Marvel at Unbelief, July, 5, 2009

2 Samuel 5:1-10
Mark 6: 1-13
The Gospel asks a very basic question, foundational to all that comes after.
Are we Awed by the Power of God, Can We Believe?, or Do we Marvel at Humanity's UnBelief?

It is that basic a question:
DO you want to be Married or not? Do you believe and Do you want your child to love God?
Is this Bread and Grape, or Is this the Body and Blood of the Savior that bring us closer to God?
Are we so many individuals seeking our independence, or
a Nation that so believes in Freedom, we will fight for the freedom of others?
Can we deny ourselves, take up the cross, and be the body of Christ for others?

Jesus came to his own people, his Village, his home and family and they could not get beyond “This is Mary and Joseph's boy”, “My wife's brother”, “The one who used to be a Carpenter”, their UNBELIEF prevented them from faith.

The point of the Gospel is not the same as PETER PAN, that if you believe in FAIRIES and IMAGINATION clap your hands for Tinkerbell; but rather that our ability to accept God, our ability to forgive, to believe, to be the Church, to truly sacrifice, are all limited by our unbeliefs.

The State Lottery used to say: You've Gotta Be in it, to win it.

SO Jesus' instruction to the Apostles is that if people will not listen, if they do not want to believe, shake the dust off your feet and move on. IF they do believe, enter in, and do not leave that household, until you are ready to leave the City.

In many ways, television mirrors the culture's values and questions. In the 1950s we watched young newly wed couples Dick and Laura Petrie, Ricky and Lucy Ricardo as they struggled with married life and as they each gave birth of their first child. In the 70s it was the Blended family of The Brady Bunch. Today, there are shows about 10 unrelated people living in a house or on an island together.
In the 1980s, there was a Television Show called “All in the Family” revolving around Archie Bunker, his wife Edith, their daughter Gloria, and her husband Mike Stivik, who lived with her parents in a little two bedroom bungalow across the river from Manhattan. In a classic episode, newlyweds Mike and Gloria find out their Pregnant, and question whether in a world as hopeless as this, a world at war, a world economically depressed, a world whose latest Reality Show is Which State's Governor will self-destruct next, a world with AIDs and Cancers, a world with 10% Unemployment, a world so addicted to energy consumption that our pollution is changing the climate, do we have a right to subject a child to this?
And finally, after all the arguments not to believe, the next door neighbor says: “But who knows? Maybe the child born to you, will be the next Gandhi? the next President? whether she could be the next JFK or Martin Luther King? Whether maybe, just possibly God might work through this child to change the world, at least to change you? Can we afford to not believe? To not want to?

This Weekend is the Anniversary of our Nation's Independence. The point of which is NOT to be able to shoot off FIREWORKS. The point of our Nation is NOT FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY. The Point of of Nation is NOT CAPITALISM and NOT FREE ENTERPRISE.

The Composer IRVING BERLIN encapsulated in music a great deal of what this nation represents. There is a Classic Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney Movie “White Christmas” in which the four leading characters sing SNOW, describing all their childhood memories of pristine white. But originally Irving Berlin had a different One Syllable Word, as the Lyric for this tune: “FREE”, Free to close the door at night not worrying about security, Free not having to bow our knee, Free to believe as we believe, FREE. The Freedom that we strive for as a Nation, is a freedom to allow others to choose to believe as they desire, free to protest, free to complain, free to hope and free to dream of possibilities that seem to others impossible.

In 1960, the Russians had launched the first rocket with a dog inside, and our President established a goal that within the Decade we would put a man on the moon. 40 years ago, this month, we began lunar exploration. we are are a people FREE TO BELIEVE in what others see as IMPOSSIBLE and not be told we CAN'T.

David, the eighth son, of an unknown family, the shepherd boy, became KING of Israel. He conquered the Giant Goliath, his army conquered that of King Saul, making him KING of ISRAEL and KING OF JUDAH. In between the two lay a strategic Canaanite city at the top of Mt. Zion. This city fortress was fortified with concentric walls, like the layers of an onion, or a bull's eye, such that if an attacking army broke through any outer defenses, they would encounter another wall and another, and trapped between these, you would be fired upon from all directions.

The point of our reading today, marks the shift in the history of Israel from Remembering MOSES on Mount SINAI receiving the LAW; to DAVID THE KING of a GREAT NATION, whose Capital is JERUISALEM THE CITY of DAVID atop MT. ZION. But how to take a Mountain? How to invade a Walled City, with no windows, and no doors? How to change from being a Nomadic People who looked back to MT. SINAI, to being a Great and Powerful Nation, a New United Kingdom of Israel and Judah, united in the City of Jerusalem, a city that had belonged to neither Israel nor Judah? The city was so well fortified, the Canaanites believed even the BLIND and LAME could defend it against any advancing army!

But the problem with DEFENSES is not only do they keep others out, at times they wall us in. Instead of seeing Concentric Walls of Defense to keep out invasion, David believed there had to be a different way into the center of the city. UP THE WATER SHAFT, means either that there were aquifers bringing fresh water into the city, or that there were sewers taking the waste out of the City. In either Case, David led his private army passed all the defenses into the center of the City. Then with an army fighting out from the center, and another fighting in from the outside, what had been defenses to keep invaders out, became walls that only got in the way.

Suddenly, this CITY FORTRESS that had never belonged to ISRAEL and had never Belonged to the Southern Nation of JUDAH, became the CITY OF DAVID, a HOLY CITY, a Place Apart. David envisioned a City where there would be no blindness, no poverty no one ever became ill, no need for defenses. A glorious new future. The heartache, is that their laws became new defenses, and Jerusalem became a city, where the Poor and Blind and Lame were outlawed. Would that today, we could ENVISION A NEW JERUSALEM, A City of God, that belonged to neither Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, but a City of God where Poverty and Blindness and every manner of disease could be healed, where all could truly be free. What a marvelous world it could be, if everyone could trust and hope and believe!