Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Dear heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for loving us in spite of everything that we are and that we have done. Open our ears and our hearts to hear your words as you speak directly to us through the Bible of your great plans for us. Help us, Lord, as we attempt to fulfill your will in our lives. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
The scripture today is from two Samuel 7816 and then Paul's comments on it in Romans 321 26.
Now then, tell my servant David. This is what the Lord Almighty says.
I took you from the pasture from tending the flock and appointed you ruler over all my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like all the names of the greatest men on earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel, and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people. Israel, I will also give you rest from all your enemies.
The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you when your days are over and you rest with your ancestors. I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away from him as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.
And then Paul in Romans.
But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe there is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness. At the present time, so as to be just and the ones who justify those who have faith in Jesus. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: So many of you may be familiar with the story that goes back to the year 2005. An eleven year old girl from Australia named Jessica Watson had a dream. She was living on a houseboat at the time with her parents and her three siblings. She, her brother and her two sisters were getting homeschooled by her parents living on that boat. And for a time each night, their mother would read to them as a bedtime story, a section from the book entitled lion a Journey of the human spirit. It told the story of Jesse Martin, an australian sailor who, at the age of 18, became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe on a sailboat. And he took the trip alone, nonstop and unassisted. An idea started to form in Jessica's mind, and the next year, at age twelve, she told her parents, I am going to circumnavigate the globe alone and unassisted. And not only that, I'm going to do it at an even younger age than Jesse Martin did it and I'll beat his world record.
Her parents probably said, yeah, yeah, that's great. You go and do that, honey. And assumed nothing more would come of it or little more would come of it or she'd start pursuing this thing and quickly get thrown off track. But Jessica pursued this dream relentlessly. She tried to get sponsors, and initially she could only get small local organizations. But eventually she got some larger companies to sign on. She took classes in boating, navigation, first aid, and how to repair equipment. She logged 10,000 nautical miles of sailing and she set a date for her journey. And if she completed this particular journey, which would take about 200 days or more, she would complete it by this particular start date she was setting before she turned 17.
So there were critical voices at the time and the media declaring her far too young to undertake such a trip. Some accused her parents of irresponsibility and allowing her to do this. But Jessica was determined and she found enough support in her family and supporters and sponsors and volunteers. One man heard about her desire to do this and he gave her a boat, this boat, which she had painted pink. Both, she said, because it was easily visible up on the water and she wanted to be visible. But also, she said, it symbolized to her girl power.
In October of 2009, she set out from Sydney harbor. Well, during that journey, Jessica had to endure the isolation and loneliness of eight months completely alone. She wasn't able to even stop by a port if she wanted to beat the world record. The toilet, the wind generator, the battery monitor, they all broke down and Jessica alone had to fix them. She encountered storms where the swells rose to 70ft and she suffered multiple knockdowns. That's when a wave hits the boat, the mast hits the water, and in some cases, it turns the boat completely over. This happened to Jessica multiple times, but eventually she reached land. And here's a picture of all the boats that were waiting to greet her people on those boats as she came into Sydney harbor. And then when she reached land, her family embraced her and thousands of fans were there to greet her with cheers. And millions around the world were watching this on television or had followed her blog post and they shared in the celebration. Now, you may know the sailing authority said that she didn't actually cover sufficient distance to get the world record. Kind of a bummer, but she still received all kinds of awards and accolades. The prime minister of Australia celebrated her and met her there. Well, if you want to read her story, you can do it in a memoir she wrote entitled True spirit. And you can also see that memoir put into film on Netflix in that movie, true spirit.
And it's an inspiring story, isn't it? It's the kind of story that's so popular in America today. And I'm drawn to a lone adventurer heads out into the wilderness alone, unassisted, to face whatever storms might come and to do it with their own will and capabilities. There's a wildly successful television show you may have watched called alone. I haven't watched it yet, but I saw it advertised in the gym the other day while I was working out. And I said, oh, yeah, of course. This show is about a competition where people try to survive alone in the wilderness, often northern areas of Canada, where it gets extremely cold. And the competition is see who can survive the longest alone and unassisted. The only people that these participants in the competition will see is a medical person to check on them periodically. Otherwise, it's survival alone and unassisted. The winner in the 7th season, it's now gone to eleven seasons, which shows you its popularity. The winner survived more than 100 days alone in the great slave Lake region of the Northwest Territories in Canada. Now, what makes these survival stories so popular? What draws us to them? What draws me to them? Well, one reason I suspect is we live in a that highly prizes individualism. We celebrate individual resilience, individual dreams, individual passion. We celebrate and love the sight and story of one person like Jessica Watson, alone on the water, surviving making it through enormous challenges. It can give us hope, you know, that when we feel alone, that we feel without resources, without strength, we can see these other stories of individuals who have prevailed, and it can allow us to say, maybe I can, too.
But depending on how these stories are told, there can be a great downside to stories of individual achievement. They can risk painting an entire portrait of the world where each one of us is at our core, like Jessica alone on the open waters, or like a contestant in the television show, alone, camping in the wilderness, unassisted. Isolated.
