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David Part 8
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
This is something that I really dig about Bathsheba. She figures out how to make her life work for her, and she undergoes trauma and this gross abuse of power. And still, she learns to occupy space and advocate for herself and for her son. Welcome
Speaker 2:to the commons cast. We're glad you're here, and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Oh, good to see you. We are glad to have you here at Commons. I'm Bobby, one of the pastors on the team, and I have actually been around for a year now. Like raised hands. So if we haven't met, I would love to meet you at some point.
Speaker 1:So please introduce yourself to me. It's been so fun being one of the voices that have brought you the David stories this summer along with Scott and Joel and Jeremy. And if you track with the journal pages and the teaching outlines, you'll notice that we have just two pages left in this David series. One being, of course, today and the last one being next week. And I know many of you are pretty pumped for the new journals which are printed and ready but you won't get your pretty little hands on those until launch September 10.
Speaker 1:Speaking of launch, we'd like to remind those of you who are often crammed into the 10:30 service that part of getting ready for the fall means making sure that there's space for everyone. And that means asking those of you who are pretty established at Commons, meaning that you feel very at home here, to consider moving to the 9AM or the noon service. Now I'm an older sister and that means that I can get a little bit bossy. So I'm just gonna embrace that part of who I am and say help us out with that. If you know in your heart that you can make the switch at least for September, then please talk it over with the people in your life.
Speaker 1:Okay. The David story that we are in today is, wait for it, the story of David, Bathsheba, and the prophet Nathan. And I have to say right upfront that this story has some real brutality and tragedy in it. And I'm not gonna shy away from that, but I won't keep you in it for too long either. Just be ready for this.
Speaker 1:The brutality in this ancient culture is brutality in our culture too. And if we skip this story of the abuse of power and sexual violence, then we suggest that some stories aren't welcome in this place and I fundamentally don't believe that to be true. But before we get to all that violence and some of that abuse let's pause for a moment of innocence by way of my little niece Emery who is just shy of two years old. And as I've said before my sister keeps me connected to the daily life of emzy pants with pictures and videos. Now, of course, the speech of a nearly two year old is pretty hard to understand, but my sister does a really great job translating toddler speak and now I'm gonna share that with you.
Speaker 1:This video is one of my favorites and all you need to know is that she's talking about baby Layton who is her little cousin and also, Ems has this thing for soothers. She sleeps with pacifiers in both hands and likes to try to trick her auntie Bobby into giving them to her. Okay. Let's roll it. I just love her little wiggles.
Speaker 1:Oh, she just she's so sweet. Now I'm not sure if it's because I watch these Emery videos like a 100 times or because I have been in this David and Bathsheba story for a couple of weeks now, but I started to actually see the basic plot of the biblical story summed up in this forty second video of my very sweet niece for real. Follow me here. In the middle ruling years of David he's at home. He's just lounging around and he sees something that is not his.
Speaker 1:Something that he has plenty of. See the connection there? But he doesn't just talk about taking Bathsheba. He actually does it. And Nathan, kind of like my sister, rocks up and reminds him that this is the behavior of a brutal king not a kind king.
Speaker 1:And David has this moment of remorse like, Anne Marie, how she says her own name. And then David goes back to being who he is, A lover of God and a protector of the people. Today I want to explore not only what happens in this David story but how the tragic fallout of broken promises can actually lead to hope. So let's pray together and then walk right through it. Loving God.
Speaker 1:Many of us come to church aware of some sort of particular tragedy or place of conflict. Maybe it's in our world or it's in our families or something that we carry in the privacy of our own hearts. And you God, you are not scared off by shame or our feelings of being overwhelmed. You draw close in hard times. You always draw close.
Speaker 1:And we trust that we can walk through this David story today and sense you hovering and healing and offer all kinds of invitations and ways forward. Ones that maybe we haven't even imagined yet. And so for all of us we ask for gentle reminders and some of those loud ones too of your love. And we pray for the wisdom of your spirit and the power of Christ. Amen.
