Religion and Politics: Solomon’s Temple as Propaganda
1 Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11) 22-30, 41-43
Proper 16B
August 26, 2012
Proper 16B
August 26, 2012
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
Whenever the
lectionary committee gives us a reading that is as fragmented as the one we
have today from 1 Kings, I want to know what has been left out and what has
been included and why. I wonder what has
been highlighted and what has been obscured by the choices that they have
made. I’m not blaming them in
particular. We can’t read the whole
Bible aloud every Sunday or even all of one book, so a reading has to begin and
end somewhere. Something will be read
and something will not.
Still, I like to
look at those things. Since the
lectionary is a collection of readings that are supposed to contain the most
important passages in the Bible, they represent the lectionary committee’s
judgment about what is important. The
human beings that formed the committee all brought their prejudices and foibles
to the text and to the task, just as I bring my prejudices and foibles to the
task of reading and preaching and you bring yours to the task of hearing and
interpreting what I say.
One of the
consistent foibles of the committee is an aversion to controversy, a distaste
of difficult readings. So let’s see
what’s going on in our reading from 1 Kings.
The first few
scattered verses—1, 6 and 10-11—are actually in parentheses, optional, in other
words. They tell us that the Ark of the
Covenant, what our version calls “the chest,” was brought from the Tent of
Meeting, where it had been kept, to the Temple that Solomon had finished
building nearly a year before. The
material left out is mostly repetitious, although it does tell us that Ark of
the Covenant contained only the two stone tablets with the words of the
covenant on them, the ones that Moses had placed in it at Horeb. In other words, God is not in the Ark
of the Covenant.
The next sections of
the reading are two excerpts from a lengthy prayer that Solomon prayed. Solomon recalls the promises made to his
father David, promises that in his view are kept that day, a reminder that, while
God does not live in a house, even one as fine as the Temple, nonetheless the
Temple will be the place where God’s “name” lives, whatever that might
mean. The second excerpt asks that the
prayers of immigrants directed toward the Temple be heard and answered.
As it stands the
reading does two things: First, it celebrates the Temple while at the same
noting that God is in no sense a captive in this building. “If heaven, even the highest heaven can’t
contain you, how can this temple that I’ve built contain you?” Solomon asks God
in his prayer. He knows that it can’t,
so that the project of building this Temple, as magnificent as it is, is a
little misleading, since the Temple sure looks like it was built as a
house for Yahweh to live in. In some of
the skipped material, Solomon says, “The Lord
said that he would live in a dark cloud, but I have indeed built you a lofty
temple as a place where you can live forever.”
We are already caught in a contradiction in the text, a contradiction
that the committee would have spared us if I hadn’t been so nosy about what
they left out.
The second thing
that the reading does is to emphasize the inclusive nature of Israel’s
religion. The word will get out about
Israel’s covenant God and when it does, people will come and pray. And when they do, Solomon asks God to hear
and answer, so that the word will spread even more. Yahweh is Israel’s God, but is concerned
about a global reputation.
This is nice as far
as it goes. But this is not really the
major theme of Solomon’s prayer. Solomon,
after talking to God about the house that isn’t a house, imagines seven
different reasons for offering up prayers to the God who doesn’t live in
the Temple that Solomon has built. (1)
Someone may sin against a neighbor and need to have the matter judged. (2) The people may be defeated by an enemy
because they have sinned. (3) There may
be a drought because the people have sinned.
(4) There may be famine or a plague because the people have sinned. (5) An immigrant may hear about God and come
to pray. (6) The people may go out to
engage in a battle. And, last of all,
(7) the people may sin and be taken away into captivity and may pray from
wherever they have been taken.
What emerges here is
that in Solomon’s imagination the Temple, this house where God does not live, is
a kind of technology for addressing what are mostly royal concerns: resolving
disputes between citizens, military defeat, drought, famine and plague, foreign
reputation, battle, and even the loss of sovereignty. These are matters that concern the king; and,
the Temple, the house where God does not live, is supposed to provide the
solutions.
Of course Solomon is
careful to hedge this technology about with disclaimers. Of the seven occasions for prayer, five of
them come about in the first place because someone has sinned. And it’s never the king. All sorts of bad things can happened for
which the king is not responsible, but for which he offers some remedy that
involves the house where God does not live, the house that he built for God’s
name, whatever that might mean.
There is also a
passing mention of the fact that this is a covenant in which there are covenant
obligations that bind all the people, the king included. Solomon thanks God for keeping the promises that
were made to his father David:
“Therefore,
O Lord, God of Israel, keep for
your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying ‘There shall
never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only
your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.’
Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to
your servant my father David.”
God’s care for
Israel is deep. God is prepared to go to
extraordinary lengths to see to Israel’s welfare. But God’s pro-Israel stand is not absolute; Israel
must not scorn the covenant. “If
only…” God had told David, and Solomon does in fact mention this, but what
chance does this sobering reminder have of getting noticed among the buildings,
the cattle and sheep being slaughtered as sacrifices and food for the gathered
crowds, the clouds of incense, the chanting and the cheers?
No, the impression
that Solomon has carefully created with the Temple and the liturgy and the
prayers is one of permanence and stable reliability. The Temple is solid; it is stone; it will be
the house where God does not live forever. There are no “if only’s” in the architecture,
not a single “as long as you” set into the stones. The Temple is built for a God who is a sure
thing.
Solomon has made a
bid for control over the religious establishment of Israel. In the process the covenant has nearly been
erased. There is no mention at all of
those who must be cared for if the covenant is to be kept: the widow, the
orphan, and the migrant worker. For the
time being, I suppose, they are eating their fill of the sacrificed beasts.
Perhaps they have
forgotten that it was the common folk of Israel, not Solomon, who built the
Temple. Oh, and Solomon’s palace as well, a building that occupied a footprint
some fifty times the size of the house that God does not live in. It was their wealth that Solomon
gathered to pay for it all. It was their
fathers and brothers and sons who were drafted at spear-point and sent to labor
for the king. They may have had some
pride in the finished buildings, but in the end this wasn’t about them. It was about the king and it was about royal power.
The covenant was
born out of the brick-making factories of Egypt, the fruit of liberation from
slavery, as Yahweh heard the cries of the people, knew their misery and came
down to save. The covenant is all about
those who live on the edges.
Solomon has given
lip service to the covenant and co-opted it to secure royal power and
control. He has built a beautiful
Temple, a house that cannot hold God, and yet, in Solomon’s imagination God has
become small enough to just fit.
That imaginative
adjustment so that God fits within the limits of Solomon’s desire for control will
outlive Solomon. It will be like a wound
that does not heal, that festers over the coming centuries until the life of
God’s people becomes a covenant in name only, until the armies of Babylon surround
the walls of Jerusalem with siege machinery, until the gates are breached and
the walls are torn down and the Temple itself—looted and defiled—lies in ruins.
Just two generations
before Samuel had warned Israel not to ask for a king, because a king would “take
your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen… [and] your
daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers… [and] the best of your fields
and vineyards and olive orchards … [and] one-tenth of your grain and of your
vineyards… [and] your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and
donkeys… [and] one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.”[1]
Just two generations later and Solomon has become that king. He has enslaved the people. And they have built the Temple, the house
where God does not live, as Solomon’s propaganda in stone, as architectural
theology.
Many generations
later, after Solomon, after the destruction of Jerusalem, after the exile in
Babylon, came a peasant from the north country to another Temple, this one
remodeled by another king who played at the game of empire. He gestured to the fine buildings, known
everywhere as some of finest religious architecture in the world, and said to
his followers, “You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone
will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”[2]
Jesus came to put an
end to the whole Solomonic project. He
recognized that we cannot use buildings to control God, even beautiful
buildings. He turned Solomon’s prayer
inside out and called the people to remember the covenant, to remember the
hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoners, and the stranger, to
remember the God who heard the cries of the people, knew their misery, and came
down.
Jesus calls us to
remember the covenant and that’s what our true life here is and will be
about. We know that peaceful justice is
what God wants. When we find peaceful
justice at work in the world, we will support it. When something in the world thwarts peaceful
justice, we will work to change it. When
we cannot change it, we will resist it.
We do not expect to
build a building for God to live in. We
only hope that, wherever and whenever and however we are striving to live out
the covenant in our shared life, God will be with us, in our midst.
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