Two Kings with Troubles at Home
Sermon by Jamie Howison on 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 and Mark 6:14-29
“Two kings, a thousand years apart, and both in trouble at home.” That’s how N.T. Wright opens a reflection on the readings for this Sunday. King Herod is in trouble, on account of his thorny relationship with John the Baptist, who both intrigues and troubles him. Herod has had John imprisoned on account of the Baptist’s condemnation of his marriage to his own brother’s wife, and as you’ve just heard he will have John executed thanks to a misstep at his own royal birthday party. John may have lost his life, but it is Herod who looks to be the deadest figure in the story.
And then there is King David’s domestic trouble, which is just hinted at in this verse:
As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.
“She despised him in her heart,” which is meant to make the reader’s heart sink. How awful to be so despised by one’s own spouse. Had we read just a bit further, the depth of her hostility and the desperate shape of their marriage is made abundantly clear, as Michal confronts David, and he responds with a defensiveness that betrays just how estranged they have become. Trouble at home, indeed.
For kings to be portrayed in this way should come as no surprise, because there is a deep suspicion of kingship that runs through the bible. You may recall the reading from early June, in which the people came to Samuel asking that a king be anointed for Israel, so that they could be like the other nations, and Samuel responds by telling them to be very careful what they ask for. A king will take your sons into his army, enlist your daughters as servants, and tax your land and crops. But they persist, and on the whole they do get exactly what they had asked for. King Saul turned out to be a disaster, and while King David is revered and even called “a man after God’s own heart,” he is far from perfect. His son Solomon is often shown in a positive light in spite of some of his own serious misjudgements, and from time to time a decent king will surface in the story of Israel, but these are the exceptions. So much of the time there is trouble at home when it comes to the kings of Israel, and the scriptures are unafraid to unveil that fact.
So let’s step back and look a little more closely at today’s story of how the ark of the covenant—the wooden box in which the stone tablets of the law were kept—is brought into Jerusalem. What is this story telling us about David?
It is Walter Brueggemann’s view that David’s decision to bring the ark to Jerusalem is both “an act of good faith” and “a nervy act of calculation.” David is in the process of solidifying his kingship over all of the tribes of Israel, with Jerusalem—the City of David—as its political centre. Jerusalem had been a Jebusite stronghold, so had no history as belonging to any one of the tribes; a canny move on David’s part.
Still, there were those who remembered the old order—the old tradition—of life before the kings, and who had begun to recognize just how true Samuel’s warnings had been. They had lost sons to the army, seen their daughters become servants, and felt the sting of a taxation system that fed the royal and military machines. How to bring those people on board? Well, if the ark is taken from its resting place under the care of Abinadab and brought to Jerusalem, that will mark the city as the spiritual centre of the nation. For those still attached to the old order, that would mean that in order to draw close to the ark—which symbolized the presence and power of God and God’s covenant promises to the people—they would have to come to Jerusalem.
And so David sets out to move the ark. And again, that is both an act of faith and a calculated move, as all the way through the writers of these stories see both David’s faith and his strategic savvy.
As our reading opened, David and a large company travel to the home of Abinadab, where the ark has been resting for decades. They set out from there toward Jerusalem “with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals,” but there is one crucial bit of the story that the lectionary had us skip over. As they make their way, one of the men walking beside the cart carrying the ark reaches out his hand to steady it as they go over rough ground, and he is immediately struck dead. Now I understand the lectionary’s temptation to skip over that detail, because it does seem like a pretty arbitrary act for God to strike the guy dead, but it actually raises a bit of real insight about David.
David was afraid of the Lord that day; he said, ‘How can the ark of the Lord come into my care?’ 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.
Brueggmann sees this as something of a humbling of David, writing:
The death has its salutary effect; David becomes freshly afraid of Yahweh. When people are no longer awed, respectful, or fearful of God’s holiness, the community is put at risk. David may intend to use the ark for his own purposes, for religious equipment has powerful legitimating effect. Such political use, however, does not empty the old symbol of its formidable theological power.
And so the ark remains in the care of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months. Note that the person to whom David has entrusted this most powerful symbol of the faith of Israel is not himself an Israelite… yet he is, the text says, blessed in his caring for the ark. That’s the signal for David to once again move to relocate the ark to Jerusalem. They begin by making a ritual sacrifice, and then the procession really becomes a celebration, with David famously “dancing before the Lord with all his might… girded with a linen ephod.” Two things to note there. First, the writer is clear that David is dancing before the Lord, not before the ark itself. Secondly, he’s wearing a linen ephod, which is often thought to indicate that he’d stripped down to his boxer shorts. But an ephod was in fact a vestment worn by the priests, which went over the shoulders and was tied at the waist. So what is David symbolizing here? Is a claim that he has a priestly role as their king? Or is it meant as an act of contrition for having leaned too far toward the political importance of taking the ark to Jerusalem, taking for granted its religious significance? Either way, he’s not dancing in his underwear!
Our text ended as David sets out a feast for all to enjoy; young and old, rich and poor, male and female. It is a moment when the sheer abundance of the day comes into view. The ark is in its new home, praises have been lifted to God, and David seems in a place where his royal power and his religious devotion are finally united.
Yet we need to recall that Michal had looked out and despised him on account of his “leaping and dancing before the Lord.” Why such a strong reaction? Perhaps she’s remembering her father King Saul, thinking that he would have been far too dignified to dance like that before his people. Or perhaps she’s remembering the days when her father had begun to lose control, mentally and emotionally, and watching her husband let go of control in this way was just too painful.
When she confronts him a few verses after our reading ended, she says that David has acted shamefully, “uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids,” which again suggests the underwear thing, but that’s not necessarily so. He has replaced his royal garments with priestly ones, the shame coming from letting go of his proper royal dignity and dancing with abandon. And it marks a permanent breach between the two of them. There may in this be something of a foreshadowing of his adultery with Bathsheba, but at the very least we are made aware that all is not well in the royal household.
I began with N.T. Wright’s comment that in these readings we see, “Two kings, a thousand years apart, and both in trouble at home,” to which I’d add that there is a third king standing just slightly offstage. Herod found himself unsettled by John the Baptist publicly denouncing his illicit marriage, but it would be King Jesus who would ultimately unveil the kind of kingship Herod banked on as being corrupt and hollow. King Jesus—called Son of David—would come into Jerusalem—David’s city—seated on a donkey and embodying a kingship of which even David himself couldn’t have begun to dream. His authority was based not in royal striving, but in self-giving, servanthood, and sacrifice. This is what Paul will call “God’s foolishness” in his First Letter to the Corinthians. A foolishness that “is wiser than human wisdom, and [a] weakness… stronger than human strength.”
That is where all the texts about kings in both Testaments ultimately point us: to a place beyond the hardscrabble politics, backroom deals, military ventures, and strivings for position and prestige. Much as these narratives revere David, their final hope is not placed in him, but rather in the Christ who was to come, has come, and will come again. In him is our true home.
