Waiting for Lightning

2 Samuel 6:1-11

January 14, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Some would say today that God needs a good PR person. In the eyes of a lot of folks, maybe even some of you here this morning, God has a bad reputation—particularly the so-called “God of the Old Testament.” In some circles, it’s become fashionable to separate the Bible as if in there we find two different Gods. The God of the Old Testament, it is said, is a God of violence, anger, racism and sexism, while the God of the New Testament, the father of Jesus, is a God of love and acceptance. Chris Webb, in his book God-Soaked Life, says he will often ask people to come up with a word picture that describes the Bible to them, and one person, after some thought, said to him, “For me, it’s a horror movie.” A bit surprised, Webb asked why, and the other person said this: “Because I keep finding myself drawn back, again and again, to the murders, the genocides, the rapes, the bloodshed—often in the name of God. I can’t escape it; the horror of it all won’t leave me. It makes it hard for me to read” (pg. 161). That person is not alone. For a lot of people in our world, the graphic, dare we say it, horror of the Old Testament makes the Bible a difficult book to read and the God who is revealed there becomes a difficult God to worship. For some, God is simply one who sends bad things into our lives, like in this scene from the film Bruce Almighty. Take a listen.

VIDEO: “Smite Me” from Bruce Almighty

Richard Dawkins, famous atheist and author of The God Delusion, summed up his attitude toward God in this way: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (qtd. in Lamb, God Behaving Badly, pg. 13). I want to say, “Tell us how you really feel!” Yet, though Dawkins’ comments may be over the top, he’s not alone in his understanding of the God we encounter in the Old Testament. God does seem to behave, at times, badly. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to address that concern, that understanding of Scripture, head-on by looking at four questions, four images people have of God today. Next Sunday, we’ll be looking at the question of whether or not God is sexist. The week after that, we’ll look at the accusation that God is a racist, and the final week we’ll consider whether or not God is violent. But today, we’re going to begin with a question that’s a bit more basic: is God angry? Or, to put it another way, is God just waiting to strike you down with lightning?

Before we deal directly with that question, though, we need to understand a couple of things about the Bible itself and the way we view the Bible. Part of our struggle today is that we don’t always like what the Bible says to us, but that’s not a new struggle. Thomas Jefferson published his own New Testament, called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, in 1820 by literally cutting and pasting with a razor and glue only the parts of the New Testament he could agree with, the parts he liked. He left out the miracles and most mentions of anything supernatural and was pretty much left with a merely human Jesus who did nice things and taught good morals. We may not do it quite so blatantly, but there are times we struggle with some of what the Bible seems to say. Consider this scenario…

SKIT

Contrary to the way we usually treat this book, it was not written with 21st-century Christians in mind. The Bible, we believe, is the inspired word of God; it contains everything we need to know to find hope and salvation and life. But we do not believe, contrary to some perceptions out there, that the Bible was dictated word-for-word. God worked through the personalities and quirks of the various human authors, which is why Isaiah doesn’t sound the same as Amos, or why 1 Kings reads differently than Psalms. It’s the same today; you don’t expect a Max Lucado book to read just like a Andy Stanley book. Their different personalities and style show through in their books. That’s the way the Bible works. It’s not really a single book; it’s a library of books written over centuries by many different authors. The different books reflect the character and the nature of their human authors. The miracle of Scripture is that, even though it was written over some 1,500 years and by maybe 35 different authors, it still has one cohesive message and story from Genesis to the maps. 