Speaker 1:Second Samuel 11 verse one reads, in the springtime at the time when the kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah but David remained in Jerusalem. So what's up with loungey pants David? This summer we have walked with David as a shepherd and a giant slayer and a respected general who stands shoulder to shoulder with his men in the thick of battle. In the contrast between the David that we have come to know and the David that we find in the city is marked by the mention of the season.
Speaker 1:It's the time of year when battles really ramp up. By stating that David is not on the battlefield, we have this narrative signal that something big is about to happen. And Walter Bruggemann whom we love to quote around here, he says that this story introduces a threshold of deep aching psychology. At the start of this story we see that our hero is a bit off and you might imagine him like pacing about at night and flipping through Tinder profiles just to add to his harem and just numbing out all those real feelings by obsessing over the beautiful Bathsheba. So while David may not be fighting a physical battle in Rabbah there's still a war going on here.
Speaker 1:It's a war of morality and power and broken promises and it doesn't happen in the battlefield. Instead, David is headed for the bedroom. And it doesn't matter that Bathsheba has already passed from the household of one man, her father, to the household of another, Uriah the Hittite. And it doesn't matter that her marriage makes her off limits to him and it doesn't matter that Uriah is out fighting the war that should be David's to fight. He sees Bathsheba and he takes her.
Speaker 1:And I wanna say two things about this. First, some people suggest that Bathsheba is partly to blame. And to that I say, come on. First, so here's the thing about that. Bathsheba I got so intuit in that moment.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing. Bathsheba is young. She is very young. And we know this because she's a married woman, and she doesn't have any children of her own yet. And second, she has more to lose than to gain by being a part of David's household.
Speaker 1:She already has a position that would be swapping her position out for a low ranking one in a sizable harem. So please, let's not put this abuse of power differential and display of lust on Bathsheba. It's David alone who manipulates and moves people around him in an attempt to satisfy his aching psychology and all of this is underscored by the use of the fast moving verbs in the text specifically the verb to send or shalach in Hebrew. David sent someone to find out about her. Then David sent messengers to get her.
Speaker 1:She came to him. He slept with her. Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness then she went back home. Bathsheba is a pious woman and an alertness to Levitical law and women's menstrual cycle point to the fact that there's something about to happen. She has ceremonially washed herself meaning she's in a fertile window.
Speaker 1:Now notice the verb sent. The woman conceived and sent word to David saying, I am pregnant. Bathsheba does a little sending of her own. As the victim she speaks up. It's kinda like her Kesha moment.
Speaker 1:These are the only words given to Bathsheba in this story. And we might think that her voice is small here, but let's not confuse this to be a simple status update. These are three words, two in Hebrew, that demand action, justice even from the king. And I wanna briefly skip ahead to Bathsheba's story in first Kings one and two to assure you that Bathsheba's voice is not silenced. Later in her life as one of those low ranking women in David's harem, she works with the prophet Nathan to secure her position.
Speaker 1:This is something that I really dig about Bathsheba. She figures out how to make her life work for her and she undergoes trauma and this gross abuse of power and still she learns to occupy space and advocate for herself and for her son. But at this point in the story, she stands in for so much more. Sarah Williams, a brilliant history professor at Regent makes this point about the public nature of sex. Private moral decisions have profound public implications.
Speaker 1:Sex is political. And the old testament scholar, April Westbrook helps us to see the public implication to this David's story when she writes that the Bathsheba story is told not as a violation of women but as a strong complaint against such violations of those who are marginalized both by the structures of social power and by those that dominate fellow human beings within those structures. In other words, when people in power break promises with people they are meant to protect there are serious natural consequences. And of course, we get this. Right?
Speaker 1:We witness religious leaders and politicians make huge high profile moral failures and we know about violence against women and children and people who are marginalized by those in power meant to protect those people. As affected as we may be by those broken promises and ensuing tragedies it's easy to find them kind of impersonal but there are broken promises that are deeply personal. Maybe for you you have a family story that has crushed you and changed you forever. And maybe you feel manipulated in a relationship and on a deep level you know that some promises have really been broken and that's starting to affect every part of your life. And maybe a friend has failed to support you through a tough time, made you feel alone, maybe kind of panicked.
