| 6th Sunday of Easter May 21, 2006 | Church of the Covenant
The Rev. Dr. Robert J. Campbell, D. Min., D.D. Printer-Friendly Version |
“You da man”
2 Samuel 11 selected
Text 2 Samuel 11:26-27
“You da man” I recall that was the line to a beer commercial sometime back. We've come a long way from the King James that reads, “Thou art the man.” or even the RSV that says, “You are the Man.” Language changes but what about God's word?
A young man came into the office this past week. His name was Rob Campbell; he will graduate from Case Medical School today with a PhD as well as a medical degree. He stopped in to say his friends kept asking him, “now that you're Dr. Campbell are 'you da man' on the church marquee?” When someone says, “you da man”, it's either a gesture of affirmation or accusation.
David was one of the greatest heroes in the Bible. He had “GQ” magazine, male model, star quality looks. He was a man's man, poster boy for the marines, military strategist and city planner all rolled into one. As a politician he was Colin Powell, Dwight Eisenhower and FDR, and he was a musician who could sooth any migraine. He was God's anointed one, of him 1st Kings said: “David did what was right with God all the days of his life, except for Uriah the Hittite.”
So a little review; Uriah was a loyal soldier, husband to beautiful Bathsheba, whom David happened to catch a glimpse of when she was taking a sunbath in the all-together. He wasn't a peeping tom it was a chance glance, but there she was and David's testosterone got the best of him. He had one of his servants fetch her and before long she sent him a note saying, “I'm pregnant!”
Like lots of folks in high places, wanting to avoid the tabloids, David tried a cover-up. As modern a soap opera as you can get. If he could just get Uriah and his wife to spend a romantic evening, no one would be the wiser. Trouble was, it was “war season” and Uriah was at the front, and like all good soldiers he was sworn to celibacy. David transferred him to capital duty and issued a pass. But Uriah refused, not once but twice, so David threw a black tie dinner and got Uriah drunk. But he still refused to go home to his bride.
Exasperated by his officer's loyalty David had orders cut sending him to Joab, the field commander. “Put this recruit into the heat of battle and then retreat so that he gets killed. (You might want to remember this story the next time someone uses the Bible as a guide for family values.) Uriah gets killed, Bathsheba goes into mourning. After a respectable time David, generous benefactor that he was, takes her in and she has a son; cover-up accomplished except for the prophet Nathan who didn't think God would look kindly on David's actions. So before the baby could make a fist Nathan came knocking at the white house door. Prophets can be very annoying to politicians.
Yet, what is special is how Nathan confronted David. He didn't accuse him like some “fire and brimstone” preacher. Instead, he launched a flank attack.
We need to understand, Nathan didn't want to condemn David, that would have been easy. Nathan had a greater agenda; he wanted David to change his ways. He wanted a great leader to lead. He wanted his leader to look himself in the mirror, listen to his conscience, and begin doing what was right. Introspection is always a great antibiotic for power's infectious blindness.
So Nathan tells David a story. He knew how we humans tend to let our guard down when listening to tales about others. There was this rich man, he had a whole herd of prize sheep; and there was this poor chap with one little pet ewe. When the rich man confiscated that little pet, David jumped to his defense “that guy ought to be shot!” And then it dawned on him, “You da man!”, and David's heart split in two.
“I've sinned, “ David cried, not because Nathan had told him so but because he saw it for himself. And that became the starting point for David's true greatness, at which point the prophet said, “The Lord has put away your sin.” It was Amazing Grace long before the tune was played on bagpipes at political conventions.
The good news was that David did a turn-around; the bad news was that David's son died. And that may be the toughest part of the story; that a child dies because of a parent's sin. Yet, isn't that history's lesson? God gives us freedom to live our lives, but there are moral boundaries, limits we trespass at our own risk. Like those ancient maps that go to the edge of the known world and then say “beyond this point there are dragons.” We can keep going, lots of people do, but there are consequences, and consequences are different than punishment.
Let's be clear, I see nowhere in our faith that God sits outside those boundaries with a laser gun waiting to zap us. That wouldn't be freedom. That would be a vindictive God setting up land minds and booby traps for self-entertainment.
