Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – 2 Samuel 6:1-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29
I’ve mentioned before the café where I sometimes have lunch. It has a screen on one wall and runs various movies without any sound. This week they were showing a recent James Bond movie, Skyfall – improbable but nonetheless riveting action segments. The genre began in the 1980’s, as some of you will recall, with movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. The plot in Raiders was equally ridiculous but it claimed to have a biblical theme. A race with Nazi’s to find the Israel’s Ark of the covenant. The same ark that makes an appearance in today’s Old Testament reading. What the movies got wrong was that if they were to find the ark in the 20th century, the glory of the Lord would not still be present and that touching it or prying it open would not result in instant death as it did in today‘s reading from 2 Samuel 6.
What is true and what we do know from the Bible is that in the time of Israel’s history from the time of Moses on, God’s presence and his glory was indeed powerfully present in or upon the Ark.
Now let’s review the elements of this account of the bringing up of the Ark to Jerusalem. David was very smart guy politically. He had just united the tribes of Israel after Saul’s disastrous reign, assumed control of Jerusalem, set it up as the capital and wanted to make a proper display of God’s favour on his reign. So he arranged for a crowd of 30,000 to witness the bringing up of the Ark of God’s presence to the very centre of his consolidated kingdom. He wanted everyone to remember that it was God, whose presence was tangible and evident in the Ark, and that bringing the Ark into the capital would signify to all that God had chosen him to succeed Saul as king.
We shouldn’t be surprised to discover the lethal power associated with those who ventured too close to the Ark. It had happened before when the Philistines had captured the Ark only to find the people breaking out in deadly tumours. After the Philistines surrendered the Ark, it was moved to Beth-shemesh with deadly results for seventy people who incited the wrath of God. The Ark was eventually housed with Eleazar at a place called Kiriath-jearim. There it rested for twenty years till David was king and he decided to move it to Jerusalem.
What the people of Israel knew from the time of Moses was that the Ark was the locus, or the place that revealed in tangible form, the Lord’s presence with his people.
The Ark was God’s place of self-revelation.
Moses, you will recall, reported that he heard the voice of the Lord coming “from between the two cherubim” positioned on the cover of the Ark – the place where the glory was actually visible (Exodus 25). This locus of God’s presence was not neutral, as one commentator aptly points out.(Samuel Giere, Working Preacher 8 July 2015). Great was the power that often resulted in blessing and joy, but sometimes even in death. In our text for today, it resulted in death almost accidentally and innocently. As the Ark was being transported to Jerusalem in an ox-drawn cart a man, by the name of Uzzah, tried to stabilize it and was struck down. There’s something about the awesomeness and holiness of God that we cannot fully comprehend. David, it should be noted, was furious and he left the Ark and the cart there for three months before picking up its journey to Jerusalem. As it neared the city David led the people in dancing for joy with plenty of loud musical accompaniment.
The Ark, resident in Jerusalem conveyed one important message, that God who made a covenant with Israel was still among his people.
What are we to make of the central theme of this story – the locus of God’s presence- for the people of God today? The Ark isn’t around and hasn’t been around for a very long time. But this morning I want you to think about what we as Christians have known for the past 2000 years. It is this: that since the coming of the Son of Man the locus and presence of God has been with him, Jesus. And it remained that way after the resurrection and yes, even after the resurrection. Jesus assured his disciples before he left that he would be with them until the end of time. He promised to send the Holy Spirit to make that a reality. The church has remembered something else. When he was about to leave this world on the night of the last supper he broke bread and gave it to his disciples with these words, ‘This is my body given for you.’’ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’ (John 6). ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. He who eats this bread will live forever.’
He who takes this very real presence of God into his very soul – not just be near it or not just touch it, but into your very selves, into your heart by faith, as the Book of Common Prayer carefully put it, would know for a certainty the presence of God.
In fact the whole company of the faithful would know this together.
This is an astounding mystery of grace when we put this beside the accounts of the Ark of the covenant. The locus of God’s presence is somehow in the celebration of the Lords’ supper.
God is not standing at a distance in a terrifying reality of holiness. Rather, the picture we find in the gospels is that of a God of love who takes the initiative and draws near to us, offering himself in a tangible way, allowing him to be placed in our open hands.
This is a very great mystery.
