­ment­at­or (Wal­ter Bruegge­mann) describes this oracle “with its uncon­di­tion­al prom­ise to Dav­id to be the most cru­cial theo­lo­gic­al state­ment in the Old Test­a­ment” God’s prom­ise to Dav­id is not without its prob­lems. The line of Dav­id did not con­tin­ue for ever. From the time of Dav­id to the 6^th Cen­tury B.C. Israel had a suc­ces­sion of kings many of whom did not wor­ship YHWH faith­fully but allowed the wor­ship of the gods of the sur­round­ing nations. Sev­er­al times God res­cued them, ‘for the sake of my ser­vant Dav­id’ but finally the Dav­id­ic line of kings was extin­guished when the Baby­lo­ni­ans des­troyed Jer­u­s­alem in 586 BCE and took the last King, Zedeki­ah, into cap­tiv­ity and put his sons to the sword.

How­ever, there always remained in Israel a faith­ful rem­nant of people who remembered God’s prom­ise to Dav­id and looked for the day when that roy­al line might be re-estab­lished and a new era begin. So we leap for­ward six cen­tur­ies and read again the words from our Gos­pel for the day: “In the sixth month the angel Gab­ri­el was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Naz­areth, to a vir­gin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of Dav­id. The virgin’s name was Mary.” So 2 Samuel chapter 7 provides a basis for under­stand­ing the concept of the roy­al Dav­id­ic house and God’s extraordin­ary prom­ise of a king­dom which will last forever. Des­pite the many short­com­ings of the his­tor­ic­al Dav­id­ic dyn­asty, the Lord remains faith­ful to his word. In light of the incarn­a­tion and the life, death and resur­rec­tion of Christ, God’s prom­ise giv­en to Dav­id is rein­ter­preted. This is made clear when the Angel­ic mes­sen­ger tells Mary that the child she will give birth to “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancest­or Dav­id. He will reign over the house of Jac­ob forever, and of his king­dom there will be no end.” As a faith­ful Israel­ite Mary would have known about God’s prom­ise to Dav­id made cen­tur­ies before and would have under­stood that what was being presen­ted to her was a very unex­pec­ted fulfilment.

Through the cen­tur­ies the church has struggled to under­stand Mary. In some tra­di­tions she has been exal­ted to a status approach­ing that of a deity and described as the Queen of heav­en. In sharp con­trast, many Prot­est­ants have ten­ded to ignore Mary’s role in the drama of sal­va­tion his­tory.  (In our own dio­cese the singing of Ave Maria at wed­dings has been banned in many churches.) Mary gets some recog­ni­tion at Christ­mas time, of course, and has been often seen as a mod­el of moth­er­hood. In more recent times she has been a role mod­el for fem­in­ist iden­ti­fic­a­tion: Mary the Vir­gin who pro­duces a son without the involve­ment of a man, and remains her own per­son, mak­ing her own choices. But if we want to under­stand Mary, Luke is our best guide. The oth­er three evan­gel­ists give little space to her.

In Mark’s gos­pel her most mem­or­able appear­ance is when she and her oth­er sons arrive on the scene, to take Jesus home think­ing that he has lost his mind. Mary doesn’t fare much bet­ter in Mat­thew, although he has her with some oth­er women at the empty tomb. John nev­er calls Mary by her name-she is always described as the Moth­er of Jesus and her role is lim­ited. Luke gives us the most com­plete pic­ture of Mary and his por­tray­al is the most sym­path­et­ic. Luke does not extol Mary as a moth­er and cer­tainly not as a god­dess but he sees her as a mod­el of dis­ciple­ship. She is not just the moth­er of Jesus she is his faith­ful fol­low­er. Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel’s announce­ment is to say, “Here I am the ser­vant of the Lord; let it be with me accord­ing to your word.” The Greek word, doule, that we trans­late as ser­vant or slave is actu­ally a rich word. In the mod­ern world we see it as a demean­ing term. But in the ancient world it was also used of the per­son closest to the sov­er­eign, a per­son so loy­al, that they were able to speak for their mas­ter. So Mary is mak­ing a state­ment of great com­mit­ment but also acknow­ledging her power of accept­ance and decision. It is worth not­ing that Mary’s words to the angel are very like the words Jesus will later pray in the garden, “Not my will but yours be done.” In both cases the response to God is presen­ted as a com­bin­a­tion of humble trust and obed­i­ent service.

When Mary goes to vis­it Eliza­beth soon after the angel’s vis­it, her cous­in exclaims “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb” and then adds “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a ful­fil­ment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Luke wants us to know why Mary is favoured and blessed. It is not just that she is to be the phys­ic­al moth­er of Jesus, but because she believed God’s word.

The point is emphas­ised again years later when Jesus is engaged in his min­istry of heal­ing and preach­ing. A woman in the crowd calls out to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” A rather col­our­ful way of say­ing, “How blessed to be your moth­er.” Jesus’ response to the woman is to say, “Blessed rather are those who hear God’s word and obey it.” In effect Jesus is say­ing, ‘My moth­er is blessed, but not because her womb bore me or her breasts nursed me: she is blessed because of her devo­tion and obed­i­ence to the word of God.’

So today we remem­ber Mary not simply because she was the moth­er of Jesus but because she is a role mod­el to all fol­low­ers of Jesus because of her faith, faith­ful­ness and obed­i­ence to God’s call. May we fol­low in her footsteps.

Philip Brad­ford