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Once, long ago in college, I went through the necessary ritual of dating. On Valentine’s Day my junior year, I received a gift from a young man I had been seeing for several months. He sent me a singing telegram of the song “You Light Up My Life.” I think he meant it to be “our song,” because a month earlier at Christmas, he gave me a spinning musical unicorn plinking out the very same “You Light Up My Life” on a metal cylinder. He was clearly very excited about the Christmas gift, he thought it expressed our relationship perfectly: a brass, horned equine, revolving on itself to strands of Debbie Boone. I accepted my Christmas gift with a bewildered smile, not knowing what to say. The poor boy never realized I absolutely hate the song “You Light Up My Life.”
So, that February 14th, I stood awkwardly in my dorm room – no escape, no choice but to listen. My eyes wandered, looking anywhere but at the train wreck belting out that insipid song for the entire campus to hear. I prayed for the ground to swallow me whole. My roommate held in her laughter so tightly, it eked out as tears streaming down her face. The realization set in that despite months of dating, my boyfriend didn’t really know me at all. He cared for a version of me fashioned out of his own preferences, a girlfriend he wanted to exist but really didn’t. “You Light Up My Life” was meant for another girl, not me.
David’s gift to God, a temple made of cedar, went over about as well as my singing telegram did. Similarly, David makes the mistake of projecting his own preferences and his own self-worth on God. David, Lion of Judah, Unifier of the North and South Kingdoms, Victor over the Philistines, Savior of the Ark of the Covenant, King of all Israel, lives in a brand new, very expensive, very impressive palace. It seemed only right to David that God should live in something at least as grand as he.
And therein lies the problem. This wasn’t the God he worshiped. God is not contained in a building. Golden pillars and gargantuan cedar walls perched on a hill for everyone to see, for everyone to stand in awe of, does not reflect the majesty of God. God goes where God will. God’s grandness needs no adornment, no flying buttresses, no crystal chalices. It would seem, after all these years of dedication and faithfulness, David doesn’t know God as well as he thought.
God clearly does not like the temple, and unlike me, God let’s David know how he feels. But – he doesn’t give an outright “no.” This is important, I think, because it shows the nature of a God willing to work with us, willing to accept our limitations, willing to take what we offer with our best intentions and make it more. This is a God with us, who knows us, and affirms us, even if we are sometimes off the mark.
My husband is an improviser here in Richmond. If you’ve ever seen “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” then you’ve got a good idea of what improvisation is. It’s actors acting out a story, with no script and no direction, making it up in the moment as they go along. It looks easy, but in reality it takes years of practice, and just like any discipline, there are rules.
The first rule of improv is known as “Yes…And.” It goes like this: an actor says to another actor “Gee, it’s hot in here.” The second actor then says, “Yes, it’s hot in here, and we’ve got to hurry before the volcano explodes.” The first actor then says, “Yes the volcano is about to explode, and I’ll get the marshmallows.” You see how that works? The story, as you create it, depends upon each actor accepting what the other one says, then adding to it. If an actor says “no, it’s not hot in here,” the story ends. If an actor just says “yes, but I was hoping for rain” and then the premise is changed and the story ends. If an actor only says “yes” and nothing more, the story ends. For the story to go on both actors have accept what each other offers and then give something of their own, back and forth, building it as they go.
God is a master improviser. David offers a temple and even though God’s not sure it’s a good idea, God says yes…and David’s descendants will build it…and David’s kingdom will last forever. David doesn’t get to build the temple. His descendants will continue this story without him. David can prepare them, but he’ll never, in his lifetime, be able to look out his window at a temple and say, “Look! There’s God.” He’ll have to remember the mysterious, uninhibited God that called him in the middle of a sheep’s pasture and followed him around the wilderness. David won’t get to show-off the temple of his all-powerful God to all the other nations whose temples and gods are so much smaller. David’s son, Solomon, gets that honor.
As God predicted, Solomon’s temple shifts the Israelites’ focus from worship of the God With Us wherever we may be, to temple-worship of a God in a box in Jerusalem. Destruction of the temple centuries later throws them into a theological conundrum.
The other prediction, the one that David’s lineage would produce an everlasting kingdom also came to pass, but that promise isn’t fulfilled on as grand a scale as the temple. It doesn’t come to pass in the holy of holies or in a royal mansion or on the battlefield. It happened in a small room in the inconsequential town of Nazareth, where a young girl is visited by and angel bearing a gift from God. The question is whether she’ll say yes…and.
I wonder how long Mary took to consider this gift Gabriel offered her. I wonder if other favored young women were offered the same gift, but said “no” because they didn’t want this particular story played out in their own lives, for obvious reasons.
She was unmarried. She hadn’t been with a man. How would she tell her parents? What would she tell Joseph? Would they think she was crazy? Would her small town cast her out? Or would they follow the law and stone her to death?
The entirety of God’s Kingdom rested upon the courageous yes…and of a young teenaged girl – a girl with no name, no talent, and no power. Gabriel, God, and the rest of creation held their breaths waiting for her response.
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
After years of being with Mary, God knew exactly what kind of woman she was. The promise of the Messiah was a perfect gift for a young woman willing to improvise with a master improviser. God’s response to David stretched centuries from “yes” to the temple all the way to “and” by dwelling within a teenage girl, trusting she will nurture, protect, then miraculously bear God to the world.
Improvising with God is a dangerous game. Mary put herself in a desperate position. When we say yes…and to God, there are consequences and pain attached. But it’s the only way to move our story forward.
Every day, in little ways, we place God in a box, peering out of our lives making sure He’s where He’s suppose to be – in a temple, on a pedestal, captive and on display. We show off our majestic God, daring anyone who isn’t worthy to cross the threshold, desperate for some evidence of God’s power championing our cause. We want “Emmanuel” to mean “God with only us.” End of story.
I tell you, my friends, the story is not over. God is with all of us, calling each and every one to the stage to play, to create a world together that is not yet known. Bring what you have, no matter how imperfect or inconsequential – God is a master improviser, weaving all of our gifts and talents into a giant tapestry that tells the story of our world. Say yes to where you are right now, no matter how small of a box in which you find yourself, and participate in the life around you. Include the poor, the powerless, the sick, the unwanted, for God’s invitation is not trapped in a temple. God invites everyone to play.
But most of all, allow yourselves to be pregnant with promise. It doesn’t matter if you thought you were barren or you’ve never tried before. Nothing is impossible with God. That secret that you keep deep inside of you, that voice, that thing you know you are meant to do: let it grow. Don’t be afraid of what others will say or do. Nurture it and bring it forth. God is waiting for you to say “yes…and,” to offer your part of this enormous the story. Creation is holding its breath.
What are you waiting for?
Sermon preached at the Hermitage, December 21, 2014. Scripture: II Samuel 7:1-16 & Luke 1:26-28
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