David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD with all their might .

II Samuel 6:5

For the last two weeks, we've been focusing on the OT texts given to us by the lectionary. Two weeks ago we looked at the story of Saul. How we was anointed by the prophet Samuel and how the ancient Hebrews thus went from a kind of grassroots theocracy to a formal monarchy.

Last week's text documented the coronation of King David. One thing we did not mention last Sunday - a point made explicitly in the text and that's well worth mentioning - is that David was crowned King of all Israel.

You see the 12 tribes of Israel had effectively divided into two Kingdoms - the south, known as Judah, and the north, which bore the early name of Israel. It was the southern Kingdom over which Saul presided.

In last week's text, David is crowned King over both the southern and the northern Kingdoms. And so in David, Israel as a whole took yet another step in its evolution from tribal confederacy to legitimate nation state.

That transition, that evolution, that transformation, continues in today's text. David brings the Ark to Jerusalem, into the heart of the Southern Kingdom, Saul's former stronghold. And in so doing, he consolidates his power as both King and bearer of God's presence.

But there are two other main characters in play here. I use the word "characters" loosely. For one is the Ark of God, as it is called in the text. The Ark is far and away the most powerful religious symbol in the life of the ancient Hebrews. It was thought to house the very presence of God. As such, as you can imagine, it was holy beyond description and freighted with all sorts of meaning.

The other "character," of course, is Jerusalem. To this point in Israel's history Jerusalem is not a particularly exceptional place. But that changes today. David installs the Ark of God in Jerusalem, making it the religious center of all Israel, and he installs himself there as King. Hereafter and for all posterity, Jerusalem becomes Zion, the City of David, the focal point of Israel's political and religious life - a fact which continues to this day.

I said last week that the story of David is considered by many literary and religious scholars to be a masterpiece of earlier religious narrative. And if you were to take the time to read the story in full, you would see why. Just as all philosophy can be said to be a footnote to Plato, all stories of political power and intrigue could be said to be a footnote to this story, the story of David's rise to power.

For old loyalties die hard and people close to power do not give it up easily. David laments Saul's death in chapter one of Second Samuel. He and his underlings then spend the next five chapters of the book consolidating their power, fighting off enemies and positioning themselves to assume the royal throne.

Of these stories, II Samuel 6, our text for today, is not unusually long, but it is unusually dense.

It is profound in its themes and wildly vivid in its imagery. It's serious and honest and, in the end, almost quaint, with a marital squabble thrown in for good measure.

Right out of the gate, a man, Ussah, dies, stricken down by God simply for reaching out and touching the Ark. For his part, David is dancing ecstatically before God one moment; the next moment, after the death of Ussah, David is angry with God, and so afraid of God's seeming caprice he initially opts not to bring the Ark into Jerusalem out of fear for his own safety.

In the meantime, David's wife -- who also happens to be Saul's daughter -- is said to despise him. And as if all that weren't real enough, the passage concludes with a description of what may have been the first-ever church pot luck.

Did you notice that? After he installs the Ark in Jerusalem, the text says that David "distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes." Sounds like something that might happen right here at the WW church.

What are we to make of all this? Where might we even start to untangle these various threads?

Well, I think we start with God. And in II Samuel, when you think of God, you must think of the Ark which bears God's presence.

I don't know about you, but for better or worse, when I think of the Ark of the Covenant I always think of that final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the lid is finally pried off that ancient and mysterious box and the presence of God sweeps through the room like a consuming fire.

Impartial observers would say that Steven Spielberg was doubtless visiting cinematic revenge on the Nazis for crimes committed against his people. But in the end he's maybe not that far off the mark.

In our time we come to church in our nice shirts and slacks or suits and ties and pretty dresses, or, if we're a student, maybe in our shorts and our flip flops. But however we're dressed our expectations when we walk through the narthex and enter the sanctuary are relatively modest.

