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The story of Bathsheba
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Today, we begin our summer series, and I'm excited about it. But kinda like that music you heard, it's a little edgy. Now I dig edgy things. I live with conviction that spirit is present in the most honest places. But that's me.
Speaker 2:You might find edgy things uncomfortable. And I wanna say two things about that. One, listen to yourself. Honor how you feel and name what's uncomfortable. And two, stay open to the challenge.
Speaker 2:The bible is complex, and we don't honor it or love it if we skip the hard parts. So take care and stay open. This series is called stories of shadow. And later in the summer, we shift to stories of light. So know that's coming.
Speaker 2:We'll spend four weeks in shadow and four weeks in light. In shadow, we will take a look at four biblical figures, their place in the shadows of the text, and what they represent about a world where bad things happen to all kinds of people. In light, we'll look at four more biblical figures, their more familiar place in the narrative, and what they represent about a god committed to our empowerment. And today, we're hanging out with Bathsheba, the ninth wife of king David. And you might think you know her story, but I I don't know if you do, especially the second half.
Speaker 2:So we're in second Samuel and first Kings, and we're gonna talk about loneliness, a parable of a little lamb, powerful influencers, and what it's like to build a life of one's own. But before we dive in, let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to notice our breath. In as we breathe in, out as we breathe out. This is a simple, simple place to begin.
Speaker 2:So ordinary, yet sustaining. As we step into the shadows with these memorable biblical figures, let us engage our imaginations in new and brave ways. In ways that look for healing and wholeness where there seems to be so much fracture and discord. Will you continue to marry the ordinary and extraordinary, the mundane, and the sacred? Even the ways our anger and hurt can coexist beside some joy and love.
Speaker 2:Christ of the cosmos, the James Webb space telescope seen cosmos. Spirit of the ordinary, be near. Amen. Alright. We are diving in with second Samuel chapter 11.
Speaker 2:In the spring, at the time when 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. And that's a bit of an alert alert. You're supposed to take note of this detail. David is at home.
Speaker 2:He's not out fighting alongside his men like he had done in the past. So then one evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent someone to find out about her. The men said she is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
Speaker 2:In other words, she is not available. Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. And this is an added note to tell us that Bathsheba was for sure for sure not pregnant before this encounter with David.
Speaker 2:And then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David saying, I am pregnant, which launches a string of very unfortunate events. David tries to get Bathsheba's husband to leave the fighting, go home, and have sex with his wife so no one will know that David is the baby daddy. And that plan fails. Uriah is a true warrior and is faithful to his men and to David.
Speaker 2:So David has Uriah killed in battle. When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. 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. Now right away, we meet Bathsheba through a web of relationships spun with the men in her life. She is a daughter.
Speaker 2:She is a wife. She is a beautiful woman noticed by the most powerful man in the kingdom while he's probably bored and lonely and she is naked and alone. Her husband after all is off fighting this king's war. And just for being beautiful, Bathsheba is taken. And I use that word taken intentionally.
Speaker 2:The translation in the NIV where David gets Bathsheba isn't strong enough. The Hebrew word means to take, to come toward, to lie down. There's another layer to the meaning here. Lacock is also the word used to mean marriage, but ironically here, it means the violation of a marriage. Now to our surprise, the story spears the reputation of the hero.
Speaker 2:And I am here for that shakedown of this powerful guy even though I don't believe David is a monster. But we're not actually here for David today. We're here for Bathsheba to listen to her story in full. Now you can divide the story of Bathsheba into two parts. The first part in second Samuel and the second in first Kings.
Speaker 2:And in first Kings, we'll see Bathsheba up close. But in second Samuel, we view her at a distance. First, we see her through the far off gaze of this king. Next, we see her body taken by the king's men, plural. And while she doesn't appear to be bound or dragged, there is no way that she could resist the absolute power of the king's command, which was go get her.
Speaker 2:And finally, we hear Bathsheba's voice, but it too is carried by others as they bring the report to David and say, Bathsheba says to you, king David, I am pregnant. Now the distance increases as the action of the scene sets Bathsheba aside. She comes back into view after David has successfully dealt with his Uriah problem by having him killed. Once the news reaches her, she wails as those in her culture are known to grieve. Even from a distance, we hear her grief as she beats the breast that will soon feed this fated child in her womb.
Speaker 2:Now how could any of that have happened? As we pay attention to Bathsheba in the shadow of David's drama, there's something here about an experience many of us know. It's the feeling of getting pummeled when life puts on punching gloves and takes a round out of you. You are just going along, minding your business, and then pow. You are knocked down.
Speaker 2:Something precious is stolen from you. You are used. You are set aside. You feel like you are undone. In that place, I think we know this.
