Giving Thanks

Christ the King, Year A                                                                                  November 20, 2011

Isaiah 1:10-20, 2:1-4, Matthew 25:31-46                                                       St. Alban’s, Austin

I don’t spend hours cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I spend weeks.

As soon as the November food magazines hit the stands I scoop them up with a kind of abandon that would horrify me if they were any other kind of magazine. I typically consider magazines to be a waste of money. And I Tivo a bunch of shows on the Food Network, and now there is so much on the web that I spend an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about this single meal. Not the eating. The cooking. The sharing. But it’s not so much a single meal as it is a singular meal.

What’s it going to look like this year, this day that we set aside to set the table with the good stuff, endure relatives we generally avoid, watch football, mess up every inch of kitchen space, gorge ourselves at an hour when we aren’t typically eating, did I mention watch football teams we don’t even care about, go for a walk, nap, and – oh, yes – give thanks to God?

There are the years when it’s all family. Kids home from college. Grandparents come from out of town. New babies and cousins and aunts and uncles, all of us joined by blood or marriage. And then there are the odd years when the table is populated by the stragglers. Sometimes you’re th host. Sometimes you’re the orphan. I’ll never forget the precious friends  who included me the first year after my divorce when the court decreed the children would be with their dad. You find yourself sitting down, at your own table or someone else’s with people who might not even know each other or have all that much in common except for the fact that this year  they didn’t have a family gathering to go to. Sometimes those are the richest Thanksgivings of all.

Today we are all worshiping together at one service so that we can all give thanks to God together, and one way we do that is by pledging our gifts to God. At the Temple on their equivalent of Thanksgiving first century Jews would literally bring the first fruits of their harvest. So instead of a paper card with writing on it you might bring forward a basket of wheat or a bowl of olives, lemons, pomegranates, honey, cheese, wool. Not the leftovers after you’d taken what you needed for the year, but the very first ones picked or produced. John Bennet and I raised our pledge this year and I have to tell you I sort of gasped when I wrote the number on the pledge card. It’s a stretch. But we’re trusting that God will take good care of us as he always has.

And so I sat down to write my sermon and what did I get? Isaiah – God’s mouthpiece – in a tirade against the people of Jerusalem saying how much God hates their sacrifices and is tired of their festivals and their worship. Oh, swell! I hate your sacrifices, folks,  but come right up here and put your pledge cards on the altar. Huh? And it’s my job to find the good news of the gospel in that!

Well, there’s work to do, so let’s get to it. Isaiah was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah

in the 8^th century BCE at just the same time that the northern kingdom of Israel, where the worship of the one Lord had fallen apart, was being devastated by the Assyrian empire.

Isaiah has a huge job to do.

He has to get God’s words across to his people so they don’t lapse into full-blown idolatry and get wiped out like the northern kingdom. So he starts by calling them names – Sodom and Gomorrah – God destroyed those faithless cities back in the book of Genesis. Isaiah confronts the people for their perfunctory worship of God. Oh, they might get to worship once a week, and they might put an offering on the altar, just enough, and they might observe the required festivals, but God could see into their hearts and God knows that at this point, where they are not giving God the first thought the other six days of the week, the only way to get their attention is by giving them what might be considered a rude reality check. You are on the road to no place good.

But then God encourages. Then God promises. Then God reminds them that God has blessed them in the past and will bless them in the future. Then God reminds them that he is the God  of creation and forgiveness and deliverance. All God needs is their hearts.

Not so long ago at a vestry meeting a new vestry person was looking over the church budget. We were talking about service and outreach and this person was flipping through the pages and looked up and asked what percentage of our budget goes toward outreach. I mean, I see numbers for copier expenses and diocesan assessment and utilities and salaries. But where is the number that goes to serve the world off the hill? It looks like we’re spending most of our money on ourselves. I have to tell you it was one of my favorite moments of the year when another vestry member answered, 100% of our budget goes toward outreach.

Jesus said, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.

This is why we are church. This is why we pledge, hopefully enough to make us gasp a little. This is why we worship together, give thanks to God together, because we grow when we come together. We challenge each other in a lot of ways and we empower each other in ways that would never happen if we didn’t gather for worship and listen to difficult scriptures together

and give thanks to God together for our disparate blessings. I mean, talk about a feast made up of the stragglers! We gather as the body of Christ that is St. Alban’s and we are transformed

for the purpose that we get down off this hill and keep God in our consciousness all week long as we serve the least, the lost, and the last in his name and do our part in the transformation of other lives.

