The View From Michal's Window
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle B
The View From Michal's Window
When I was teenager, I worked one summer at a church camp washing dishes. One day, after cleaning up from supper, the cook, his assistant, the groundskeeper, and I ended up out behind the dining hall where there was an old tree stump on which someone had painted a target. The cook, who was always up to trying something new, had brought with him the kitchen's meat cleaver, a hatchet-like utensil, and he suggested a contest to see which of us could throw the cleaver most squarely into the center of the target. That sounded like fun, so each of us took turns flinging that sharp-edged implement at the stump.
We were just getting into it really good, when around the corner of the dining hall came the camp manager. We immediately assumed we were all in big trouble and braced ourselves for a bawling out. Instead, the manager asked if he too could try throwing the cleaver, so of course we let him, and for the next several minutes we all had a good time with our target practice. The fun ended abruptly, however, when the manager's wife suddenly appeared on the scene. She took one look at what her husband was doing and started chewing him out loudly and in front of us all. She scolded him for engaging in our "dangerous game" and for setting a bad example, and told him that he should be ashamed of himself.
The man himself seemed to take this in stride, but he did say to us, "Okay, fellas, we better quit this." We all slunk away while he walked off with his wife.
That incident always comes back to me when I read this story from the Old Testament about King David dancing his way into Jerusalem. He was heading the procession that was transporting the Ark of the Covenant into the city, and it was an important moment in the history of Israel. The Ark symbolized God's presence, and by bringing it into Israel's capital city, the people were effectively saying that their lives would center around God. David was really getting into the spirit of the event, dancing without restraint as an act of praise to God. The text makes a point to tell us that David wore only "a linen ephod," which was essentially a loincloth. This does not mean that the king was in his underwear, but rather that he understood the religious significance of the day, for the ephod was a ceremonial garment usually worn by the priests. What is a little odd, however, is that the priests normally wore their ephods over other garments, whereas David wore only the ephod, perhaps because of his vigorous movement in the heat of the day. Whatever the reason, the ephod would not have covered him very well, especially with all that dancing around.
As David led the procession into the city, his wife, Michal, viewed this pageantry from her window. By this point, David had several wives, but Michal, who was the daughter of the previous king, Saul, was his first wife. She had come into the relationship loving David, but a lot of water had since gone under the bridge, and their relationship had soured. In any case, as Michal now looked out the window and saw her husband leaping around scantily clad, she was suddenly filled with loathing for him. The text words it as "she despised him in her heart."
Well, has that ever happened to you? Have you ever had a sudden overwhelming feeling of displeasure or even disgust because of some behavior by someone you rely on or love? Or have you ever been on the receiving end of such scorn, where someone you've counted as a friend or coworker or perhaps even your spouse all at once erupted with caustic criticism and scorn for something you were doing and enjoying? How did it make you feel? Probably not very good.
In the case of David and Michal, it was the final breakdown of their already shaky relationship. They didn't actually divorce, but Michal was likely exiled from David's presence thereafter. He had other wives and probably didn't miss her that much. The biblical author sums it up by saying that Michal "had no child to the day of her death," probably meaning that David never again took her to his bed.
In all likelihood, most of us have had incidents in our relationships like that where someone else has not lived up to our expectations of them or where we have not lived up to theirs. But that raises the question about whether we are right in judging others by our expectations of them. Are we right to measure others by who we are? We can imagine the object of our scolding saying, "Like, who died and made you boss of me?"
