Scripture Text:
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1: 46-55
Romans 16: 25-27
Luke 1: 26-38
Sermon:
I would bet that most of you have, at some point, received a Christmas present you didn’t want. As children most of us got clothes for Christmas in addition to toys, and it’s the rare child who is as excited about a turtleneck sweater as about a video game or a new bicycle. But sometimes you get one of those gifts that just… makes you wonder if the giver even knows who you are and what you’re all about. And we all smile and say thank you, and we move on. Well, most of us.
My dad hates brand names and logos on stuff. Especially on clothing. When I was a kid, the big trend in menswear was the IZOD sweater. You know, the one with the little alligator embroidered on it. Someone, I’m not sure who, gave my dad one of those sweaters. He only submitted to wearing it once my mother had been convinced to get out her sewing kit and remove the alligator stitch by stitch.
King David tried to give God a gift that God didn’t want, too. David was king over Israel and Judah- he had spent a long time in battle, overcoming long-established tribal allegiances, and uniting these two kingdoms into one. He then rode into Jerusalem, which wasn’t part of either kingdom, took it over, and proclaimed it as his new royal capital city. Finally, he brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, making Jerusalem the religious as well as political center of Israel.
The Ark of the Covenant wasn’t just a big fancy box holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments- it was a ritual object of unimaginable holiness and power. It was the place where God’s glory dwelt on earth- the one and only point of contact between the priesthood of Israel and the God they made known. And for all the generations since its construction, the Ark had been carried about from place to place, because the Israelites were a nomadic people, and it was always set up in a large ritual tent called the Tabernacle.
But now, Israel was no longer a collection of nomadic tribes- it was a settled kingdom with a standing army and a capital city and all of the trappings of a great nation. To most of us, just as to King David, it would have seemed odd that the king lived in a great palace with cedar paneling, but this holy Ark would be kept in a tent. Try and imagine, if you will, a canvas Vatican. It’s an odd idea. So David decided he would build a temple, and put the Ark there- a suitable sacred place for this most sacred object which was God’s earthly throne.
But God pointed out through the prophet Nathan, that God had never asked for a palace. God had never asked for a temple. God, apparently, was just fine in the tent. The Temple, of course, did end up getting built many years later- but it was destroyed, and once it was rebuilt, that too was destroyed. After all- what temple could possibly contain God’s glory? What, really, is this human desire to take the divine glory of God and try to wall it in and keep it in one place?
Instead, God laid out another and better vision. “I have been with you wherever you went- I will make for you a great name, and appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them so that they may be disturbed no more.” This in essence, is what God has been working toward all along- this is, after all the promise he made to David’s ancestors, and to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children for ever.
As we roll on toward these last days of Advent, we have to keep in mind that God is propelling us toward a future which ends in this vision. It’s the vision God gave as a promise to Abraham, and the vision that the Virgin Mary remembered and sang in the words of the Magnificat:
the proud scattered, the mighty cast down from their thrones,
the hungry filled up, the lowly lifted up, the rich sent away empty.
When she realized who this child was growing in her womb, she sang this song which has become so beloved in every age of the Church’s life. These words gave voice then and now to the promise which would soon begin to be fulfilled with the birth of Jesus Christ.
The first generations of Christians were interested in the parallels between Mary herself and the Temple. They saw the Temple as a place where God’s glory dwelt, and Mary, for the nine months of her pregnancy, was also a dwelling place for God. These early Christians also saw Mary reflected in the Ark of the Covenant: it contained the Ten Commandments, which were sacred words of God. Jesus was himself the Word of God made flesh, contained within Mary’s womb. The Ark also held a jar of Manna, the miraculous food which sustained the Israelites in the wilderness- Jesus himself becomes the bread of life in the Eucharist to sustain us in our pilgrimage of faith.
And while these parallels are striking, and while they do point to certain truths about Jesus, to many of us, they are strange and problematic. Mothers are not just vessels which contain children-to-be. Boxes and buildings are awkward metaphors for women who are living breathing people who give birth to real live children.
And that’s perhaps precisely the point- it ties in very well with the problem God had with King David’s idea for a temple: God doesn’t want to be closed up in a box or walled up in a building. When God showed up most fully to be with us, he did so by becoming one of those real live children, born to one of those living breathing mothers. This is what we’re gearing up for, after all- Christmas is about the incarnation. God becoming flesh and blood, “to take our nature upon him” “to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us,” as the Eucharistic Prayer says.
And we need to be careful not to enclose Mary inside an artificial boundary either- because she’s not an impossibly unique case. She was an ordinary young woman who became an inseparable part of God’s plan. This is Mary’s message to us- become part of God’s plan, because God has chosen you. God has called you to put your soul and body to work to bring God’s glory into the world. God has called you to share that vision promised thousands of years ago to Abraham and Sarah and all their descendants right to this day and into the future. God has made you and me, too, and sent the same Holy Spirit upon us that he sent upon Mary- and we are not to stay bound up in the four walls of a church building, but to be a living part of this promise, our selves, our souls and bodies, bringing the light of Christ into being in this world, in the flesh and blood of our own lives.