When I think back to the Bible story books of my childhood, and the portrait they drew of King David, what I recall is this: he was the smallest and the youngest in his family, yet the prophet Samuel saw beyond those limitations when choosing someone to face the dreaded Philistine, Goliath; I recall pictures of David the poet and songwriter, and I recall the jealousy he engendered in King Saul who threw a spear at him; I recall his sorrow at the death of his dearly beloved friend Jonathan, son of King Saul; and I recall that he was the head of a royal family that started with his son Solomon and continued right up to Jesus. In these hazy early memories of the story of David, I recall Bathsheba, and that she was beautiful, but I can assure you that the story we heard this morning was not in my bedtime Bible stories.
And no wonder: the story of a woman bathing as required by religious
custom, then being sent for by the King; a King seeing and having what he
wanted, Bathsheba in no position to say no; and a dutiful husband and loyal
soldier, Uriah, set up for slaughter to cover up the scandal. As a teenager reading through the Bible for
the first time I recall coming across this story, and being stopped dead in my
tracks, incredulous at the low-life actions of the King. While impressed that those constructing the
Bible didn’t just pay some low-ranking scribe some hush money to make this
story go away, I was astonished and disgusted by these events. How exactly,
does one have power-coerced sexual relations with a woman, try to cover it up,
intentionally have her husband killed on the front lines, and not only remain as
King, but remain in the heart of the people as the kind of King one yearned for?
Rather than leaving that as a
rhetorical question, the tools that enabled King David’s actions – and the
actions of his living replicas in our day - include patriarchy, misogyny, and
the power of empire; unbridled ego, lust, oh, and rampant disobedience of the 6th
9th and 10th commandments, the ones about murder, and not
coveting, and not covering things up with lies. (The more things change, the more they stay
the same…!)
The story of King David and
Bathsheba is a story of power, abused. What it isn’t, is a story of seduction, and
I need to say that in the strongest possible terms. In preparing for this sermon, I consulted a
number of sources, including some pretty conservative ones, seeking angles at
this story that could help me hone what to say about it. Where I’ve landed, is on these words of a Christian
counselor in the USA named Elyse Fitzpatrick: “if there’s one thing I know it’s
that the Bible’s writers… aren’t queasy at all about uncovering sin. Hence, if
Bathsheba had been culpable at all, we would have heard about it. But we
haven’t.
“What we do hear is that
David decided to grab a little ‘me’ time and one afternoon, after he got up
from napping, he went up on his roof to check out the doings in his kingdom. It
was from there that he saw Bathsheba bathing herself. BTW, she wasn’t on a
roof. He was. She was probably in a private courtyard. The Bible clearly states
that she was … purifying herself … as required after having her period.
“So, David said to his
servants, ‘Oh, I like the looks of that…get me one.’ So his servants went to
her house and ‘took’ her. That Hebrew word means, ‘to get, lay hold of, seize…acquire,
or buy.’ What the Bible doesn’t say is that she cunningly arranged a peep show
so she could entrap the king, kill off her husband, and set herself up in
cushiness for life. If that had been the case, the Bible would have said that.
But it doesn’t.
“The next time we hear about
her, she’s telling David she’s pregnant. The Bible doesn’t tell us her state of
mind but it tells us David’s: He’s going to scheme and eventually murder to
cover up his sin. At the death of her righteous husband… Bathsheba lamented and
grieved for him (2 Sam 11:26). Later, she grieved for her dead firstborn son.
David brought nothing but death and grief into the house of a righteous woman”.
To me Elyse sums it up well. And
yet this is part of our faith story, and the driver of these actions is nothing
short of a hero of the faith. What
gives? In what way is this ‘good news’?
On this second Sunday this
summer in which we engage the Ecumenical table setting of the Theological
Banquet, the place at which one’s active faith response is exercised through acts
of social justice, the first bit of good news I wish to offer is that God did
not sweep this under the carpet. Even
the old King James Version of the Bible states it clearly: “the thing that David had done displeased
the Lord”.
And to make sure David knew this
displeasure and its consequences, the prophet Nathan was sent by God to speak
truth to power. And while not stated in scripture, Nathan’s heart must have been pounding double time in
having to confront the King like this.
As hard as this work is to
do, the reality is that unless the Church finds the nerve to speak truth to
power, we end up as agents of empire. History has shown us this. Church and colonizers
have worked hand in hand to overrun Indigenous populations, and the collusion
of Church and Empire continues to assert itself loud and clear each time we
hear that women’s reproductive rights, the life journey of trans folks, the
evidence of catastrophic climate change, and the religious rights of
non-Christians, specifically targeted with the gleeful support of some branches
of Christendom. With the prophet Nathan,
we become agents of gospel, carriers of the good news, when we find the
chutzpah to speak truth to power.
