Oh the blessing of haverim!

And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. And Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be averted from the people.” Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.” But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. (2 Samuel 24:20-24 ESV)

Some nice havering yesterday in our Sunday discussion.

Examining David’s motives in refusing to accept Araunah’s gift of this threshing floor…doesn’t he know how to receive a gift? Was it his own pride – he made a mess and by golly was going to pay to “clean it up”? Or was something else at work here? And does worship have to personally cost us something for it to truly be worship?

The whole discussion was for me a reminder of why reading the Bible is supposed to be a community event. Too many of us are solo reapers swinging our hermeneutical sickle into the text and “harvesting” our implications and applications very nicely on our own, thank you very much.

But the fact is we are never truly solo.

Our hermeneutical sickle has a handle shaped by others more than we realize, swung over a field we didn’t even sow along a path that has been travelled countless times before us. Our self-sufficient, American individualistic mindframe simply has to go. When we enter the Bible we are entering a community library with many volumes that have passed through many hands – authors, editors, copyists, translators, scholars. And it is meant to be received and processed through many hands joined together in a common faith and passion to hear and enter the text, to enter the story. I have met plenty of proud, self-made Bible “scholars” who have just “read the word” on their own (used to be one too!) – because, after all, that’s all it takes, right? Just me and my Bible.

But hearing the Word is a community endeavor, involving hearing and discussing, sifting and sorting, give and take. And hopefully some honest calling each other out when there’s far too much personal conjecture and say so and far too little immersion in the text and story itself.

And so back to our wee circle yesterday, with David “on the couch” as it were. What does this story say about his motives? What lessons are here about worship? After exploring various paths and suppositions, each with valid points along the way, we ended up observing together that there may be nothing more at work here than cultural conventions. Araunah may well be bargaining with David the way Ephron the Hittite bargained with Abraham over the cave of Machpelah in Genesis 23 – offering to give it freely (showing his generosity) and then proposing a fair price after the free offer was appropriately turned down. Maybe that’s what’s driving this exchange. Or maybe it’s what I have always heard “harvested” from this story: that worship and obedience are only truly worship and obedience when there’s sacrifice, only when it hurts (at least a little).

Nothing earthshattering in imporantance here, I suppose, either way.

The blessing for me – the blessing of my wonderful little Sunday morning band of haverim – is that the group discussion opened up some legitimate options based on the wider text of Scripture and it blessed me. I fell in love a little more with the Lord, with the Word, with my wee group.

Which is why we all so desperately need this kind of honest, thought- provoking, life-stimulating, face-to-face havering.

Oh the blessing of haverim…

puppeteering

After this David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?” And the LORD said to him, “Go up.” David said, “To which shall I go up?” And he said, “To Hebron.” So David went up there, and his two wives also, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. 2 Samuel 2:1-2

David inquired of the Lord.

Six times we are told that David “inquired of the Lord” – three times in 1 Samuel and three times in 2 Samuel. And while that’s not an avalanche of inquiry, the close grouping of the occasions on which David inquires and God answers impresses me…and makes pronounced the absence of that inquiry in the second half of 2 Samuel.

Intriguing that when it comes to battle, David inquires of the Lord before he moves. When it comes to navigating his home life, nothing. He seems to move through the increasing wreckage of his life by his own wits. In the latter half of his life he is surrounded by puppeteers who counsel this or scheme that. His son Amnon lusts and schemes and though David seems to suspect what’s up, he doesn’t press it. And he doesn’t inquire. Absalom is banished, David mourns and a status quo of unresolved loss and grief sets in that is only broken by the maneouverings of Joab, Nathan-like, and the plotted sly pretensions of a woman disguised. She says, “My lord the king has wisdom like the angel of God to know all things that are on earth.” But David seems to me clueless and impotent, a man who is carried along, passively moved by strings wielded by others.

And he never inquires.