But the Biblical books do reflect the culture and the time in which they were written. That’s why I often spend some time trying to explain the history behind the various passages we study. If we don’t understand the culture, we will struggle to truly understand what that chapter, verse or book is really trying to tell us. If we don’t understand the background, we can easily misunderstand and mis-apply the passage. And understanding the culture is especially important when it comes to the Old Testament. As one scholar puts it, “The Old Testament was not only divinely inspired, it was also culturally engaged” (Lamb 23). While we are far removed from the Roman Empire, the context of the New Testament, we at least understand it a little better because much of our culture has grown out of that culture. But when it comes to the Old Testament, we’re far removed from the traditions, the world, the understandings of the Ancient Near East. Our brains often don’t work the way theirs did; we have a different worldview. And yet, as we will see, the Old Testament, understood in its own setting, is shockingly progressive in its acceptance of strangers and its affirmation of women compared to other literature of the time. That’s surprising to a lot of folks who may not even have read the Old Testament, but have made up their minds about the God revealed there based on what they have heard. You see, our image of God determines how we live. For those outside the faith, their image of God also determines what they think of God’s followers. Those two truths are what make this series so important. If God is angry, sexist, racist and violent, the thinking goes, then his followers (you and me) must be, too (cf. Lamb 23). So, with that background, let’s dive in and ask our first question: is the God of the Bible angry? And to begin to answer that question, we turn to a strange story in the book of 2 Samuel.

The book of 2 Samuel is largely the story of King David, the second (and greatest) king of the fledgling nation of Israel. David was called a “man after God’s own heart,” not because he did everything right the first time but because he longed, above all else, to please God in whatever he did. On those occasions when he failed in that pursuit, he would immediately repent and try to get back on the right path. David’s story always gives me hope, to be honest, that even someone as flawed as I am can love and serve God. In the story we read this morning, David has finally been accepted as the king over all of the twelve tribes of Israel, and he had chosen Jerusalem, a neutral city at the time, as his new capital. But David wants it to be more than just a political capital; he hopes Jerusalem will become the spiritual capital of the nation as well (Goldingay, 1 & 2 Samuel for Everyone, pg. 130; Chafin, Communicator’s Commentary: 1, 2 Samuel, pg. 275). It’s not all that different, honestly, than what we’ve seen happening in the news the last few weeks. Jerusalem is already the spiritual capital of Israel; in fact, for many, Jerusalem is considered the spiritual capital of the world. But with the President’s declaration, our country now recognizes it as the political capital of the country as well. In that opinion, we’re in the minority in the world, and there are arguments for and against, but it gives us a glimpse into the situation David was facing. He wanted people to recognize Jerusalem as the absolute center of the kingdom he was building, but for it to become the spiritual center, people had to believe God dwelt there. And every good Hebrew knew that God was present wherever the Ark of the Covenant was.

The Ark of the Covenant was a decorated box, covered in pure gold, dating from the time of Moses, and it was said God dwelt in the middle of the cherubim’s wings on the top (cf. Exodus 37:1-9). Inside the chest were the original Ten Commandments, a pot of manna (the food the Hebrews ate in the wilderness) and a rod used by Moses’ brother Aaron. Now, as every “Indiana Jones” fan knows, the Ark was rescued by our intrepid hero and today is kept in Area 51—but not really. The Ark has been lost to history, and though there are various theories as to its location, no one has seen the Ark for thousands of years. But this is not the first time it was lost. Israel lost the Ark to the Philistines, an ancient enemy, in the book of 1 Samuel. But the Philistines, after having the Ark for seven months, determined that many bad things happening to them were because they had kept the Ark, so they put it on a cart and sent it back to Israel. It made it as far as a house in a town called Kiriath Jearim, and there it sat, in a private home, for twenty years. Israel forgot about it, this Ark, this reminder of the presence of God in their midst was forgotten—until it was useful to their new king (1 Samuel 6:1-7:2; Chafin 274). Are there times we forget about our faith until it becomes useful to us? Have we ever forgotten the presence of God until we need something from him?

So David, in a move that is more politically than spiritually motivated, arranges a huge party to move the Ark from its place in a house up to Jerusalem. It’s the first step in his plan to build a Temple, a place for worshipping God. He gets a brand new ox cart, one that has never been used and therefore couldn’t have been made unholy, and he arranges people to walk alongside the Ark to guarantee its safety. The author of 2 Samuel describes the scene this way: “David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrum and cymbals” (6:5). This is a rowdy, raucous party. It’s a pep rally. It’s a chance for David to be seen and to show off his new power. Then, in the midst of the party, the unthinkable happens. Uzzah, one of the guardians of the Ark, notices that the oxen have stumbled, perhaps over a rock or a root, and suddenly the cart tips, ever so slightly, but it’s enough that the Ark is in danger of sliding off of the cart and onto the ground. So Uzzah does what probably any of us would have done in that situation. He reaches out and steadies the Ark, to make sure it doesn’t fall. And for his trouble, he is killed. 2 Samuel puts it this way: “The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God” (6:7).