Sociologists call such a portrait of the world social atomization. It's the notion that the individual, the smallest unit in a larger social structure, is the core of the thing. It imagines a society full of self interested, self sufficient individuals. Such a perspective can fail to recognize the powerful bonds that link individuals together as families, friendship networks, neighborhoods, communities, churches, ecological bio regions, cities, states, nations, even a global community with whom we are connected, focusing the camera in on one lone individual on their journey, without panning out as to how that individual is so integrally connected to larger social units in a larger bioregion of which they're a part that can present, at its worst, a flat out false picture of yours and my reality.
I know a number of you are fans of Wendell Berry, and you've surely heard that great quote from his I believe he wrote that the Community, the Community in the Fullest Sense, a place and all its creatures, that is the smallest unit of health. And to speak, the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms. An isolated individual, Wendell Berry writes, is a contradiction in terms.
Some of you are physicists or chemists, and you might well make the argument to us this way. You might well say, well, atoms are fascinating. In looking at an individual atom and its properties is really interesting. But to just see the Atom you miss so much. Look at chemical bonding. Look at how atoms are connected to one another, their Relationship to the Environment surrounding them. Then. Then you will understand matter. This is not to say the individual unit or the atom is not important, but it's not the only thing. A crucial element in understanding the world and ourselves. And God's work in the world is recognizing the ties that bind.
And so for this sermon series, we're endeavoring to do just that, to look at the ties that bind. We've been looking at times in scripture where the camera hones in not just on an individual achievement, but on the bonds of covenant that are formed between God and people, and that God uses to connect people with one another and with the broader earth God has made, so often, our scriptures pan out and look not just at individual adventurers, but how they are connected to others in ties that bind.
We've looked at Noah, and you remember Noah's bold ocean adventure. He survived. He overcame the odds. But then when he finally steps out onto dry land, what's the point? Portrait we get. Is it the portrait of Noah as the individual who has overcome the odds? No. God says to Noah, I am making a covenant with you. I bind myself to you and to your family and all creation. In this way, I promise never to flood the earth again. And I give you a sign of this covenant, of this bond. I have made the sign of the rainbow. And this covenant is not just with you, Noah. It's with your family, your whole family, and with every living creature. That's what it says in scripture. Every living creature. For you are bound with them. You were bound with them. Even out there in the open water, you were bound with them in that ark together. You weren't on a solo voyage. It was a journey of connection, rich connection with other people and all creatures. And you are now to honor the lifeblood of every living creature. God says to the people, for your lifeblood and theirs is bound together.
Now, are those kind of bonds confining, restrictive? Perhaps there's a kind of confinement we observe in being held to a commandment, like the call to Noah and all humans to honor the lifeblood of all creatures. But that bind also frees humans and all the earth to flourish, to flourish in relationship, in rich connection with God and one another. The ties that bind, given to us by God in covenant, they free us to flourish in relationship.
I've entitled this sermon series, freedom in a Bind, for I believe that social atomization, at its most extreme, can leave us as individuals experiencing life in a kind of cage, cut off from our neighbors, cut off from God, alone in the wilderness. Sociologists note that such a state can foster anxiety and depression. You've probably heard how the surgeon general of the United States has compared the epidemic of loneliness to the health hazard of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And we also know it can make people prone to us, them thinking. It can make us grab onto one group if we think we have a common enemy. It can make us prone to authoritarianism if we are. Since life is too isolated, there is power in knowing connection. And what is the alternative to social atomization?
Knowing the freedom and glory of life and abides.
In today's passage from two Samuel, we read of yet another individual in scripture like Noah, who had just completed a series of harrowing adventures. And you notice how David often when you've been to Sunday school or read scripture stories or heard these stories told, he's often presented as a lone hero. It was David alone in the wilderness as a shepherd boy who took on bears and lions and prevailed. It was David alone, with nothing but a shepherd's sling that allowed him to prevail over the giant of the philistines, Goliath. It was David alone who escaped Saul's efforts to kill him. And it was David alone who eventually rose to the throne.
But right at that moment, when David has reached the pinnacle of his ascent, we get this passage that Darlene read. It's a portrait of life for David in a bind.
God doesn't say, well done. Look what you've accomplished. Alone and unassisted David. No, God says through the prophet Nathan, David, this is how you are bound. I look, I took you from the pasture to be prince over my people, Israel. Wherever you went, I was with you. I was with you. I'm the reason you overcame your enemies. And I have plans for my people. Not just for you, for my people. In fact, I am making your house one to be shepherds of this people, to care for them, because I want to plant this people. It's part, as I read it, of that long desire of God to bless and work within a particular people that all nations and peoples, especially those even that Israel looked at as enemies, might be blessed and might know the compassion, mercy, and justice of God. I appoint you, God says, and your descendants to be their shepherds, and I will not remove my steadfast love from you.