I want to enrich our appreciation of what we receive in holy communion with reference to the introductory passage in Ephesians Chapter 1 that has been assigned as one of the texts for this Sunday.This might be a bit tricky given the fact that these 11 verses comprise one very long sentence in the Greek containing a mass of images, not neatly categorized in order to make a doctrinal argument. One commentator warned preachers about tackling this passage on a rather hot day in the middle of July when people may not be very receptive to a heavy theological treatment (Arland J. Hultgren, Commentary on Ephesians 1:3-14, Working Preacher)
Another commentator was more encouraging, suggesting that the images in Eph 1 verses 3-14 and the reference to the work of Christ there, flows powerfully like a rushing and life-giving stream , that could easily sweep us off our feet but for the few stepping stones by which we can find a path through it.(Sarah Heinrich, Commentary on Ephesians 1:3-14, Working Preacher) So, let us quickly pick out some of these stepping stones to deepen our appreciation of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
First, the promise of salvation, (verses 3 and 4) : that is to say, salvation in its fullest sense is punctuated with references to God’s plan and divine will. What is particularly moving about this passage is that God’s plan to redeem humanity pre-exists the foundation of the world – so that those who come to believe in Christ find themselves participating in God’s eternal plan. We can remember this when we partake of the fullness of Christ in the sacrament because he is the heavenly mediator chosen by God before the foundation of the world.
Secondly, in verses 5 & 6 we take into ourselves a divine adoption as the children of God through Jesus Christ. And it’s an adoption, even of those we might have written off as wicked or disobedient.
God’s gracious election is not of a righteous remnant alone, over against the majority who will not receive God’s grace. This should humble us all when we tell others of God’s forgiveness of sins.
In this regard, I should mention that I’ve been watching the Father Brown series about a priest in rural England in mid-20th century who somehow ends up solving murder mysteries as part of his ministry. It’s charming and sweet in the best sense. But what has struck me more than anything else is how Father Brown comes up to the worst sinners, speaks of God’s love and offers them the courage to repent. He tells them that Christ’s death should be understood as the wiping out of sins, or the paying of the price for our sins. It’s a free gift to all believers regardless of the history of our offences. He might as well have been preaching these verses in Ephesians about God’s forgiveness in Christ and his gracious adoption of us as his children.
Thirdly, when we receive Christ by faith in the Eucharist, we partake of a great mystery of God’s will. And what is this mystery hidden for so many ages prior? – that all things, in the fullness of time are gathered up in Christ – all things in heaven and on earth. It is why you will find in the art of the earliest churches, enormous mosaics of the head and shoulders of Christ with arms reaching out to embrace the earth and the heavens. Take into yourselves then with the Eucharist this mystery – that God has gathered up all things in Christ the church and ourselves included.
Finally in verses 11 – 14 we find that in receiving Christ we receive an inheritance. We are marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit as the text has it. It is the pledge, a deposit, a down payment, as it were, that God’s own people are in the process of being redeemed. If we have eyes to see we would recognize that God is redeeming our own church in the Syrian refugee initiative, in our Friday youth programme, in our welcoming of neighbours, in the way we respond to financial needs and in the way we support those who suffer. This is the movement of entering in upon our inheritance. We have been given an inheritance that applies to the whole church. All of us who believe are together being redeemed. Remember that when we reach out to take God’s life offered in the Eucharist.
Being in Christ re-organizes everything we experience in this life together- our greatest joys, our achievements, yes, even our temptations, our regrets and sorrows, our losses.
To be in Christ and to be knit together we will know what it means to cry with our brothers and sisters, to sing songs of triumph at the resurrection, to acknowledge God’s blessings. That’s what it now means to partake of God.
So there we have it. God’s presence, once represented on the Ark of the Covenant, has since been gathered up in Christ Jesus once and for all. What we now see is that love and mercy is offered freely in a completely different way. Instead of men and women being afraid about touching, even accidentally, the holy presence of God, we find God approaching us, wanting more than anything to be received. Instead of the image of archaeologists prying open an newly- unearthed ark, we find ordinary people kneeling with hands outstretched to receive the God’s gift of his presence in the body and blood of Jesus. There’s no way to express this comprehensively, but we know that among the riches of his grace, are the stepping stones in this great torrent of joy and blessing referred to in this wonderful passage from Ephesians. Let those waters wash over us every time we come to the holy table, binding us together in God’s great purpose to bless this world.
