Bible reading: 2 Samuel 6:1-16.

David and all the chosen men of Israel set out and went to Baalah in Judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim. They carried the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, Abinadab’s sons, were driving the new cart with the ark of God; and Ahio went in front of the ark. David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.

When they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him because he reached out his hand to the ark; he died there beside the ark of God. David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah; so that place is called Perez-uzzah to this day.

David was afraid of the Lord that day; he said, ‘How can the ark of the Lord come into my care?’ So he was unwilling to take the ark into his care in the city of David; instead he took it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. The ark of the Lord remained in his house for three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household.

King David was told, ‘The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.’ So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing; and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling. David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.

Message.

Over the years the clothing I’ve worn to lead worship hasn’t changed much. Yes, in two of my churches I’ve worn a jacket and tie (I had a good selection of Wallace and Gromit ties but we’ve recently cleared them out) while in two others I’ve worn a clerical collar. In one church that was accompanied by a preaching gown as that was their tradition.

But one thing I’ve never done is to lead worship wearing only my underpants (don’t even start to imagine it!). Yet that was what king David was effectively doing when he danced at the head of the procession bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem – at least that’s what today’s Bible passage tells us, although its parallel in Chronicles gives him a linen robe as well. Nevertheless, robed or not, David was hardly behaving in a dignified or regal way. It’s no surprise to read that his wife Michal, already spurned in favour of other women, saw him from her window and despised him. When he got home, she tore into him: “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of his servants’ slave girls!”. David’s plea that he was dancing in praise of God didn’t convince her for one moment.

The context for David’s dance was the recovery of Israel’s most sacred and precious artefact, the Ark of the Covenant, which had been captured years earlier by our old friends, the Philistines. We all know what the Ark was (not, as I used to think when I was a child, a boat): it was a richly decorated box containing Jewish treasures, principally the inscribed tablets of the Ten Commandments given to Moses. To the Hebrews it was a national symbol, rather like our Crown Jewels or the Stone of Scone are for Britain and Scotland. Just imagine the rumpus if they were stolen (which in fact they have been).

But the Ark was more than that: it declared that the nation had been founded by God, that he had blessed and guided it, and that he now dwelt at its very heart. You’ll know that the Jews of the time believed that God in some way “lived” in the Tabernacle or Temple; the Ark of the Covenant was the central focus of that belief. Tampering with it meant you were tampering with God; losing it implied that God had abandoned you. It’s no wonder that the old High Priest Eli’s daughter-in-law, hearing as she was giving birth (and sadly dying) that the Philistines had seized the Ark, named her son “Ichabod”: “The glory has departed from Israel”. That’s what the loss of this object meant.

However (and this is where things get tricky) the Ark of the Covenant appears to have been more than a symbolic religious artefact; it seems to have had an inbuilt power and made weird things happen wherever it was placed. The Philistines, delighted with their success, put the Ark into the shrine of their god Dagon; when their priests go in the next morning they are shocked to see Dagon’s statue lying on the floor. They set it upright again but, when they come in the next day, things have gone from bad to worse as the statue hasn’t just fallen over but is now broken into several pieces. The heathen priests are seriously frightened: “Let’s get this accursed Ark out of here!” It gets sent to a place called Ekron but is hardly welcomed there with open arms as its reputation has already gone before it: “Have you brought that thing here to kill us? Send it away!” the people clamour. But it’s too late: a plague of rats and an epidemic strike the city and many people die.

After seven months, the Philistines have had enough. They decide to eat humble pie and return the Ark to their old enemy. They place it on an ox-cart together with a chest of valuable gifts, and take it across Israel’s border to a place called Beth Shemesh. The people of that village are busy harvesting wheat and rub their eyes when they see the Philistine procession approaching: can that really be our beloved Ark? Yes, it can! – and they rejoice. To use a phrase we may have recently heard in a different context, the Ark was “coming home”.

But things once more go dreadfully wrong. For folk are curious to see what’s actually inside the fabled Ark as they know they’ll never get another chance. About seventy of them open it and take a peek – only to be struck down (we’re not told how) by God for daring to be so presumptuous. The villagers are terrified and want to get shot of this lethal object as quickly as possible, so they send a message to the men of Kiriath Jearim, a known centre for worship, to come and take it to their city. They collect it, take it to the house of a man named Abinadab, and commission two men to guard it. And there the Ark stays, without any apparent ill effects, for the next twenty years. That’s until David, now the undisputed king of all Israel, decides to bring it to his new capital city of Jerusalem with the aim of cementing his prestige and status. And disaster strikes yet again, for during the journey from Kiriath Jearim to Jerusalem the oxen pulling the Ark’s cart stumble and a man named Uzzah reaches out to stop it crashing to the ground, only to be fatally zapped for his efforts.

