Michal Despised

Three powerful characters drive the action in Second Samuel 6, and all three teach some important lessons about worship. From Uzzah, we learn to take God’s holiness seriously. David teaches us to practice holy self-forgetfulness. It’s kind of hard to focus on God when you’re fretting about how you look to others. Michal teaches a lesson, too. And it may be the hardest of all.

Michal did not like what she saw, not one little bit. David’s liturgical dance welcoming the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem was undignified, inappropriate, irreverent and un-kingly. Her late father and king, Saul, would never have disgraced himself or his office with such a ribald display. Her husband’s humble background was showing, not to mention a good bit more of him than she would have preferred. Had she loved him, she would have been embarrassed for him. But she didn’t, so she was embarrassed by him. The truth is, she despised him from the bottom of her heart.

Have you ever been where Michal was? Maybe you saw someone worshipping in a way that caused you to feel, perhaps not spite, but some seriously negative emotions.

Let’s say you are in a very enthusiastic worship service. The music has been uplifting, upbeat and up tempo. You are just overwhelmed with God’s awesomeness and you’re full of joy. Then, you look across the aisle and you see a guy sitting there while everyone else is standing. He doesn’t laugh when something is funny or smile when something is sweet. He doesn’t even sing. He just seems bored and really out of touch. And in your heart, you think, “Man, why bother even coming? Look at that guy. He looks so dour and sad. This is worship! He should be joyful!”

In other words, you basically judge the daylights out of him.

But what if he really isn’t affected by the worship the way you are? What if he isn’t joyful because of God’s forgiveness, but rather saddened by his own sin? What if, at the very moment you look down from your high window and judge him, he’s feeling convicted and remembering that passage in Matthew 5 – “blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted?”

He may look bored and detached on the outside, but on the inside, where only God can see, his emotions are flowing like a river. Paul’s council to the Romans seems apt – who are you to judge another man’s servant?

Let’s turn that around. Say you see someone in worship and they have this sort of distant, drugged look in their eyes. Their hands are lifted high above their heads, swaying back and forth like a mime pretending to be a tree. They are singing louder than everyone else, though they don’t possess that particular gift. During the opening prayer, this dude grunts through the whole thing and keeps saying, “Yes, Lord! Yes, Lord! Yes, Lord.”

And you think to yourself, “What a show-off! What an inappropriate display. This is a worship service, not a circus act. And would it kill him to wear some shoes?”

What Jesus said to the Pharisees in Luke 19 when they told him to rebuke his rowdy disciples fits here; “I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Look, maybe sitting there quietly and reflectively doesn’t express your emotions to God. That doesn’t give you or me the right to judge someone else or to conclude that they don’t know how to worship. We have no idea what’s going on in another’s heart. God calls us to tolerance and love.

And if someone raises their hands, shouts, weeps and/or grunts, just because you or I may be uncomfortable with it doesn’t mean God is. Worship is not the time or place to judge people. In fact, we ought to be focused on God, not on how those around us are focusing on God. If you or I are evaluating the worship of the people around us, we’re looking in the wrong direction.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if, instead of worshiping God, we worship the way we worship.

Here’s one more thought, a terrifying one, from Michal’s part of the story. She was rendered barren because she despised David for the way he worshipped. Historically, in the Churches of Christ, we have often centered our identity more on how we worshipped God than on the God we are called to worship. At times, we have looked down on and judged other churches for the way they praised. Now, we just judge each other. I wonder if there is a correlation between our lack of growth – our barrenness – and our lack of humility.