| In the spring of the year, the
time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with
his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the
Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at
Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David
rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof
of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman
bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone
to inquire about the woman. It was reported, 'This is
Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.'
So David sent messengers to fetch her, and she came to
him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself
after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The
woman conceived; and she sent and told David, 'I am pregnant.'
So David sent word to Joab, 'Send me Uriah the Hittite.'
And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him,
David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the
war was going. Then David said to Uriah, 'Go down to
your house, and wash your feet.' Uriah went out of the
king's house, and there followed him a present from the
king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house
with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down
to his house. When they told David, 'Uriah did not go
down to his house', David said to Uriah, 'You have just
come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your
house?' Uriah said to David, 'The ark and Israel and
Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants
of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then
go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with
my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will
not do such a thing.' Then David said to Uriah, 'Remain
here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.'
So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next
day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence
and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to
lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he
did not go down to his house. In the morning David wrote
a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In
the letter he wrote, 'Set Uriah in the forefront of the
hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that
he may be struck down and die.' |
|
| 2 Sam 11:1-15 |
| It was springtime. A time of the year when it nature tells
us the world should be filled with new life. The harshness
of winter has passed, crops are planted, and animals are giving
birth. Creation had begun to bud and bloom! |
| This vision of spring is a stark contrast to the springtime
narrative of 2 Samuel 11. “In the spring of the year,
the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with
his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites,
and besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem.” (v.
1) |
| We know in the first lines David is up to something. It must
have been common fact in ancient Israel that springtime is
the time for kings to go with their army off to war! Every
spring, war; whose vision of spring, of blossoming life, is
this? Anyways, instead of leading the people in the war he
sent them out to, he is lounging around his palace, in search
of something young, fresh and budding to amuse him—it
was spring after all. He found his amusement in a married woman
who was unprotected when the squad of palace messengers came
to collect her for David. Her husband was off serving David
in the war. The powerful King David takes for himself Bathsheba
the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Were there ethnic tensions heaped
into this abuse of kingly power? On a whim of self indulgence
David saw Bathsheba, sent for her and lay with her. Then he
dismissed her to her house. Bathsheba’s only words end
up being through a messenger who tells David, “I am pregnant.” |
| This is the turning point in David’s life as narrated
by the books of Samuel. He commits adultery, and then becomes
a desperate, irrational man after learning he impregnated Bathsheba.
There are limits to David’s royal power; he cannot control
Uriah’s steadfast loyalty. Something’s gotta give!
David decides not to come clean about his actions. Instead
he continues down a path that takes him further from righteousness,
further from God’s will, further from Torah commandments
and his anointing to be a righteous leader for Israel. David’s
act of lust led him to kill Uriah, a man who lived up to his
name, “Yahweh is my light” through his faithfulness
to David, Israel and God. Not only did Uriah die by David’s
command, but other men of Israel who were sent into a compromised
situation in battle with Uriah also died as a result of David’s
sin. |
| David’s sin drips like a thick residue throughout the
story, sticking to everyone it touches. Today’s story,
King David’s greatest recorded sequence of sins, makes
us face our own complicity, our impulses to use others for
the fulfillment of our desires. |
| We too betray those we know will honor us till the end. We
have our own Uriahs, Bathshebas, Joabs… “The dramas
of our lives are not always on the grand scale David’s
was, but we should not imagine that because we have stopped
short of murder that this narrative is not our story. We have
acted to exploit others for our own self-interest. We know
how easily a lie to cover our tracks can involve us in additional
acts that compound our original complicity.” (1) |
| We’ve even tried to cover David’s tracks for
him throughout the history of scriptural interpretation so
that the anointed King won’t be culpable as we are. One
commentator suggested, “Perhaps we need to preach this
bleak side of David’s story more often, not simply to
point fingers at the sins of the mighty but to acknowledge
how often we excuse and emulate them.” (2) In the past,
and in some places even today, Bathsheba got blamed for the
sin of seducing an innocent David. Somehow the story of David
and Bathsheba became known as one of the 10 greatest love stories—at
least in popular society and Hollywood’s eyes. |
| A great love story? Bathsheba was compelled to go to the
palace by David’s messengers. She didn’t see him
across the way and skip on over through the security into his
open arms. The story as told by its narrator is pretty simple:
David took, David lay, David sinned. When David was done with
Bathsheba, he sent her home. Why have we the urge to protect
David when the original narrators didn’t? |
| One reason we might run scared from such a story of sin is
that we forget we are to be rooted and grounded first in the
story of God’s steadfast love and forgiveness. God gave
the Torah commandments, God sent Jesus, while we were estranged
from God…while we still sinned. One preacher and teacher
stated, “Sin can be known only when our stories are exposed
by more truthful stories.” God’s story with us “makes
our actions comprehensible not as minor slipups, mistakes of
judgment, or even as our inappropriate response to the facts
of the human condition but as sin, as our determined effort
to live our lives as if God were not the author of our lives.” (3) |
| “The church's notion of sin, like that of Israel's
before it, is peculiar. It is derived … from a peculiar,
quite specific account of what God is up to in the world. What
God is up to is named as covenant, Torah, or, for Christians,
Jesus. Only by getting the story straight, God's story of redemption,
are we able to understand our sin with appropriate seriousness
and without despair because only then will we know of a God
who manages to be both gracious and truthful. …We view
our lives through a "heap of broken images," never
getting an accurate picture of ourselves. Through the "lens" of
the story of Jesus we are able to see ourselves truthfully.” (4) |
| We don’t have to live in arrogance or denial because
we are fully aware and filled with God’s love. We know
the breath and the length and the height and the depth of the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. We are a people filled
with the fullness of God! |
| It was springtime, God’s love was known, yet David
lost sight of God’s steadfast love and thought a quick
fix gratification would meet his deepest needs. Next Sunday
we’ll hear of the prophet who called him into repentance
and recognition of God’s amazing love despite David’s
sin. |
| It is springtime for us today and everyday! Can we believe
what David lost sight of? That God is our fullness. That we
are new creations? That rooted and grounded in God’s
love we are set free from our sin, to serve and love God. |
| May this good news be known to each one of us. |
| Amen |
| Beth E. Godfrey - July 30, 2006 |
| Central Presbyterian Church, Geneseo, New
York |
| (1) Bruce C. Birch, “The First and Second Books of
Samuel” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary
in Twelve Volumes (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1998) 1288. |
| (2) ibid. 1290 |
| (3) "A
Peculiarly Christian Account of Sin," William H.
Willimon, Duke University. Theology Today, July
1993. p. 221 and following. |
| (4) ibid. 227 |
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