Speaker 1:Any configuration of relationship opens us up to this kind of disappointment and pain. So let's take some comfort in Bathsheba's power and in her piety and her ability to build a life out of some real fallen down pieces. This tragedy it doesn't silence her. Her story is still speaking. And in fact, it's Bathsheba's piety and the devotion of Uriah that are the foil for David's moral failure.
Speaker 1:In response to Bathsheba's call for help David tries a really quick cover up. Here he really just ramps up the sending. So David sent this word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite and Joab sent him to David. And David welcomes Uriah back from the battle and encourages him to just take a break and he says, go wash your feet. Wink.
Speaker 1:Wink. So I'm not that good at that. Wink. Wink. Go wash your feet and hang out with your wife and actually the wink wink is pretty important.
Speaker 1:In this context like in Ruth and Ezekiel, feet means genitals. I'm sorry to say. It's a euphemism for sex. So David's saying, go get it on with your wife. But what he isn't saying is that this is his plan to make people believe that Uriah is the baby's father.
Speaker 1:So so much drama. Right? And while we aren't sure if Uriah knows what David is up to, we quickly find out that the plan doesn't work. And when David asks him why he didn't go home Uriah replies, the ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents and my commander Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife?
Speaker 1:As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing. Uriah, one of David's elite fighters throws some shade saying, your best men are on the front lines and you and I both know that that's where we both should be. While likely born in Israel his handle as Hittite refers to his ethnicity which linked him to a civilization that survived by being enfolded into Israel and the contrast is key. We see how this foreigner is more faithful than the king. And after this first cover up attempt fails David gets really desperate and he plies Uriah with alcohol hoping he'll finally just stumble home and have sex with his wife.
Speaker 1:But again, Uriah doesn't go home and then we see David sink even further into the suck. In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it, he wrote, put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die. And I am sad to say that's exactly what happened. This part of the story ends with the report coming back to David saying Uriah is dead and also some of our best fighters with him.
Speaker 1:And rather cynically, David communicates back to Joab saying, look, bro. Some fighters die. No big deal. It's just another battle. Hashtag the thug life.
Speaker 1:That doesn't doesn't sound quite right. Maybe it's just like hashtag thug life without the definite article. Okay. This is another tragic piece of the story. Uriah was a good man but no amount of piety and devotion could save him from David's ruthless power used to cover up his sin.
Speaker 1:And I feel some tension with this. Yes. Samuel warned the people, kings are takers. They're gonna take your best sons and make them fight. They're gonna take your daughters and make them serve the throne.
Speaker 1:They will take and they will take and they will take. But David's different. Right? Yes and no. I mean we expect a great deal from good leaders especially the ones caught up in all kinds of promises to deliver up a better world and David he's on track with that so simply but then he wasn't.
Speaker 1:Chapter 11 ends. When Uriah's wife heard that her husband had was dead she mourned for him and after the time of mourning was over David had her brought to his house and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord and seen. This week I spent a lot of time thinking about promises and when it comes to the story about David, we can trace the tragedies back to broken promises. And in her book about the practices that sustain community or kingdom we could say in this case, the ethicist Christine Pohl writes, promises provide the internal framework for every relationship and every community.
Speaker 1:They function like the hidden supports in a well built house. And we don't generally notice or call attention to them when they are providing structure in our relationships though we certainly notice when they collapse. In other words promises make us and they break us. They provide the structure for our lives and think about that. We live by explicit promises, the ones that we spell out.
Speaker 1:I promise to love you forever. I promise to clean out that pile of dirty clothes. I promise to look out for your kids. And we live by implicit promises, the ones that we don't necessarily spell out like coffee dates and volunteer commitments and carpools and neighborliness. And when we break promises, the formal and the informal, we rip at the fabric of everyday fidelity.
Speaker 1:Okay. Back to David and his promise breaking. I really believe that David is in a crash moment in his life. A crash moment you ask? Yes.
Speaker 1:A crash moment. Remember the movie Crash from 2004, which controversially won the Oscar for best picture that year. It's about a bunch of characters and how their lives intersect in LA. And the movie opens with a car crash and the character played by Don Cheadle says, in the real city, you walk, you know, you brush past people, people bump into you. In LA nobody touches you.