He is struck down by the power of God. Let’s be clear about this. The text does not allow us to say it any other way. Twice, the author points out that it was God who killed Uzzah, and while it doesn’t say he was struck by lightning, that’s been the image in popular understanding that has come out of this story and other stories like it. We still talk about someone being “struck by lightning” if they say or do something that is slightly (or more than sightly) irreverent, or someone who has done something (usually trivial) that we think will make God mad. Have you ever moved aside from someone like that, saying something like, “I don’t want to be hit when you’re struck by lightning”? Well, take comfort: I believe God has pinpoint accuracy! He will not miss his target! But, all joking aside, this passage underscores the tension we often feel between understand God’s love and God’s anger or God’s wrath. Many people today live in fear of being “struck by lightning” for somehow offending God. The legend is that it was a lightning storm that caused Martin Luther to make a vow to become a monk, which then led to the Protestant Reformation. And though there are historical questions about that story, we do know that Luther was spurred on in his early religious devotion out of a fear of offending or upsetting God. So some folks will say, “Look at this story of Uzzah and tell me God isn’t a God of anger.”

So, here is where some context comes in handy. There are several things we need to understand about this passage and others like it. First of all, David has ignored Biblical instructions about how to carry the Ark. There were rings on the corners of the Ark, and it is stated over and over again in the most sacred Hebrew texts that priests were to carry the Ark with poles inserted through the rings. The ox cart was the idea of the Philistines, so Israel is copying the pattern of an enemy who did not care anything about God to begin with. Had they obeyed the original instructions on how to transport the Ark, the stumbling would not have been an issue (Lamb 28). This was a symbolic command, a reminder of who the Ark represented. You see, in that culture and time, royalty did not ride on a cart. Carts and wagons were for things, not for royalty, not for the king. David would have never ridden on a cart or a wagon, but apparently in his mind it was okay for this Ark, which was said to be the place where God was enthroned, to ride on a cart. It was okay for God to ride on a cart. In many ways, by ignoring God’s original instruction in this matter, David is thumbing his nose at God. The cart is an insult; in some ways, it was a message to the entire kingdom that obedience to God was optional, and that was not a message God wanted to have passed along to his people at this critical time (cf. Lamb 30).

Now, let’s be honest: we do the same thing as the Hebrews did, don’t we? We choose which Scriptures we want to follow and which ones we don’t. Perhaps less blatantly, but we do the same thing as the person in the skit did, the same thing Thomas Jefferson did—we mentally “cut and paste” the Bible, listening to the texts we like and ignoring those we don’t or those we think are irrelevant. The priests in David’s time decided it didn’t matter how the Ark was carried, not really. And Uzzah paid the ultimate price for their selective listening to Scripture. So that begs the question: which Scriptures, which commands of God have you decided you, or we, no longer have to listen to?

There’s another passage that Uzzah apparently forgot. In Numbers 4 (again, part of Israel’s most sacred texts), God had clearly said that to touch the Ark meant instant death (v. 15; Chafin 276). Such an attitude was meant to give the people a sense of the holy, that holy things should not be treated carelessly. In fact, in that culture, most of the people in the procession were probably surprised that only Uzzah was killed for his transgression. They most likely would have wondered why everyone hadn’t been punished (cf. Chafin 276). Unlike us, they lived with a healthy, respectful fear of the holy. God was not their “buddy.” He was and is the Lord of the universe, the creator of all that there is and the one who could wipe it out in an instant if he wanted to. To them, it was not surprising that God would strike Uzzah down. The amazing thing was that he didn’t strike everyone down. The unexpected news of the Old Testament is, as my Old Testament professor put it, “The God who could fry you loves you.” We see this even in David’s reactions in verses 8 and 9. In verse 8, David is “angry,” and in verse 9, we’re told David is “afraid.” Those are not mutually exclusive emotions, especially when we consider that David’s anger is more likely at himself for not doing things the way God wanted them in the first place. Remember, he is a man after God’s own heart; more than anything else, he wants to please God.