Yes, we expect good music, well played. On a good day we'll enjoy all the hymns and on a really good day the sermon will speak to us one way or another. And if we get all that, we're happy and we go home feeling like we got our money's worth.

But in light of a story like today's, one wonders if we're not missing something.

Annie Dillard was perhaps the first contemporary person to wonder that same thing. In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk , she asks, somewhat uncharitably, ''Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a package tour of the Absolute?"

"On the whole," she continues, "I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are (like) children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return" (Annie Dillard, from "An Expedition to the North Pole" in Teaching a Stone to Talk.")

Poor Ussah, the man in today's story. He certainly would have been well served to wear protective gear in transporting the very symbol of God's own presence amongst the people. The ark teeters, he reaches out his hand to steady it, and he is struck down.

It seems harsh, and is harsh. But as always with these texts we must ask, what is this story trying to teach us? One the one hand, as one of the commentaries I read this week puts it, maybe the questions raised by this text cannot be fully answered, "but the death of Uzzah can stand as a reminder of the danger of trying to manage God's holiness" ( New Interpreter's Bible Commentary , pg. 1252).

Maybe that is the lesson here, that God is not to be handled, that God needs no help from human hands. That the presence of the holy is powerful and should inspire awe and even, perhaps apprehension.

I was reminded of that this past Thursday during that rather fierce storm that passed through the valley here. I was glad I was inside, glad I had shelter and was not out in the middle of all that close lightening and the booming thunder. And that was just a mere local storm.

But it did remind me that the elemental forces of nature - wind, water, fire - that these can be and often are, wonderful and terrible, familiar and yet awesome.

It's not very surprising that God - the creator not just of wind and fire, but of the sun and the galaxies - it's not surprising that God should be any different. Indeed, it would be surprising if God were different, smaller and tamer than the forces God created.

But of course that's the difference, too. For God is not a mindless, sometimes destructive force. God is not fire or wind or lightening or thunder. God is a being who has promised, in some mysterious way, to be in covenant with us.

The Hebrews understood that. As a desert people, they lived out under the vast expanse of the sky, under the huge canopy of stars. They watched storms gather in the sky by day and our galaxy pulsing with energy and power at night.

Better than those of us who spend our days at the movies and our nights in our air conditioned palaces, they knew that any God who could create such wonders was to be respected, even feared to some degree, in the way one might fear a lion.

But they also had the Ark, a sign of God's covenant to be with them and for them. And so they knew, 3,000 years before C.S. Lewis's Aslan, that this presence, this lion was generally safe but not to be trifled with and certainly not to be domesticated.

Yes, yes, yes, but what about that dancing? Well, it's true that prancing around half-naked in God's presence, as David did, is not very Presbyterian. We don't even dance with our clothes on, most of us, never mind parading around in a loincloth.

And I'm glad for that. But still one wonders if Annie Dillard doesn't have a point. And if this story today doesn't get at that point. When you're grasped by this power, by the Absolute, by the very presence of Yahweh, as David was, when the living God presses upon you, you're liable to do unusual things.

For David it was dancing around so uninhibitedly it made his wife seethe with embarrassment.

Much later in the history of Israel we saw it again in a group of 12 men and doubtless a bunch of women too -- Who when this same power walked by them in the form of a person, they left their nets and followed him.

They got out of a boat and walked on water. They sailed to Rome and Corinth to start churches, communities centered around this same power, a power that could trump death and transcend empire.

History's full of examples of that very same thing -- people in the grip of this power who do strange and wonderful things, things well out of the ordinary. Things that often upset the status quo and usher in new ways of thinking, new ways to worship, new ways to relate to the powerful, new ways to relate to the powerless. People who start colleges and build hospitals. People who take mission trips to India and Sri Lanka.

I'd like to think we are some of those people and that this is one of those places. A place where we come not just out of habit, not just for the music or the preaching. But a place where the sleeping god may wake and meet us head on, or where the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

Amen