AN AGENDA WORTHY OF DANCING

Scripture Lesson: 2 Samuel 6: 1-19

Dr. Matthew S. Brown

July 23, 2006

I don’t know about you but when I was a child, I was a bit disappointed when people did not do what I wanted them to do when I wanted them to do it. Oh, through discipline, either outwardly imposed or inwardly called upon, I may have learned to respond to my friend’s inquiry of what I wanted to do with the words, “I don’t know, whatever you’d like to do.” Though I said it, and though I may not have actually known what I wanted to do, more often than not, it was a lie to say, “…Whatever you’d like to do.”

Even if I did not know what it was, I did know that I wanted my friend to do or want to do not only what I wanted to do but also what I wanted him to do. And you know, I’m not so sure that this was a stage I ever (we ever) completely leave behind.

Go observe the little batonless maestros out on the playground trying to orchestrate their preschool classmates, entreating them to play what, when, and how they are directed. “No, you be the Indian and I’ll be the cowboy.” “It’s my turn on the swing!” “You can’t play in our tea party because we only have four seats.” “I’m going to tell the teacher if you don’t pass the ball to me.” Of course, such scenes are not so different from any number of adult gatherings, from the corporate office, to the political party caucus, to the church committee meeting.

Whether it is the preschool classmate, the soccer teammate, the dorm roommate, the sibling, the parent, the co-worker, the son or daughter, the spouse, or the couple with the little children at the restaurant, we get stressed when those around us fail to do what we want them to do.

Orchestrate, arrange, plan, set up, bring about, mobilize, mount, stage, stage-manage, mastermind, coordinate, direct, engineer, choreograph, scheme. All are words descriptive of our vainglorious attempts to control our lives.

Maybe as a youngster you played with Matchbox cars or Barbie dolls. I cherished my Matchbox cars and would spend hours setting up a village on the top of my double bed. Break out the Lincoln logs and build houses, garages, the outlines for the roads. We’d perfect our own distinctive sounds for our cars. If we’re honest, the reason we could sit for hours playing with cars or dolls is that we had control. Those cars, those dolls stayed where we wanted them to stay, moved how we wanted them to move. They didn’t argue. They didn’t balk. We had control.

We couldn’t control our friends. We couldn’t control our families. We couldn’t control that big ol’ world out there. But in the sheltered land of make believe, we could control those cars, those dolls.

This is precisely the reason I didn’t like games like electric football. You’d turn on the switch and you had no idea where those players would go. I guess that’s part of the fascination with video games. You sit there with the (what do they call it?) REMOTE CONTROL, and the more you play the more you master the world inside that television screen. You’ll hear the kids talk about “beating the game,” which is another way of saying they’ve mastered it, they’ve obtained control.

And let’s not even broach the subject of the male’s fascination/obsession with the remote control for the television. Undoubtedly, it’s the security blanket for our generation granting us the illusion of control.

We want control. We want to set the agenda. We want the world to bow to our will. And there seems to be no limit to the extent we will go to gain control. I have heard reports of young women in elite universities struggling with the scourge of anorexia. These are students who throughout their lives have been relentlessly driven to succeed, the drive often directed and fueled not by the fire within, but by controlling parents pushing, prodding, chauffeuring, and pulling them to gymnastics, ballet, French lessons, flute lessons, competitions, soccer games. And in a world these students can’t control and a life direction they may not have chosen, the act of not eating is the one thing over which they feel they have control.

There are no borders in our quest for control. The New York Times this week ran a piece highlighting the newest trend in our obsessive quest for control – the hiring of party planners for funerals. John Leland writes, “At a time when Americans hire coaches to guide their careers and retirements, tutors for their children, personal shoppers for their wardrobes, trainers for their abs, whisperers for their pets and – oh yes – wedding planners for their nuptials, it makes sense that some funerals are also starting to benefit from the personal touch… forcing funeral directors to be more like party planners, and inviting some party planners to test the farewell waters.” (Lord, deliver us.)

Mark Duffy last year began what he calls the first nationwide funeral concierge service. He says, “Baby boomers are all about being in control… This generation wants to control everything, from the food to the words to the order of the service.” They went on to describe how someone chose a disco theme for their service. (Don’t go getting any ideas! We don’t need the Bee Gees showing up for any memorial services here!)

As much as I shudder at the thought of funeral party planners, I must say the man has read the boomer market well in regards to our obsession for control. All you have to do is watch a soccer game with boomer parents on the sideline to discover that.