There is something to be said in favor of being able to live without trying to conform to anybody else's expectations of us. In fact, that very idea was a big part of a pop philosophy that took hold back in the 1960s, a school of thought that focused on individualism. Its main idea is probably best summed up in a few lines written by Frederick Perls, a psychologist and developer of the branch of psychology called Gestalt. Those lines, sometimes called the "Gestalt Prayer," go like this:
I do my thing, and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I;
If by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
That philosophy was a useful corrective to the notion in some relationships that the other person is there to fulfill all of our so-called needs, and even, in some demanding relationships, all our whims. But Perls' lines also go too far in the direction of "I have no responsibility for how my friend, partner, coworker, spouse, relative, or anybody else is touched by what I do." Would you really want to live in relationships where the only places you intersect with others is when your individual interests happen to coincide? That does seem to be what the individualism movement advocated. To again quote Perls, whom this movement considered a kind of poet laureate:
I hope to ... make you understand how much you gain by taking responsibility for every emotion [you feel], every movement you make, every thought you have -- and shed responsibility for anybody else. ... We touch each other by honestly being what we are, not by intentionally making contact.2
Whew! As I said, that thinking may be a corrective to the other extreme. But it's also a pretty lonely way to live.
In the scripture before us, it's pretty hard to fault David in this particular case, as God himself did not reject David's celebratory actions. But we can sympathize with Michal's plight, too, if not with the way she chose to handle it. Fairly early in her marriage, when her father Saul was still on the throne, David had to flee for his life when Saul tried to kill him. In fact, Michal helped her husband escape, knowing he would have to leave her behind. Once David was out of reach, Saul took Michal, and giving her no choice, presented her in marriage to another man.
In the meantime, David acquired a couple of more wives, and, as far as we know, made no attempt to even communicate with Michal. Years later, when he finally got the throne himself, he ordered that Michal be restored to him. Some Bible scholars think David did this not because he missed her after all those years, but to secure his rule over what had been her father's realm. And once again, nobody considered Michal's wishes. She was taken from her second marriage and brought to David's palace.
Even after all that, however, it doesn't appear that she began to despise David until this day when he failed to live up to her idea of how a king should behave. But once that happened, she made no bones about telling him how she felt.
This story reminds us that there are some questions we ought to ask ourselves when we are inclined to scold someone for actions that don't measure up to our expectations.
The first is: What will a diatribe accomplish? Answer: Probably not much that's helpful. Harangues seldom bring desired results. The old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar applies here, but I am more moved by the biblical principle of loving my neighbor. That often means trying to see things from the other person's point of view -- see things from their window, as it were. That's not agreeing necessarily, but it is trying to understand what a position or action means to the other person. When we do that, it may leave us still needing to confront the other person, but now with something other than a tirade. When we take time to look from their window, we are more likely to attack the issue than the person.
Another question is: What drummer is the other person dancing to? Either Michal didn't understand or she didn't care that David was dancing to God's tune, but he was. Just because we wouldn't act as another person acts doesn't make their actions wrong by definition, and it is always possible that the other person is listening to God better than we are, or that what God is asking of her or him is different from what God is asking of us.
And one more question: Where is our sense of relationship? In the case of Michal and David, there wasn't much relationship left, but is that where we want to be? Whether our connection with the other person is as friend to friend, partner to partner, colleague to colleague, coworker to coworker, parent to child, spouse to spouse, or something other, we should be working in terms of relationship. Is battering the other person verbally or storming on their parade a way of enhancing our connection to that person and theirs to us? Relationship usually implies some level of caring, but how caring can we be when we are blasting another because they don't measure up to the yardstick of how we would behave?
Relationship does not mean agreeing with or overlooking troublesome behavior, but it does mean trying to understand each other's expectations. It means that where we feel those expectations are unreasonable, we talk about them and explain our feelings. And where we cannot agree, often we can live with our differences.
To some degree, all of this is common sense, but when we are talking about human relationships, we are also talking about an arena in which our Christianity gets lived out. It's fine to talk of Christian love, but human relationships are major places where that love gets applied -- or fails to be applied. So, if we are going use the word Christian about ourselves, we need to look for a window on our relationships that is large enough that we see more than Michal's limited and self-centered view. We can't expect to see things as God does, for his window is bigger than any we will ever have, but we can do better than to just measure everybody else by our tastes and expectations.
What we need to do is to pray for bigger windows.
____________
1.ÊAlthough the lectionary reading stops at verse 19 and does include the reference to Michal's window, I suggest you also include verses 20-23 in the reading.
2.ÊFrederick S. Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, (Moab, Utah: Real People Press, 1969), p. 65.
