July 19, 2009:  HOLY ON THE MOVE
2 Samuel 6:1-19; Mark 4:30-32; Psalm 89:20-37
Eileen Parfrey - Springwater Presbyterian church

            What a great text for celebrating our congregation’s 120th birthday!  The shrine of God on the move to a permanent home in Jerusalem, followed by an extended potluck for the entire nation.  The difference between our story and David’s story is not their raisin cakes versus our berry cobblers.  Springwater is not moving.  We’ve been in this spot since 1904, when we rebuilt after the 1902 fire.  David’s party is all about the Ark, the one Indiana Jones was looking for in the first movie, not Noah’s.  But what’s so big about the Ark?  Moses built it according to God’s instructions, and it held his rod, a jar of manna, and the tablets with the Ten Commandments (what our kids have learned to call The Ten Best Ways of Living).  The Ark was Israel’s guide and portable sacred space for their wilderness years and the conquest of the Promised Land.  It represented hope and courage, it was God and nation.  At some point the Philistines captured it, thinking to control Israel’s military, but it was such a plague to them that they were glad to give it back.  Now, David was king, ready to unite his fractious kingdom through centralized worship, and he needed the Ark to do that. 

To move the Ark to Jerusalem is as political as it is religious.  Its presence in the City of David (Jerusalem) legitimates his right to the throne.  By this one act, he unites the religious conservatives (who acknowledge only God as Israel’s king) with the new secular monarchists.  Party, indeed!  But it’s not all policy spin.  David’s dance is part relief, part religious as well.  The fussy gesture to stabilize its transport is severely dealt with, but the Ark was never supposed to be transported.  It was supposed to be carried by humans, set apart for the sacred task of service to the holy.  Later, when David states his intention to build a permanent home for God, the prophet Nathan brings the message that God has always been on the move and won’t tolerate a monument to permanence.  Nevertheless (this is always divine concession), nevertheless, because humans need permanence, because humans need monuments, David’s son will be allowed to build God a Temple. 
But that’s another story.  Today, the Sunday Springwater traditionally celebrates its birthday, we hear of sacred place, portable holiness, the unbreachable power of God—and the resultant party.  This is the sort of occasion that screams for the parable of the mustard seed.  Not as in, “Springwater is little and insignificant like a mustard seed,” but as in conspiracy.  The mustard seed conspiracy is Richard Rohr’s idea of church.  Did you know the rabbis didn’t allow mustard in kosher gardens?  The very characteristic Jesus praises in the mustard seed is what disqualifies it in the eyes of the rabbis as a cultivated crop.  While Jesus notes that mustard “grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches,” the rabbis knew it meant mustard was as invasive as blackberries.  That’s the conspiracy.  There is no such thing as scarcity to an invasive plant.  Tell a blackberry sprout, “You’re so little, you won’t amount to much,” and then ignore it and see what happens!

Rohr sees the mustard-seed conspiracy church as smaller, not larger.  “I take seriously Jesus’ teaching about ‘two or three gathered in my name,’” he writes.  “Two hundred or three hundred look good, but mean less and less—to one another and to the world (1).”  His hope is for a church less institutional, more flexible organizationally and operationally, a church attentive to God’s call and the world’s needs.  Less “decently and in order,” more of what we say when we’re ordained, when we promise to serve “with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.”  Rohr’s hope is for a church as movable as, say, a box carried around the countryside on poles, holding a few objects that tell us everything we need to know about our relationship with God.  The miracle-working rod that says, “God is God and I’m not.”  A jar of miraculous, trust-inducing food.  Guidelines that point to “the best way to live.”  Springwater could learn something from the mustard seed.  Rohr’s mustard seed church knows that the way to evangelize the culture is not to join the power structure, to remember we’re not the only tree in the neighborhood. 

In our over-committed, over-consuming world, smaller is good news.  A church of less, not because “we have so little and times are tough,” but less in terms of distractions, less in order to focus on who we are supposed to be.  God made no mistake in calling us to be church in this particular spot.  Had God wanted a mega-church here, there would have been one.  We are who we are by design—God’s design, mustard seed design, portable-carry-the-sacred-with-you design.  When the question is, “What is God calling us to do and be?” (and that’s always the question!) the answer comes the way it did for David moving the Ark to Jerusalem.  Take a few steps.  Stop.  Check to make sure everything works, then celebrate (worship).  If we want a deeper sense of the holy, more room for the sacred in our lives, we need to be willing to stop, take stock, and then celebrate who God is.

God, in infinite wisdom and mercy, made the sacred portable.  The sacred was meant to be carried by humans, not turned into monuments and idols.  We don’t literally have the contents of the Ark with us—rod, manna, Law—but this congregation has its functional equivalent to carry with us.  What tells us, “God is God and I’m not”?  What, like manna, reminds us to trust God to provide, knowing it doesn’t all depend on us?  What is our roadmap for a better way to live?  David knew.  David had roots and tradition.  (Do we?)  He surrounded himself with people of like minds.  (Do we?)  It’s no wonder David danced.  He carried the sacred with him.  Do we?