II Sam. 7.1-7 28-29 12 October 2008
“UNLESS THE LORD BUILDS THE HOUSE”
As a child, where was the place you felt most at peace, most cherished, most yourself? A vacation cabin? The first home you remember? For me, it was the elegant
Driving to dine at Fred and Eleanor’s, mom would drill us in etiquette. “Start with the outer fork, it’s a salad fork. Next to it is your bread plate. And use her butter knife!…Don’t eat cashews by the fistful!...If she passes the Sanders chocolates, the first and only one you take is the one you touch.” We didn’t mind mom’s ‘talks’. For we knew it would be yummy fun. Moreover, we knew their gracious hospitality was rooted in a precious love. After dinner, interesting books splayed on their knotty pine basement floor like birds in flight. And we took wing to new places. I told Fred about my Cub Scout entry in the Pinewood Derby. We would engineer that little block of wood. Then we retreated to the den’s leather sofas to giggle at Topo Gigio on the Ed Sullivan Show. Everything was right in the world.
Finally, driving home, I would burrow into the backseat, overhearing my parents’ muffled chatter. Streetlights strobed above. I wasn’t even aware of falling asleep until my dad gently gathered me in his arms and nestled me into bed. Picture where your place was like that, where you knew life as how it is supposed to be.
In our trying times today--nest eggs shrinking, 401Ks evaporating, financial foundations rumbling—I want to float back to Murray Hill Street and move in. For let’s face it, life brings its share of strain, anxiety, and threat. As the world erodes places we always imagined secure, we want to hunker down in unassailably safe spots. But the simple truth is Fred and Eleanor have been gone for years. Dutch Elm disease took those magnificent trees before I was out of high school. Today the neighborhood is crime-ridden. Dreaming of such a return is like climbing back into the womb. You can’t do it. It’s not an option. So, in a world of change, where can we find ourselves strong and secure, most completely and fully ourselves?
At a high school graduation in the mid-nineties, Attorney General Janet Reno told of when she was a girl. Her mother looked around one day at their life. She saw a growing family in a tiny home. She saw a husband working from dawn to night to support his family. She knew they could not afford a larger house. She further knew they needed one. So
She visited the library and found books on construction. After studying the books, she had meetings with contractors, visited their work sites, and asked questions. Then she began to dig the foundations. She built that house with her own hands. She knew the codes and met them. She didn’t cut corners. Years later, with her children gone and husband deceased, a hurricane blew through the southeast. Storms battered the coast, and houses and buildings blew away like pup tents. But inside her home,
Paul wrote about our quest for safe haven, “Outwardly we are wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day…we know that if this earthly tent is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house eternal in the heavens.” What if I said God has built this sanctuary that is our destiny in Christ? That is my mes-sage today. That Jesus’ death and resurrection creates a new reality, a new creation, a new home for eager, seeking, and hungry children like you and me.
Psalm 127 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor build in vain.” It’s true of this gleaming new spiritual home as well as our life together as a spiritual family. This reality and home is built not by human hands, but by the love and power of God in Christ. Because God builds this house of Christ’s love, it is eternal and cannot be destroyed. Storms will rage. Markets will convulse. Loved ones will pass. Our outer lives might become wind-whipped and worn. God has never promised that we will not face testing and tribulation in unforeseen ways. But this house will stand because it is sturdily built upon rock and not the shifting sands of life’s worth being always up for grabs, its meaning up to us to decide.
That brings us to our story in II Samuel. David has risen from lowly shepherd to boy warrior to military genius. King Saul and son Jonathon, David’s close friend, died in battle. After mourning them, David was crowned king. David had made every possible shrewd move, and he enjoyed God’s favor where he needed luck.
He expelled the last vestiges of the enemy from lofty, fortress-like
What was first on David’s agenda in a new era? Making a home for the Ark of the Covenant, their holy shrine of God’s presence, their protection through thick and thin. He put it on a cart and brought it to
Surely God was not unmoved by David’s gesture. But Yahweh worried that his supremely gifted Golden Boy might grow too full of himself. (We know from the Bathsheba incident this fear was justified.) So God told David, no thank you. My
Unless the Lord builds this safe, peaceful house, those who labor build it in vain. God builds the house of faith and we decide whether we move into it to occupy it.
