Minister: Rev. Kerry McCormick

Text: 2 Samuel 6:1-11

Theme: On the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, and in the midst of our OT study, we hear from the history section of scripture that God doesn’t need us to interfere with God’s holiness, but that God needs us to attend to the building up of our relationship with God and with other people. 

2 Samuel 6:1-11

6:1  David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand.

2  David and all the people with him set out and went from Baale-judah,

to bring up from there the ark of God,

which is called by the name of the LORD of hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim.

3  They carried the ark of God on a new cart,

and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill.

Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart

4  with the ark of God;

and Ahio went in front of the ark.

5  David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD with all their might,

with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.

6  When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon,

Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it.

7  The anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah;

and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark;

and he died there beside the ark of God.

8  David was angry because the LORD had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah;

so that place is called Perez-uzzah, to this day.

9  David was afraid of the LORD that day; he said,

"How can the ark of the LORD come into my care?"

10  So David was unwilling to take the ark of the LORD into his care in the city of David;

instead David took it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.

11  The ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three months;

and the LORD blessed Obed-edom and all his household.

The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. 

Let’s pray.

Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that, as the Scriptures are read and your word proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.

I remember that Tuesday morning, ten years ago like it was yesterday.  I was just arriving at my customer service job for an international shipping company in the Denver Tech Center.  As I approached my desk, people were standing; appalled at what they were watching on computer monitors streaming live news feeds from the east coast.  I had heard about an explosion in NYC on the radio at about a quarter of 7.  Fellow employees were gathered in their work groups.  No one knew what was happening.  We stood together, horrified, as we watched a newscaster describe the smoke and fire at the first Tower and the speculation about what had caused it.  Somebody said it was a plane – and we laughed in disbelief.  Suddenly, a 747 came into view and we watched helplessly as it turned and dove into the second of the World Trade Center Towers just after 7:00 a.m. Denver time.  The image of the explosion is etched in my mind; it still gives me chills. 

Half an hour later, another plane hit the Pentagon.  And almost 30 minutes after that, we heard United Flight 93 went down outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  Where would it happen next?  When would it stop? Who could be doing this?  We all felt disbelief and shock. 

I remember in the days that followed how quiet the world seemed without the normal sounds of airplanes, trains or tractor-trailers.  All of our cargo containers were frozen as every port on every coastline was completely shut down.  Our attention turned toward recreating the Bills of Lading and documentation for the cargo at the harbors along the eastern seaboard, as those records had been destroyed when the Port Authority (who owned both Towers) went suddenly and tragically silent; crushed beneath tons of rubble.

My co-workers knew that I had been to seminary and so many wanted to process with me the theological implications of what they’d seen and felt. Where was God when all those innocent people were dying?  Does God even care?  If God is all-powerful, then why didn’t God prevent all this needless harm?   How shall we look to God for justice?

Locally, churches everywhere opened their doors to gatherings and prayer services to help people begin to deal with their grief and listen to some of the big questions.  In those quiet days after 9/11, there was a notable gentleness and compassion about the community in which I lived.  People reached out to one another, even in lines at the grocery stores.  People seemed to go out of their way to express the unity experienced through tragedy.

Remarkably, our United Methodist Church was among the first to have a public response.  Just as our national United Methodist Communications division was within days of launching a brand new advertising campaign about coming home to church, they shifted gears overnight and produced a black and white image of praying hands.  The caption read, “Fear is not the only force at work in the world today.”  These lines were followed by the brand new (and now familiar), “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.  The People of the United Methodist Church.”

It offered a sign of hope in a moment of despair.  It offered calm in the midst of terror.  It offered a faithful response in the midst of our collective confusion.  It represented a people willing to authentically live out their core beliefs at a time when faith was shaken in the hearts of so many.  It allowed us to reach out to those who felt disenfranchised, excluded, shunned by their past encounters with church and to remind the faithful of what is real in their lives.

It was a way to know that something was right with the world, even when it felt like there was nothing right with the world.  I wonder if David felt the same way witnessing the events of his day.  As we make more progress today through our study of the Hebrew Bible, we encounter an interesting passage in 2 Samuel.  The history section of our Old Testament helps us understand our own world in light of ancient experiences.  Drawing from our past, perhaps we might find relevance in scripture, and make sense of times when things are or are not right with our world.

Today’s text tells us how King David’s plans for transporting the Ark of the Covenant from the home of an important leader, Abinadab, who lived in a city in the tribal area assigned to the line of Judah, to a place of safety inside a tabernacle (or tent) prepared for it in Jerusalem.  We know the King went about the task with vigorous celebration for it was his intention to offer God his very best.  But sometimes, trying to do the right thing leads to a wrong result.

Apparently, David (we don’t know his motivation from the text) forgot to attend to the instructions God had given (as recorded in Exodus 25 and in the early chapters of Numbers) for the Ark’s movement.

Back in Exodus, God provided detailed commands for the Ark’s construction.  It was to be made of wood, rectangular in shape, gold plated inside and out.  The lid had a decorative, built-up gold border around it forming a rim.  This golden lid or cover was called “the mercy seat.”  At either end of the Ark’s cover was a hammered gold cherub (angel), with wings outstretched over the Seat. Perhaps you may recall images you’ve seen of these creatures as they pull their wings in front of their faces and look down upon the Ark.  Beneath the cover, within the container, were three objects: a golden jar that held manna from the days of wandering in the wilderness, Aaron's rod, and the tables of the Covenant. God promised to meet with the people and show the very Glory of God on this Mercy Seat.  In other words, this Ark was Holy (set apart for God’s purposes). 

