Meg Peery McLaughlin
Barely Remembered
April 28, 2024
2 Samuel 7: 1-17
You’re the 8:30 crowd.
I rarely get a chance to preach just to you on a Sunday.
You are so faithful, always in your same seats,
gaping holes between you,
though it doesn’t seem to bother you.
Not much to be done about it,
but you don’t often get to see things like
baptisms
choir anthems
bible presentations for 3rd graders
special commissionings.
Most of that happens at 11o’clock.
It makes me worry – Do you feel like you are barely remembered?
Here is a story for you.
It comes from the Old Testament, 2nd Samuel.
To set the stage, when the people of God asked the prophet Samuel to appoint a King,
so King Saul was anointed, but was disobedient,
and Samuel anointed the shepherd boy from Bethlehem, Jesse’s boy, King David.
At that time, God’s dwelling place amongst the people was in the Tabernacle,
a sort of mobile home for God.
But David thought it would be a good idea for God to have a permanent home.
You may remember that it is David’s son, King Solomon who ultimately builds the Temple.
In our text from 2nd Samuel, chapter 7, we hear from the prophet Nathan.
As we listen to what God has to say through him, let us pray.
Living God,
Silence our agendas; banish our assumptions; cast out our casual detachment. Confound our expectations; penetrate the corners of our hearts with this word.
We know that you can, we pray that you will. Amen
Now when King David was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2the king said to the prophet Nathan, ‘See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.’ 3Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.’
But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: 5Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’
8Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.
12When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 14I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. 15But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever. 17In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
As my preacher friend Andrew says, “I bet Nathan had a crummy call story.”
The Bible says nothing about it.
When the prophet Jeremiah was called he says “I’m just a mere lad”
and God responds “watch me go to work through you.”
Isaiah sees the LORD high and lifted up
with cherubim and seraphim flying all around.
Moses gets a burning bush.
Samuel hears God calling him while he’s in bed. Here I am, Lord, he finally says, when he figures it out.
Even Jonah, that failure of a prophet, gets a big ole fish to get his attention.
But Nathan – nothing.
It’s like nobody really wants to remember Nathan.
You have to look really hard to find him in scripture.
He is ensconced in a book named in memory of a different prophet
who already has a first book named after him.
The canon committee could have named the first book “Samuel” and the second “Nathan.” But no, Nathan’s not going to get too much credit .
Nathan’s role is that of a prophet. Prophets, as far as I can tell, have the job of announcing whatever God wants announced.
Moses said: Let my people Go!
Amos said: Let justice roll down like water.
Ghandi said: Be the change you want to see in the world.
Mandela said: People must be taught to hate and if they can learn to hate,
they can be taught love.
But as much as we lionize the prophets of old,
people who announce what God wants announced,
well they don’t often find themselves on pedestals.
Maybe that’s why Nathan is hidden so deeply in the text.
Nathan has to say hard stuff to the king.
And people don’t like the church meddling in politics, or so I’ve heard.
In today’s story Nathan says to David
“Maybe that good idea wasn’t so good. You’re NOT going to build a temple.”
And in a later chapter of this story, the chapter with David and Bathsheba, Nathan is the one who says
“You don’t get to sleep with anyone you want to just because you’re king.”
“Your money doesn’t put you above the law.”
Saying hard stuff to people is not what draws anyone into ministry. Because it puts prophets in a triangle,
they are stuck between God and the people. And it’s not always fun.
There’s a reason that so many books about church have “odd” in the title.
They call living a life of faith an “odd and wondrous” calling.
Odd prophets don’t fit in fully with anybody.
It think this is why the Adult Spiritual Growth committee hosted the Faith in Plain Sight Sunday school series. To capture the stories of faithful ones among us who have lived their lives in this odd tension.
It’s why as part of that series, the committee asked your pastors to tell a bit about their call stories.
We like call stories. Because they power us through the hard days.
They give us mountain top memories, when we are down in the valley of the shadow.
Moses gets the burning bush.
Jonah gets the Whale.
But Nathan has no call story.
He’s barely remembered.
And perhaps that’s on purpose.
The center-point of prophecy is NOT ABOUT THE PROPHET,
but about what God is up to.
Nathan doesn’t appear to need a phenomenal call story.
He doesn’t even need much of an explanation for why he does what he does.
He just does the work that God sets before him
because God told him to do it.
He says what he says
because God told him to say it.
There is no way he could have prepared for it. No origin story or school or degree or practice could have gotten in ready.
For God’s announcement here is completely unpredictable.
Did you hear it in the text?
It is an announcement of God’s unconditional love.
The most important promise of our faith.
I’m going to admit something to you now that I’d rather not.
See, I like for you to think of me as a good mom, or at least a decent one.
Not a mom who bribes her children to do things.
I mean I’m probably not alone in saying things like:
“If you eat your vegetables, then you can get a cookie.”
But the truth is that over the past few weeks I’ve lost a fair amount of money.
Because for years, years,
I’d been coaching one child to learn to swallow a pill.
We tried sprinkles and m&ms,
we tried opening them and pouring the contents in icecream. Nothing.
And for years and years
I’ve been coaching another child to ride a bike.
Holding onto the back of the seat, running hunched over, to the point of back pain.
So I devolved into saying:
If you just swallow this pill, I will pay you.
If you just pedal, I will pay you.
Not my finest moment. And this week
all those promises came due and I had to pay up.
–
I tell you this because, up until this point in the salvation history of the chosen people, everything with God has been conditional.
“If you do this,” God says “then I will do that.”
“If you love me with your whole heart, then I will bless you.”
“If you shun idols, then I will not depart from you.”
“If you keep my commandments, then my steadfast love will remain with you.”
But here in 2nd Samuel chapter 7, it’s “you’re not going to make me a house, David, I’m going to make you a house. And I’m going to love your house forever regardless of all the crud that I have to put up with from humans like you. Yes I’ll tan your hide a few times when you need it but I’m going to love you forever.”
The whole of the Old Testament faith up until this point in the story has been conditional. The story of “if, then.” Now God decides unilaterally and without precedent to say something completely different.
God says: I will not take my steadfast love away. Ever. I will love you forever.
This is “the most crucial theological statement in the Old Testament,” according to one scholar.
This is the foundation of the Apostle Paul’s unconditional election.
Saved by grace, named first right here in the text.
The ground for our Presbyterian tradition, our entire Reformed heritage.
Interesting, is it not? that the prophet who hears this amazingly good news from God and announces it for the first time is barely remembered.
So, my dear 8:30 people,
I give us Nathan today.
Nathan teaches us that we don’t need a profound call story,
that all of us eventually will just be barely remembered
and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Because,
though we may stand between God and a messy world
in places that are not always comfortable or easy,
we get a ringside seat to where God is still working,
what God is still doing, and what God is saying to people who are still conditioned to think everything is quid pro quo.
And God is still announcing unconditional love.
No if, then.
Just grace.
There is no way to prepare for it, here, church is our front row seat.