Speaker 1:We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something. And as the king in his castle David is behind some metal and glass of his own and we don't see into David's interior world but we can imagine that something is seriously bugging him and again the aching psychology is evident. And maybe it's this ache that makes him just crash around in his life just so he can feel something. He puts aside his promises as king and protector and he just goes for it.
Speaker 1:Crash Bathsheba. Crash Uriah. Crash an unnamed child. Crash. What a wreck.
Speaker 1:The ethicist again, Margaret Farley, she says, the history of the human race as well as the story of any one life might be told in terms of commitments. This David story reminds us that the story of our lives is written with the promises that we make and the promises that we break. And in that light, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm not a little bit worried that I could do some serious damage to the person that I've made lifelong promises to. And I'm aware that as great a friend as I am, I'm gonna let people down. And I'm also aware that I make all kinds of promises to myself and those little buggers are pretty hard to keep.
Speaker 1:I promise to do daily YouTube yoga with Adrian. I promise to take deep breaths in hard conversations to keep my mind clear. I promise to meditate every day. Okay. Once a week.
Speaker 1:Okay. Just once this month. Promises, man. They can make us or they can break us. And before we dive into how David is made aware of the depth of his promise breaking, I wanna settle in on this point.
Speaker 1:David did some dirty deeds. There's innocent blood on his hands and still we read in verse 27, the thing David had done displeased the Lord and the point is that you were not your broken promises and more that that person who hurt you is not his or her broken promises either. Every life is made up of more than the things that they break. Now I'm not saying that you need to stick it out if you've been a victim to some very serious broken promises. So please don't hear that from me.
Speaker 1:But if you find yourself in a particular David story and you think, yeah, I've messed up too. Then know this, God does not despise you. God just grieves that that thing happened. It's not the crash that defines David, it's what comes after that counts. Second Samuel chapter twelve first thing we see is that God is now the one who does the sending.
Speaker 1:The Lord sent Nathan to David and David he's just like any of us. He loves a good story and the prophet Nathan he tells him this short parable appealing to David's emotions and connecting with his heart. He says, there once was a poor man who had a little ewe lamb. He loved that little lamb like a daughter and his kids loved it too. And there was a rich man who received a guest from out of town and instead of slaughtering a lamb from his large flock he kills the little ewe lamb that drank from the poor man's cup and slept in the poor man's arms.
Speaker 1:And David declares, as surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this
Speaker 2:must die. And Nathan says, you are the man.
Speaker 1:Then Nathan goes over the whole story from God's perspective exposing the rape and the murder and listing all that God has done for David. And finally, Nathan delivers this dire consequence speaking for Yahweh. He says, out of your own household I or God am going to bring calamity on you. The sword will never depart from your house. And sure enough, this is exactly what happens and we read this in the chapters to come.
Speaker 1:Second Samuel 12 to 20 recount the troubles of David's monarchy mostly through his own family. More murder, more rape, more loss. But for now we are here in this moment with David and instead of getting defensive David says to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And can we just imagine for a moment what it must be like to stand up to power like that? Absolute power that had shown a real shadowy side.
Speaker 1:Last week I read the novel, The Secret Cord by Geraldine Brooks and it narrates the life of David from Nathan's perspective. And in it the thoughts of Nathan after this holy confrontation they go like this. My task would be twofold, to stand up to him and to stand by him, to awaken his conscience and to salve the pain that would cause him, to help him to endure through the hard days and years that lay ahead of him. Now we might wonder who's to blame in all of this mess? Is it Yahweh who put David on the throne in the first place?
Speaker 1:Is it David who abused his power and set up this chain reaction of further abuses? Is it Israel, the people who use their divinely given freedom to demand a monarchy in the first place? Well, we don't have clear answers to those kinds of questions in the text. April Westbrook sums it up like this. Yahweh has purpose in establishing an enduring house with David that goes beyond the present story and from here we can kind of spot Jesus in the distance.