And that’s what’s in jeopardy in this passage—it’s the people’s relationship with God. We’re told repeatedly in the Bible that God is “jealous” for his people. By that, the authors mean that God wants to be first place, number one, in the lives of all those who claim to follow him. He is not a cosmic vending machine, just giving us things we think we want. He wants to be Lord of our lives—Lord of all or not at all, as we prayed in our Covenant prayer a couple of weeks ago. In the mess that this party became, in David’s mixed motives for even moving the Ark, that relationship is in danger. And that begins to get at the source of God’s anger in this story and in many similar stories. He will not tolerate our disrespect for that relationship because he is jealous for his people—for you (cf. Lamb 32). And sometimes, like a good parent, he has to go to extreme lengths to get our attention.

So, is God angry? Well, yes, about certain things, most importantly about the things that either distract us from or derail us from having a relationship with him, from having the abundant life he promises. As we might expect, we see the same thing in the life of Jesus (cf. Mathew 21:12-13). Perhaps you remember what happens when Jesus goes into the Temple, which was, by that time, the center of Jewish religious life and the place it was believed where God lived. We have two accounts (perhaps the same event, perhaps different events) where Jesus enters the Temple and becomes angry. Both times Jesus turns over the tables of the moneychangers and runs out those who are selling animals. For centuries, that story has been used to condemn people who sell things in church or who have fundraising dinners, but that’s not what made Jesus angry. What angered him was where they were selling things. The marketplace was set up in what was called the Court of the Gentiles, the place where non-Jewish people could come and pray. The Jews, the Hebrew people, were supposed to be a light to the nations. As Jesus himself says, this Temple was supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations, and yet those who ran the marketplace didn’t care about that. They set up the marketplace in the very place “the nations” were supposed to come and pray, and the noise and the craziness of the marketplace would have kept them from being able to pray, to have a relationship with God. What angers Jesus is the neglect, the distractions, the way people were preventing others from having a relationship with his heavenly father. God loves us so much that he gets angry when anything gets in the way of that relationship.

And yet, thank God, there is another descriptor of God that comes primarily from the Old Testament. In many places, God is said to be “long-nosed.” You won’t find that translation in your Bibles, though, because that was a Hebrew slang phrase that meant “slow to anger.” No one’s quite sure why except that maybe they understood anger to be focused in the face with the nose becoming red when a person was angry (cf. Lamb 33). God is said to be long-nosed, slow to anger. Another word that’s used over and over in the Old Testament to describe God’s behavior toward people is the nearly untranslatable word hesed. It’s hard to describe in a single word, but basically it means this: “when the one who owes you nothing gives you everything.” Often in the Old Testament, this word is translated as “lovingkindness,” a compound word made up just to translate hesed. God is more loving and kinder to us than we deserve—and aren’t we glad? If we were to get what we deserved, we would all suffer the fate of Uzzah. But God is gracious, compassionate, kind, loving—and even in his anger, he is always seeking to protect the relationship he desperately wants to have with us.

Let me say one more thing along these lines. Sometimes, especially for those who have this image of God in their minds of an angry old man, just waiting for us to mess up so he can send us to hell, people struggle with how God can be loving and at the same time send anyone to hell. Now, whatever image of Hell you might have, it is, at a very basic level, separation from God for eternity. But if God loves us so much, if God wants a relationship with us so much, why does he send people to hell? Why does he send people away? Those are good, legitimate questions, because it seems to many that a loving God would not do so. We think (in our own infinite wisdom) that a loving God would just let everyone into heaven. But is that really the loving response? Would a loving God force people into heaven who do not want to be with him forever? C. S. Lewis, one of the best Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, put it this way in his allegory The Great Divorce: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.”