When I was teenager, I worked one summer at a church camp washing dishes. One day, after cleaning up from supper, the cook, his assistant, the groundskeeper, and I ended up out behind the dining hall where there was an old tree stump on which someone had painted a target. The cook, who was always up to trying something new, had brought with him the kitchen's meat cleaver, a hatchet-like utensil, and he suggested a contest to see which of us could throw the cleaver most squarely into the center of the target. That sounded like fun, so each of us took turns flinging that sharp-edged implement at the stump.
We were just getting into it really good, when around the corner of the dining hall came the camp manager. We immediately assumed we were all in big trouble and braced ourselves for a bawling out. Instead, the manager asked if he too could try throwing the cleaver, so of course we let him, and for the next several minutes we all had a good time with our target practice. The fun ended abruptly, however, when the manager's wife suddenly appeared on the scene. She took one look at what her husband was doing and started chewing him out loudly and in front of us all. She scolded him for engaging in our "dangerous game" and for setting a bad example, and told him that he should be ashamed of himself.
The man himself seemed to take this in stride, but he did say to us, "Okay, fellas, we better quit this." We all slunk away while he walked off with his wife.
That incident always comes back to me when I read this story from the Old Testament about King David dancing his way into Jerusalem. He was heading the procession that was transporting the Ark of the Covenant into the city, and it was an important moment in the history of Israel. The Ark symbolized God's presence, and by bringing it into Israel's capital city, the people were effectively saying that their lives would center around God. David was really getting into the spirit of the event, dancing without restraint as an act of praise to God. The text makes a point to tell us that David wore only "a linen ephod," which was essentially a loincloth. This does not mean that the king was in his underwear, but rather that he understood the religious significance of the day, for the ephod was a ceremonial garment usually worn by the priests. What is a little odd, however, is that the priests normally wore their ephods over other garments, whereas David wore only the ephod, perhaps because of his vigorous movement in the heat of the day. Whatever the reason, the ephod would not have covered him very well, especially with all that dancing around.
As David led the procession into the city, his wife, Michal, viewed this pageantry from her window. By this point, David had several wives, but Michal, who was the daughter of the previous king, Saul, was his first wife. She had come into the relationship loving David, but a lot of water had since gone under the bridge, and their relationship had soured. In any case, as Michal now looked out the window and saw her husband leaping around scantily clad, she was suddenly filled with loathing for him. The text words it as "she despised him in her heart."
Well, has that ever happened to you? Have you ever had a sudden overwhelming feeling of displeasure or even disgust because of some behavior by someone you rely on or love? Or have you ever been on the receiving end of such scorn, where someone you've counted as a friend or coworker or perhaps even your spouse all at once erupted with caustic criticism and scorn for something you were doing and enjoying? How did it make you feel? Probably not very good.
In the case of David and Michal, it was the final breakdown of their already shaky relationship. They didn't actually divorce, but Michal was likely exiled from David's presence thereafter. He had other wives and probably didn't miss her that much. The biblical author sums it up by saying that Michal "had no child to the day of her death," probably meaning that David never again took her to his bed.
In all likelihood, most of us have had incidents in our relationships like that where someone else has not lived up to our expectations of them or where we have not lived up to theirs. But that raises the question about whether we are right in judging others by our expectations of them. Are we right to measure others by who we are? We can imagine the object of our scolding saying, "Like, who died and made you boss of me?"
There is something to be said in favor of being able to live without trying to conform to anybody else's expectations of us. In fact, that very idea was a big part of a pop philosophy that took hold back in the 1960s, a school of thought that focused on individualism. Its main idea is probably best summed up in a few lines written by Frederick Perls, a psychologist and developer of the branch of psychology called Gestalt. Those lines, sometimes called the "Gestalt Prayer," go like this:
I do my thing, and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I;
If by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
That philosophy was a useful corrective to the notion in some relationships that the other person is there to fulfill all of our so-called needs, and even, in some demanding relationships, all our whims. But Perls' lines also go too far in the direction of "I have no responsibility for how my friend, partner, coworker, spouse, relative, or anybody else is touched by what I do." Would you really want to live in relationships where the only places you intersect with others is when your individual interests happen to coincide? That does seem to be what the individualism movement advocated. To again quote Perls, whom this movement considered a kind of poet laureate:
I hope to ... make you understand how much you gain by taking responsibility for every emotion [you feel], every movement you make, every thought you have -- and shed responsibility for anybody else. ... We touch each other by honestly being what we are, not by intentionally making contact.2
Whew! As I said, that thinking may be a corrective to the other extreme. But it's also a pretty lonely way to live.
