Sanctuary

1 Samuel 21:1-6

Matthew 12:1-8

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The Youth Group meeting was technically over, but a few of the kids were hanging around the church kitchen, just talking and casually munching on a bag of “snacks” they found in the refrigerator.  I happened to wander in and noticed that their new found munchies were actually the communion wafers that a woman in the congregation specially baked for that church. She was of Scotch descent so they did kind of resemble Scottish shortbread, and they were tasty.  But, they were not “snacks.”

When I told the kids that their snack was actually the communion bread that we would soon consecrate to God in celebration of the Holy Supper which marked the crucifixion and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, their jaws dropped; their faces turned white, and they immediately dropped the bag as if electric.

Now, I did assure them that God would not strike them with a lightning bolt, and that this was, after all, just a mistake.  But, I must admit that I was inwardly pleased to see that they at least had some appreciation that they were handling something holy, something which was to be set apart for sacred use.

Today, there is a declining regard for the holy, and few things are seen as being sacred anymore.  Our values are such that nearly everything is measured in utilitarian terms.  We only value what is useful for us, and if it is not, it is easily discarded.  Many measure even God in those terms.  God is important only to the degree that God does something for us, fulfills our wishes and dreams, or helps us to avoid discomfort.  If God does not measure up to those expectations, God is dumped.

            Yet, when life crashes over us like the waves of a nor’easter, when problems swirl around us like a tornado, when people pound upon us like hailstones stinging at our flesh, we all search for a sanctuary, a special and sacred place where we might rest and find shelter, where our souls will be revived.

In the scripture we focus on this morning, the hero of the story, David, is a refugee on the run.  He is a fugitive from the king’s wrath. He is pursued with almost canine persistence by the captain of Saul’s guard, a man who appropriately is called Doeg the Edomite.  Exhausted and worn out, David stumbles upon a priest called Ahimelech and he seeks sanctuary.

Before we explore fully what he seeks and finds, let us pray that we might find what we seek in this sanctuary and in this time of worship:

Lord, it seems as if there are times we can barely drag ourselves into this place and at this time.  The events of this week sometimes leave us exhausted, and battered, and maybe, confused.  And, we face a coming week that may look worse than the last.

So, in this in-between time, we seek sanctuary and rest and comfort.  We pray, O Lord, in this sacred moment, that Your Spirit shall “renew us with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:30).  We ask for the strength to face a new tomorrow.  “[L]ead us beside the still water, and restore our souls...for Your name sake” (Psalm 23:2).  Amen.

David’s reputation and the giant-killer had preceded him.  So, when he arrived at Ahimelech’s doorstep, we find the priest trembling, scared-to-death.  It’s not clear whether the priest is apprehensive about David or is afraid of David’s sworn enemy King Saul who might take umbrage at anyone who helps David.  In either case the priest knew he was in the middle of something that he could not control, that he could easily find himself at the center of a fire-storm of swirling politics. He was after all just a quiet country parson.

David made a feeble attempt at subterfuge, telling the priest that he is actually serving the king and not running from him.  But Nob was only a few miles from Jerusalem, and word travels fast so the priest knew the score.  David’s ragged appearance and his eyes, looking hungrily about for something to eat, revealed his refugee status.

Here the priest in Ahimelech really comes out. The pastor in him wanted to feed this hungry man, for that is the way of pastors. But, the priest in him wanted to guard what is sacred and keep it holy, for that is the way of priests.  The only food in the house was called the “shewbread” or “bread of the Presence” (Exodus 25:30).  The command from the Torah was very specific.  The priest was to guard this sacred offering to God from Sabbath to Sabbath.  And even at the end of the week, only the priest might eat it.  (Thus began a long tradition of giving clergy the leftovers.)

This part of the story is difficult for many in our modern world to understand.  Bread is bread after all and if David is hungry the priest should share. But, the priest believed it was his obligation to protect that which is holy and sacred from becoming something that is plain and ordinary.  He believed that if nothing is sacred then everything is ordinary and if everything is ordinary life loses some of its luster and mystery, some of its meaning and purpose.  It becomes gray and flat, meaningless and mundane.

I remember years ago when our family traveled to England. We were touring the grand cathedral in York with its high soaring ceiling held up not by wooden beam, but by pillars of stones. The sun shone brilliantly through colorful stained glass windows and the chancel soared high carved out dark English walnut.  As soon as we entered my oldest, I think 15 at the time, immediately stopped talking and took off his hat out of respect.  Now, I didn’t tell him to do that. We never talked about proper decorum when visiting a cathedral.  He just knew he was in a sacred space.  He just knew this was no ordinary place.