I’ll be honest I’ve found this story hard to handle. The folk who compiled the Lectionary passages must have felt the same as they neatly snipped it out of today’s reading, but it’s there in the Bible and we can’t pretend that it isn’t. The whole idea of the Ark wreaking havoc or, for that matter, bringing blessing wherever it is placed reeks of magic and primitive superstition and the tale of God slaying Uzzah for touching the Ark seems to be utterly unfair and cruel: didn’t God realise that Uzzah was only trying to help? This story, if true, confronts us with a very unpleasant picture of God; is this a God we really want to worship?

Well, I find it impossible to answer these questions adequately; other folk who’ve written about this story seem to find it equally difficult. It certainly says something about God’s holiness and his power, both of which were somehow embodied or contained in the Ark. It may have just been a box, albeit a very special one; but it had to be respected or even feared, it could never be treated carelessly or irreverently. God is pure and holy, and the Ark was also considered pure and holy. The merest touch by an unauthorised person would defile not just the Ark but God himself – and that was something he couldn’t possibly allow.

But there’s something more. The Philistines returned the Ark to Israel on a new cart, drawn steadily by two cows, as that seemed to be the right thing to do. The Jews, taking it onwards to Jerusalem, did the same. We’re told that people sang and danced and made music and had a happy time as they accom-panied the cart along the road, with David at the forefront. So were they really concentrating on the job in hand? Were the cart drivers distracted by the noise and merriment? Perhaps everybody should have kept a better look-out, noticed the pothole in the road ahead of them, and steered away from it.

In any case the Hebrews weren’t following the strict instructions about transporting the Ark that had been given back in Moses’ time. For it should never have been put on a cart: it was like a sedan chair and had been designed to be carried on poles by people walking in front of and behind it. The Hebrews had unthinkingly followed pagan practice and it seems that God wasn’t at all happy with that. The procession was disorderly, irreverent and disobedient; it was more about David wanting to be popular than about bringing God back to his rightful place at the heart of Israel. Although doubts still remain in our minds, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that things backfired so badly.  

So we have a story which combines horror and joy, superstition and devotion. Has it anything at all to teach us? We could focus on David’s dance and see the story as an encouragement to worship extravagantly and without being worried about what other people may thing; there’s clearly some merit in that but it’s at best a trivial lesson to learn from a story which bristles with so many difficulties. We could also take it as an exhortation to treat religious artefacts with respect: there are churches which have strict rules about the cloths used to cover the altar or communion table, they must be washed and folded in a certain way and never allowed to touch the ground. While I must respect those churches’ practices, I struggle to believe that God is really concerned by such matters. I also thinks it shows us a misunderstanding of the word “holy” which simply means “set apart” rather than “sacred”. We might also take this story as a warning about disobeying God’s rules; but Christians believe that Jesus replaced the detailed Old Testament laws with just two wide-ranging ones which give us a huge amount of freedom: to love God and to love our neighbour.

But perhaps we do need to be reminded of God’s holiness and power. Perhaps we do treat him with too much familiarity and not enough reverence. Perhaps the Christian truth that ‘Jesus is our friend and brother’ needs to be balanced by a sense of the ‘magnum mysterium’, awe and wonder at the majesty and greatness of God – after all, Jesus’ disciples had to balance the day-to-day experience of knowing him as a human with the awe-inspiring experience of his Transfiguration. It seems that there is a place to dance before the Lord, but also a place to fall prostrate before him in fear. When did any of us last do that?

As I’ve said, I’ve found this story difficult. Perhaps it’s one of those parts of the Bible which show how peoples’ under-standing of God developed and became more sophisticated over time. I think that’s underlined by the fact that, despite the best efforts of Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant seems to have vanished forever: it was in the Jerusalem Temple for many years, but appears to have been lost when the city fell to the Babylonians in 586BC. Some traditions say that it was taken to Babylon and lost or dismantled there, others say that it was buried in order to keep it safe; archaeologists have carried out digs in various places but the Ark has never been found. I’m inclined to think that that’s a good thing; if it were discovered it would become not only an object of veneration and pilgrimage but also a powerful symbol for Jewish Zionism – hardly an aid to peace in the Near East!

In any case, as we often say when we share Communion, Christians believe that the Old Covenant has been superseded by the New; that we no longer sacrifice animals in worship but reflect on Jesus’ once-and-for-all death, that the focus of our thinking is not a box of holy objects but a cross on which our Lord once died (and no, I’m not saying that we should venerate so-called fragments of the True Cross). God hasn’t changed, but our understanding of him has developed. As we worship and serve him, let’s make sure that our picture of God is as complete and multi-faceted as it can possibly be.