by CCW | 14 July 2013 20:00
The first lesson[1] from The Second Book of Samuel (2 Sam. 7. 1-end) is theologically rich and suggestive. Key to the understanding of it are the various sense of the word “house,” various senses, ultimately, about the meaning of God being with us.
David has observed to Nathan the prophet that “I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.” That image of God tenting among his people in the various journeys and conflicts belonging to conquest and settlement is an intriguing concept. It reaches, we might say, its fullest expression and meaning in the great prologue to John’s Gospel read at Christmas. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” is central to the Christian understanding of the Incarnation. Literally, it means tented among us, thereby picking up on a whole host of Old Testament images about God’s presence with his people and challenging our assumptions about temples and churches. In a way, they are nothing more than the tents of God’s being with us.
David is suggesting to Nathan that there is something wrong about the ark of God – the sign of God’s presence through the tablets of the Law conveyed in the ark or casket – being in a tent rather than a house. He is pointing to the idea of a temple for the ark, a temple to honour God; house as temple. God’s response to Nathan is to identify David desire, “would you build me a house to dwell in (house meaning temple)?” He points out that “I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling.” Even more, God points out that he has never requested, commanded or suggested the idea that “a house of cedar” should be built for him.
Underlying the entire dialogue is the dynamic of the distance between God and man and the dangers that lurk in human ambition. Who after all is in control? God or man? Are our temples, our churches, the places where we attempt to contain and control God or are they the places that belong to our worship and acknowledgement of the truth and the power of God which is, by definition, beyond the finite and beyond us?
The lesson continues with God’s promise to David that “the Lord will make you a house,” house meaning an hereditary kingdom through David’s offspring or family. It will be Solomon, David’s son, who will build the temple in Jerusalem, not David, whom we will discover has blood on his hands on account of his sin in the later story of his adultery with Bathsheba and have conspired in the murder of Uriah. David cannot build the temple.
And yet in a way the deeper point is that no man can build God’s house. “Except the Lord build the house,/their labour is but lost that build it,” as the psalmist observes (Psalm 127). And this is the point which David has finally grasped. “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house” – house as family or kingdom – “that thou hast brought me thus far?” He recalls God’s providential guidance and presence; he is recalled to the truth of God who cannot be contained by human effort and endeavor. No, the house as people exists for the praise of God and so too, do our churches. They are buildings that exist for that purpose and that purpose alone.
When we forget this we run the risk of the error cum heresy of Simon Magus in The Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8. 4-17), though curiously the lesson[2] stops two verses short of the deeper point. Simon Magus is amazed at the power of God at work through disciples like Philip, which is all well and good, I suppose. But in the next verse, Simon, seeing the power of the Holy Spirit conveyed through “the laying on of hands,” offers money to receive and distribute the same power (vs .18), as if we could purchase God’s favour and power. “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit” (vs. 19). His action gives rise to what will be called Simony, the attempt to purchase ecclesiastical power and authority, to buy God’s grace, as it were, as if the apostolic ministry of the Church were a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. Jesus, too, comments on this misguided and erroneous tendency – one that is still with us. He casts out the money-changers from the temple of God – the buying and selling of the instruments of sacrifice turns the temple into “a den of thieves,” he says. Strong language, indeed, and one which goes to the greater issue of the misuse of God’s truth and power, a misuse that denies God.
Such things speak directly to our Anglican confusions, particularly about our churches. Viewed as burdensome facilities, the policy of the institutional church has been to downsize, destroy and dismantle the churches in our land, ignoring their purpose and the larger sensibility about the houses of God which are also about the people and the community and about our Christian witness to the God who “has tented among us.” Our churches are the visible witness of something which the Church and the culture has forgotten – God. The problem runs from the highest eschelons of power right down into the smallest parish and littlest congregation. Do we believe in God or not? There is too much hand-wringing about the problems of maintaining the buildings and not nearly enough commitment to what they stand for. If they are not honoured and respected and used for what they were built for, then they deserve to disappear, and they will. The absence of God in our hearts and minds is the real problem.
We have forgotten what David learned, namely the truth of the God who is with us and who cares for us, whose steadfast love is a property of his very being. Our churches and our worship are about taking hold of that idea.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity VII, Evening Prayer
All Saints’, Leminster
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2013/07/14/sermon-for-the-seventh-sunday-after-trinity-evening-prayer/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.