In the society of Isaiah’s world and Jesus’ world and Matthew’s world the dispossessed were the widows, the orphans, and the sojourners, people who had no familial systems to define them or support them. They are why we are Christians. They are why it matters that we give to God in gratitude. They are why it matters that we don’t just go through the motions but worship and serve and share with our hearts. They are why we come together and risk being transformed again and again and again.

The kingdom will be present on Thursday in one form or another as we gather for our extraordinary meal. Whether we are with family or at one of those amazing straggler events, our meal is very much a holy eucharist because there is not a moment of a day that is not the Lord’s and there is not a breath we take that is not pure gift. There is not an act of kindness that doesn’t make God glad. There is not a gift we can give that doesn’t make us richer.

Let us pray:

 Gracious and loving God, giver of all that is good and true and beautiful and life-giving. These cards represent our sweat, they represent our lives, they represent our dreams. The pledges which we make on them are but tokens of the awesome gifts that have been given to us and they are pledged in thanksgiving for all we have received, for all we have been inspired to be, for all we are challenged to become, in this place. May they be the first fruits of all we have and not what we have left over, so that we may live out as closely as possible how you give to us.

May we see them as our offering to you, sacred, holy, yet earthy, filled with possibilities. May we hold this image in our hearts and minds so as we watch our offerings each week come to your table, we can see our very selves being part of this offering, it is us on the table, living sacrifices to you. Amen. (1)

(1)   Prayer by the Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, Bishop of the Diocese of Olympia

Isaiah 1:10-20; 2:1-4

10 Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

12 When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13 bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation -- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. 14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

18 Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

2:1 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

2 In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3 Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Sermon: Short Story Long...

Proper 28 A                                                                                                     November 13, 2011

1 Kings 19:1-18                                                                                              St. Alban’s, Austin

I have to tell you that I am a bit frustrated as we navigate the narrative lectionary. These are such incredibly great and interesting stories that I want to just sit down on the altar steps and tell them in their entirety.

I want to tell you everything I know about Elijah. I want to talk about what an amazing person he was, how he appeared, a mysterious man called by God to stand up to the prophets of Baal and to the bad king Ahab and his murderous wife Jezebel, but then I’d need to go back and tell you how the kingdom of Israel got divided in two after King Solomon died without a designated heir and his two sons Rehoboam and Jeroboam went their separate ways and in the south only two tribes maintained worship at Jerusalem at the temple while in the north ten tribes went back to worship at the high places and all the sneaky little idols and foreign gods wrangled their way in. So much for worshiping only Yahweh.

Instead of making a long story short, I’d much rather make a short story long, weave it with all the rich details. Wonder about character and motivation. Imagine what might be going on in the gaps – that’s called midrash, embroidery. Let the different stories intertwine and probably end up confusing you to bits. That’s what I want to do, but I won’t.

We’re going to be reading from the prophets for a number of weeks now, and I wonder how much we know about prophets. What we know as the Old Testament is the whole of the Bible for our Jewish friends. They have a different name for it. They call it Tanakh. It’s a book with three parts. T is for Torah, the law, or the Book of Moses, which is comprised of the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. The second part is called Nevi’im, or the prophets. That’s how important they consider these unusual people. And the last part is called the Ketuvim, the writings, and includes the psalms, proverbs, and other books.

We probably think of prophets as fortune tellers, but that is an over-simplification. Rather they occupy a very particular era of Jewish history and fulfill a specific function. The era of the prophets began, as I said, with the death of Solomon and the division of the promised land into two kingdoms. These kingdoms were doomed from the get-go. They were headed down the very wrongest roads led by mostly very poor leaders. Fearful leaders. Egocentric leaders. But God kept trying to set them straight.

God appointed prophets to be God’s mouthpieces, to get the people’s attention through being outrageous in their dress and their behavior in order to shake the people out of their misdirection and wake up the kings to doing God’s will. All this began in the 10^th century BCE and pretty much ended with the exile in Babylon in the sixth.

