Readings: 2 Samuel 6:1-2, 12-19, Secrets of Heaven 10416 (see below)
See also on Youtube: youtu.be/PK5TJzklh7U
Not long after I decided to go with the reading for today, I began to regret it. As I read over 2 Samuel, going back and forth over the text to see what happened before and after, I started to panic a little, thinking: “I can’t draw anything good from this!” And why? Because it is too messy. There are no simple heroes or villains. It is a story of war, and no one comes out well. We may remember David, a mere boy who vanquished the giant Goliath. After that, he spent years as a loyal servant in King Saul’s court. Even as Saul’s paranoia eventually forces David to become a fugitive, he maintains his integrity in the face of Saul’s cruelty. And yet, as David gathers support and strategizes, even as Saul eventually dies at the hands of the Philistines and David mourns him with sincerity, the narrative is filled with wartime actions that seem almost casual in the biblical account but that feel deeply wrong in the larger scheme. And, as much as David is lifted up as a seminal leader, alongside his good qualities we also know that he was deeply flawed.

And in a flash I feel a distinct resonance with our own times: full of messiness and sadness and loss and injustice, full of a necessary reframing of things we thought we knew, full of a necessary reckoning with things covered over, full of dealing with things we never thought we’d have to deal with. From pandemics and insurrections to climate change and racial injustice, there is a lot to feel uncomfortable and uncertain about. Processing it all feels hard and messy and sad, as we all just try to figure out how to show up in way that is accountable and useful. I’m sure we’d prefer easier stories, easier history, an easier sacred text, but that is not what we have in front of us.

What I take from this story, though, is the recognition that God remains in all of it, not as sanction but as grace, and a reminder to pair reflection and challenge with celebration and joy. Because, in the face of all that is happening in the world,  I know that I sometimes it can feel like celebration is not allowed, that somehow joy itself in the face of injustice and pain is a betrayal. How can we be happy when so many are suffering, so much is going wrong in our world?

And certainly, there are ways that the pursuit of happiness, of momentary and external joy, can be a distraction, an avoidance, a resistance, an indulgence, that prevents us from dealing with what needs to be dealt with. We certainly need to be aware when we are doing this. But, celebration and joy around the presence of God with us is an indispensable way to connect *to* God, to feel within our bones that our God is a good God, to recognize that our God is with us, in every challenge. It is a kind of celebration that cannot be relinquished, for the sake of our own well-being.

We can see this in the picture of David dancing as the ark is taken to Jerusalem, bookended by war and upheaval on one side and David’s upcoming transgressions on the other.  It is not so much that David as a character has a consciousness of this tension; rather, the narrative itself provides us with the juxtaposition. Within so much loss and violence and turmoil, still God reaches out in order to be among humankind, to be at the very center of our lives, as the ark with God’s instructions for living would be in the center of Jerusalem. And so David dances, as do the people, and we are invited to join in.

This dancing, this expression of joy, does not erase the urgency and the gravity of the wrongs we will need to right, the catastrophes we will need to manage, the apologies we will need to make, the healing we will need to do. The dancing, the expression of joy, puts us in the space where we might be renewed, where our selfhood is forgotten, even if just for a moment, where God’s love might freely flow into our soul, our mind, our heart, so that we have the fortitude and the resilience to step into the challenges of our life and our world.

For there certainly are other ways to approach our challenges. We look at Michal, Saul’s daughter, we see her despising David as he danced, and we see a resonance with that part of us that despises freedom and joy in ourselves and in others. She admonishes David sarcastically as he returns home:

“How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!” (2 Samuel 6:20)

Her story is complicated too. As daughter of the king, she was used to privilege. And yet as a women in ancient times, she did not have access to any measure of self-determination either. She was initially promised in marriage to David by her father, Saul, when David was favored in court. Years later, after Saul had died, David called that promise due and dragged Michal away from her current husband. The biblical account tells us her husband followed behind her for miles, weeping, as David’s soldiers led her away. Of course she was salty and resentful, at minimum. Her life had been determined by powerful men who cared nothing for her own wishes. And even her own feelings ultimately do not get to be hers, as this personal episode is co-opted by the narrative to demonstrate the true end of the reign of Saul and his line.