That statement in this very passage, this Bible scholar, Walter Brueggemann, calls the very heart and center not only of one and two Samuel, but in some ways a core text in all of the hebrew scripture, marking a powerful turn up to this point, up to this passage from two Samuel. So much as life is framed as an if then arrangement, where God says, if you obey, then you will get blessings. If you follow the commandments, then good things will come. And then we come to today's text, and suddenly human obedience seems to be removed from the picture, and it is all about God. Human obedience comes out of God's work. In this people, of God's call and claim on people's life. There are ethical injunctions to be sure, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. But it's based on this bind that God makes with God's people, by God's initiative, and that is everlasting. God calls this house that he's establishing with David and the promise of steadfast love everlasting, unbroken.
All human achievement, not just an individual achievement, but all human achievement in that text is downplayed. The greatness of a people, a according to Second Samuel, lies not in their achievements, but in God's steadfast commitment and accompaniment and work in them.
You see the kind of portrait scripture's painting here. Yes, there's an individual in the painting, David. I saw a whole lot of art on Jill Lucy's and my recent trip to France, saw some incredible sculptures of powerful people so often portrayed as individuals. You might even have seen the sculpture of David alone by Michelangelo. But this individual that we see portrayed in scripture is inextricably linked to God, linked to a people. And through that people, they are linked as well to God's glorious plans and purposes for the world. The former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, observed this. The biblical ideal, he wrote, is not so much to deny the self as to decenter the self. The truth that scripture lifts up time and again is that the self is an integral member of a community in which the only indispensable one is God.
With this covenant God makes with the house of David, we see it fulfilled in a marvelous new way in the New Testament. In the Gospels, we read of how a child was born, a son of David, and his birth was proclaimed as good news for all people. We read of how that child would grow to become a teacher of God's people. He would heal the sick, feed the hungry, proclaim the reign of God had come near. God's love was so close they could taste it, see it at work in him. We read of how he challenged the religious and political authorities of his time with prophetic fire when they neglected the work of justice and compassion. And then we read of how the Son of David endured death by crucifixion in faithfully answering God's call in his life to obedience and to self sacrifice.
We then read of how God raised this Jesus from the dead and how the community of the disciples he brought together the church receives the gift of the Holy Spirit and is bound together in Christ's mission to the world.
The New Testament tells the story of a new son of David, in which God's covenant with God's people is fulfilled in a new way. And the book of Romans describes that new covenant like this, even though all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, even though God's people were not able to be righteous, weren't able to make it on their own and live the kind of faithful, loving and life in rich relationship with God to which we are called. God did what human beings could not by being bound with Christ through faith. A relationship with God and with one another and with all the earth. A relationship that had been broken by sin is restored not by our individual striving or achievement. It's accomplished by God in Christ and given to us as a gift of grace. And we read on in Romans to read of how it transforms us. It makes us vessels of God's love and blessing and work in the world. We're bound. We're bound by the work of Christ to God, to one another as the church and to this earth God loves as we go out to engage with it as ambassadors of our savior.
Friends, if you are feeling the weight of life on your own, of life alone and unassisted is just too much to bear. Remember how you are bound if you feel alone on the ocean, and like the challenge of living faithfully, purposely, justly, compassionately, righteously, on your own is simply too much.
Remember who you are. You're not an atomized self alone in the wilderness. You've been given the freedom, the freedom of life in a bind. You're bound to God, to God's people, to God's glorious purposes for the world, that all life might flourish. You're part of this wonderful process that we read about in colossians, where God is reconciling all things, all things to God in Christ, life in a bind, life connected. That's the freedom to flourish.
And I have a secret to tell you, and you might already be aware of it if you've read the book or seen the movie. True spirit brings this out. Jessica Watson discovered this connection out on the open water in the midst of a storm, in a TEd talk that she later gave. She went on to become a public speaker. In this TED talk where she'd talk about her journey, she recalled one particular time where she wondered if she was going to make it. It was a particular moment later in the trip, during one of those knockdowns when the boat had been turned completely over. This had happened multiple times, and she figured, at this point, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And she thought in that moment, what might make me hang on. And she told the audience it wasn't just a desire to survive. It wasn't just a desire to get a hot shower, though she really wanted one right then. It wasn't this pull to just endure. She thought of her family. She thought of her family and what it would mean for them if she didn't make it. She thought of all the people who were following her blog post as she'd write about this journey each day. She thought of eyes around the world, and she thought of those volunteers who had given so much of their time and energy for her dream. And she realized it wasn't just her thing, it was a communal effort. It was a global thing. She celebrated those connections and she told the audience, those links, those bonds out on the open water, were what carried her through.
What a portrait she paints of connection, moment of reckoning, and realizes it is those ties that bind, that matter most. Friends, when you are out on those open waters, as you will find yourself or feel some days, remember the truth of the gospel. You've been given ties that bind, that will remain by the grace of God, unbroken. You've been reconciled to God in Christ, made one with your creator. By faith, you've been made part of a people, a body of believers by God's love partner poured out for you in Christ. And as part of that church, as a part of that broader family, we have a glorious purpose. We get to be vessels of God's blessing and good news, justice and love to every corner of the earth. Go in peace. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