Elijah was a prophet of the northern kingdom. He lived during the reign of King Ahab, who died in 850 BCE. Elijah’s job was to bring Israel back to God, but Ahab would hear none of it. Ahab married the daughter of the king of Tyre, Jezebel, and, well, we know what the name Jezebel means. Bad to the core. She brought her gods with her, the Baals, fertility gods, and right away there was a showdown. During a drought there was a competition between the prophets of Baal and Elijah, the prophet of the Lord. Elijah won hands down and the prophets of Baal were slaughtered. Jezebel was not pleased. She put out a hit on Elijah and he ran to the cave to hide from her hit men.

This is where we find Elijah in our reading. Quivering in a cave on the same mountain where Moses received the law. Don’t let that detail escape you.

And don’t let the detail that we are nearing the end of our pledge drive escape you either. This is an important time for our parish. Not because of a budget. We will have a budget. Some years it is fatter than other years. But no matter where it ends up, we will do important ministry, life-giving ministry, life-changing ministry, transforming ministry with whatever we are given by the action of God’s love in your hearts.

This unsettling feeling is God working in us, maybe making us feel just a little off balance because God wants us to step out in faith, to try something that is not altogether comfortable so that we can grow closer to God, so that we can grow in our ministry, so that we can become more confident in claiming and using the gifts God has given us. It’s as if God is giving us the nudge to step out on the high dive board and saying, “Hey, you can do it. You can do it because I am here with you.” I have to tell you that I basically am gutless. I would never, ever dare to step up here to the pulpit thinking I had anything worthwhile to say to you on behalf of who – God? – if I thought I were stepping up here alone.

God is not happy to find Elijah in the cave. Shoot, God just sent down fire from heaven to help Elijah triumph over the prophets of Baal, and Elijah demonstrates his faith by hiding out from Jezebel’s goons? By waiting to die? Hey, Elijah.  Do you remember who’s got your back?

But God is pretty gentle. He’s essentially telling Elijah to get over himself, but he has compassion for Elijah’s fear, and so he tells Elijah to prepare for a theophany. A theophany is an appearance of the Lord. So Elijah sits waiting.  And there is a great wind, and all the leaves get blown of the trees and debris is flying everywhere, but it is not God. And then the earth starts to shake under Elijah’s feet and there is nothing to hang onto and rocks are rolling down the mountain cracking trees, but it is just an earthquake, not God. And then fire, singeing everything, choking the air with smoke, but it is not God. And then there is an intense stillness, a dense silence, a presence and a motionlessness, a centeredness, and that is where God is.

A small still voice.

Have you not heard it? In the moment you felt most alone? In the moment you felt most vulnerable? God’s gentleness, God’s strength, all in one moment. Certainty. You are not alone. It’s not about your power. It is God’s. Of course you are not enough. God is. With God, each and every one of us is more than enough.

What is church about?

I saw a video about a church in which the pastor built a huge parking lot, and his goal was to have that parking lot filled up fifty-two Sundays a year, and to have every seat in church crammed elbow to elbow, and do you know how he did it? He taped a check for a thousand dollars to the bottom of one chair each week, and at the end of worship people turned their chairs upside down to see if they got the thousand bucks. If they did, do you think they came back? And if they didn't? And do you really think they were thinking about God during the service, I mean other than praying that the dough was on the bottom of their chair?

No, what is church about? Maybe getting a door prize? Or is it about making us feel guilty? Gosh, I hope not. Is it about making us feel superior to the people who don’t go to church? I hope not that, too. Is it about helping us to know that our lives have meaning? That we have been given gifts by God that God needs us to use for God’s people? I think that’s it.

That God needs us to get out of our caves, to stop feeling as if we are inadequate because the Jezebels of the world are always going to be going after us’ God wants us to know that we are not our own best line of defense. Nor are we our own best source of power. Whatever it is that we are to do, whatever it is that is our calling, our vocation, our mission, we are not left to our own devices to implement it.

No. As God shows Elijah in the confrontation, the blessing, the commissioning, the embracing at that cave, God is always ahead of us, preparing the way, inviting us into a future we are inadequate to imagine and too insecure to embrace on our own, leading us as if with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night into nothing less than God’s own promised land and God’s own kingdom on earth.