There are ways that we have all been wronged and challenged, by particular people, by systems, by what seems like fate. Anger, resentment, and sadness are reasonable and expected reactions to this reality, especially in situations where we have no power to make things better, to right the wrongs, to change our circumstances. 

But the ways we process that anger, resentment and sadness are key. We can see in Michel what happens when life make us hard and cynical. When we see the eruption of joy in others and all we can think of is what we have lost, what has gone wrong. The biblical narrative implies that for this stance, Michal would remain childless all her life. In the natural sense, this seems an overly harsh sentence for an understandable reaction to being treated like chattel. But in the spiritual sense, we can see that nothing can be born from that type of hardness, there can be no offspring of growth and transformation from a mindset that centers our pain, instead of processing our pain, that twists the existence of hardship into an ongoing support for a ego-centered worldview. And that is a very different thing from recognizing an accountability for our own actions even as we do not excuse what has happened to us, even as we work for justice and change.

And all of this is so nuanced and difficult to sort out in our real lives. This text doesn’t tell us “don’t worry be happy.” This text doesn’t tell us to just forget about our challenges and dance. This text isn’t saying we shouldn’t feel the fullness of the injustice of the transgressions we encounter, learn about, or experience. Perhaps it is just too much to see *David* dancing, knowing that he was the one who took Michel away from her life. But is it possible to see the dancing itself as holy and good apart from him?

What instead, would it have been like if Michal could have danced? She was alone in that window looking down; what if there had been a community to dance with her, to help her remember her connection to her God and her worthiness and potential. We can have compassion for the way her perspective turned, and why, while also hoping and wishing that she might have had access to a community and a practice that renewed her, that kept her whole in spirit. Purely happy endings are the stuff of fairy tales, but the dance, connected to the ground and our heartbeat; it bridges what is and what could be in a real and primal way.

The establishment of the ark in Jerusalem is so very important to the Jewish tradition and by extension, to ours. It signals the centrality of God in our lives, about how God pitched a tent right in the middle of all our messiness, and how we might respond by building the temple of our reverential selfhood around it. What steadfastness, what an unreasonable faith God has in us! And for this gift, for this grace, we dance. Amen.


Readings:

2 Samuel 6:1-2. 12-19

1 David again brought together all the able young men of Israel—thirty thousand. 2 He and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark.

12 Now King David was told, “The LORD has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. 13 When those who were carrying the ark of the LORD had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. 14 Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the LORD with all his might, 15 while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets. 16 As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart. 17 They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the LORD. 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty. 19 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes. 

Secrets of Heaven #10416

This is clear from the meaning of 'playing' as the desire of a person's interiors to celebrate, for play is the outcome of that desire, being a bodily activity brought about by gladness of mind; and all desire for celebration and all gladness of mind come from the delights belonging to the loves that govern a person. The reason why agreement as well is meant is that every desire to celebrate has agreement residing inwardly within it; for if any disagreement or disapproval enters in, that desire perishes. The desire to celebrate resides inwardly in a person's feeling of freedom, and all feeling of freedom comes as a result of love, when nothing exists to frustrate it.

Readings: Mark 6:1-13, Secrets of Heaven #4677:8-9 (see below)
See also on Youtube: youtu.be/ucNEkdH5y0M
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

So, I feel a little crotchety standing up here and saying this but its true: I don’t like to travel.  Now, I totally like being in new and different places, that’s great.  What I don’t like is the traveling to and from new places, especially air travel.  I’m not afraid to fly, but rather, I do get anxious about all the moving pieces…packing for myself and my family, leaving to get to the airport on time, finding parking, wondering will there be a huge line at security? will I make it onto an overbooked flight?  how will I navigate an unfamiliar airport?  There are just so many variables.

