God at Work: God Unites

The New Revised Standard Version David Anointed King of All Israel

David Anointed King of All Israel

(1 Chr 11:1–3)

5 Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron, and said, “Look, we are your bone and flesh. 2 For some time, while Saul was king over us, it was you who led out Israel and brought it in. The LORD said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel.” 3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel. 4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. 5 At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months; and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years.

The New Revised Standard Version Jerusalem Made Capital of the United Kingdom

9 David occupied the stronghold, and named it the city of David. David built the city all around from the Millo inward. 10 And David became greater and greater, for the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him.

We mark today in many important ways.

First, it is the end of our time looking at the books of Samuel, the rise of King David, and the unification of the divided nation of Israel under God’s chosen King. Next week, we will move to the Letter to the Ephesian church, a brief interlude in our summer studies which will be followed by our annual pulpit swap with Cordata and First Presbyterian churches. God is uniting God’s people under their king — we are united as we gather in community with the people of God.

Second, today is a day we mark due to Washington State’s formal reopening and lifting of many restrictions due to COVID-19. While we understand that the pandemic is far from over, we also celebrate the advancements of science and medical care that have allowed for many of us to be vaccinated, which paves the way for the full alleviation of the threat of this virus. We celebrate that God has moved through our world in this way, in the hands of epidemiologists and skilled physicians, drawing us back into in person community. We are also reminded that we have never truly been apart, as we are bound up as God’s people even as we have been called to stay separated for so long.

Finally, we mark today as the celebration of the birth of our nation. Words like freedom, liberty, and independence are often used in this celebration, marking our nation as separate or somehow superior because of our triumph over the powers of tyrannical empires. However, this celebration has a bittersweetness to it: we are also reminded that the sovereignty of our nation comes upon the backs of enslaved peoples, gathers land from existing nations of indigenous peoples, and does not always represented all peoples in its laws and justice. So, we mark today with caution. As the church of Christ, we are encouraged not to tout our liberty, but rather celebrate how God unifies us, breaks down walls of division, and leads all people into the shalom and hope that our American independence only offers faint, cloudy images of.

Our text today is a study of such optimism and such need for caution. It is a unifying text, no doubt. And we must see this text as such, as a picture of how God’s people can unite after division and discord. We must read this text for the truth God reveals in it: the people get what they want, but also…the king who unites is God’s chosen king, none other. This inauguration of David is a preview of, a taste of, a foreshadowing of the True King, Jesus the Christ. As we hear in the final verses of our reading, David becomes great, not by his own ability, but by the presence of the Lord, the God of Hosts, with him.

So, what does the presence of God, as we experience as the gathered body of Christ together, invite us to grow into and taste today?

To Move On

First, God is inviting the people of Israel to move on. It seems that they already had, according to this passage, as we hear in vs. 2 — Saul may have been king, but David was the true leader long before his inauguration.

It is time for the people to move on. And it is time for us to begin to move ahead. All through this past year and a half, we’ve been longing to move on. And certainly, while we are not fully ready to put this pandemic behind us, we are also so very ready to move ahead. We are ready for a new chapter, a renewed and hopeful step forward as a people. We have much work to do to rebuild and maintain the safety of our communities going forward. As the Israelites can’t (and don’t want to) go back to Saul. We, also, cannot go back to the way things were, the way we wanted it, the ways of indignity, frivolity or self-centeredness that led us into this mess to begin with. We have to capture what we have learned and grow from here.

To Unite

In connection with this, God is inviting the people of Israel to unite under David’s leadership. No longer will they be a divided people, no longer will some tribes worship God in Hebron, some in Jerusalem. God is reuniting them.

And so for us, we are reunited. But we reunite with the hope that our divisions will be set aside as well.

Think about this — as we move forward together as a church, what divisions you being invited to set aside?

Are there folks in this church community that you’ve actually been kind of glad you haven’t seen in over a year?

Well, what’s the invitation there — I believe it is to healing, to reconciliation, to forgiveness. Divisions we have long harbored in our hearts must be set aside. I know that I have grown so much over this past year…and I expect you have too. In unity, we set aside our past disagreements and begin again in hope of peaceful, justice-focused community. God is calling us to unity today. Unity over liberty, unity over identity, unity within our great diversity, unity that loves and builds up our church, our city, our nation, our world.

To Build

And so, we finally see that God’s people unite with David in Jerusalem, the City of David, and begin to build something new there.

Ever-mindful of the skepticism and caution we must bring to the biblical text, we acknowledge that the building of Jerusalem comes at the expense of others — as the City of David is built out, other nations continue to be expelled from the land. The City is a City of promise, but it also is a city of expansion.

So with us, we are invited to build, to grow, to expand into the new community God invites us to. And we do this with caution — we must tend to the ones who are still suffering, we must care for the ones who are impacted most deeply by the shifts that we’ve experienced in our world. We love the poor, the widow, the orphaned. We seek justice for the victims and restoration for the perpetrators.

If we are to build ahead as a church here at St. James, we will need to build with and through our scars. We have wounds. We have pains. And those pains are not a problem, but rather the site where the building can take place. We build and grow from this new place where we currently stand by doing all that is within our power to make the church a safe haven, a hospital, a site of healing. Building, like the City of Jerusalem, takes time and requires the presence of God to be close at hand. And when the presence of God is with us, we experience new life, healing of fractured relationships, and action for justice that draws people in.

We are at the threshold of a new time as a world and a church community. We cannot look back. But our building and growing forward must come out of all that we have learned, all of our scars and pain, all of our latent hopes and longed for dreams. We cannot look back, but rather, as the writer of the book of Hebrews encourages us, we set our hearts on the founder and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ.

Christ, the wounded healer, the shepherd king, the holy one of God. It is in Christ that we are healed, in Christ that we are built up and restored, in Christ that we become one. This is the Kingdom, the flesh and bone Kin-dom of God, that we speak of.

The Foretaste of the Kingdom

King David’s reign is historically significant for the nation of Israel, and yet, it is but a foretaste of the Kingdom of God which Christ speaks of. The people of God tasted what unity around a leader was like. They could sense the difference and blessing of this King. And yet, it is always just a shadow of what is to come.

This is what Jesus speaks of when he describes the Kingdom of God being “at hand.” It is arriving, breaking through, already here and not yet fully realized. We, the church, the people of God, we are also anticipating that which is to come. While we are united a bit more today, we still long for unity in its fullness. We long to gather with those we have long since lost. We long to be with those from whom we are estranged. We long for the day when God’s justice will roll down like a mighty stream and bring wholeness to all people who cry out for God’s mercy.

Thankfully, we have a practice that helps us to mark a day like this in all its sense of resolution and yet longing and anticipation, the already and the not yet: This practice is our coming to the table. We come to the table as individuals whose liberty is set aside and instead, become one people, united, all collectively longing for the goodness of God that we find at this table. The table is the great unifier — all are offered, all are welcome, all are received. There is no privilege, no social standing, no greater or lesser place at this table.

As the elders of the tribes of Israel remarked to David, we as well are “bone and flesh” with one another. We are family in the Kin-dom of God.

This bone and flesh imagery is helpful for us as we come to the table today. We come as a people who share bone — we share strength and resolve as a people. And we come as a people who share flesh — we share weakness, fatigue and humility as a people. We are bone and flesh, greater than our shared biology or family of origin — bone and flesh as a shared humanity, longing for God’s good meal set before us.

And so, as the Good Shepherd has called us here to gather today, the Good Shepherd invites to receive these Gifts of God at the table as one, united people.

Amen.