Westworth United Church

Rev. J. Clark Saunders,  Westworth United Church,  December 18, 2011.

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Luke 1:26-38

 I was racking my brain trying to figure outwhat on earth our two scripture readings had in common today.  And then, finally, my eye fell on aparticular word.  It was the word “house”.  Both the Old Testament reading from the Second Book of Samuel and the more familiar passage from Luke use the word repeatedly.

 In the Hebrew scripture we find King David enjoying some rest after a period of warfare. He has settled down in his house in the new capital he has established, the city of Jerusalem.  Given time to reflect, it hardly seems fair to him that he should have a house to live in,while God, whose presence is symbolized by a shrine called the ark of the covenant, has to make do with a tent. When he tells the prophet, Nathan, about his plan to build a temple, a proper house for God to dwell in, Nathan says, “Go for it.”

But overnight Nathan has an experience thatchanges his mind.  He gets a message from God.  “What do I need with a house?” God asks him.  “Did I ever ask for a house?   All these years I’ve been moving around in a tent.  I like the mobility,the flexibility, the portability, the freedom of this kind of lifestyle.  So in the morning Nathan tells David that God doesn’t want him to build a house.  On the contrary, God will make a house of David.  In turning the tables on David, it’s clear that God is speaking, not of a building, but of a royal family, like the House of Habsburg or the House of Windsor.  David and his descendants are to be a house that will be established as rulers in Israel.

And it’s in that same sense that the term “house” is used in our gospel reading.  The angel Gabriel visits a young girl named Mary and tells her that she is going to have a son.  Mary, we’re told, is “engaged to a manwhose name was Joseph, of the house of David.”  And later, Gabriel’s message makesreference to an even more remote ancestor than David.  This child Awill reign over the house of Jacob forever, he says.  And “the house of Jacob” is a term that refers to the people of Israel.

There is ambiguity in all this talk about ahouse, isn’t there? — almost as if the writers are using a play on words.  Sometimesa house is a building, and sometimes it is a family, and sometimes it is an entire people.  And there is paradox here, too.  The Old Testament reading gives us a window into the mixed feelings the people of ancient Israel had about the need for a temple, a house of worship, a house for God.  We know that, although in the end David did not build a temple, his son, Solomon, did.  The human need for a sense of place, a location to come together for worship, a space in which to think about God won out over the notion that God could not be geographically restricted, that God should not be pinned down, that God should be allowed to move about freely.

 And when we think of the word “house” in relation toJesus we can see some paradoxes as well.  Luke wants to make the point that Jesus was descended from King David.  But it was for that very reason that, when the census was taken, Joseph and Mary had to leave the town ofNazareth (where presumably they had their house), and go to the city of David, Bethlehem, to be enrolled, because  as Luke will tell us shortly  Joseph was of the house and lineage of David.  And so it was that Jesus was born, not in a house (as he would have been if the family had just stayed home), but in a stable.

 And as we follow his life as it unfolds we find again a mixture of location and dislocation. It appears that he grew up in the family home in Nazareth, but that wasonly after returning from a period in which they had lived as homeless refugees in Egypt.  We know that he enjoyed hospitality in the homes of friends like Mary and Martha and their brother,Lazarus, but we are told as well that the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head.  That must also have been true at times.  One thing seems clear from the three years of his ministry, and that is that, having left home, he no longerhad a home of his own.

But two thousand years on, what are we to do with all this ambiguity about a house of God and the house of David, the house of Jacob and a house for Jesus?  Well, on the one hand, I think we can all understand the importance of houses in human life.  We all have a basic need for shelter.  It is right, for example, for Christians who follow someone who was homeless at the time of his birth to be concerned about the needs of the homeless in our own time.  We can understand, too, the way in which the phrase “making a house a home” speaks of the things our dwelling places can come to represent for us.  When people talk about going home for Christmas they are talking about continuity, about reconnecting with the things a particular place has come to represent in their lives.

 And we can understand, too, can’t we, that Jewish and Christian congregations have recognized a need for a house of worship, aplace to enjoy each other=s company, to carry on the educational and recreational activities that enhance our communal life.  Nothing wrong with that.  As long as we recognize that the bricks and mortar are not an end in themselves but a means to a larger end.

 And what is that larger end?  Well, our scriptures hint at it when theyspeak of a house, not as a building — whether we are thinking of the places we live or of houses of worship –  but as a family (the house of David) or as a people (the house of Jacob).  Here we are speaking, not of walls or windows nor of physical shelter, but of relationships.  And relationships are not material things; they are spiritual things.  They are intangible, just as the throne and the reign that Gabriel predicted for Jesus were not tangible ones.  Jesus would reign, not over the land of Israel, but in the hearts and minds and in the relationships of people who responded to his invitation to live in his realm.  Those who, by God’s grace and by their choice, live in a household of faith, are not limited to any specific location.  They take their beliefs and their values, their principles and their convictions with them, wherever life and the call of God lead them.