Speaker 1:The son of David, the one who shepherds our souls and won't abuse his power and even in Christ's commitment to non violence he will come under the sword but in passing through death he will show us how to live. In today's David story it wraps up like this. Nathan says that God has taken David's sin away but the son he has with Bathsheba will die and sure enough the child gets sick and David spends seven days fighting for that life by fasting and his servants they even try to force him to eat and he refuses but the child dies and David ends his fast saying, I thought that while the boy was alive God might spare him but now that he is dead I'll just carry on. Two more big events. First David comforted Bathsheba all the air quotes there and she has a second son who is loved by God and his name is Solomon.
Speaker 1:And second, Joab sends word to David saying, you better get your butt out on the battlefield or I'm gonna take this victory for myself. And that's how this chapter ends. David's out fighting for Israel acting more like the guy that he knows himself to be and that means that he's going to keep doing what kings do. He's gonna keep fighting and taking. So David mustered the entire army and went to Rabbah and attacked and captured it And David took the crown from the king's head and it was placed on his own head.
Speaker 1:And even in this ancient story, this in in this ancient context, this story shows us that on the other side of all of those broken promises and brutal actions and brave confessions is something bigger. You know what's always waiting on the other side of broken promises? Another chance at love. Now some of you may know this about me but I have spent the last six years working as a wedding officiant alongside of my pastoral work and while I have loved it and I'll always do weddings I'm moving on from a chapter in my life where I did multiple weddings every weekend of the summer for an amazing company called Young Hemp and Married. And after all of those weddings, like a 150, you'd think that I'd be some kind of wedding superhero, a guru of love and marriage vows.
Speaker 1:But I must confess that I still hardly know what it's about. Who the heck do we think we are making promises like that to another person? We know we're gonna mess those up a bit. Right? Like we know that.
Speaker 1:Still, I've learned to trust the tradition of the thing and I know that there's something profound and important in promising. We make and depend on promises because we know that as human beings we are so often inconsistent and we find it hard to live and to love without some kind of promise, some kind of assurance that we're gonna be loved in return. And to be clear, I'm not just talking about promise making in marriage. I'm talking about the promises that we live by, the conscious and subconscious. I'm talking about the promises that guide our relationships with kindness and the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about resisting the urge to take from another person that which is not ours to take, and I mean that in more ways than a Susu or someone else's spouse. I mean keeping promises where we won't expect others to meet the needs that are not theirs to meet like filling up our identity or taking all our loneliness away. I mean keeping spiritual promises, searching for truth and meaning and braving the hard questions. I mean honoring physical promises that lead to living responsibly in our bodies, Promises that bring comfort to our body and the bodies of others in healthy and respectful ways. And I mean promises that are open to discussion, that bring out the best in us and others and provide more hope and healing than we ever thought possible.
Speaker 1:I mean the promises of second chances and do overs and don't worry I'll help you with that. Every time we make a promise and work on keeping it we tap into something mighty and divine. And the scriptures do in fact give us a glimpse in David's interiority. We have Psalm 51, a Psalm of David after he was confronted by Nathan and it begins, have mercy on me, oh God, according to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
Speaker 1:And the Hebrew word for unfailing love is Chesed and even this translation is just too small. It's the kind of love that will not let go. Do you hear that? It's the kind of love, God's love for you that will not let you go. So nobody plans for a crash but I implore you on the doorstep of a new academic and church year, check-in with your promises, interact with your problems.
Speaker 1:Face what needs facing. Do all of this basically on a daily basis so that you don't numb out and crash into a part of your life that's going to cause all kinds of damage. And if you do find yourself at a crash site in your life or the life of another then trust this. Love is on the other side. Fight for it and pray for it and if that feels like it fails, get up and keep going forward.
Speaker 1:Take steps towards what is true. The God of Hasid will meet you. Let us pray. Loving God, we never have to go far to find you. You are always I am and you are always drawing us into a profound mystery of your holiness.
Speaker 1:And for those of us who feel like David and we are profoundly aware of where we've messed up, will you meet us? And for those of us who connect with Bathsheba and are aware that we've been messed with, will you meet us? And for those of us who are Nathan's and know it is time to take action and to speak up, Will you meet us? By your humble power Jesus and your love holy spirit. Amen.