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Dance of the God-Struck
There's something about worship that can drive even a king to strip down and leap up.
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But it is a story with a darkly textured backdrop: death looming over there, barrenness skulking over here. It begins when David wants to make the ark of the covenant a symbol of his royal authority. David, after seven years of court intrigue and brutal civil war against the house of Saul and the northern kingdom, has finally been crowned king of both north and south, Israel and Judah. Now David has breathing room. It's time to turn his abundant energy toward other things: civic development, cultural initiative, scientific inquiry, political fence-mending, worship. The ark of the covenant baptizes David's political daring and novelty with ancient authority. It gives David the imprimatur of Mosaic legitimacy. Such might well be David's political motive in bringing the ark "home." But David, who is not above shrewd political calculation, almost always transcends it. So the ark coming to Jerusalem is not primarily a political gesture. It is primarily worship. By this, David makes a powerful statement: God is king in this kingdom, lord of this land. The king acknowledges the King beyond him, above him, to whom he owes all fealty. For whom he dances. So the ark is taken out of cold storage. It's been moldering, a dangerous neglected relic, for three or four decades. In all the tumult of the early kingship, it was easily forgotten. Maybe for some it's become an embarrassment, a relic of old folkways, a hoary religious symbol, a primitive war talisman from before the days of kings and standing armies and modern weaponry. But David hasn't forgotten. For him the ark is a living symbol of a deep reality: Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders build in vain; unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen watch in vain. So David brings the ark to Jerusalem. And as it comes, David dances. His dance is a kinetic outburst of sheer joy. It is a pantomime of trust and surrender. Offer your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, for this is your spiritual act of worship. David does. David dances. But things go tragically awry. A man dies, struck down by a fiercely angered God. Why? Uzzah simply tried to keep the ark from tumbling to the ground. He tried to keep the flag from touching the dirt. This is what any of us would do under similar constraints: the right thing to do, the noble thing. But God killed him for it. Why? Here's my guess. Uzzah is a strange hybrid, an iconoclastic bureaucrat. He's a rule-flouting stickler, a nitpicking maverick. He makes radical breaks with convention, then rigidly adheres to his own conventions. Uzzah's willingness to carry the ark on an ox cart was in clear breach of divine command. God had given detailed instruction about how the ark was to be transported: slung on poles and hefted by priests. Freighting the ark on an ox cart was a Philistine notion. It must have seemed to Uzzah—maybe it was even his idea to bring it over from the Philistines—more convenient, efficient, elegant. The latest fashion in worship accoutrements. Why didn't God think of it? Well, we'll amend that. It was always the hankering of the Israelites to be like the other nations. It's always been the hankering of the church, too. If everybody's doing it out there, it must be an improvement on what we do in here. |             | |||||||||||||||||||
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