Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Paul Kolbet, July 21st, 2024
In today’s gospel reading we are told that, “the apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught” (Mark 6:30). I’m sure there were oh so many good things. In Luke’s version, they brag that “even the demons are subject to us in your name” (Luke 10:17). They must have thought Jesus would be so impressed. They might even have hoped for a bit of, “I’m so glad the twelve of you said ‘yes’ when I asked you to come and follow me because it turns out I really needed you.” That is not what happens in the story, right? The only thing we are told that Jesus said was, “Come away [with me] to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” The disciples may well have thought, “Wait what about the good things we are doing? Didn’t you hear what we were saying? Do you need a house Jesus? We could build you a house!” Jesus says, “Come away [with me] to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
The disciples struggled with a certain asymmetry, a lack of reciprocity in their relationship with Jesus because they, frankly, received from him so much more than they gave him. Think about it, have you received an invitation and fretted and fretted over what gift to bring with you? You bring a gift because it is the right thing to do, but isn’t also true that a good gift as a guest seems to even things out a bit, right. “We are both giving. We’re both making this evening together as guest and host, are we not?” And how many of us have spent a lot of time on a thank you note, as if it itself was a small gift to the one who gave us something? If we struggle with the dynamic of giving and receiving between each other where we are all equals, how much do we even more so with God? There is something right about the mutuality of giving and receiving that characterizes the best human relationships. It is comforting to be needed by those we love. To love God is to live with the discomfort of loving someone who has no need of you, but loves you anyway. You are invited, but there is no gift you can bring to this party that wasn’t already given to you by the host.
Likewise, God says to King David, “The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house” (2 Samuel 7:11). That is not what King David expected or wanted to hear. See, David already had his own plan and he only needed God to bless his plans. The ark of the covenant had contained the tablets on which Moses wrote the ten commandments and it was kept in a tent that was moved around for oh so many years. King David had conquered the city of Jerusalem with his soldiers and laid plans to build a temple on the highest and best property in Jerusalem for the ark and for God. The Temple would give the ark of the covenant a permanent home. It would give God a worthy home with his people. Such a great plan. David had done so much for God.
God says through his prophet Nathan, “I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever 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?’” It doesn’t seem to have crossed David’s mind that God did not need him to build him a temple. Or, perhaps even worse, that God didn’t need him at all. God responds to David saying, [No David, what matters here is that I] “will make you a house.”
David is not the only one praying the prayer, “Lord bless my plans.” I find myself pretty regularly having a conversation with God that goes something like this, “Lord I am doing pretty well, but would like to do better. I’ve been a little hurt, but I am working on it. I’m happy to inform you that I have myself mostly stitched up. You might be pretty proud of me. I’m not David building you a temple, but I’m doing some good work here. Can you please just finish these last couple of stitches for me? My experience in that situation, almost always is, that I have this experience of God hearing my prayer, reaching down to help me with that string I’ve been working on, and then, somehow, mysteriously, pulling the whole thing out. I want God to bless my plans. God does something else, something else with me. David said, “God I’m going to build you a house.” And God says, “No David, I’m going to build you a house.”
These days from time to time I hear very earnest sermons telling me and others how much God needs me for this cause or that cause. Sometimes it is accompanied with a well-intentioned saying such as, “Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours.” There are some new liturgies where we describe ourselves as “Co-Creators” with God, where we and God seem to be doing this thing together. And it feels really good to be needed by God, to be helping God. It feels good to be standing there with King David making plans to build God a really nice temple. It feels good to be building the Kingdom of God with and for God.
And like David, it is hard to hear that God does not need a house we build and does not need us. There is this place in the Psalms where we hear God say, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine” (Ps. 50:12). “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine” (Ps. 50:12). That is what it is like to be God. Proverbs says, “A man [or woman] makes plans, but the Lord directs the steps” (16:9). And yet we say, “God, bless my plans.”
The key thing in the Bible is that, over and over again, the good news is that life is about oh so much more than the success or failure of our plans. Life is about being caught up into the free gift that is God’s grace to us, a grace that is more than we can ask for or imagine. When the fate of your good, well-intentioned plans, for yourself and the world is in the balance, it is possible to be pretty near despair and full of fear all the while missing out nearly entirely on the great and beautiful thing that God is doing in and with your life apart from your plans. King David never built that Temple for God. He never got it done. Whatever God’s opinion of David was, it never depended on whether or not David built a temple in Jerusalem. To live with joy, David needed to get on board with God’s plan not his plan.
We are not wrong, however, that there is a debt that we owe by the sheer fact that we did nothing to make our existence happen, and that debt obligates us. It’s a good heart, a church going heart, a disciple’s heart that wants to bring a gift to the party, that seeks some level of mutuality, that wants to help God to be God. That is a heart like David’s, the heart wanting to build a house for God. But, the truth is, God is not the kind of God ever saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” If we are hearing that voice, it is not God’s voice. It is coming from somewhere else.
We receive from God so much more than we give. This is the case even if we give everything we have. Because all that we are and all that we have are already God’s, our efforts at best are only returning to God what was God’s all along. Nothing we have, nothing that we are, are ours. They are all gifts to us without having done anything to earn any of them. And yes, it is an inexplicable mystery why God cares about us in the first place. Why does God love any one of us when there is nothing to be gained by it? As the Psalmist says, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, what are mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4). That is the most unanswerable theological question of all. And a good part of what we mean by “faith” is the wonder that arises by finding yourself loved by a God you can doing nothing for or ever pay back. A good part of faith in this life is a struggle with a love you will never equal.
The good deeds we do are not needed by God. It is and always was God’s world and God’s eternal purposes whatever those may be are firm and secure no matter what mortals do. We do good, we care for those in need, we love people near to us, we give all that we can, out of pure astonishment and wonder that we are already fully known and loved for no reason we can fathom. And that is something to celebrate. That daily wonder and celebration is what it is like to have a relationship with a good God.
The good work we do here at St. Paul’s, both inside the parish and outside the parish, is an expression of pure gratitude. That is a solid basis of action without losing sight of the joy of life.
So go ahead and tell God all your plans. Go on! If you want to build God a house or something grand like that, you are in good company. But God is telling you, “No I am going to build you a house.” As you explain your good works, Christ will say, “Come away [with me] to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” That’s the real invitation. Accept it with joy and wonder. Know that one day, from that place of eternal rest you will look back at all of your plans and prayers and … laugh the laughter of the Saints. As St. Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). Amen.. Amen.