Speaker 2:That's such a lonely place. Loneliness is the sensation of distance from others, and you aren't faulty when you feel lonely. But rather than shame Bathsheba or shame ourselves, loneliness can be read as this feeling in your body that reminds you of your need. And we do well to make space for loneliness, kind of like it's this quirky friend who is strangely faithful at showing up to draw us back into life. Bathsheba might be alone right now, and the distance from her old life will never be retracted.
Speaker 2:But she's about to get an unlikely ally. In second Samuel 12, the Lord sends the prophet Nathan to David. And on his arrival, Nathan launches into story time with uncle Nate. There were two men in a certain town. One rich and the other poor.
Speaker 2:The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup, and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Then along comes a traveler.
Speaker 2:And instead of offering hospitality by killing one of his many sheep, the rich man takes the yew lamb that belongs to the poor man and slaughters it to feed the guest. And at this point in the story, David burns with anger. And in the face of the injustice, he cries out, the rich man must die. And Nathan says, you are that man. I love the drama of that part.
Speaker 2:It gets me every time. And Nathan reminds David of his humble beginnings. His now his position as king and his role as husband to many wives. And he speaks the word of the Lord to David saying, if all of this had been too little, I would have given you even more. He exposes David's evil, how he killed Uriah and took Bathsheba as if she were his own.
Speaker 2:David is the rich man. Bathsheba is the little lamb. And now David's house will be cursed with violence. Verse 15. After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife had born to David, and the child became ill.
Speaker 2:And then the baby dies. Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved him. Now when it comes to Bathsheba, we have a problem in the history of interpretation.
Speaker 2:I'm of the opinion that many scholars who write about Bathsheba's story ignore chapter 12, where Nathan the prophet makes it pretty clear that none of what happened to Bathsheba in chapter 11 is her fault. It is fine that she bathes at night, And it is fine that she is beautiful. And it is fine that she is naked. It might even be fine that David sees her and admires her from afar. What is not fine is that David abuses his power when he takes another man's wife, gets her pregnant, kills her husband, covers it up, is full of what he thinks is this righteous anger at the parable of a little lamb and lacks the self awareness to know that he's the thief and he is the killer.
Speaker 2:So when, as I work through a serious exegesis of this text, I find respected scholars say that the relationship between Bathsheba and David begins as this affair or worse when they call Bathsheba a seductress? I shut the books that they write. I just slam them. There might be some expletives. And I say, no.
Speaker 2:You are not correct. I am with Nathan, the prophet here. I am with Bathsheba. And if David can hear it, I am with him and hope that he can see his error and make it right. So to counter what I would call irresponsible scholarship when it comes to sexual violence, I like and respect the work of biblical scholar Will Gaffney and how she walks us through this part of Bathsheba's story.
Speaker 2:And Gaffney states that, yes, the text is frustratingly ambiguous in the way it doesn't tell us that David forces himself on Bathsheba. But also, we can still trace violence in his abuse of power. There are ripples of it. And so Will Gaffney gives us permission if we need it to read that text as she does, to read it as a rape. Because rape is not about sexual desire.
Speaker 2:It is about the quest to acquire and to dominate, and God did not make any of us for that. When we name this violation and we do not shift the blame onto the victim, we can trust that our shadow stories, all of them are speakable in church and they are speakable in the scriptures. So we own the wrong that we do and we rise from the wrong that was done to us. We can. Okay.
Speaker 2:How's that for a Sunday? Take a breath. Take a breath. I know that these shadow texts, they're really hard, and you're brave when you face them with me. Now Bathsheba's life is about to have a very different energy as we turn to her story in first Kings.
Speaker 2:This is a woman with power and influence aligned with that storytelling prophet Nathan. In first Kings one, Nathan asks Bathsheba if she's heard that David's son, Adonaiha, has made himself king. And what's worse, David is an old man. He doesn't know anything about it. So Nathan offers Bathsheba a plan that he says will save her life and the life of her son Solomon.
Speaker 2:And he tells her to go to David and say, my lord and my king, didn't you swear to me your servant saying that Solomon would be king after you? So why is Adonijah king? And Nathan says, I'll come in and I'll back you with my word. Verse 15. So Bathsheba went to see the aged king in his room where Abishek the Shunammite, a beautiful young virgin was attending him.
Speaker 2:Bathsheba bowed and prostrating herself before the king says the king says, what is it that you want? She said to him, my Lord, you yourself swore to me your servant by the Lord your God. Solomon your son shall be king after me and he will sit on my throne. But now, Adonaiha has become king and you my Lord the king do not know about it. Then she leaves and Nathan arrives to back her story.
Speaker 2:And then David calls Bathsheba back in and says, as surely as the Lord lives, I will surely carry out this very day what I swore to you by the Lord Solomon will be king after me. And then Bathsheba bows low and says, may my Lord King David live forever even though the dude is dying. And the point of this story in first Kings is to tell us how Solomon, one of David's younger sons becomes king of Israel after David. And we are dropped into this scene similar to something from HBO succession. Like, it's got that kind of tension in it.
