You can’t do everything
Sermon by Jamie Howison on 2 Samuel 7:1-14
This evening we are observing the Feast of St Benedict, though on the church calendar the feast day was actually last Sunday. I wanted to move it forward by a week, because this is the first Sunday in eighteen months that we have a congregation present in the church building. It is a small group made up mostly of the volunteers who have stepped forward over the year to serve as liturgy assistants and musicians, as well as those who have offered to help serve as ushers and on the clean-up crew as we begin next Sunday to open things up more widely. Still, it is a congregation all the same, and it seemed a good day on which to remember our patron saint.
I’m still going to focus my sermon on the story of David, as I have since the middle of June, but I can actually recognize how the wisdom and spirit of Benedict can help illuminate this particular story. Watch…
Picking up from where we left off last Sunday evening, David has now brought the ark of the covenant—the wooden cabinet in which the stone tablets are kept—into Jerusalem: the City of David. As I noted last week, it is Walter Brueggemann’s view that bringing the ark to Jerusalem was both a faithful act and a canny strategic move. This city is now not only the political capital for the tribes of Israel, but also its symbolic spiritual centre. For those of the old school who still remembered with fondness and a touch of idealism the days prior to the establishment of the monarchy, this solidification of spiritual and political in one location was David’s way of saying that a whole new day was dawning.
And indeed, things did seem to be going well. Listen again to how the reading opens:
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, ‘See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.’ Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.’
David was settled and the people were experiencing peace—“rest from all David’s enemies” is how the writer puts it—and in that period of peace, David begins to reflect, saying to the prophet Nathan that he wants to build a home for the ark. After all, he has a house of cedar—a precious wood greatly valued in that world—but the ark of God stays in a tent. Nathan seems to think that this is a fine idea, or he does until he turns in for the night and hears a different message from God.
“Tell David that I need no house of cedar. Since the days when the covenant law was first given, the tablets rested in a tent, and whenever the people moved the tent went with them. Did I ever ask for anything different? No. But I have been with you through thick and thin, David? And it has been quite a journey, hasn’t it? All that you have done in my name to bring this people of mine to a place of peace and unity is on account of my being present with you. Through thick and thin; “from following the sheep to becoming prince over my people Israel.” No, you won’t build me a house, but rather I will make of you a house.”
That is a little play on words, because the Hebrew word used can mean either a building such as a temple, or a family line, a dynasty. The message Nathan will deliver to David moves him from being the one who wants to build a temple to being the one for whom God will build a family line.
I am persuaded that part of what is happening is that David is being, in a sense, reined in. He has done a whole lot to bring Israel to this place—cannily and faithfully both—and now he has set before himself one more great landmark project, namely the building of the temple. But no, David. That’s not yours to build. You can’t do everything, and you can’t achieve every milestone moment in your people’s story. That temple work will indeed be completed, but by one of your heirs, not by you.
It is interesting to note that the version of David’s story told in 1st Chronicles adds one more layer to this, namely that David has blood on his hands: “You shall not build a house for my name, for you are a warrior and have shed blood.” (28:3) David, you’ve been the military leader and defender of your people, and that’s enough. You’re not going to build the temple, David. You can’t do everything.
But how is this at all connected to the work and life of St Benedict? Benedict was really the founding figure in Western monasticism, and his Rule is still the guiding document for much of the monastic world. Written in 516 for the community of monks that had gathered around him, it is fair to say that part of what the Rule insists is that you can’t do everything. No one can, nor should anyone try. The motto ora et labora—pray and work—is the great informing principle of Benedictine spirituality, yet it is also fair to say that pax—peace—stands at its heart. The Rule is intended to structure community life peaceably, and in a way that extends deep hospitality to anyone who knocks at the door. This peaceableness is shaped by prayer and work, but also by making sure that rest, leisure, and celebration are all part of life. The monks and nuns in the tradition certainly observe a discipline of fasting, but there is also room for the feast.
About a decade ago I spent ten days at the Collegeville Institute in Minnesota, which is part of the ministry of St John’s Abbey. I was on an Eastertide writing retreat, and on the Sunday—which happened to be the Second Sunday in Eastertide—the writers and scholars in residence at the Institute were invited to join the monastic community for lunch following Mass. Our host was Fr. Kilian McDonnell—one of my absolute favourite human beings—and as he led us into the dining room to join the 150 or so monks, we were faced with a gorgeous feast. Ham, turkey, roast beef. Three or four different potato dishes, probably a dozen different salads. All manner of pickles, relishes, and mustards. Several different types of bread. Coffee and various desserts. Oh, and a glass of wine was on offer as well! As we settled with our plates around the table, Kilian smiled and said, “Don’t think we always eat this way! But it is a Sunday in Eastertide, and so a time to feast.” Then there was a wee pause, and a mischievous look came across his octogenarian face. “Come back in Lent, if you don’t believe me!”
It is a sensibility built around balance, and that same sensibility teaches a Benedictine that they can’t do everything. They have their work and prayer in the community, they have their areas of strength and areas of weakness, their failings and their hopes, just like any one of us. Thing is, they take time in community to learn from all of it, and they tend to know when it is time to just let the day end and go to bed. Interestingly, Benedictines tend to be very long-lived. Fr. Kilian will turn 100 in September, and while he is considerably slowed up from what he was even five years ago when he was still working on his poetry and wondering if he had one more book to be published, his life under the Rule has served him ever so well. It was on another visit there, probably in about 2014, when he looked at me with his always sparkling eyes and said, “I do not have a single regret in my life.” And isn’t that remarkable?
But you know that Benedictine sensibility isn’t limited to the world of monks and nuns. It is something that can be embraced by all of us, in the here and now of our lives lived in whatever neighborhood we call home. That sense of making space for life in its fullness, attentive to what makes us whole… and wholly the people we were created to be. And sometimes that means letting go.
David, the temple is not yours to build. You can’t do everything. Neither can I, neither can you, neither can anyone. And isn’t that a blessed thing to embrace?
