Let’s Dance

Sunday, October 20, 2019
Intern Teleen Saunders

2 Samuel 5:1-5; 6:1-5

Grace and peace to you my friends on this beautiful celebratory morning. I can only imagine that this text makes some Lutheran’s nervous, after all, we almost danced. In church. What’s next? Random shouts of alleluia? Snake handling? A three-hour sermon? Don’t tempt me. I’m feeling the spirit today! And for anyone who wants to criticize David’s dancing and celebration, check out the end of chapter six where David’s wife called her husband’s behavior “vulgar”. Let me just warn you that her days did not end well.

So why all the celebration? What’s going on here? Well, come back with me about a thousand years before the birth of Christ. This is a time of transition for the people of God. A time where leadership moves from judges to kings. Although judges were powerful and held some important roles in ancient times they did not rule the whole country like a king could. Judges were temporary and acted more like disjointed chieftains.[1] As time wore on the judges began losing their influence as people started to “do what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25).^[2]

This disjointed nation-state brought threats from outside as well. The biggest of these threats came from the Philistines – skilled warriors who had advanced weapons[3]^,[4] and a giant named Goliath. So, the people yearned for a mighty king, a powerful king who could unite the kingdom, defeat their enemies, and solve all their problems. But alas, this was not to be. The first king of Israel, Saul was a fickle and taciturn ruler who failed to put his trust in God. As our story picks up, we find that Saul falls on his sward in utter defeat at the hands of the Philistines. The enemy has taken Israel’s king and by association Israel’s hope and Israel’s very identity. For in a world where there is no word for “religion”, the loss of this war means the loss of their God too. The Philistines have taken the ark of God as their most prized possession – a symbol of triumph, a symbol of life.

So aside from what you may have learned from Indiana Jones, what is the ark of God? Well, it’s not a statue or graven image. Quite simply, it’s Torah, the early writings, the very word of God![5] But in the minds of these Israelites, it is God! And David is the hero who returns the ark back to the people. So in our story today, a celebration erupts with dancing before the LORD, with songs and harps and cymbals. Because the power of God is back in their midst!

For the people of Israel this means that they will be blessed with an identity, with hope, and with a promise. This is a big deal. As a character, David is mentioned over eleven-hundred times, the longest single personal narrative second only to Jesus.[6] Here, for the first time, Israel is a unified kingdom and the people get a savior in the form of a strong monarch! So, what does it mean to live in the presence of God? What does it mean when God is in our midst?

First of all, it means that we gather around the word of God, the prized ark. For Augustana this morning, it was a literal gathering where we physically brought the word of God into the midst of the people into the midst of this holy house. David had no temple. But he knew the power of God’s word. He knew the power of creating a holy place where people come together to confess their sins, seek reconciliation, and praise the one true God. Jerusalem became David’s royal city. The place where God made a promise to David saying, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). We gather today not in literal fear of God’s power where we cower before the altar, but in reverence of God’s power where we gather in amazement at what the Lord can do. And when we as Christians gather around the word, we become what Martin Luther calls the priesthood of all believers meaning that God speaks to us all. There is no holy hierarchy. We still support seminaries and synods, but there is no special access to God, nor is there any need for an intermediary saint to pray on our behalf. The strength comes from the gathering itself and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. From our good times to our bad times we have strength in community. When we gather around the word we are all blessed. This leads into the second point.

To live in the presence of God means to receive a blessing. When David becomes king, he gathers the elders, makes a covenant before the Lord, and THEN is anointed. David is showing authentic leadership that points back to God and gives God praise. In today’s reading, the Lord says to David, “You will shepherd my people Israel, you will become their ruler” (5:2). This NIV translation only partially reveals the type of leader David is to become. God uses the words, tireh “shepherd” and nagid which is translated as “ruler” or softer yet, “leader”. These words describe the kind of relationship God has with David. When David is anointed in the presence of the ark, it is clear that God will reign supreme. God creates but David will lead as a shepherd leads his flock. This blessing is an invitation to care for God’s people. It is not the installation of a dictator. Now to be thoroughly clear, David was not perfect. He certainly had his flaws, but here, God is establishing a new kind of monarchy for Israel. One that is blessed in the traditions and compassion of God’s word.

This blessing for us means living as faithful stewards of God’s benevolence. (Yes, the clever stewardship drive tie-in.) Because as people of God, we too are called to be servants. We make a commitment to live according to God’s commands as a blessing to others as we too have been blessed.

Finally, when God is in our midst, we dance! This is unabashed worship! It doesn’t matter if you dance with your whole body like a winner on The Price is Right or if you keep your joy contained to the twinkle of your eye. It’s good to worship because God is good. So dance in prayer, dance at communion, dance with our music, and dance in the word of God because God is here. Perhaps American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham put it best. She said, “Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”[7] God is in our midst. Let’s dance.

Amen.

[1] https://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/37-3_Joshua_And_Judges/37-3_Park.pdf

[2] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-role-between-judges-and-kings-in-the-Bible

[3] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/king-saul/

[4] https://www.gci.org/articles/weapons-and-warfare-in-ancient-israel/

[5] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4213

[6] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4213

[7] http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/2017/dance-quotes/

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Let’s Dance

Sunday, October 20, 2019
Intern Teleen Saunders

2 Samuel 5:1-5; 6:1-5

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Let’s Dance

Sunday, October 20, 2019 Intern Teleen Saunders

2 Samuel 5:1-5; 6:1-5

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, October 20, 2019
Intern Teleen Saunders

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson