SermonStudio

Last week we left David handing a note to Uriah to take to Joab. "Good luck, old chum, back to the front, God bless and all the best, glad you could have a little rest. Oh, by the way, could you deliver this note to Joab, a request for your commander from your king?" It was Uriah's own death sentence: Send Uriah to the forefront of the battle and then draw back from him, so that he might die.

Last week David left us wondering about his situation: to take Uriah's wife, Bath-Sheba, to discover that she is pregnant, to bring Uriah back so that Uriah might go to Bath-Sheba, and then to have his royal scheme thwarted by Uriah, who, as David's foil, will not break the law of purity befitting a soldier in a royal war. Uriah does not go near his wife. So David sends Uriah back to the front to be killed, with, he thinks, none the wiser.

News comes that Uriah is killed. Bath-Sheba makes her lamentations. David, as a good and compassionate king in the eyes of the people, takes in the poor, bereaved widow. David, as a generous king places her under royal patronage and Bath-Sheba becomes David's wife. It seems to be the end of the matter.

It is the end until the Lord sends Nathan to David. Nathan comes to David and says, "There were two men in a certain city, the one rich, 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. And he brought it up and it grew up with him and his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom. It was like a child to him. Now there came a traveller to the rich man and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, so he took the poor man's lamb to prepare for the traveller."

Then David's anger is greatly kindled and says to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, the one deserves to die, because he has no pity."

And Nathan says to David, "You are the man." The truth must have stabbed David like a dagger into his heart: "You are the man."

In all the commentaries on the text, throughout the midrash, the rabbis are unrelenting and like Nathan, hold David fully accountable. David had been chosen by God to lead the people of Israel in God's holiness. David knew God's justice and God's righteousness. David knew all the commandments. David knew that once Israel was chosen by God, Israel was responsible to God, and his role as King of Israel made him especially responsible. In any other kingdom in the ancient Near-East, it was well within the royal rights to take a subject's wife, but not in Israel. In any other kingdom in the ancient Near-East, it was well within the royal rights to have a subject led into battle for the slaughter of that subject. But not in Israel.

Israel was chosen by God to fulfill the purposes of God, to bind the words of God as a sign upon the hand and as frontlets on the eyes. Israel had been chosen by God to do what was right in the sight of the Lord; to love the Lord with all the heart and soul and might, to love the neighbor as self. And most especially, Israel was chosen to uphold the cause of the powerless, the fragile, the forgotten, to take the poor little lambs into their close keeping.

Nathan does not tell a parable about coveting, though David has coveted. Nathan does not tell a parable about adultery, though clearly David has committed it. Nathan doesn't even tell a parable about murder, though David was responsible for Uriah's death. No, when Nathan holds the mirror up to David, David recognizes himself in relation to God as one who has forgotten God's holy expectation, of God's compassion. David sees that he has had slain one who was cherished, was beloved. He had "despised the word of the Lord." He had done wrong. David looks at Nathan and confesses, "Behold, I have sinned against the Lord."

This section of scripture, that goes from 2 Samuel through 1 Kings 2, is called the Succession Narrative. It is a history of the final turbulent years of David's reign. The writer of the Succession Narrative is trying to interpret why it all falls apart for David. David, who as a child, slays the giant Philistine. Goliath, with five smooth stones and an unswerving faith in God, the Lord of hosts. David, who as King of Judah, triumphantly takes Jerusalem, and becomes King of all Israel. Why does it all fall apart for David, unravel in the most complicated and unseemly fashion? Why does it all fall apart, so that David suffers the death of three sons, the unnamed one born out of wedlock to Bath-Sheba, Amnon, and Absalom? Why does it all fall apart so that David ends his reign as King of Israel, a beaten and brokenhearted man, shivering, unable to get warm?

It falls apart because David forgets his responsibility to the covenant, because David forgets what it means to be chosen by God, led by God, loved by God. To be God's chosen is to be chosen by God to uphold the commandments, God's holy expectation of us all, and most especially to uphold the cause of those most vulnerable, the poor, the powerless, the little lambs. God is compassionate and God's judgment is upon us when we are not.

David actually pronounces God's judgment first. After Nathan recites the parable, David's anger is greatly kindled and David says, "As the Lord lives, this one deserves to die. Because he has done this thing, because he had no pity." David knows the law. Then Nathan points out, "You are the one. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I anointed you king, I rescued you, I gave you your house and your wives, and if that had been too little, I would have added much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in God's sight? Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, for you have despised me."

So, what if some present day prophet came to you with a parable, to what would the parable point? What if some present day prophet came and held up a mirror, what would you see? This passage can be more than a history for us. It can be a parable for us, a mirror for us. For we, like David, live in the covenant of God's holy expectation, the covenant that we love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and might, and our neighbor as our self. And though few of us sit in seats of power like David, and few of us will turn from God in all the ways that David did, still we live in the covenant through all our days and all our nights. Like David we are chosen by God to love one another with all our heart, especially those who are lonely and frail, vulnerable and alone. Still we, like David, will fall short and find ourselves looking in the mirror sadly, but then face to face.

We need, like David, to confess, "Behold, I have sinned against the Lord." In the words of the ancient prayer, we need to confess "the sins that no one knows and the sins that everyone knows; the sins that are a burden to us and the sins that do not bother us because we have become used to them." I cannot look in the mirror for you but I can urge you to take a look, as if your life depended on it, for it does. We, like David, live in the covenant of God's holy expectation. God's judgment is upon us and God's grace is. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. David confesses wisely, "I have sinned against the Lord." God's mercy prevails. David's life is spared. But God's judgment prevails also. And terrible the judgment appears to the writer of the Succession Narrative looking back on the history and trying to make sense of all of it: the death of the infant son born of the glance, the bloodshed and the violence, the wars and wars' ravages, the despair. David confesses, God's mercy and judgment prevail.

Then, tucked in the same chapter as the terrible judgment is the first hint of God's grace in the narrative. God's grace born to the same pair - David and Bath-Sheba. Then, David comforted his wife Bath-Sheba, and went in to her, and lay with her, and she bore a son, and David called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved Solomon. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Amen.