9.18.11--Shattering the Box

Friends, can I be honest with you? Some Disney movies freak me out. I mean, think about it. In the Little Mermaid, a giant octopus witch steals the souls of living, sentient beings and little kids are subjected to watching a chef try to boil a crab while it is still alive. In Sleeping Beauty, a girl in a coma is awakened by a strange man and then attacked by a green dragon. In Snow White, a young woman’s stepmother tries to first strangle and then poison her just because she’s beautiful!

These stories are scary! These stories are cruel! And we hide it all behind cute Disney animation, which makes it all alright.

But you know what the worse one of the bunch is? Alice in Wonderland. The story is nuts. A girl chases a rabbit into its home and ends up in the Disney version of the Twilight Zone. There, she drinks strange concoctions out of strange containers, eats strange foods, meets animals and fairytale creatures who talk to her, and is sentenced to death by a queen who rules over a deck of playing cards.

Messed up.

 But there is one part of the movie that I keep going back to in my head when I think about God. It’s right after Alice eats the cookie… or cake… or whatever it is that causes her to grow, and grow, and grow. She shoots up and out at such an alarming pace that she breaks through the roof of the house, causing pieces of debris to fly in every direction.

The house could not hold her. The house could not contain her.

Brothers and sisters, we see the same thing happen over and over again in this chapter from the story. Whenever the Israelites think they understand God and how God is at work in their lives, God comes in and says, “Uh uh. There’s more to me than that.” As a friend of mine once told me, we have the sad tendency to try to fit God into a box, saying that everything we know about God, everything that God is, fits into the definition, this understanding. And yet every time we do this, God shatters the box, showing us that God is much, much bigger than we realized.

Our boxes cannot contain God.

This is the lesson that we learn from the story of King David, the man said to have the heart of God. From the very start, we read that God changes the expectations of humanity. When the prophet, Samuel, goes to the household of Jesse to anoint the new king, he has certain characteristics he plans to look for in the one who will be ruler over the Israelites. He expects him to be tall, good looking, wise, and with a presence that can fill a room and demand respect. He sees this in Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab (which, by the way, is a pretty cool and obscure biblical name). But God speaks to Samuel and says something so simple and yet so profound that we can still hear and learn from it today:

“People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

And with that, Samuel—the man who has been a prophet and judge for the whole of his life, the man who spoke to and heard from God and knew God better than anyone else in his time—Samuel had his box shattered. It was not the first-born of Jesse’ house that God was calling, not the one with the most worldly experience, not the one who served first in the king’s army and would inherit a double portion of his father’s estate, but the youngest, the one assigned the lowly job of shepherd for the family’s flock that would one day reign as king and shake the foundations of the Israelite people.

Later in the chapter, we have one of the most famous stories of the Bible: the battle of David and Goliath. Now I’m sure that we all know the story well. Young David, a shepherd, wearing no armor and carrying no weapon but his sling and five stones, defeats the giant, Goliath, who is decked out in full regalia and is carrying a sword that weighs as much as David.

I love David’s reasoning behind his confidence. What does he tell Saul is the reason that a big oaf is not threat to him? “I kill bears and lions.” David’s awesome.

But listen to what he says to Goliath on the field of battle: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give all of you into our hands.”

And just like that, the entire Israelite army has their boxes shattered. Not a one of them had the faith to trust in God to help them overcome the Philistine giant, but this lowly shepherd boy was able to best him because he knew that God was fighting for him. It was not by sword or spear or might of muscle that the battle was one, but by faith in God.

Finally, toward the end of the chapter, we come to one of my absolute favorite stories of the Old Testament. It is the story of David bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. There is a huge parade and celebration in honor of this momentous occasion, and who is leading the procession in, going all out in praise and worship to God? None other than King David himself, clad only in a loincloth and dancing his heart out down the streets. The king of the Israelites is worshiping with wild abandon, and nothing matters to him at that moment but giving all the praise that is due to his God.

Not everyone is excited about this, though. His wife, Saul’s daughter, Michal, calls him out on it later that day. Let’s listen again to the exchange:

“When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

David said to Michal, “It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this. I will be humiliated in my own eyes. I will give it all to the Lord in worship, and not care what anyone else says or thinks.

It is time for Michal’s box to be shattered, the box she built around what she decided was the acceptable form of worship to the Lord and what were acceptable actions from someone of her household. David understood that even a king is humbled in the sight of God, that even a king is called to drop his fronts, let loose his chains of societal expectations, and worship God with all that he has in whatever way God is calling him to worship.

On that day, it meant dancing through the streets half-naked.

My friends, our God is in the business of shattering our boxes. And God is very, very good at it. Just when we think that we have it all figured out, that we understand Who God is and how God works, God pulls an Alice and breaks through the limits we have constructed.

God did it then, and God does it now.

So what are the boxes that you try to house God within? What are the limits, the boundaries that you set for your God? Maybe, like Samuel, you have a certain understanding of whom God calls and who can be God’s people. Maybe you have an idea in your head of who is allowed to be a Christian or member of our church and who is not. Or maybe your limits are instead on whom it is that God is calling you to minister to. Maybe you have stayed in your comfort zone in church for so long that you struggle with God’s call to be in community with the homeless, with the widowed, with the handicapped, with those of different skin tone, nationality, gender or gender preference.

Maybe, like the Israelite people, you are afraid to let faith guide your life even in the midst of adversity and hostility. Your fear causes you to have more faith in guns than in God. Maybe you have lived so long in a world that responds to violence with more violence that you cannot see any other way of living. Maybe you struggle with the call to respond to violence with love, to pray for those who persecute you and your loved ones.

Or maybe, like Michal, you struggle with different ways of worship. Maybe you have been turned off or scared by the way that others respond to God that you cannot see it as an effective means of praise. Maybe different music, different dress, and different locations make you uncomfortable, because you are so used to meeting your God in a starched white collar or pressed dress while sitting on a hard bench in a sanctuary surrounded by people who look and act the same as you. Maybe your limits on God are of how you interact with God, and not on God at all.

Does any of this sound like you?

The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked as a councilor at the church camps that I had been attending since I was in junior high. The last camp, a high school camp, had an unofficial theme song that we ended up singing at every single time of worship. The song was Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble. The chorus said it all for us that week:

Open up the doors! Let the music play! Let the streets resound with singing! Songs that bring Your hope! Songs that bring Your joy! Dancers who dance upon injustice!

And by our last time of worship together before we would leave for our respective homes, we couldn’t contain it. Almost as one, the campers, councilors, and worship band flung open the doors and took our singing to the streets. We couldn’t stop it! We couldn’t keep it inside any longer. We had to worship God outside and let the streets truly resound with singing.

We became even more undignified than we thought we could. We celebrated before the Lord.

My prayer for us as a church and for us individually is that God allow us to do the same.

So may God continually shatter the boxes that you build around God. May God leave you continually in awe, astounded by who God is and what God does. May you allow yourself to be an instrument in shattering other peoples’ boxes as well. And as your limitations of God continually diminish and your understandings of God continually grow, may you celebrate before the Lord in whatever means you feel called. May you find yourself stating that you will become even more undignified than this for your God, and may you open up the doors and let the music play, that the streets would resound with the songs of praise that you lift up to God Almighty.

Amen.