The God of love and compassion that I know has described the way life works, letting us know that it is not only a material universe but also a moral universe. Our actions and inactions have consequences. We live in a web of relationships that connect one another and all of creation, and generations to come will be affected by the choices we make.
Now there are lots of folks right here in Ohio who would have favorite poster boys to play the part of David. They know sin when they see it and they can attach it to plenty of people in high places, usually someone with a different political or religious understanding. He sinned, she sinned, but you see sin is a funny thing. It's easy to personalize it. It's even easier to spot it in someone else. But the fact is sin in the Bible is most often corporate with communal effects, which was most clearly pointed out in the New Testament when a bunch of self righteous guys wanted to throw a stone at a woman they had used, and then wanted to clear their conscience with a dab of righteous indignation. Jesus said, “Fine, which ever one hasn't sinned throw the first stone.” Or there is that little line from Jesus that suggests we get the boulders out of our own eyes before we look for dust in our neighbor's. Sin is corporate with communal effects.
Don't get me wrong; there are consequences for our personal indiscretions. If I smoke, it will most likely affect my health. If I abuse this rented tent that houses my soul, the owner is deeply saddened. God watches with great dismay when we follow our freedom into the far countries.
But having said that, if the poor are allowed to starve in Dafur or Dayton or anywhere in the world, while oil profits guzzle into the bank accounts of a few; if the gun lobby is allowed to manipulate elections by fanning the fires of fear; and gun makers profit by selling to a world awash in misery, then terrorism will find its fertile soil to grow its crops of destruction and you can count on the fact that one day amber waves of grain will become blood red killing fields.
If personal wealth is seen, as the key to heaven's door and politics is the handmaiden to greed, then corporate empires will continue to implode. The Christian Science Monitor described it best. “From the roaring 90's to the odious '00's the growing list of doctored books is a crisis of our nation's fiber.” The results can well be the suffering of our children and our children's children!
What is sin? When a teen pregnancy program that has reduced pregnancy rates in a three county area by a documented 60% has $150,000 taken from a federal grant by those with a conservative social agenda, supposedly to make room for promised money to KATRINA victims, and then Northrop Pump Corporation gets $500 million on top of insurance claims from the same politicians, and the poor of New Orleans are still without sanitary facilities -that is sin!
When human rights are violated and world justice is spurned for the political self-interest of any nation -that is sin! When simple health care for older adults is reduced to bureaucratic confusion and deadlines, and Berlin walls along Mexican borders are constructed to keep people out of a place of opportunity only because vote hungry legislatures want approval ratings -that is sin!
Which means, to quote Otis Moss in this week's inauguration of “We Believe in Cleveland,” part of “We Believe in Ohio,” “The time has come for prophetic pastors not patriot pastors.” Let me expand that, the time has come for prophetic churches not pulpits pandering to political operatives seeking the restoration of bigotry in this state; the time has come for all of us to look in the mirror and then call the Davids of our land into account, knowing full well that to stand silent is to contribute to the sin of a nation that is better than that.
See, there were this rich man who had a gazillion sheep and a poor man who had only one. The rich man took the one sheep just because he could. What harm was done? It probably tasted better since it was fed table scraps.
But there is no moral autonomy. When human beings exercise freedom in life-giving ways, all heaven and nature applauds. When we exercise our freedom in the ways of death, sooner or later the earth will quake beneath our feet. What David discovered is what we as a nation, as states, as communities, cities and churches need to discover, that God is not happy with our selfishness; and God calls prophets to tell the old, old stories so that we can look at ourselves, and seeing who we really are we will be sensitive enough to feel our hearts split in two. Then we will discover that the death sentence we have pronounced upon our children and ourselves is lifted.
Things were never the same for David. He buried his first-born. There were lasting consequences. But he and Bathsheba had a second boy named Solomon and David's linage produced a boy by the name of Jesus who no doubt heard the stories of his ancestor.
Was David a great leader? Did he make mistakes? He was like all humans, a mixture of good and not so good. If he was great, it was not because of his looks, not because of his poetry or politics, not because of his military might. David goes down in history because of one moment in time when he heard a story told by a prophetic voice and caught a glimpse of who he was becoming and had the courage to change directions so that he could hear God say, “Welcome home.”
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