We crave control and certainly our faith is not immune to this endeavor. Americans are notorious for our consumer approach to God. We tend to collect our beliefs as if we’re tossing specials into our grocery carts at Harris Teeter. How deluded are we to assume that we can assemble a God to suit our needs? How confused are we to think we can put God in a box? If God is the product of your design, then who is actually playing God in that relationship?

2 Samuel 6 serves as a corrective to all who would endeavor to control God. David’s army had been very successful in battle. Saul was dead, as too was David’s friend and Saul’s son Jonathan. David had managed to consolidate all of Israel under his rule. And it was decided that Jerusalem would serve as the capitol of the united kingdom. In order to provide legitimacy for himself as king and for Jerusalem as the locus of his power, David decided to bring to Jerusalem the Ark of the Covenant, which had been in storage in an obscure, unprotected address, the house of Abinadab, for the previous twenty years.

About the size of a healthy foot locker, the wood and gold-plated ark contained the tablets of stone that Moses had delivered to the people from Sinai; a jar of manna from the wilderness years; and the rod of Aaron, through which God initiated many miracles in Israel’s journey from slavery to freedom. The objects were a continuing reminder that it was God who had brought them out from Egypt, it was God who formed them as a people, it was God who sustained them.

The mercy seat on top of the ark represented the presence and holy rule of God for the people of Israel. And so any political advisor would say it was a masterful move for David to bring the ark out of mothballs to the new capitol with great pomp and circumstance. By using the ark for his purposes, David would certainly be perceived as legitimate. So a parade was organized, dancers and musicians were trained, honored guests lined up in the politically appropriate places and the procession moved forward. It may have well had all the spontaneity of a presidential inauguration where every move and breath are seemingly orchestrated. “At 14 hundred hours the presidential Kleenex will be offered to the first lady timed to coincide with poignant paragraph in the inaugural address.” Oh, how we love controlled environments.

But God will not be controlled. God will not be manipulated for political purposes. The glory of God will not be contained.

Uzzah reaches out to steady that box. We’ve got to keep God in that box. We can’t let God get out of that box! We’ve got to keep God in God’s place! We don’t want God breaking loose here! We’ve got to keep our faith in that nice little wrapped package! Have to keep God within the narrow confines of our political agenda. Can’t have God offering aid and comfort to our enemies. Don’t let God out of that box. Have to keep God confined to Sunday morning worship. Keep religion in its place, as they say.

But God will not be handled. To all of our attempts to make God in our image, the chronicler of 2 Samuel has one thing to say: Uzzah! Ironically, the name Uzzah means, “he is strong,” But compared to the strength of God. Our strength is nothing.

You had better be careful when you seek to confine God to the little ornate box bearing your expectations. In Exodus it is written, “The appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire…” The Psalmist writes, “The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forests bare…”

Author Annie Dillard eloquently and powerfully speaks to our pitiful attempts to domesticate the God of glory. She says, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never  return.” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk)

We sing about the glory of God with no idea of the power about which we sing. And then, we go out into the world continuing to assume God will fall in line with our agenda, that God is malleable to our preferences, that we can keep God in that box. But remember that name, my friends, Uzzah.

The question here is not whether Uzzah’s death was justified. The issue here is our attempts to in any way control God. For God will not be controlled. Walter Brueggemann writes, “When people are no longer awed, respectful, or fearful of God’s holiness, the community is put at risk.” (Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel) Eugene Peterson says we’re always forgetting, “we don’t take care of God, God takes care of us.”

At this point in the story, David’s meticulously orchestrated parade is abruptly and unceremoniously brought to a halt and David is reminded that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The ark was put back in storage and David takes some time to reflect on whether God was to serve David or David was to serve God. Can’t you imagine the look on the guy’s face when David’s servants showed up at the front door with that package. “The King wants you to keep it for awhile.” Yikes!

It is our obsession with control that inspires arguments, feuds, disputations, altercations, wars and rumors of war. It was, it is our obsession with control that nailed God to a cross. Yet even there God would not be controlled, used, manipulated, or managed. God would work out his purpose of love for us in spite of us. Next week we will explore our how joy is not something we orchestrate but something God inspires when we cease our orchestrations.

Today it is enough for us to remember that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Let the memory of Uzzah’s name sober us to the reality that God will not be controlled. We do not take care of God. God takes care of us. Amen.