2 Samuel 6:3-5

"They carried the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab….David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might . . . "

Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell

A few miles west of Jerusalem is a town called Abu Ghosh. Tradition says it's the location of Abinadab's house, where the Ark of the Covenant rested before coming to Jerusalem. The Ark was the chest—now lost—that contained the Ten Commandments.

On the highest point in Abu Ghosh, on the place where Abinadab's house is supposed to have stood, is a church called Notre Dame de l'Arche d'Alliance. In English, that's Our Lady, Ark of the Covenant.

The original Ark of the Covenant bore inside itself the terms of God's relationship with the people. That, claimed the ancient Christians, is exactly what Mary did in carrying Jesus, and so, in a splendid leap of Christian imagination, they gave her the same title.

But these days neither Ark is around anymore, and so the world needs a new one: you. It's your turn to bear the terms of God's relationship with the people—devotion, gentleness, honesty, self-control, respect, love—to the world. Nobody else is going to if you don't, and God knows the world needs it.

If it seems like too grand a task, if it sounds altogether too presumptuous to refer to yourself as the Ark of the Covenant, remember this: that’s just what Mary would have said.

Prayer

God, you call me to tasks too big for me and too magnificent for me to have thought of on my own. Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Amen.

About the Author Quinn G. Caldwell is Associate Minister of Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-editor, with Curtis J. Preston, of the Unofficial Handbook of the United Church of Christ, published by The Pilgrim Press.

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