Melinda and I do not watch a whole lot of television, but if
there is one show that can suck us both in like no other it is “Househunters International” on Home and Garden Television.
It only takes the opening five seconds of the program to get us hooked,
and then we find we have to sit down and watch all thirty minutes, even if it
keeps us up past our bedtime.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the program, the concept is very simple and can be explained in a matter of seconds. Each episode features an individual, a couple, or a family who is in search of a new home in a new country. A real estate agent takes stock of their purchasing price range and then shows them three potential properties. As you can probably guess from its title, “Househunters International” tends to feature home searches of the cosmopolitan and well-to-do. It may be a couple who made their living in London’s busy financial district who are now looking to retire to a farmhouse in the south of France. Or maybe it’s a young urban professional who’s just been transferred from Seattle to Buenos Aires. Whatever the case, the program begins with a discussion about the homebuyer’s wish list for their new property and ends with a build-up to the homebuyer’s final decision. Along the way, the real estate agent showcases those three fascinating properties that contain any number of cool and unique characteristics.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the program, the concept is very simple and can be explained in a matter of seconds. Each episode features an individual, a couple, or a family who is in search of a new home in a new country. A real estate agent takes stock of their purchasing price range and then shows them three potential properties. As you can probably guess from its title, “Househunters International” tends to feature home searches of the cosmopolitan and well-to-do. It may be a couple who made their living in London’s busy financial district who are now looking to retire to a farmhouse in the south of France. Or maybe it’s a young urban professional who’s just been transferred from Seattle to Buenos Aires. Whatever the case, the program begins with a discussion about the homebuyer’s wish list for their new property and ends with a build-up to the homebuyer’s final decision. Along the way, the real estate agent showcases those three fascinating properties that contain any number of cool and unique characteristics.
What I think we find so compelling about this otherwise
ordinary reality show is that each time the final decision manages to surprise
us in some way. The homebuyer always
goes for the property we think they’d rate lowest, either because they discover
new priorities along the journey, or because they become enchanted with some
aspect of a house they hadn’t expected.
But, without fail, when the show is over, I feel I’ve wasted a valuable
half-hour of my life, voyeuristically watching the deliberations of someone
else’s luxury.
Despite that, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to
say that this is not too different from what the people of God experience as
they await their salvation from on high.
Will their God hunt a house among humankind? If so, where might it be? What, pray tell, is on that wish list? And will this grand, sweeping episode of
reality contain a surprise twist at the end?
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| detail, Michaelangelo's "David" |
As you might imagine, the scope of Scripture’s witness
contains many clues as to what God is looking for as God begins to imagine a
home among mortals, and we are probably not surprised to learn that God is not
in the market for a villa in the south of France or a flat in Buenos Aires,
technically-speaking. Then again, we
wouldn’t exactly look first to the ancient kingdom of Israel, either—a wandering,
hapless group of backwater tribes who had spent a great many years ranging
around and attempting, with spotty success, to settle the land promised to
their ancestors. Yet there is God,
hunting for his home among them, drifting from encampment to encampment in a
temporary tabernacle that houses the Ark of the Covenant. Before a simple shepherd named David rises to
power as ancient Israel’s second king—which is sometime around a thousand years
before Jesus is born—God’s people were nothing spectacular. Often prone to internal fighting, they were
not a military power. With no merchant
class or fertile regions for farming, they were not an economic power. Lacking a major center of population or
learning, they were not a cultural power.
They really had little going for them, but this David helps to change
that. Finding favor with God, he rises
to the throne, unifies the people of Israel, and establishes a capital city by
conquering the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem.
This stronghold turns out to be as much of a curse as a
blessing as history plays out, but for the time-being, the kingdom begins to
flourish and expand. Would God choose
his home here? While it may seem the
most logical spot from our standpoint, it turns out that God has other
priorities, other options to consider. Even
after David decides to bring Israel’s long days of wandering to an end by
getting the ark out of the camps below and building it a permanent structure up
in the city, God makes it clear that that’s not his vision. In a prophecy
revealed to Nathan, David’s prophet, God explains that he was quite content
going to and fro in that temporary tabernacle as Israel wandered in the wilderness:
“Wherever I have moved about among all
the people of Israel,” the word of the LORD says, “did I ever speak a word with
any of the tribal leaders of Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house of
cedar?’” In fact, God hadn’t asked
for that. Turning the tables somewhat,
God explains further what he is looking for: David will not make a home for
God, but God will make God’s house from David.
David will not be laying a foundation for God to dwell in Jerusalem, but
God will be laying a foundation in David to dwell with the people of the
earth. No fancy flat or sun-drenched
villa just yet—God’s wish list is looking a little different!
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| David's Jerusalem (ca. 1000 B.C.) |
To that end, the LORD makes it clear that his home in David
will contain these virtues. First, it
will provide a great name. Second, it
will entail a place where they can be planted to receive protection and refuge
from their enemies and other evildoers.
