"Holy Other" - 2 Samuel 6:1-15

July 13, 2003 
Rev. Rachel Cornwell, Bethesda UMC

I have good news and bad news for you this morning–the bad news is that I am a lectionary preacher who likes preaching from the Old Testament, and that is why this morning’s scripture is this strange and somewhat disturbing story from Second Samuel. The good news is that I am a lectionary preacher who enjoys preaching from the Old Testament, so you were spared the Gospel story of the beheading of John the Baptist. But I should warn you that that one might be making a re-appearance at some point.

Actually, the Revised Common Lectionary leaves out of this story of David bringing the Ark to Jerusalem the verses that tell of the sudden death of Uzzah, an innocent guy who mistakenly reaches out to touch the most sacred object of the Israelite religion, and is instantly killed by God. I think that it is worth our time to look at this story and to ask what it might teach us.

Uzzah and Ahio, the sons Abinadab, who has been guarding the Ark since the Philistines returned it to the Israelites, are dutifully helping King David move this sacred object to the new political, cultural and soon-to-be religious center of the kingdom, Jerusalem. This is a really important because the Ark has represented, since the time of the Exodus, the presence of God with the people.

(Incidentally, if you are wondering the reason why the Philistines returned the Ark to the Israelites, it’s because they also learned the hard way about the sacredness of this religious object. Coincidentally while they had the Ark in their possession people were breaking out in tumors, so they got rid of it as quickly as they could!)

The story refers to this object as “the Ark” but it was actually called the same name as the Lord of Hosts–a name so holy that it cannot be written down. So they are transporting this sacred object with great care and caution, on a brand new cart–not the regular cart that they use for ordinary transportation of livestock or grain or humans– and they are traveling over the rocky dirt road toward Jerusalem. The Ark starts to tip, so Uzzah reaches out to steady it, and because he has not been ritually prepared, he dies instantly.

What kind of God is this story trying to tell us about? Is this the same God that we know and love, and worship? The one who created us, loves us, sent his Son to redeem us? It is, but we might be having trouble recognizing him at the moment.

Several years ago a briefly popular singer, Joan Osborne released a very popular song called “One of Us”–you may remember it. It began with the line, “If God had a name, what would it be? And would you call it to his face if you were faced with him”. It had a catchy melody and an interesting music video with a white bearded homeless man walking through crowds of people in a big city who don’t even notice him. The chorus was:
“What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?”

It was an interesting song, and had the positive effect, by way of its frank and theological questioning to get listeners to think about their conception of God. But the question this morning is not– “what if God was one of us?”, but rather “what if God was something Holy Other than us?” This Hebrew Bible story reminds us that, even if we might be tempted to think about God only on our terms, in our life, in our skin, that God is also awesome, powerful and mysterious.

Don’t get me wrong–thinking of God in our own image is what we do–it helps us understand the unfathomable complexity of God. And God was one of us, in the form of Jesus Christ, but he is so much more than “just a slob like one of us.” We are sometimes tempted to try and make God so totally knowable, so familiar, that we risk diminishing mysterious powerful God, who created the universe, and who does things that we don’t understand. We want so desperately to have an intimate relationship with God, to know God’s will for us, to hear God call our name, that we sometimes wind up accepting a much smaller understanding of who God is. Sometimes we decide that it is too difficult to worship and love a God who we don’t fully know, or who does things that we don’t understand, or doesn’t do things that we think a loving God should, and so we settle for a more palatable God.

In a scene from the irreverent but clever movie Dogma, a priest of the church, played appropriately by the comedian George Carlin, decides that the crucifix is too much of a “downer.” So he introduces a new image of Jesus that is much warmer and fun than the crucified One: they call it “the Buddy Christ.” The “Buddy Christ” is approachable, friendly, happy, easy to be around. He doesn’t ruffle feathers or make anyone feel uncomfortable.

But the “Buddy Christ” also lacks all of the power that the crucified and risen Christ has to change lives and heal the world. The “Buddy Christ” will be your friend, but I want more than a friendship with God–don’t you?

I prefer to liken our relationship with God to falling in love with your soul mate. When you first fall in love, you want to know everything about the other person–what their passions are, what they believe, how they think, their dreams and fears, and if are they as madly in love with you as you are with them. And as the relationship grows you come to understand that you may never know everything there is to know about this person, not matter how much of your lives you share with each other. There are aspects of this other human being that are mysterious and sacred. That is why we sometimes must tread lightly in our relationships, with respect and awe. This person is holy other.

There are many spiritual bad habits that can evolve out of a too familiar, too palatable, too comfortable relationship with God.

We can begin to think that we know everything there is to know about God–which can lead to arrogance and defensiveness. We may think that we have the truth, and other people’s understanding of God is wrong. We see this all over the church–on the left, on the right, even sometimes in the middle. People are so invested in their personal understanding of God that they cannot accept other people’s vision of who God might be. We limit God to certain familiar descriptions, abilities, places, pronouns.

Another danger is that we begin to limit God’s power or love. We lose faith in God’s ability to eradicate things like illness or hunger or poverty or war simply because they seem unchangeable to us. We start to despair, and we think either: some things just can’t be fixed, or it is all our responsibility to fix things. We begin to accept human suffering and injustices as “that’s just the way it is,” because we don’t have faith that God can change out human condition, and therefore we certainly can’t do anything about it. Or we may think that God has lost the ability to do anything about the state of the world, and so we have to do it all ourselves, our way.

A third problem with the small God theology is that it leads people to think that we don’t need the guidance or the experience of the community to make ethical decisions. When we fall into this pattern we make our choices independently, based only on our personal understanding of who God is, and what God’s will is for us, without imagining that God might have revealed other things to other people that we don’t know about, or without the humility and reverence that one ought to have in the presence of the Divine Creator.

So how do we keep from falling into these small God ways of being unfaithful? How do we balance our need for, and the possibility of having, an intimate spiritual relationship with God who is the God of the Universe? How do we reconcile the experience of God calling our name, the trust that God has a desire and a plan for each of us, with the huge-ness, the awesome-ness of a omni-present, omni-powerful God? The answer is: we just do. Our faith holds us to this paradox. The Jewish theologian Martin Buber, in his book I and Thou, cautions us from limiting God to only our personal experiences of God. Buber writes:
What, then, does one experience of the You (that is God, the Holy Other)?
Nothing at all. For one does not experience it. (We only experience part of God.) What, then, does one know of the You?
Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars. Buber wants is to see that accepting God as Holy Other is liberating. We no longer feel that we must explain God. We don’t have to turn spiritual somersaults to hold onto our contained image of God, because God keeps on revealing God’s self to us. The one thing we have to do, though, is accept that we might not always understand or be able to predict God, and through faith, as long as we live we will continue to learn more about God.

So, let us come back to the story from 2 Samuel. Is it possible that we can accept a God whose presence is so sacred, so holy other, that just coming into the presence unprepared can kill someone? Can we accept that, even if we don’t like it? David gets mad at God, and scared. He asks, “How can I take care of this Ark?” So he leaves it in someone else’s care for a while, because he can’t handle it. But even though David walks away from God, God does not walk away from David. God waits until David comes back to bring God’s presence home, to the sacred place where it belongs. So, too, I believe that God waits for us, to open ourselves up to the Holy Other and accept a relationship with God on God’s terms. At least, that’s what I have discovered so far–but I expect to learn more. Let’s keep each other posted, OK?