In the Samuel text we read we have the story of the Ark of the Covenant being brought into the city of Jerusalem.  Basically we have a grand parade.  At the front of the parade there is King David.  He is singing, and dancing, and making burnt offerings if they had confetti back then he would have been throwing it.  but he is just the beginning.  He is the lead in for the heart of the parade.  The Ark of the covenant.  This is the great item that is being brought into the city.  And we will talk more about that in a second. 

At the end of the text we get a brief introduction to Michal.  She is the daughter of King Saul.  The King that David replaced.  Michal and David are enemies, and Michal does not like at all this parade into the city.  She thinks it is foolish and stupid.  She thinks David is doing this for himself.  But the truth is he is doing it for the Ark, and for God. 

 Now the Ark of the covenant, is a very popular and common symbol from biblical times.  It is not just mentioned in the bible but also in the Islamic texts of the Qur’an.  It is also a symbol used today in popular culture.  It has been in movies, and books, and there are at least two video games I know of that make reference to it. 

 Most of what people know about the ark of the covenant they learned by watching the Indiana Jones movie.  It was a beautiful chest covered in gold with two large angels or cherubim on top.  It had long poles along the sides so people could carry it without touching it.  It held enormous power.  Power so great that it could easily destroy the Nazi bad guys in the movie, but spare the hero Harrison Ford. 

 For the most part the descriptions and characteristics of the ark, George Lucas got right.  Its size of about 2 and half to 3 feet wide by about 5 feet long; its beautiful decorations and golden angel guardians on the top; and its immense power and ability for destruction. 

 In the movie the Nazis are searching for it to use a weapon of mass destruction.  Legend said that armies who carried the Ark before them would never lose and their enemies would flee in terror.  This is not far from the biblical stories.  The Israelite armies would often carry the Ark with them into battle and their enemies would flee.  The ark is treated with such respect, and has such dangerous power.  In the text for today you may notice that it skips verses 6-11.  That portion is a story of a soldier who sees the ark is slipping as it is being carried, he reaches out to steady it and he is over come by its power and falls dead.  Typically when the ark was transported it was covered in a veil not to protect it but to protect the people from it.  King Solomon placed the ark in the temple it was placed in the innermost chamber behind several curtains, again to protect the people from its power, and only the highest of priests was allowed to go before it, and that was only once a year on the day of Yom Kippur. 

 So the Indiana Jones movie got right its usage as a weapon and ability to kill.  However that is not all the ark symbolized.  The bible tells us that within the ark were the stone tablets on which God, with God’s own hand wrote the 10 commandments.  Again they made a movie about this one, you know Charlton Heston, coming down the mountain with the stones. 

 Other texts say that the ark also contained the Rod or staff of Moses’ brother Arron, the first of the line of priest of Israel.  It may have also contained pieces of the broken tablets from the first time God gave the commandments to Moses.  These items are all significant and have different meanings. 

 The 10 commandments are not just the law of God but represent the covenant or promise that God made with God’s people.  It symbolizes the relationship between God and Humankind.  The staff of Aaron has two meanings, one it reminds the people of their story, their rescue from slavery in Egypt, it shows where they come from, and since he was the first line of priests it represents the beginning of their religious traditions.  The piece of the broken tablet is also important, it stands for forgiveness, that even though the people turned away from God and made a molten calf, God forgave them and upheld the promises God had made. 

 But the ark itself represents so much more.  It is mentioned by name many times in the bible and eluded to many times as well.  Because the ark was kept inside the temple or a shrine, the expression “before the Lord” or “Before God,” sometimes biblical characters are said to pray “before the Lord” or a sacrifice was made “before God.” This may more literally mean “before the Ark”. 

 It was the essence of God.  It was the pride of the people.  It was the Holy Grail of the Israelites.  We see great care and respect in the text with the dances and music as the ark is carried.  The ark represented God.  Worship and praise of the ark is worship and praise toward God.  If God could be embodied in one thing the ark would have been it. 

 But the ark also represented something else.  That being tradition.  The ark was hundreds maybe even a thousand years old at the time David gloriously brought the Ark into the city.  And with that entrance, David was bringing forward the traditions of the people, the religious traditions forward.  Into the present day. 

 Tradition.