Lastly, it will ensure an eternal relationship with God, one that is firm
and solid and established forever. That
is God’s idea of a home, and a deluxe cedar suite in Jerusalem will not provide
it. Somehow David and David’s family
will be that home, at least for now. Through this particular king and his
rather ill-fated line of descendants in this particularly disorganized group of
tribes God will seek out a great name, a place of sanctuary and a steadfast
relationship with God’s people.
Interestingly, the intensity of God’s search for a home
seems to go cold for a while. King
Solomon, David’s successor, does end up building a temple in Jerusalem. It is a bejeweled, awe-inspiring
edifice. Israel’s worship and religious
devotion becomes centered there, off and on, for about a thousand years. Prophets come and prophets go. Commercial breaks interrupt the drama here
and there. At one point the Temple gets
destroyed and then rebuilt and eventually added onto.
It would seem that God had almost settled on that structure in that city, but one day in a very remote small town far outside Jerusalem, God finds favor with someone else. An real estate angel named Gabriel drops by the home of a young girl engaged to a man named Joseph, who happened to be a long, lost descendant of that ancient David. The town is Nazareth, a place hardly on anyone’s radar. And Gabriel’s message is something no one ever could have expected, a surprise twist that we never saw coming. God will hunt his house in her womb. If she consents—and she does—God will move in through a miracle of the Holy Spirit and become a resident of creation in a way only possible to a God whose love knows no bounds. God turns down a house of cedar and temple of stone to live in a house of human skin and bones.
Try as we may, we cannot predict where or how God the
Creator of heaven and earth will choose to reside with us, his creatures, just
as David was unable to build a structure to house the LORD. Try as we may, we could never foresee that
God would choose something this risky, this unprecedented, this common—to take up shop as the quickening
flesh of a young Jewish maid, to knock on the door of someone so seemingly insignificant. Martin Luther says, in a sermon on the
Annunciation, that “Mary was possibly doing housework when the angel Gabriel
came to her.” Kings and queens would
have died for this kind of opportunity—provided they could keep it from upending
their system of authority—but it comes to a woman who is put in an unlikely
predicament. David made an offer of
cedar timbers to make way for such an arrival, but God puts himself at the
mercy of a young unwed woman’s faith. It may seem like the whim of a finicky
homebuyer to us, but God will always choose to interact with the world on God’s
own terms, not ours.
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| "The Annunciation," Paolo de Matteis, 1712 |
And that wish list, as it turns out, is still valid. It ends up being completely fulfilled through
the womb of this Mary, once and for all.
The great name will be Jesus. In Hebrew:
The Savior of the people. He will plant
a place, on a hill right outside Jerusalem, in fact, where people will finally find
refuge from their greatest enemies, sin and death. And his life and death will establish an
eternal relationship based on love and forgiveness between God and God’s people
from now until the end of time. As should
be expected from a God as gracious as this one, those wishes on that original
wish list shared with King David were not really wishes for God, but wishes for
his people! All of them, wrapped up in
human flesh and growing, right now, in the womb of Mary.
For when it comes to taking up residence with us, God will
call the shots. God will order the world
the way God wants to and cut his deals on his own terms. And when that happens, a great name is given
to a nothing people. The proud get
scattered and the lowly are uplifted.
The hungry get filled and the rich are sent away empty. A holy place is
planted in the most vulgar of surroundings.
And the most insignificant, vulnerable soul, as it turns out, can
magnify the LORD. This is what happens
when God makes his home among us.
At this time of the year, as we approach what is arguably
culture’s biggest holiday, there is a lot of talk (and sometimes whining,
especially among Christians), about finding and upholding what this season is
really all about. We lament the
over-the-top commercialism and crumble under the weight of the busy holiday schedule. We debate the difference between saying “Happy
Holidays” and “Merry Christmas.” All the
while, we want to re-capture some elusive spirit or “true meaning of Christmas,”
as if it’s something we can grasp with our hands. Ironically, it is King David who
inadvertently stumbles upon it one thousand years before the fact: that God’s
grace it never something we can control or get a handle on. It is not something we can conjure with any
amount of doing good. God’ grace just
happens. It hunts a home where we’d
least expect it, entering at the corners, checking out property on the margins,
turning down the fancy cedar gift in exchange for something more ordinary, more
delicate…like human flesh. Or bread and
wine. All it is looking for is that “Yes”
so graciously modeled by Mary. God’s is
a rare grace that first hooks us and then promises a twist of surprise: He is promised. He is born.
His is crucified. He is risen!
But be warned, you people of God, because this grace will
suck you right in. For thirty minutes…for
thirty years…and if God finds favor, for the rest of your life.
Is it wasted time?
Nope. It is nothing less than the
beginning of it…
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| Mary, Theotokos (God-bearer) |
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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