There is good news to be
found in the breadth of Bible commentators I found that recognize the horrible
position that Bathsheba was in, from the start of this story to its
long-lasting consequences. As Elyze
Fitzpatrick pointed out, the Bible authors would happily have blamed Bathsheba
if she carried blame, but no such blame exists.
And furthermore, if we could reach into these stories and actually talk
to the characters, I would want time to hear Bathsheba tell her story, for
people caught in her situation seldom have enough safety or agency to speak and
be believed. 2nd Samuel gives
Uriah and David and Nathan and even Joab plenty of opportunity to speak but
Bathsheba has one only line recorded: “I’m pregnant!” If I could, I would want to hear Bathsheba, listening
with non-judgmental belief to her story, including her account of the loss of
her husband, Uriah, without sanitizing or minimizing her experience. People of faith need to help restore the
voice of the voiceless.
There is good news to be
found - and I find it hard to hear this let alone say it, for at times the
grace of God is both baffling and overwhelming - in the path to reconciliation
offered to King David by the prophet Nathan. King David is required to own all aspects of
what he did here, there will be big, enduring, heartbreaking consequences, but he
is not expelled to a place of no return.
That possibility of reconciliation, which involves a bunch of other R
words like repentance, restoration, restitution, and reparations, is one of the
reasons why the grace of God has such enduring importance and relevance. King David’s role in the death of his loyal
soldier Uriah, and his predatory pursuit of Bathsheba, are well beyond road
bumps in his legacy, and that gives me
reason to question why the royal line reaching forward to Jesus is called
David’s line rather than, say, the line of Solomon or even the line of Ruth,
but I’m not the one making those decisions.
And taking one small step to
the side, there is good news to be found when we imagine how the Ecumenical table
setting relates to this story. By using
the word “ecumenical” to describe the ministries that speak truth to power,
Janet Gear reminds us that such truth-telling is not just Nathan’s job to do;
the engagement of evil, the confronting of the tools of empire is something we
are called to do, together: together as families, together as a community of
faith, together within the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good, together as a
region and denomination, together with the entire body of Christ. We, as
Oikoumene, all God’s children together who seek shalom in all the earth, are
called by God to be agents of the good news of the Kin-Dom of God. We are to proclaim, through courageous
advocacy our intimate connectedness to a just and loving God and with one another.
We, in word and deed, are to exhibit the God’s own justice and lovingkindness
that infuses all the earth, the good news of a God who calls us to be
accountable but not stuck in such guilt or hopelessness that we just stay put. We are called, together, to speak into a
world where the stifling power of Empire finds countless ways, subtle and
blatant, to hold sway. As Church, we are
to be Nathan in the face of what King David has done, even as we ensure that Bathsheba
is heard and believed.
It is a hard story, this, yet
it calls us to engage he world in which we live with power and love and
hopefulness. It names that when evil
intent is enacted, God is not unmoved.
It uplifts the importance of accountability, and the necessity of
speaking truth to power. It empowers and gives voice to all who have suffered
at the hands of others. It draws us
together in action, in the midst of forces that seem well beyond our capacity
to address. And it sets our feet once more, on that pathway of all who have
caught a glimpse of that glorious new way we hear of in Jesus, the Kin-dom of
God. As stories like this get relived
over and over again, even in our day, may we be both challenged and empowered
by the sacred call to engagement. Amen.
References cited and
consulted:
Aten, Jamie and Annan, Kent. https://www.christianitytoday.com/better-samaritan/2023/mnay/11-tips-for-preaching-trauma-informed-sermon.html
Carter Florence, Anna. “She
Wasn’t on the Roof: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, the Women of
Jesus’ Genealogy.” A lecture at the
Festival of Homiletics, May 14, 2024, Pittsburgh PA.
Fitzpatrick, Elyse. https://elysefitzpatrick.com/its-all-her-fault/
Imes, Carmen Joy. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/july-web-only/rape-david-bathsheba-adultery-sexual-sin-prophet-nathan.html
Johnson, Jamie. https://livingforjesus.blog/2021/02/16/the-truth-about-david-and-bathsheba-and-why-it-matters/
McAndless, Scott. https://retellingthebible.wordpress.com/2019/08/28/episode-3-11-you-saw-her-bathing-what-were-you-doing-on-the-roof/
And to address this story
with children, see VeggieTales, “King George and the Ducky.” https://youtu.be/FtKFfZ14DQ8
© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Scarboro United Church, Calgary AB.
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