Speaker 2:Who will take the power after their dad dies? Now we see more of Bathsheba's agency here. Nathan sketches out this bare bones plan, but Bathsheba actually, she makes it pretty fancy. She uses honorific titles to appeal to David's ego. My lord, my lord, and my king.
Speaker 2:And then she sets up David's promise to make Solomon king as a promise that David swore to the Lord. And that is super, super interesting because you won't find that promise anywhere in the scripture. And then to show us that her plan works, we hear David add even more flare with his embellished response saying, as long as the Lord lives and the Lord surely does live, not only that, but this God of Israel delivered me from all my trouble. All my trouble. So, of course, I'll carry out what I swore to you by the Lord.
Speaker 2:Solomon will be king. Ta da. Bathsheba and Nathan are very powerful influencers. Their plan works. Solomon will be king after David who ruled Israel for forty years.
Speaker 2:Now here's what I wonder as we glimpse a very powerful Bathsheba. Do you think that she likes herself? Like, do you think Bathsheba is proud of how she manipulates this dying man? One who at the peak of his power stole so much from her? Do you think Bathsheba is happy now?
Speaker 2:And what kind of hero is she? Is she any kind of hero at all? I mean, I like her, but that doesn't make her everybody's cup of tea. Is she a hero, or is she just human? And that fact carries dignity and complexity and contradiction and resiliency, and you don't have to agree with her, but you should respect her.
Speaker 2:Maybe in her calculating and conniving and convincing, she's not that different from any of us when it comes to power. And maybe that makes her a much more interesting companion in the journey of being human and being a parent and being a partner and being a friend. Pain has a way of generating action. We'd go nowhere without it. And maybe we'd do better to just let our stories be what they are with warts and painful experiences and power grabs, dignity lost and self respect reclaimed.
Speaker 2:You gotta hand it to Bathsheba for building a life of her own. In our last chapter today, we have a final scene of political intrigue, and Bathsheba is at the center. David is dead, And in first Kings two thirteen, Adonijah approaches Bathsheba with the request he wants her to take to King Solomon. Adonijah requests that the beautiful young virgin who kept David warm at night at the end of his life becomes his wife. He's like, it's no big deal, but can you get her for me?
Speaker 2:And Bathsheba plays along. Very well. I'll take your request just as you have made it to the king Solomon. Now David's dying words to Solomon were about cleaning house and killing those who threaten his throne. First Kings two nineteen.
Speaker 2:When Bathsheba went to king Solomon to speak to him for Adonaiha, the king stood up to meet her, bowed down to her, and sat down on his throne. He had a throne brought to the king's mother and she sat down at his right hand. She says, son, I have a request for you. And Solomon says, make it. I won't refuse you.
Speaker 2:She says, let Abishek the Shunammite be given in marriage to your brother Adonaiha. You can almost see Bathsheba like lean back in her throne as Solomon says, what? You may as well request the kingdom for him. Verse 25. So king Solomon gave orders to Benahya and son of Yehoyada.
Speaker 2:And he struck down down Adonaiha and he died. And along with him, Solomon has a priest and a general murdered just as David advised him. So now the threats to Solomon's reign are dealt with. The kingdom was now established in Solomon's hands. After all of this intrigue, maybe you're wondering, what does Bathsheba have to do with me?
Speaker 2:And there's a work of justice I wanna point you to, which is really what's driving our series of stories of shadow. In her work on what it takes to rebuild worlds and just institutions after violence, the academic Jill Stauffer introduces two key concepts relevant for us today. First, that of ethical loneliness. And ethical loneliness is the isolation one feels when one, as a violated person or a member of a persecuted group, has been abandoned by those in power. The second concept is that of revision.
Speaker 2:And Stauffer doesn't mean changing history or the facts of a story. By revision, she means how human beings live with the past in their present moment. And that's what Bathsheba has to do with you. The writers of scripture guided by the spirit do not bury people like Bathsheba. They let them live.
Speaker 2:I thank God for that. Bathsheba is not a victim of ethical loneliness because we have not forgotten her. We trace her story, the whole thing, where she defines herself by much more than the trauma that truly did change the whole trajectory of her life. You cannot erase the worst thing that happened to you or to someone you love, but you can integrate the harshness of any story in your life so that somehow by grace and by help and by your own good wisdom, you are so much more than harm. That is the hope to be defined by what we love the most and by how creative we are with how we move forward in love, and you don't have to be perfect for that.
Speaker 2:Let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to listen for something that we can carry with us today. Maybe it's this awareness of our loneliness, what it's there to point us toward. Maybe it's the ability to see who the real victims are in the world that you love. Maybe it's the assessment of where power comes from and what kind of power we can trust and channel.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's this gentle invitation to just keep going, to build a life that is fully seen and fully welcomed by you. So spirit of the living God, present with us now. Enter the places of our pain and our isolation and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.