In the scripture before us, it's pretty hard to fault David in this particular case, as God himself did not reject David's celebratory actions. But we can sympathize with Michal's plight, too, if not with the way she chose to handle it. Fairly early in her marriage, when her father Saul was still on the throne, David had to flee for his life when Saul tried to kill him. In fact, Michal helped her husband escape, knowing he would have to leave her behind. Once David was out of reach, Saul took Michal, and giving her no choice, presented her in marriage to another man.
In the meantime, David acquired a couple of more wives, and, as far as we know, made no attempt to even communicate with Michal. Years later, when he finally got the throne himself, he ordered that Michal be restored to him. Some Bible scholars think David did this not because he missed her after all those years, but to secure his rule over what had been her father's realm. And once again, nobody considered Michal's wishes. She was taken from her second marriage and brought to David's palace.
Even after all that, however, it doesn't appear that she began to despise David until this day when he failed to live up to her idea of how a king should behave. But once that happened, she made no bones about telling him how she felt.
This story reminds us that there are some questions we ought to ask ourselves when we are inclined to scold someone for actions that don't measure up to our expectations.
The first is: What will a diatribe accomplish? Answer: Probably not much that's helpful. Harangues seldom bring desired results. The old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar applies here, but I am more moved by the biblical principle of loving my neighbor. That often means trying to see things from the other person's point of view -- see things from their window, as it were. That's not agreeing necessarily, but it is trying to understand what a position or action means to the other person. When we do that, it may leave us still needing to confront the other person, but now with something other than a tirade. When we take time to look from their window, we are more likely to attack the issue than the person.
Another question is: What drummer is the other person dancing to? Either Michal didn't understand or she didn't care that David was dancing to God's tune, but he was. Just because we wouldn't act as another person acts doesn't make their actions wrong by definition, and it is always possible that the other person is listening to God better than we are, or that what God is asking of her or him is different from what God is asking of us.
And one more question: Where is our sense of relationship? In the case of Michal and David, there wasn't much relationship left, but is that where we want to be? Whether our connection with the other person is as friend to friend, partner to partner, colleague to colleague, coworker to coworker, parent to child, spouse to spouse, or something other, we should be working in terms of relationship. Is battering the other person verbally or storming on their parade a way of enhancing our connection to that person and theirs to us? Relationship usually implies some level of caring, but how caring can we be when we are blasting another because they don't measure up to the yardstick of how we would behave?
Relationship does not mean agreeing with or overlooking troublesome behavior, but it does mean trying to understand each other's expectations. It means that where we feel those expectations are unreasonable, we talk about them and explain our feelings. And where we cannot agree, often we can live with our differences.
To some degree, all of this is common sense, but when we are talking about human relationships, we are also talking about an arena in which our Christianity gets lived out. It's fine to talk of Christian love, but human relationships are major places where that love gets applied -- or fails to be applied. So, if we are going use the word Christian about ourselves, we need to look for a window on our relationships that is large enough that we see more than Michal's limited and self-centered view. We can't expect to see things as God does, for his window is bigger than any we will ever have, but we can do better than to just measure everybody else by our tastes and expectations.
What we need to do is to pray for bigger windows.
____________
1.ÊAlthough the lectionary reading stops at verse 19 and does include the reference to Michal's window, I suggest you also include verses 20-23 in the reading.
2.ÊFrederick S. Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, (Moab, Utah: Real People Press, 1969), p. 65.
