2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son.
But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.” David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
But the thing David had done was evil in the Lord’s sight. Just two weeks ago, I was preaching about the promise and blessing that God sees us—all of us, all our brokenness and woundedness, and seeing us completely, God has compassion for us. And there is a wonderful good news to that reality—that we are never lost to God and that God’s love for us is complete and that there is nothing that could turn God’s love away from us because God already knows the fullness of our being.
And, as David finds out, there is another side to that reality—that there is nothing that we can hide from God’s sight. Even the things we wish God could not see. Even the things we wish we could forget. David raped Bathsheba and had her husband, Uriah, killed in order to cover up his actions. And for a brief time, David thought he had gotten away with it. David thought that his actions here sufficiently concealed and that there would be no further consequences. Nothing is hidden from God. In God’s sight, all is revealed, and David is revealed to be a profoundly flawed individual.
And there would be consequences. The child David conceived through his crime would die shortly after his birth, and David would grieve deeply the loss. But it wouldn’t end there. Our actions create consequences, good and bad, which ripple away from us, like a stone thrown in a pond, until they touch distant shores, far from our sight.
The immorality that David had brought into the king’s house, the disregard for God’s laws and covenant, would be mimicked in the actions of his sons. David’s first son, Amnon, heir to the throne, would rape his half-sister, Tamar. Absalom, David’s third son and full brother of Tamar, would kill his brother, Amnon, in revenge for what he did to his sister. Absalom hated his father for his lack of response to what happened to his sister and would later steal David’s wives and eventually lead a great rebellion against the king. David’s fourth son, Adonijah, would try to usurp the throne from his father, leading David to execute his own son.
And, well, you get the idea. It was a profoundly dysfunctional and broken family, that seemed to drift farther and farther from whom God had called David and his lineage to be, and dragged Israel back into a time of great social strife and civil war that claimed many, many lives.
Yes, there would be consequences, and David, his family, and indeed all of Israel paid dearly because of David’s actions.
And yet, for thousands of years, up to this very day, we think of David’s reign as being the start of the Golden Age of Israel. We proclaim it every Christmas as we sing the word’s of “Once in Royal David’s City” and we memorialize David’s stories and actions in Sunday school classrooms and stained glass windows alike. What is more, we proclaim the very lineage of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus, through his ancestor, King David, because for centuries it was anticipated that God’s chosen one would be of the lineage of David.
How do we hold these two things together? How do we reconcile David’s profound brokenness with the place he holds in the history of both Judaism and Christianity?
As I was reflecting on today’s story, I found myself pondering a question, a question that you may be pondering too. Why is it that most of these Biblical characters are so deeply flawed? What David did was awful, and he is not unique in this regard. Scripture is filled with stories of people through whom God works; they are filled with people who are flawed and broken too lesser or greater degrees: Adam and Eve who fell prey to a snake’s deceptions, Cain who killed his brother Abel, Abraham and Sarah who lied and deceived their way to the Promised Land, Lot (Abraham’s nephew) who bore two sons by incestuous relationship with both his daughters, Joseph who was such a know-it-all tattletale that it nearly got him killed, or King David who killed a man to steal his wife.
Why is this? Does God specifically seek out the most unlikely people, the people who are morally ambiguous at best, and choose to work through them? It is certainly seems so, for the weight of evidence in the scripture shows that God systematically chooses the most unexpected person to advance God’s work in the world; God chooses time and again the most improbable characters to move God’s story forward. It is a pattern that continues all the way up to the birth of Jesus, when God enters the world, not as a great king in the midst of power, but as an unlikely and unexpected tiny child, born in the outskirts of the city amid the stench and dirt of animals.
Lying in bed one night, turning this question over in my mind, another possibility occurred to me. Did David’s behavior lie far outside of the spectrum of human behavior, or is David an archetype, a stand-in, for the shortcoming and tragic flaws we all bear ourselves? Why is it that most of these Biblical characters are so deeply flawed? Is it that we are all flawed? Does God choose to work through unlikely and broken individuals because God only has unlikely and broken people to choose from?
You’re probably wondering where I come up with such happy and upbeat messages, but stick with me, because I do see something positive here. There is Good News in this possibility because God did work through this cast of flawed characters in the Bible! David did terrible things and God still worked through him. David did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and God still led God’s people into a Golden Age, the likes of which would never be rivaled.
There is Good News because, even though we are broken ourselves, God still works through us. We often know our own flaws and our own sins all too well and so we have a tendency to underestimate God’s ability to work in us and through us. We look at ourselves and see only an unlikely option for God. We say to ourselves, “What can I possibly do, I’m no saint.” The thing is, neither were the saints!
My friends, we are all broken, and we can still do God’s work in this world! I see it every week when our children gather for Children’s worship, I see it when we gather food for St. Augustine’s, and I see it when we form teams to volunteer at the community meal as we seek to feed all of God’s children—this community right here is seeking to build God’s kingdom and change the world!
My friends, we are all broken, and we can still be saints for God can always work wonders through us. I see it in the way that you care for each other through sickness and grief, and in the way you come together in prayer and in love.
My friends, we are all broken, and there will always be a place for us at God’s table. So come, let us gather together and be fed.
Preached by the Rev. Adam Yates