But just as God essentially kicked Elijah’s backside to get him out of that gol-darned cave and back into the world to consecrate kings, God needs us to trust that he’s got our back, that he’s got better ideas for us than we do for ourselves, and that he needs us to step out into the gap and trust that he will take us where he needs us to go. Where we need to go individually and where we need to go as a parish.

It’s not easy, not for me, not for you. But a cave is no place for God’s beloved, God’s appointed.

We’re out on the high wire, but we’re never, ever, out here alone. We have been given gifts. Different gifts. Different quantities of gifts. But they are not to be hidden in caves. They are not to be handled with fear. They are to be shared and celebrated. And we are called to step forth in faith, to participate in the joy of our abundantly creative God and to offer freely and with gratitude from the gifts we have been given what we have to offer to nothing less than the kingdom of God.

Amen.

Elijah

1 Kings 19:1-18

1 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow." 3 Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

4 But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." 6 He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7 The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." 8 He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. 9 At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  10  He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." 

11  He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake;  12  and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.  13  When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  14  He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."  15  Then the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.  16  Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place.  17  Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill.  18  Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."

 

All My Hope on God Is Founded: Sermon for the Feast of All Saints

Feast of All Saints, Year A                                                                             November 6, 2011

1 Kings 5:1-5, 12-13, 8:1-6, 27-30                                                                  St. Alban’s, Austin

I read this week that it was a custom in the ancient Near East that a king would build a temple to his god or gods very soon after his succession. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. What a powerful way of stating in bricks and mortar, in gold leaf and brilliant jewels and pre-cious metals what it is that you value and worship.

You say the name Solomon and opulence comes to mind. Caravans laden with chests of treasure,

harems of beautiful women.  Maybe wisdom, too, you know, the story of the baby with two mothers, but if you read on it soon becomes clear that Solomon was all about power. He was all about status among not only his people but the high muckety mucks of the neighboring kingdoms. And this is exactly where the story of the children of Israel begins to go off the tracks.

My favorite hymn in our hymnal is #665, All My Hope on God is Founded.  I love the tune but even more I love the words and what they say. My favorite is the second verse:

Mortal pride and earthly glory,

sword and crown betray our trust;

though with care and toil we build them,

tower and temple fall to dust.

But God’s power, hour by hour,

is my temple and my tower.

We have so much going on today that I’m going to keep this sermon very short. We’re baptizing little Hudson Sanders and reading the names of beloved saints who have gone before us and listening to another stewardship moment and commissioning fourteen new lay chaplains who have taken the rigorous training for Community of Hope, and it’s very important to get David to choir rehearsal on time.

So I’m going to pose some questions for you to ponder this week: what temple would we build? What does church mean to us? How does St. Alban’s embody what we truly cherish? And why should any parents bring their darling babies here and what difference does it make that they are baptized? Who are the saints, anyway? Actually, I’m looking at a lot of them. Yes, you.

We could spend hours unpacking these questions and still only come up with partial answers.

But I think we could do worse than go back once again and look at those five questions that are our entrance exam to our membership in this body of Christ, which is the body of Christ to the world. Jennifer and Brad will take the test for Hudson. He hasn’t had time to study up – he’s only been here for eight months -- and he can’t read yet, so they will answer for him. Oh, and we will answer for him as well. We all take this test over and over because we need to be reminded exactly what it is that is our temple and our tower.

We’re going to say these words in a moment, and then we’re going to listen to the names of people we love who have given what they had to give to this world and gone on to the next, leaving us their legacy of faith. And we’ll listen to the witness of another of our peers who is willing to get up in front of you probably with knees shaking to risk telling you why this parish family is worthy of the investment of their financial resources.

Pledge cards will arrive in the mail later in the week, and I imaging you will look at that blank space with the dollar sign by it and wonder what you need to be writing in it. It’s daunting every year. We come together as church, specifically as St. Alban’s, because when we pool our resources we can make a bigger difference in the world than any one of us can do alone. My energy is more efficacious because it is joined by your energy. I’m so grateful for that. I would feel so small and useless by myself, but with you, I feel as if what I have to give matters.