I recall one time several years ago trying to make it back from Convention in California. As I touched down in Chicago, ready to make a connection, my phone dinged.  The connecting flight was delayed two hours.  Fine, that meant I had more time for lunch.  But over the next several hours, I came to dread the buzz of my phone.  Ding. One more hour delay.  Ding. Another hour.  Ding.  Another two hours.  Ding.  Flight cancelled. I checked into a hotel with nothing but my handbag and my clothes on my back, thinking of this text. No second tunic, or deodorant for that matter, for me.

This is what makes the bible a timeless document.  Instructions given to specific people in a specific time, for specific reasons, can also have something important to say to us now.  Jesus had good reason to instruct his disciples as he did.  The dangers of traveling in the ancient world (as chronicled for example in the story of the good samaritan) made pairing up a good idea. A staff, in particular, was necessary to protect against wild animals. They were not to carry money to make it clear that they were not charlatans or magicians looking to make a quick buck, as there were many of those kind around in those days. They were to stay in the first house they were welcomed to, in order to discourage an appearance of currying favor to procure fancier accommodations. They were not to carry a second tunic, something that would protect them against the cold of night, but rather, trust in the Lord that lodgings would be found. And finally, shaking the dust off one’s clothing has a precedent in the book of Nehemiah as a sign of renunciation. The disciple’s mission was urgent, and they were not to waste time in the towns that were not receptive to their preaching.

Jesus was combining common sense with a desire for accountability, integrity and resilience. His disciples would be able to adapt to their circumstances, bringing the good news to people with a sense of servanthood, not triumphalism or superiority.  And they would respect people’s freedom, moving on when it was clear that they were not welcome.  We would do well to remember the simple beauty of these instructions and what they teach us.  Like: Community is a good thing; so make a friend for the journey.  Or: Be fierce and brave in protecting those we love from harm; and we might be called upon to protect the vulnerable too.  Avoid making money an idol; recognize that it is incidental to the movement of God in the hearts and minds of individual people; we can always show love no matter how much money we have in our pocket.  Be a humble servant; what we are given and who we are is enough; we need not strive towards an ever-increasing level of comfort and convenience because, really, it is not about us.  Avoid trying to engineer all possible outcomes; for then there is no room for the movement of God and for grace to flow between people and into situations. And, always respect the freedom of others; we may not agree with them but we are doing no one any favors by being pushy.  Gentle persistence born of love is about trusting the emergence of image of God in all people, and that is very different from the kind of relentlessness is often about our own agenda more than God’s.

As we learned in our Swedenborg reading, there are two additional spiritual dimensions to this teaching.  In the Word, tunics (as do most clothing) correspond to truth, the true ideas that we clothe ourselves with, the ideas we slip into that guide our living in the world. We are not to have two tunics because, as the reading said, Divine Truth is singular, it only ever derives its being from divine love.  There are no other origins for Divine Truth, and the instruction to only have one tunic represents this fact. A second tunic would represent truths that we derive from our selfhood and our ego, truths and ideas that serve us, not Divine Love.  And it is really easy to pack that second tunic, just in case. It’s really easy to clothe ourselves in divine truth until it starts to cost us something.  For example, we might believe in the equality of all people until it means that we need to give up our privilege.  We might believe that God loves everyone until we ourselves are called to love everyone, including those we “other.”  We might believe in the glory of creation, until it inconveniences us to care for our earth.  Then, we reach for that second tunic to protect ourselves against the loss of whatever we think is indispensable to us.  We start to think we deserve our unearned privilege, or that others are inferior or different, or that we can’t possibility make a difference. But these ideas involving superiority, power, apathy (and many others) do not serve divine love, they serve our self.  They keep us feeling safe and comfortable and toasty warm.

The second idea from the Swedenborg reading is this: that all the things listed in the gospel text, in Mark and the other gospels, are all good things from the Lord.  Gold, silver, bronze, and bread represent different shades and kinds of goodness in our lives. So it is not that the disciples were never to have any contact at all with these things, but rather that they were not supposed to pack them for themselves.  They were not supposed to carry them along as if they owned them.  And this is because the goodness and truth we receive from the Lord is from the Lord alone.  We get into trouble when we start thinking that they are ours, that they originate in us, and we can and should control their coming and going.

