“On that day, David was afraid of the Holy One, and he said, ‘How can the Ark of the Holy One come with me'” (2 Samuel 6.9)?
For background, prior to Saul’s rule, the Elders of Israel, after a nasty defeat against the Philistines, decided that it was time to use their secret weapon. So, they took the Ark of the Covenant along with them into battle. Alas, it did not provide them with the blessing of victory and the Ark was taken by the Philistines and placed in the Temple of Dagon.
The priests of Dagon, after grabbing their coffee and checking their phones, came into the temple to find the statue of their god lying face-down. They set to work putting the image back into its place and went about their day probably commenting how strange that was. The next morning, it got stranger when they found the statue not only face-down again but broken (its head and hands were lying in the doorway).
After this, the Philistines all developed a nasty skin problem. Shortly after, they surmised that, you know, we didn’t have these issues until they brought the Ark into town. So, they loaded it up on a cart pulled by a couple of cows and sent it over the border.
The Ark spent a number of years in the care of a family of Abinadab who kept it dusted and dry in the garage next to the camping equipment and the lawn mower. Until the day David determined that something that important, that powerful belonged in Jerusalem. So, with quite a crowd, he set out to retrieve it.
Along its journey to Jerusalem, at a particularly bad stretch of road, the oxen pulling the cart stumbled causing the Ark to shift. Uzzah, doing what you do when something’s about to fall off into the mud, reached up to steady the Ark.
This action ticks God off something awful and Uzzah drops dead right where he was standing. A bit extreme, least David seems to think so. We’re told that he was really angry at this. And then he got scared.
It’s one thing, of course, to understand that God is…well, God. It’s another thing to know it, to be on intimate terms with the reality of how different, how wholly (and holy) other the Divine is. How, I suppose, the Disciples must have felt.
In Luke’s account, Jesus appears to those hidden away behind locked doors after the two travelers from Emmaus had preceded him, telling that they, like the women, had seen Jesus and he was alive. This marked for all of them the second time they’d heard such talk. It’s amazing. It’s glorious. It’s something we could say that, in this moment, they understood.
Yet when Jesus comes into the room, somehow entering through a door locked against the outside, they were frightened. “They were scared out of their wits; because, they thought they saw an apparition” (Luke 24.37).
It makes sense. I imagine our minds are going to automatically, upon seeing someone we know has died, assume what’s standing in front of us is a spirit, an ectoplasmic form from beyond. And, on some level, I figure those gathered in that room, even with the words of witnesses fresh in their ears, really thought, in that moment, what they were seeing was something more spirit than flesh.
But I can’t help thinking that their reaction—their terror—was similar to what afflicted David beside the Ark. No longer was the power, the awesomeness of the Divine theoretical or something about which they’d merely heard. No, here was the unimaginable power of God in front of them—one that even death stood defeated against.
And both these stories make me wonder, should we be afraid?
I don’t mean living in fear of the vengeful (and perhaps temperamental) deity that we’re told struck down Uzzah. This is out of sync with the One who, when he reached out his hands, brought healing and life rather than suffering and death. No, what I’m wondering is that perhaps me, you, anyone ought to be a little afraid when contemplating this season and the One who was dead but lives again.
That kind of power is beyond any of us. Yes, we can built rockets that propel us into the stars, design weapons capable of destroying all life on earth, but we cannot defeat death. Despite all our developments and achievements, death is not something any of us can overcome.
And yet God, evidenced in the actions of Jesus, has that sort of power. A power not just to create nor just to destroy but one that can overturn the normal order of things. Innate within the Divine is the real and raw ability to undo the brokenness of this world, to make something new.
In the face of that potency, it seems like any or all of us ought to feel a little afraid of the One we’re called to follow, to emulate, to love. But with a fear different from what David experienced—a fear that pushes that incredible power and the being behind it away.
Instead, experiencing a fear that dares ask that it come home with us, because evening is near.
Jesus, nothing in the cosmos or upon this earth is more powerful than your love. May we, in this Resurrection season, be acquainted with the holy fear of that awesome power so we might draw closer to be made whole.