And the Ark was mobile.  At each of the four corners was a fixed ring of gold. Through these rings were slipped gold plated poles by which the Ark was carried. Numbers 3, 4 and 7 clearly state that handling the Ark of the Covenant was to be done by the Kohathites, a family within the tribe of the Levites (the group assigned to the priestly duties), and it was to be carried on their shoulders.

Each one of these details was important to God.  And that's where David got into trouble. Out of expediency (no Levites around?), convenience (Abinadab was happy to see the Ark go), forgetfulness of his own history, or anxiousness to get a project moving forward, David decided it was best to transfer the Ark on a cart (2 Samuel 6:3).  So the sons of Abinadab, Uzzah and Ahio, got a new cart and set the Ark on it and hitched it to their ox in accordance with the King’s wishes.

King David and his whole company of 30,000 men celebrated with music and dance with all their might in order to make a joyful and pleasing noise to the Lord as the Ark went along the road.  At some point, however, in a place called Nacon, whose location has been lost to us over time, the ox pulling the new cart with the Ark of the Covenant on board stumbled a little.  It tripped over a loose stone.  It didn’t fall down.  It didn’t really miss a beat.  But it did provide the moment for this whole story to come to a dead stop. Literally.

If you’ve ever had a passenger riding in your vehicle when you’ve had to suddenly hit the breaks, what’s your first instinct?  You quickly reach over with your right hand to prevent that person from lurching forward.  It’s pure reflex.  In a heartbeat, your impulse to protect overrides your logic.  You notice, seconds after, that your movement was completely unnecessary.  The seatbelt held them far more safely than you ever could have.  And you withdraw your hand as you vow to pay closer attention to the drivers around you, knowing you need to control your vehicle with both hands on the wheel.  Sometimes, trying to do the right thing leads to the wrong result. 

That’s just what happened to Uzzah.  Instinctively, when the ox tripped over an uneven surface, Uzzah’s hand shot out and touched the Ark as though it needed steadying, just in case, just to be safe.  Uzzah’s instincts and his heart might have been in the right place; he was just trying to do the right thing to protect the Ark of the Covenant, God’s holy Mercy Seat, and it’s incredible contents.

Unfortunately, his gesture communicated something different to God. Uzzah, for a moment, felt it was his responsibility to save the integrity of God, and that our almighty God somehow needed Uzzah’s assistance. He presumed that, without this intervention, God’s presence would be dealt a blow, or that God was somehow too distant, unaware or feeble to attend to the Ark in that moment.

It was Uzzah’s undoing.  Bam!  Dead in his tracks.  No more Uzzah.  All because the King hadn’t done his homework to find out the right way to do the right thing.

Honestly, I recognize myself in David and even in Uzzah.  My instincts for self-preservation, my reflex to protect my loved ones, or my impulse to object to an injustice sometimes jumps in front of my desire to live out my faith in active daily discipleship, trusting God to be God for me.  You know what I mean?

And I’m forgetting one important detail: God doesn’t need my help.  In fact, I’m kinda getting in God’s way.  God needs no help from Uzzah, or me, or anyone else, for that matter, to protect God’s integrity, identity, authority or nature. God is quite capable of doing these things already. 

Where God does need our help is in the relationships God yearns to have with individual people.  Our integrity, our identity, our nature, our character is at risk.  In order for us to understand how trying to do the right thing leads to the right result, we are invited (it’s always our choice to exercise our freewill toward God’s intentions and instructions for humanity) we are invited to actively participate in a life-long journey of faithfully following God’s instructions for our lives, an adventure of active daily discipleship. 

If our first impulse is to practice the means of grace: worship, study, fellowship, generosity, service, and sacraments, rather than worrying about defending God’s character, then we begin to see the ways God offers guidance and purpose for our lives.  And as members of God’s family, we have an obligation to extend the invitation for relationship to others.

And that means we have to do our homework, even as King David forgot to do his.  Our homework includes studying the same sacred texts that Jesus called his Bible, for they remain the foundation for our faith, the most clear and concise source of God’s divine revelation to human beings about what God wills for all of creation. Our homework involves learning from the history lessons we find in scripture. What’s the common saying, ‘those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.’  How many more Uzzah’s have to drop before we choose to attend to God’s word?

It’s a nuanced point, this passage from Hebrew History.  God doesn’t need our help – to protect God’s integrity, holy otherness, or character.  And God does need our help – our constant decision, really – to choose to be in relationship and to live ever mindful of God’s holy presence in our lives.  God does need our help to remember the unfathomable love God has for all of creation and to remind others and help them understand that our integrity, our identity, our character is best safe-guarded when it is grounded in faith in God through Jesus Christ. 

That’s what we witnessed ten years ago, when a banner flew in Times Square despite the fire and smoke and rubble.  It proclaimed the truth that, “Fear is not the only force at work in the world today.”  As the people of The United Methodist Church, we reminded the fearful, wounded, frightened citizens of our nation that God is in control, even when we can’t understand how.  We continue to hold a posture that God’s teachings are relevant and crucial for modern life, that God loves us enough to want every person to come to know of God’s overwhelming love, and that God will hold us accountable for our decisions.  I believe that is how we figure out how doing the right thing leads to the right result.

Let’s pray:

Holy, gracious and eternal One, we solemnly remember today the events ten years ago that rocked our world.  We pray for all those families of the innocent workers, first responders, police and fire fighters, pilots and passengers whose lives were so tragically affected by the unconscionable actions of others.  Bless them with your continued peace and comfort.  As we witnessed those events and were touched by what our memories cannot erase, ease our pain by your Spirit’s compassionate healing presence. God we desire your will and your ways.  Aid our ability to know when we get in your way and when you want our help.  Guide us, through your word, to know the difference. Amen.