I remember when my daughter was a much younger than she is now, and I thought that I would start giving her some responsibility when we were preparing to travel.  I gave her a backpack and told her to pack the things she thought she would need.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but I was a little surprised by what made it into the bag, and I had to sit down with her and pull things out one by one.  I found myself saying things like: “You never use that headband, do you really think you will need it? or “You can’t possibly need three different stuffed animals, how about just one.” (Let me say, with practice and age, she is a very competent bag packer now.)

But you can see how this is like us and God.  When we pack our own bags, we will put lots of stuff in there that doesn’t belong.  And so God will sit down with us and gently challenge us about what we think is necessary for the journey.  This is actually the process of regeneration: The Great Unpacking.  We all probably begin with one enormous unwieldy backpack, full of things that we have deemed necessary for survival, or things we picked up on the way. Sometimes we maybe let other people pack our bag and we never thought to look inside, or we were too afraid to. But, One by one, God will help us unpack the things we don’t need, the things that are too heavy and weighing us down, the things that prevent us from being the nimble and focused disciples that God knows we can be.  Do we need this armor?  No we do not.  Do we need this self-defensiveness?  Nope. Do we need this fear? No. Do we need this self-focus, do we need this worry, do I need this self-hatred, do I need this distrust?  No, no and no.

Just in case we think we can get around the idea of an empty backpack by choosing to only packing good things, like empathy, service, civility, well, its not that simple. Packing good things is better than unhelpful things, certainly, but this can only be transitional at best. Money and bread are good and helpful things, but the disciples were not supposed to pack them because the problem is our packing them into our backpack ourselves. The problem is us trying to control the goodness of God, to hoard it and use it for our own ends. And this is where it gets so hard; striving for achievement, keeping ourselves busy, pleasing other people, having enough, being healthy or accomplished—these all seem like good things. And they are. Unless we are using them to bolster our own sense of self-image, keeping them in our backpack because they make us feel good or important.  And lets face it, we all do this.

This is why it is important to sometimes take off our figurative backpack and take a look inside.  Buddhist teacher Tara Brach quotes the sage Sri Nisargadatta saying “illusion exists…because it is not investigated.” She continues: “If we are attached to untrue beliefs, it is because we have not examined our thoughts. We have not met them with mindful investigation; we have not asked whether they truly represent our current, living experience of reality.  Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.” (1)

Perhaps we are carrying around some things that we didn’t realize, things that prevent us from being present to our lives in its vulnerable and beautiful reality, that prevent us from opening our hearts in compassion to those around us, that prevent us aligning from ourselves with the influx of heaven.

Swedenborg’s book Divine Providence tells us: “The Lord is at work in the center of our being, and works from that center into everything that depends on it all the way to our boundaries, and we are living at these boundaries while this is happening.  As long as we are keeping these boundaries closed, then, no cleansing can take place.” (2) The Lord is with us, in the center of our being, and is working for our benefit.  But God will not take away our sins without our cooperation, just as it would have been unkind for me to empty my daughters carefully packed backpack without her permission.  We need to purposefully and in freedom, lay our backpack down and look inside, and be willing to learn about the value and usefulness of what we have packed. 

And one day, to our surprise, we might find that our psycho-spiritual backpack is empty, that our second tunic is neatly left in the closet, and we do not care, because we are so connected to our God that we know we will be given what we need in every moment to become an angel.  Amen.

1. Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart, p116
2. Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #119

Readings:

Mark 6:1-13

1 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

6 He was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. 7 Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. 8 These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.


Secrets of Heaven 4677:8-9

[8] Because Divine Truth is singular - that is to say, it is derived solely from Divine Good - the twelve disciples were commanded, when they were being sent out to preach the gospel of the kingdom, not to have two tunics.
[9] All the individual instructions given in these places are representative of the celestial and spiritual things of the Lord's kingdom which the disciples were sent to preach. The reason they were not to take gold, silver, bronze, bag, or bread with them was that those things meant different kinds of good and truth received from the Lord alone.…Now because these things had to be not twofold but singular, they were forbidden to have two staves, two pairs of sandals, or two tunics.