I tell these stories of home—contemporary and ancient—because this is the real context for our living and for our giving. Hardly a soul exists among us who doesn’t have a roof over our head, heat in the chill of the night, and bread on the table. Hardly a soul exists among us can dispute but that God has done an in-credible thing by bringing us into this beloved spiritual home over this past year. But the economic environment swirling around us is the most turbulent context for any stewardship sermon I have ever preached. And this today is my thirtieth.
What can we finally count on? we ask We live in such tempestuous times. Homes that anchored everything precious—domestic and divine—come and go. Where can we at last hold fast? “Outwardly we are wasting away,” Paul wrote, “but inwardly we are being renewed day by day…we know that if this earthly tent is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house eternal in the heavens.” Paul is telling us that as we give what we cannot keep we gain what we will never lose
Along these lines, last week I was remembering Mary Schmidt. I interviewed her daughter for Mary’s memorial service on Friday, Oct. 24th. You veteran members recall Mary’s impish twinkle and how much love she radiated in her time here. She was such a fixture it was hard to picture her moving to
Actually, my ethnic humor has a serious side. Did you know Mary’s wealthy Scot-tish father lost everything in the Great Depression? The family had to start over. But there was never a loss of faith or a loss of love. Mary never stopped giving, whether calling in nursing homes or baking crumb cakes for every new neighbor. Mary’s daughter asked why she never got to eat those nice crumb cakes. Maybe because Mary gave what she couldn’t keep to gain what she could not lose.
Friends, this DUC spiritual home is the context for our living and giving. Today on Stewardship Sunday I offer words of comfort as much as challenge. And we have a big challenge. Some of you have already made generous pledges before recent headlines. We hope we can still count on you. Many more will pledge in the weeks ahead. We hope you’ll find a way to step up with us to the challenge.
I have doubled my own giving in the past two years, not only because Lise and I look to her college graduation this spring. But because ultimately I live not in any house made with hands, but one eternal in the heavens, in Christ’s resurrection.
I give what I cannot keep because in God’s promises I gain what cannot be lost.
Frankly, the only way to experience the safe haven of indwelling in Christ is to anchor ourselves in Him as the storm winds rush by our door like a freight train. The only way to discover the house of God’s loving promises is sufficient and trustworthy in all situations is to walk through the door with what faith we have. At its core, stewardship doesn’t mean talking about money and then tacking on a Bible verse. No, you begin with living, rock-ribbed faith and then consider giving.
Stewardship takes root where we live as we walk into the house of God’s love and decide that place is our home. And will even be our eternal dwelling place. Stewardship means giving what we cannot keep to gain what will never be lost.
Amen.
Lord God, as we notice this gorgeous weekend, and remark at the lovely setting where you have gathered us, of all things we notice first and last your giving. You give without reserve or limitation, giving us worlds of beauty and abundance.
You give us sustenance each dawn so the sun does not smite us by day nor the moon by night. You give us—in the center of your giving—your only, well-be-loved Son. You give us your spirit of power, energy, wisdom, all ungrudging gifts.
We receive because we have no alternative, because we can’t live without your gifts, because we have nothing apart from what you give us. We receive anx-iously and carefully, worried there is not enough safety or security, not enough friends or gas or Social Security, not enough in our storehouses for the future.
We receive as you stagger us to break gratefully beyond the bonds of our worry, recognizing that in your generosity, you give us more than enough, and that in grateful giving we become our true selves, breathed in the image of your Son.
As we ponder your generosity, we’re dazzled. We measure again today our grati-tude and our capacity to be generous, starting with you, not Asian stock markets. We pray your haunting us beyond ourselves, in wonder at your way, in love for the world you love, in praise that transforms fear, in the life beyond ourselves..