Absalom returns, but not. Absalom pulls Joab’s strings, Joab motions to David, and then vain and pretentious Absalom (he weighed his hair!) steals the hearts of Israel. Rebellion is afoot, David on the run again. And there is no inquiry. Though he does seem to awaken. Several appeals to God. “Confound the counsel of Absalom.” “Perhaps the Lord will see my grief and take pity.” And he takes the strings and moves his pieces around the board as Absalom sleeps with his women in an improvised rooftop brothel. And when it comes time to muster his forces against his own son, he doesn’t inquire. “I myself will go out with you.” “No you won’t,” retort his men. “Whatever seems best to you I will do,” says the king.

And he does not inquire.

It is a blatant famine of inquiry that seems only broken later by a three year famine in the land that finally produces the notice again that “David sought the face of the Lord.”

It just makes me reflect a bit on the all too frequent sparseness of real inquiry in my own life and experience. We pray, but so often not with serious expectation of response. Prayer as polite gesture, as a wave of the hand towards an invisible god whose favor We would humbly beseech as We do whatever makes sense to Us, whatever seems to sync with the expectations of people or with what we’ve always done or feel like we should do. On the whole, I’ve witnessed far more puppeteering over my three decades in this church business, of motions from meetings and calculations from committees.

Not that I have this inquiring business down. I’ve seen plenty of wanna-be inquirers over the years who strike me more as pagan priests and priestesses looking at livers. Guess I would just like a bit more of that wonderful naivete I see in David’s inquiries; longing for release from the inescapable puppeteering and calculations of life. Still hungry for the give and take of Tevye’s walk, with eyes up and hands in motion, complaining and questioning and laughing, feeling His rhythms, or savoring the memory of them when prayer seems unrequited.

And David inquired of the Lord…

swordplay

Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. And Joab the son of Zeruiah and the servants of David went out and met them at the pool of Gibeon. And they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool. And Abner said to Joab, “Let the young men arise and compete before us.” And Joab said, “Let them arise.” Then they arose and passed over by number, twelve for Benjamin and Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David. And each caught his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his opponent's side, so they fell down together. Therefore that place was called Helkath-hazzurim, which is at Gibeon. And the battle was very fierce that day. And Abner and the men of Israel were beaten before the servants of David. (2 Samuel 2:12-17 ESV)

This story has always intrigued me.

Twenty-four guys facing off with each other, simultaneously taking each other by the head and then each stabbing the other in the side in some sort of twisted choreography. The image of choreography is further underlined by the Abner’s challenge to Joab to have the young men rise up and “compete.” The Hebrew is literally “have a laugh, jest, play” (the KJV translates it “play”).

It was a deadly game that ended up spreading through the countryside in the decisive battle of Gibeon.

Looking at this through a “havering lens,” I can’t help but notice some points of instruction for havers as we grapple with truth together.

First off, it is perfectly appropriate for havers to grab each other by the head. This is, in fact, the whole point of havering. To grab each other by the head is to engage in a lively exchange of thoughts. It is passionately thinking together, with word swords flashing and clashing and sparks flying. “Iron on iron,” says the proverb, “and so a man the face of his friend.” It is in such sparring – such “playing” – that we are prepared to fight the real enemy, who is never the person standing opposite you.

We desperately need such tactile, thoughtful engagement with each other. Unfortunately, all too often we rip off ourselves and each other by refusing to do it. We settle for making mincemeat out of each other while absent. We shadow box, thrust and parry, with a missing partner, often in the safe company of sympathizers who with us imagine each crucial blow as we grapple with an invisible man’s head. But true havers don’t box shadows, they lay hands on each other.

Which leads to the second observation: grabbing each other by the head, havers don’t then thrust their swords into each other’s sides – or worse, into each other’s backs. Havers don’t assassinate each other. They don’t turn their discussion forums into sword fields. “Field of Swords” is actually the literal meaning of the name attached to that bloody place by the pool of Gibeon: Helkath-Hazzurim. Peterson calls it “Slaughter Park.” There have been far too many such parks littering the roadside of church history.

Havers, play hard. Lay hands on each other. Grab your fellow haver by the head – and keep your dagger out of his side.