We in America have many traditions, not as many as some other cultures, but nonetheless.  Some of these practices are quite obvious.  Like singing the national anthem before a baseball games or saying the pledge of allegiance, to the flag.  In this area there is a lot of tradition associated with Duke and Chapel Hill universities.  A tradition of basketball.  There many food tradition, like Bar-b-Que, or some family recipe that gets passed down from generation to generation.  Thanksgiving is noting but one long chain of traditions, an entire day devoted to celebrating traditions.  National, historical, religious, personal, and family traditions.  My family when I was growing up we would always go to the movies after thanksgiving. 

 And of course every family has their own Christmas traditions. 

 Now some of these practices we do every day or week and don’t even realize it.  Like when we meet someone new, we extend our hand in welcome, and because that person likely shares our tradition they extend their hand back. 

 Like when you eat, you hold the knife in your right hand and the fork in your left and cut the meat, and then you place the knife down, switch the fork to your right hand and eat.  This act of switching hands is strictly American.  Most people do it without even noticing, nor do they realize that it would be much faster and easier to not switch hands.  But that is how it is with traditions, we just do them, and we don’t realize it.   

The CHURCH is heavily steeped in tradition.  We have annual traditions, like VBS, or the stewardship campaign, the youth trip to Montreat has become a tradition.  The monthly practice of communion is a tradition.  The robes we are wearing today, are a tradition.  The order of worship, we confess our sins, we do the offering, we read the scripture, and then we have a sermon.  That order of doing things is a tradition in this place.   

The way we pray, bowing our heads and putting our hands together is a practice we all do, even the words we say.  We end each prayer with “in Christ we pray, Amen.”  That is a practice that goes back thousands of years.  We all do it, we probably take no notice. 

 The songs we sing in church some of the hymns are older than the USA,

 The prayer of the collect, we say it every week, we could probably say it without looking at the page.  But do we ever stop to notice what it means. 

Do we ever stop to notice what traditions mean?  Or do we just do them blindly because that is what we have always done?   

Do we pay attention to the words of collect, do we know the meaning behind them? 

Do we just do our weekly rituals and practices or do we understand the meaning and purpose behind them. 

Back to the Text…

 Lets go back to the text we read.  And lets talk about that understanding.  In the text we had David bringing in the Ark and we had Michal, Saul’s daughter, disapproving of the grand parade.  If the Ark represents religious tradition, then Michal would represent the opposite.  not upholding tradition, not understanding it.  even scorning it.  She said to David, in a voice of disgust…

 "How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants' maids, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!"

 She thinks David is practicing a stupid old tradition, one that has no meaning, and is only for selfish glory of the King.  What Michal doesn’t get, what she doesn’t understand, is that the grand parade was not about David, it was not really even about the ark, it was about God.  It was about praising and worshiping God. 

 The dances, the music, the burnt offerings, were all for praise and worship of God.  The celebration of the Ark’s entrance into the city was a celebration of God and of God’s relationship with humanity. 

 David tries to explain this to her.  Because David understands the meaning behind the tradition.  He knows why he is dancing and singing.  He understand what the ark represents.  And for David, that meaning, is more important than the practices.  More important than the actual songs or the way he dances; it is more important than the Ark itself. 

 The act of Praising God, and knowing why we praise God, is more important than how we praise God.  See the Ark of the covenant was lost.  Maybe it was destroyed, maybe it was captured.  We don’t know for sure.  If it hadn’t been lost, Indiana wouldn’t have had much to look for. 

 However, the act of praising God was not lost.  The covenant which the Ark represented, the promises of the 10 commandments, none of that was lost. 

 God still wants to be in relationship with us, and we should still praise God. 

 Those are the questions we must grapple with.  Because if we don’t, if we don’t understand ourselves and our tradition, our search for a new pastor will be frustrating.  We will go out and look for some one who does things the way we do them, we will look for someone who says the things we say.  Who acts the way we act, and looks the way we look.  And we will look for a new pastor who is just like Haywood was. 

We will be like Michal, not understanding the traditions. 

 What we should look for is someone who doesn’t necessarily do what we do.  But rather we should seek someone who does things for the same reason we do things. 

 So I invite you, over the next few months and year, to take a careful look at us.  At who we are.  And at why we do what we do.  Not just answer the question “what traditions do we have” but rather “why we have them” and then, we look for someone with the same answers.   

We should look for someone like David, who says it was not for myself, but “it was before the Lord” that I did these traditions.