I want to share a case in point, something that happened to me yesterday in the midst of all the chaos of our pet blessing. I took a minute to go inside the school to the library to thank the librarian for getting us the Clifford costume and for all the work she has done with our Early Readers’ Initiative. For those of you who don’t know, in hopes that the children would not lose their reading skills over the summer, we bought twelve new books for each of the 115 first graders at Menchaca in May, so they’d have books to read over the summer whether or not their parents could afford to buy them.

One of the second grade teachers was there, so I asked her if this project had had any effect. She said that they expect the children to slip one or two reading levels over the summer, but this year  in her class, EVERY CHILD save one (and her parents switched her from reading Spanish to English over the summer) was reading ON LEVEL at the beginning of school this year.

My favorite hymn says it all for me. All my hope on God is founded. Not some of it. Not most of it. All of it.

And the way I express that hope is in the words that we are about to say together, the promises of our baptismal covenant. I don’t need to say another word. All I’m asking is that as you say these words once again, you will listen deeply to the promises you are making and that in your heart of hearts you are meaning what you say.

Amen.

1 Kings 5:1-5, 12-13; 8:1-6, 27-30 -- Solomon's Temple

1 Kings 5:1-5, 12-13; 8:1-6, 27-30

5:1 Now King Hiram of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon, when he heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father; for Hiram had always been a friend to David. 2 Solomon sent word to Hiram, saying, 3 "You know that my father David could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet. 4 But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary nor misfortune. 5 So I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD said to my father David, 'Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, shall build the house for my name.'"

12 So the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him. There was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and the two of them made a treaty.

13 King Solomon conscripted forced labor out of all Israel; the levy numbered thirty thousand men.

8:1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, before King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.

2 All the people of Israel assembled to King Solomon at the festival in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month. 3 And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests carried the ark. 4 So they brought up the ark of the Lord, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent; the priests and the Levites brought them up. 5 King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.

6 Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim.

27 'But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! 28 Have regard to your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; 29 that your eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you said, "My name shall be there", that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays towards this place. 30 Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling-place; heed and forgive.

Sermon: The Apple of God's Eye

Proper 26 A                                                                                                     October 30, 2011

 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 51:1-10                                                                    St. Alban’s, Austin

David was the apple of God’s eye. Other than Jesus, no one is more pivotal in the gospel narrative than David, but the fact is, he doesn’t show up all that much in the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the one we typically read and which is pretty much standard in all mainline churches these days. David’s story is long and convoluted. I’m going to try to encapsulate it or maybe just hit the high points – and low points – for our focus today. We’re hitting the ground running here.

David was a complicated person, but his reign is considered to be the Camelot of Jewish history, the golden age to which Jews always hoped to return regardless of the fact that it was undoubtedly not as golden as it appears from the distance of three millennia.

David is the first main character in our biblical ancestry whose existence can be historically corroborated. That does not mean that Abraham and Moses and Noah weren’t real people. Just that we don’t have any proof outside the Bible itself. But David did live, and conveniently we can locate him right around the year 1000 BCE. The name David means beloved. More about that later.

After the dark and bloody era of the Judges God relented to the appeals of his people for a king, and the prophet Samuel anointed Saul. But Saul proved not to be up to the task, so God sent Samuel to find another king. He sent him to the home of Jesse, who had eight sons. One by one the strapping big brothers are presented but none of them is God’s chosen. No, God’s chosen is the little boy so irrelevant to any honor that he is out in the field with the sheep while the search for the new king is being held.

If you want to read a summary of David’s story I commend to you the account on Wikipedia. No kidding. David’s life is full of ups and downs, but all in all he is known as a good king, the one whose claim to fame is that he united all the twelve tribes of Israel into one nation, and declared that all worship of God is to take place in Jerusalem. No more high places and pesky idols. He was a warrior – if you know one story about David it is undoubtedly the one about Goliath – and he was a gifted musician and poet, the author of many of the psalms. He was a devoted friend to Jonathan and a faithful worshiper of God. His worst misstep was when he seduced Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, whom he then had killed. The psalm we read this morning is his lament over the great evil he had done. He begs God, “Create in me a clean heart.” That is a good prayer, one we could well pray every day. Create in me a clean heart, God, and I’ll just bet that everything else will fall into place.