What are our sacred spaces today?  What places do people recognize as being special?  For some it is a football stadium. They look forward all year to the first day of the season. They come early.  They set up communal meals in the parking lot. They dress differently wearing the holy and sacred colors of black and gold.  They make sacrifices to be there. It is expensive to go. They block out their calendars and they will let nothing intrude on that holy moment when kickoff raises a cheer.

There are other sacred spaces and places. Randy was telling me about one of his honor choir trips to New York City.  One of the places they visited was ground zero, the place where the twin towers were brought to the ground by jetliners driven Al Qaeda terrorists.

He said when he arrived he immediately knew he was in a sacred place.  He knew it was to be respected, because he remembered that day on September 11. He remembered how he felt when he saw the pictures of twin towers falling.  He knew where he was and what he was doing when he first heard. Most of you do as well, but the kids in his honor choir did not.  Most of them were only two or three years old when that happened. They kind of knew the story, but they did not know the feeling, so Randy had to explain it to them.  He had to teach them.

That’s what Ahimilech was trying to do with David.  He was trying to teach him the difference between the sacred and the ordinary, the special day and every day.

But, Ahimelech the “priest” was also a “pastor” he could not use the sacred to starve the hungry.  The pastor prevailed, but only after precautions were taken to assure that David would understand the sacredness of this moment and not receive this gift lightly.  But receive the gift he did.  The “bread of the Presence” of God was broken and given to David.  He found sanctuary, he found rest, and his soul was revived.  It was perhaps this day he would later describe in this way:

On the day I called, thou didst answer me,

my strength of soul thou dist increase.

Though I walk in the midst of trouble,

thou dost preserve my life.

                                                                                                                     Psalm 138:3, 7

A thousand years later, a son of David, sometimes called the Good Shepherd, was walking with his disciples through a field on the Sabbath day. They were hungry and casually ate some of kernels of grain they had gleaned from the stalks as they were going along. This did not go un-noticed by the Pharisees who criticized Jesus’ friends for harvesting grain which they saw as working on the Sabbath day.  The rules on that were very clear.  Like Ahimelech they were just trying to protect the sanctity of the day lest the Sabbath day become ordinary like any other day. They did not want what eventually happened in Pennsylvania when the blue laws were overturned.

Some of you are old enough to remember when Sunday was not like Saturday or any other day of the week.  You remember Sunday dinners and family gathering.  You remember when it was a day of rest and not for shopping.  Some of you I think even miss the easy pace of those days.

That’s all the Pharisees were trying to do, but Jesus like Ahimelech understood that God created sacred space and places and times as a blessing and not a curse.  That’s why Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”  We need these sacred places and spaces and special times to separate them from everything else that is ordinary, but they are not a prison.  They are a hospital to help us get better.  They are a family gathering where we feel loved.  They are a gas station from which we get energy to face another week.

When we come to this table and to this place and to this time, we come to a sacred moment and we stand on Holy Ground so that “we might become aware that there’s more to life than meets the eye, and that ‘more’ is God” (Peterson, Eugene, Leap over a Wall, pg. 64).

David finds more than rest and sustenance in that sanctuary at Nob.  He also finds the means to continue that “good fight.”  Here’s a good question for you the next time you play a game of trivial pursuit.  After David killed Goliath, what happened to Goliath’s sword?  The answer—it ended up as kind of a souvenir relic stored at this sanctuary at Nob.  For, when Doeg the Edomite comes knocking at the door seeking David’s head, David asks the priest if he has any weapons.  Ahimelech drags out Goliath’s sword (1 Samuel 21:8-9).

Rested, refreshed, renewed and now armed, David leaves that place and goes out into his world to “fight that good fight.”  The sanctuary was not a place to hide from the problems of the world, but only a place of renewal.

Eugene Peterson described it this way:

Wonderful things happen in sanctuaries.  On the run we stop at a holy place and find that there’s more to life than meets the eye....  We perceive God in and around and beneath us.  New life surges up within us.  We discover a piece of our lives we had thought long gone restored to us, remember an early call of God, a place of prayer, a piece of evidence that God saves....  But terrible things also happen in sanctuaries.  We can use a religious ritual to insulate ourselves from people we have come to despise....  Every time we enter a holy place and become aware of the presence of a holy God, we leave either better or worse. “we become aware that there’s more to life than meets the eye, and that ‘more’ is God”

                                                                                                                               Ibid. pg 69

As this bread will soon be consecrated, broken, and offered, remember this is not a snack—it is sacred; it is not hollow; it is holy.  Receive this gift of God to “renew of right spirit,” and then go back out into your world and “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12).