A Sermon for Proper 13 B
Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house…
Last Sunday, we heard the beginning of the famous story of David and Bathsheba in all its disturbing detail: how the King, taking a late afternoon walk on the flat roof of his house, noticed a woman bathing next door; how he was taken with her beauty, sent messengers to bring her to the palace and slept with her; how, when she informed him that she was pregnant, David had Bathsheba’s soldier husband, Uriah, sent home from the front lines where he was battling Israel’s enemies; how the King urged Uriah to spend the night with his wife, hoping he’d assume that he was the father of her child; how Uriah proved more honorable than David, refusing to enjoy his wife’s embrace while his fellow soldiers were roughing it in the field; how, finally frustrated with Uriah’s stubborn loyalty to his comrades, David sent him back to the front carrying a death sentence which the illiterate soldier could not read: a letter ordering Joab, his commander, to put Uriah in the most dangerous part of the battle, and then abandon him to be killed by the enemy.
Today comes the denouement of the
story.
After Bathsheba learned of her husband’s death and completes the ritual time of mourning, David sent for her again – this time to add her to the collection of wives and concubines in his harem. Upon which the storyteller dryly comments: But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. Indeed.
God sends the prophet Nathan to David, and Nathan tells David a story:
There were two men in the same city, one rich, the other poor. The rich man had huge flocks of sheep and
herds of cattle; but the poor man had
nothing but one little female lamb, which he had bought & raised. It grew up with him and his children like one
of the family; it ate off his plate, drank
from his cup, and slept on his bed. It
was like a daughter to him. One day a
traveler dropped in on the rich man. He
was too stingy to take an animal from his own flock or herd to prepare a meal for
the visitor, so he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for the guest
who had come to him.
On hearing of this, David is incensed.
Where does this rich man get off being
so arrogant; feeling so entitled that he
can take what he wants without regard to the rights and feelings of others? "As the LORD lives,” David explodes, “the
man who did this deserves to die!”
"You,” says Nathan, you, you
King David, you are the man! Here is what LORD, the God of Israel, says
to you: I made you king over Israel, and
I rescued you from the fist of Saul; I
gave you your master's house, & your master's wives, & the houses of
Israel and of Judah; and if that hadn’t
been enough, I would have added yet more.
Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do evil in God’s sight? You murdered Uriah the Hittite with the
sword, and took his wife to be your wife, and killed him with the sword of the
Ammonites.
David has come a long way, and not always a good way, from the innocent shepherd boy we all learned about in Sunday School. In his climb to power, this brilliant military and political leader has learned to be devious and ruthless. Despite his many and real virtues; despite God’s abundant gifts to him; David has imbibed the corrupting arrogance of power that we’ve seen in politicians in our time: the belief that if you’re important enough, powerful enough, or clever enough, you can do what you want and get away with it. David’s taking of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah were not singular lapses by an otherwise sinless man. Rather these actions reveal the sinister side of who David had become on his way to the throne.
There is also good, still, in David. After hearing Nathan’s tongue-lashing, David he recognizes his sin and repents. But, Nathan tells him, actions like his have lasting consequences that can’t be escaped. The sword shall never depart from your house; says Nathan; David’s arrogance will beget more arrogance. His attitude of sexual entitlement will re-appear in his sons. His violence will beget more violence. As another translation puts Nathan’s words: Killing and murder will continually plague your family. And so indeed it was.
Next Sunday, we will hear of the death in battle of David’s favorite son, Absalom. Absalom was killed, against David’s explicit order, by the same Joab who had followed David’s order to send Uriah to his death. We will hear David’s deeply heart-felt lament: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”
What we will not hear – because the story is too long for Sunday morning reading -- is what led up to Absalom’s death; the story which Nathan’s prophecy is fulfilled: how Amnon, one of David’s sons, raped his half-sister Tamar; how Absalom killed Amnon in revenge, then fled into exile; how David longed for his absent son, and in time allowed him to come back to Jerusalem, yet kept him at a humiliating distance; how Absalom slowly stole the hearts of half of Israel and in time, rebelled against David; how David fled Jerusalem and how Absalom publicly shamed his father by going in to David’s concubines in a roof-top tent that all could see; but how, in the end, the military experience of David and Joab proved superior; the rebellion was put down, Absalom killed, and a saddened and somewhat humbled David returned to the throne.[1]
David’s troubles and the violence
among his descendants did not end there, but I’ve told enough of that story for
today. Why, in fact, have I told so much
– apart from the fact that it is a stunning story? One reason is to drive home the truth of what
Nathan says to David: actions have
consequences; destructive actions have destructive consequences. Or as St. Paul writes: God is
not mocked; you reap whatever you sow.[2]
This isn’t to say that God makes a full time job of seeking out sinners to punish them. It simply is a statement of how the world works: actions have consequences; destructive actions have destructive consequences.
This is a truth often ignored. Would David have done to Bathsheba and Uriah as he did if he had seen the consequences coming? Would Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford or any of the other politicians caught in sexual escapades have acted as they did if they could have read the headlines that would follow? And all those whose corruption arrests have just given NJ politics another black eye -- would they have done what they did if they had believed their careers and lives might be destroyed by their own actions?
Of course, it is not just the politically powerful who ignore the destructive consequences of their own actions. I trust that each of us, if we are honest with ourselves, can look at our lives and see choices we’ve made, things we’ve done -- on the job, in family life or on our own --whose consequences have come back to haunt us.
The truth that destructive actions have destructive consequences is also sadly visible on the world stage. We need only look to the decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians to see how violence begets more violence. Americans differ, sometimes passionately, about where the greater right or wrong in that conflict reside. But whatever view you hold, I trust you see the deadly dynamic between the two adversaries -- how each act of violence or occupation, each bomb, each battle leads to another violent response. Action with consequences – consequences not always born by those responsible, but often by the innocent. There is a stunning word of warning in these stories of David to which we would do well to pay heed: our actions have consequences, real, sometimes destructive, consequences; consequences for ourselves and for others.
I do not want to gainsay that word
of warning in any way, but I do want to leave you with a word of Good
So often, we don’t know what we’re doing. Like David, we don’t see the consequences of our actions. That is a fact, not an excuse. Nonetheless, we are offered forgiveness, even when the consequences of our actions are deadly. Forgiveness does not mean that we or others will magically be spared the consequences of our actions. Forgiveness mean that God loves us, no matter what we do. Like David, the things we do may displease God, perhaps very badly. But there is one consequence our actions can never cause: Whatever we do, God will never stop loving us.
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
August 2, 2009