I read a tongue-in-cheek blog this week by a clergyperson to his flock in which he spelled out twelve ways to get out of pledging. Don’t go to church in October. November isn’t all that safe either. Move and don’t give the church your address. Tell the rector that you are morally opposed to pledging. That you give to the plate but don’t want anybody to know what you give. (Guess what – people who want to keep their giving secret are not embarrassed that they might be giving too much.) When you put a dollar in the plate

you can fold it creatively to look like more. Tell them you gave electronically and the computer ate your contribution. I’m guessing you could be very creative and come up with more than twelve. But is that really where you want to put your energy? I’m guessing not so much.

Last spring about ten or so of us had the great privilege of going over to Menchaca Elementary School on the day when the first graders got to come to the library to pick out their books. For those of you who are new, we raised money so that every first grader, all 115 of them, got to go to a special Scholastic book fair just for first graders to pick out 12 new books of their very own to read over the summer so that they would not lose their reading skills before second grade. That was a lot of books!

Well, the children were adorable, all excited as they saw the books on the tables. They had excellent manners as they chose books about vampires, (very cuddly looking vampires), sharks, Strawberry Shortcake, Amelia Bedelia, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. All the things that six and seven year olds like. We were glad that they were excited about the books, and they told us who they would be reading to over the summer, their baby brother, their grandfather, the family dog.

But something happened that we hadn’t anticipated. Something that had nothing to do with them getting books. These wise, observant, sensitive children saw something in us. They saw the joy we were experiencing by giving these books away. They saw that we big people were probably having the best time of everyone there, and they wanted in on it. Quite a few of them wrote about this in their thank you letters. You must feel very proud of yourself. I don’t know how you could afford to do this. When I grow up I want to give lots of stuff away like you do.

They caught onto the fact that the real joy is for the giver, not the receiver, and that here were a bunch of old people who didn’t know them and they were having fun giving books to little children whose names they didn’t know. That wasn’t the lesson we set out to teach them. We wanted them to have books and to feel beloved, and I think they did, but they also caught onto the fact that the belover  is every bit as blessed as the beloved.

David was the apple of God’s eye. He danced before the Ark of the Covenant, can’t you just see him? Lifting the scrolls of the Torah overhead and carried away. So filled with the belovedness of God that it overflowed and there was nothing to do but dance it? And belovedness overflows into belovingness as he loves his friend Jonathan and his wife Bathsheba and his sons Absolom and Solomon and so many people whose names we do not know. He loves God so much he wants to build him a permanent home, a temple, but God says, slow down, David, take your time, tend to the business at hand, and David does.

Create in me a clean heart, David prays. What would it feel like to have a clean heart? I imagine it would feel like all the cheapness, pettiness, meanness, stubbornness, laziness, and greediness

were scrubbed out of me. If I could lay out on the table every adjective that could truthfully be said about me it would be a very mixed bag. What if they were all there, words like those old refrigerator poetry magnets, and I could take away all the ones I don’t like and get rid of them forever and keep all the ones I do? I think that’s what it would feel like to have a clean heart. To be the person that God knows I can be because that is the person I am in God’s eyes.

I learned this week what it means to be the apple of someone’s eye. I had to go back to when I was very small to retrieve the memory. I was the apple of my Nonnie’s eye. She was my dad’s mother, the Margaret for whom I was named. She loved me like nobody’s business. I spent the night with her a lot, and whenever I came over she always had fresh-squeezed orange juice and 7-Up and amazing cole slaw. Isn’t it funny what you remember? And she read me Alice in Wonderland. And she had a room full of crafts. We’d spend the whole weekend gluing sequins and rhinestones and pearls onto every random piece of plastic that wasn’t already covered with sequins and rhinestones and pearls.

Nonnie loved me like nobody’s business and she looked at me like nobody else did. She would hold me close and look into my face as if it were the most beautiful face she had ever seen and when she did, and I looked back into her eyes, there I was, reflected as clear as day in the dark pupil of her eye. In the apple of her eye.

God loved David like that. And the thing is that God loves you like that. God knows each and every one of those adjectives that you’d like to sweep off the table. God knows when you’ve let people down and let God down and let yourself down, but God always, every hour of every day holds you close, looks at you so closely and so intently that you can’t help seeing yourself reflected in God’s eye.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and open that heart to do your will, to share with the world from the blessings you have given me because that is the best way I can love you back.

Amen.