In other words, God will honor the choice we make here. He doesn’t “send” people to hell; we choose heaven or hell. The kind of person we become here is the kind of person we will continue to be in eternity. Perhaps a parable will help a bit. The story is told of a man who asked God what Heaven and Hell are like, so God led the man to two doors. He opened one of the doors and inside, the man saw a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew which smelled delicious and made the man's mouth water. The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. Strapped to each of them was a spoon that was long enough to reach the pot of stew, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. They were starving, even with food right there. “This,” God said, “is Hell.” They went to the next room and opened the door. This room was exactly the same as the first one: a large round table with a large pot of stew. And, just like in the other room, the people all had long-handled spoons. The big difference here is that the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The man turned to God and said, “I don't understand.” “It’s simple,” God said. “You see, they have learned to feed each other, while the greedy think only of themselves.” God doesn’t “send” people to hell. We make the choice as to where we spend eternity: with God or without him.

So, in the end, what can we say about God’s anger, God’s wrath? Three things, I believe, very quickly. First, while it is true that, in the Bible, there are instances of God smiting people or “striking them with lightning,” that’s not the norm (Lamb 34). In reality, God’s love and gracious compassion toward us is more what we experience in God than the “almighty smiter.” The Bible reminds us that it takes God a long time to get angry. This is why it’s important to read any story like the one we read today in its context, to understand the history, and to gain a sense of what the whole Bible, not just an isolated passage, says about God. When we understand the whole picture of God, we can begin to see that there are reasons why God gets angry from time to time. And his anger, unlike so much of ours, is righteous and just. When it comes, it’s the right, needed response.

Second, it’s important for us to remember that the most frequent reason God is angry is because there is a breakdown in our relationship with him. He is jealous for his people. He longs to be with us. And because we were made for relationships, our broken relationships, which are rooted in our sinful nature, make him angry as well. This is one place we can see that God’s anger and God’s love are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are interconnected, twin sides of the same coin, you might say. God’s anger comes out of his love, his compassion. But, in these situations, anger is not where God stops. God is not “always angry” because God would move heaven and earth to bring you back to himself. In fact, he did, when he came in Jesus, when he lived, taught, died and rose again so that we could know him.

And then, finally, one more thing: we can see from the Scriptures, evidenced in Jesus’ action in the Temple and in many other passages in the Bible (some of which you’ll read this week) is that God is angry when injustice takes place. God is angry over abuse and neglect, over poverty and famine and war and human trafficking. God is angry about greed and oppression and so many other injustices that we don’t even notice because such things have become “normal” in our world. God is angry over things that cause his children, his creation, to suffer. So here’s the question: what are you angry about? Or, better stated, are you angry about the things God is angry about? Is your heart lined up with his? Or do we get angry about much lesser things—like the person who has 15 items in the 10 item lane at Kroger? The person who is going the speed limit ahead of you when you’re in a hurry? The power outage or the internet outage or the person who posted on Facebook with a different opinion than yours? What makes you angry (cf. Lamb 45-46)? There’s a great story in the Gospels where Jesus and the disciples are going through Samaritan territory, and it wasn’t a secret that Samaritans and Jews didn’t get along. So when the Samaritans don’t welcome them into their towns, the disciples ask, “Do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” And Jesus, we’re told, rebuked them. We don’t know exactly what he said, but it may have gone something like this: “You’re missing the point. These are people God loves, and even though for now they’re rejecting us, God is compassionate, long-suffering, slow to anger. I want you to become like the Father” (cf. Luke 9:51-56). Today, in this place, in this divided and broken world, Jesus is asking us: do you get angry about the things that matter or about trivial, non-eternal things. Is your heart broken by the things that break the heart of God? Instead of waiting for lightning to strike, or demanding that God smite certain people, let’s ask God to always give us more and more of his heart, that we might become more like him. To that end, let’s pray.