October 4th

The Philistines and the Ark

             When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod; then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and placed it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off upon the threshold; only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.  This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not step on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day. The hand of the Lord was heavy upon the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and struck them with tumors, both in Ashdod and in its territory.  And when the inhabitants of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us; for his hand is heavy on us and on our god Dagon.”

1 Samuel 5:1-7

            There had been a battle and the Israelites had lost big.  They had not just lost lives.  They had not just lost land.  They also lost the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of God’s favor and power that they had followed throughout the wilderness and into the promised land.  The Philistines took the relic and paraded it into their central cities, celebrating the spoils of their victory.  They moved the Ark into the temple of Dagon; since their army had defeated the Israelites, their god must be stronger as well.  Dagon was one of the primary gods of the Philistines, honored as the god of fertility and often associated with harvests from the land and the sea, grain and fish.  He was revered by his people and lauded as the power above all others.

            When Dagon’s statue shared a room with the Ark of God, it fell apart and ended up face down in reverence to the one true God.  Their idols were bowing, their citizens were afflicted with tumors and boils, panic and nightmares gripped their people, and the leaders of Ashdod knew that what they had brought into their city walls was not a trophy, but the powerful presence of the God of the Israelites.

            They sent the Ark to one of the other 5 capital cities, and the same horrors fell upon them.  The Ark was sent away over and over again until the entire nation of Philistia wanted nothing to do with it and loaded it onto a cart and sent it on its way home.  They did not want a trophy.  They did not want parades.  They did not want to cheer at their victory over their enemies.  They just wanted the God of Israel to leave them alone and stop tormenting them.

            Do you know what God does not need?  Our protection.  God is big and strong and intelligent and wise and secure.  There was one power that kept Israel’s enemies from being wiped off the map. It was not the military might of rival nations.  It was not the power of foreign deities.  It was the rebellion and disobedience of the Israelites.  The Philistines realized that they stood no chance against God.  But a physical fight against a rebellious people that God was trying to instruct?  That was something they could win.

            One of the main things that gets in our way as Christians is that we believe that God is too small and too insecure to handle the real world.  We teach our kids that faith means not asking tough questions, largely because we think God can’t handle them and we are afraid of the answers we will come up with.  We teach our kids to pray with a lot of qualifiers and a lot of opportunities for us to be okay with God not answering prayer, in large part because we think that God won’t or can’t answer.  We teach our kids to put on a happy face for the world, and especially for God and the church, in large part because we don’t think that God can handle big feelings and all the drama and messiness that we bring to the table.

            God can handle the questions.  He can handle the longings of our hearts.  He can handle our big and messy emotions.  He can handle the hardest problems that life throws at us.  The Israelites saw God as a strict rule-giver whose only joy in life was telling them what they could not do.  God would not let them murder or cheat on their spouse or take other people’s stuff and they were just so tired of His laws.  The Philistines saw Him as power incarnate and did everything that they could to get away from His bad side.

            We tend to see God as too small and impotent.  We ask small.  We question small.  We feel small and generally we just don’t want to bother Him as He must be way too busy for us and our insignificant issues.  He is much bigger than that.  We are much bigger than that.  If God is Creator and ruler of the Universe and we are his children, then you and I are sons and daughters of the king…Princes and Princesses who have the ear and the heart of Power Incarnate.  Let us live in that reality instead of trying to get through life without being noticed.     

           

A moment to reflect:

How is your vision of God too small?