Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – 2 Samuel 11:1-15, Psalm 14, Ephesians 3:14-21, John 6:1-21
There’s always a strange tension in phrases like – hot, lazy, summer. You know a movie is going to be sultry and steamy if it has a title like ‘It happened one summer’. Something about the heat and humidity puts the soul to sleep, as it were. And so it is in our Old Testament text from 2 Samuel 11. We find King David at mid-career, brilliantly consolidating warring factions into a unified kingdom at Jerusalem. Sending his younger generals out to do the fighting, enjoying a certain wealth and status, even designing a temple to house the Ark of the Covenant. Suddenly these telltale words appear, “It happened late one afternoon”. You can feel the chill in the narrative. Something dreadful is going to happen. As David strolled along the terrace rooftop he saw a very beautiful woman, bathing. He sent someone to find out who she was. Bathsheba, he was told, wife of Uriah. Once again, the tension is taken up a notch. David is King, after all, so he sends for her. And then the whole thing unravels in a very steep arc. Bathsheba becomes pregnant and she sends word to David. More chilling than before are the events that follow.
We know this human drama all too well. It’s not so much the sin that sours the man, it’s the cover up, more so for the powerful who have the means at their disposal to wipe something out and not leave a trace. The very worst crimes are committed in trying to bury the wrong. Why is it that very few, if ever step forward and confess? David, the bravest of the brave, loved of God, the most famous king in a very long line of kings, falls. And like the Greek tragedies the king arranges for the murder of a faithful, honourable and totally innocent man. How, indeed, are the mighty fallen.
Hear the words of James in his letter to the first Christians, speaking of this most human of all dilemmas, common even in the household of faith:
“But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14-15).
He wasn’t thinking just of King David.
Yes, we all know what David should have done. Gone in and had a cold shower, perhaps. Fallen on his face before God, prayed over and over a prayer like the Russian monks later taught the world, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner”. But he didn’t, because he was frail flesh like the rest of us.
What, you have to ask, would have happened if David had sought help before the cover-up? Think of our own modern leaders. What if they had come forward sooner? Wouldn’t they have been forgiven by the people and lauded for their courage in facing the consequences? Wouldn’t they have been praised for showing personal strength in the face of weakness?
But King David didn’t turn anywhere for help as the elevator dropped. He was like the rest of us – a human being, not a cardboard cut-out.
David fooled himself, thinking that his scheme to have Uriah killed in battle would actually work. His sin was not hidden from God and eventually, he was confronted very publicly by the prophet Nathan.
Despite this awful mess, we must recognize something of David’s greatness. When he is confronted he doesn’t argue. He goes straight to his room and falls flat on his face. There he stays for days. What is he doing by this? He is sheltering within the judgment of God and somehow trusts God to forgive and restore. The unravelling is swift. He loses the child. His eldest son, Absalom, tries to unseat him and is killed. And then his whole house collapses. This is extremely painful, but David will not wallow in self-pity. Somehow even in this terrible mess, he trusts God to forgive and to restore.
Many people have said over the years that this story remains in the Bible not to show how dumb people can be, but to declare in the most universal way the grace of God.
David’s sin becomes an occasion for grace. You and I know that to be true of our own lives. We know about sins and cover- ups. But we also, I trust, have glimpsed the nature of God whose primary interest is to restore us to fellowship with him.
I said earlier, we know how this story of David unfolds. Bathsheba becomes the mother of Solomon, a gifted but ultimately unfaithful king. But the truly amazing evidence of God’s grace and his plans to fulfil his promises does not yet emerge in the books of the Old Testament. We find it in the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel.
There we find Bathsheba’s name in the genealogy of Jesus.
In fact, one person has observed that Matthew “goes out of his way to include some of the more scandal-associated figures from the Old Testament”(Scott Hoezee, Calvin Seminary, Center for Excellence in Preaching, July, 2015). Four women are referenced there, each of them a non-Israelite and several of them had whiffs of sexual scandal surrounding them – Tamar, Rahab and Bathsheba. In fact when Matthew mentions Bathsheba he drives home the irony by adding that Solomon’s mother was the wife of Uriah. It’s in there not to stick the knife into David but to let us see the grace of God unfolding. These things are also kept locked into the text because they serve as a permanent reminder that it’s this kind of world that needed a saviour, and that this Saviour is full of grace. Jesus tells the women taken in adultery, “Go and sin no more”. He saves her, not just from the stones of her accusers, but for something else, fellowship with the living God. The good news of God in Jesus is grace to be forgiven and grace to be brought back into fellowship.
This being a hot summer’s day, let me take the liberty of reading to you from a story about St. John the beloved disciple and apostle that I believe conveys the heart of God for a sinner’s redemption and ultimate restoration.
Late in life, the apostle was able to leave Patmos, the island where he had been exiled and made a tour of Asia Minor, spending his time appointing bishops and setting the churches in order. In one church he noticed a fine young man who seemed earnest for the faith. So John turned to the local bishop and committed the young man into his spiritual care. John moved on and the bishop reared the young man in the faith and eventually baptized him, after which, notes the account, he relaxed his oversight because he felt that in baptism the young man had been given the seal of the Lord.
But sadly our young man was enticed by others his own age and led into a life of increasing corruption and violence – his zealous temperament driving him with even more intensity into greater evil. He rose to be head of this gang of robbers but he despaired of salvation in God and expected to suffer the fate of the ungodly.
Time passed and the apostle, John, made his rounds again and paid a visit to the same bishop to whom he said, “Come, O bishop restore us the deposit which both I and Christ committed to you, the church over which you preside being witness”. The bishop first thought he was being accused of stealing money. But the apostle clarified his request, “I demand the young man and the soul of this brother”. The old bishop responded by breaking down in tears saying, “He is dead. He is dead to God, for he turned wicked and is at last, a robber, leaving the church and haunting the mountains with a band like himself”. The apostle John rent his clothes and beat his head in lamentation. Then he called for a horse and asked someone to show him the way to the young man’s hideout, where he was taken prisoner. He asked to see their leader, the young man, who was waiting for him fully armed. When he saw the aged and holy apostle he turned in shame to flee. But John, forgetting his age, ran after him crying out, “Why my son do you flee from me, your own father, unarmed and aged? Pity me, my son; fear not; you have still hope of life. I will give account to Christ for you. If need be I will willingly endure your death as the Lord suffered death for us. For you will I give up my life. Stand still and believe. Christ has sent me”.
The young man hearing this stopped and looked down. He threw away his weapons and then trembled and wept bitterly. When the apostle approached, the young man embraced him, making confession with lamentations, baptizing himself a second time with tears. The apostle lovingly brought him back to the church and spent many days praying and struggling together with him in continual fastings and eventually subduing his confused mind.
The apostle did not depart until he had restored him to the church – a trophy of visible resurrection.
It’s worth hearing that whole story again despite the archaic language, because it vividly presents the true nature of God towards a sinner – grace upon grace, without limit, regardless of the enormity of the sin, encouraging tears of repentance and never ceasing in love despite its cost, until the person is restored to fellowship with God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on us, sinners.
It takes time to see the grace of God being worked out in the church. Amen.
