Sermon: YOU ARE the MAN

2 Samuel 11:1-15

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 get 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.”

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Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him so that he may be struck down and die, The Word of the Lord, Thanks be to God ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Sit. Sit down, Be seated.

Long years ago a parishioner came to me for pastoral counseling on a matter that had devastated her conscience for two decades, not unlike the story of David and Bathsheba, pregnancy out of wedlock, shame, resentment, guilt, anger, regret, and a sickly child. We talked at length over several sessions, including liturgical private confession, intense discussion, penance, Reconciliation of a Penitent that concludes,

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you your offenses; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins: in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” then “The Lord has put away all your sins. Go in peace …” 

theologically wiping her slate clean. 

When it was over she said, “You have not done a thing for me, Tom Weller. I know God forgives me, but I cannot forgive myself.” 

For a Christian to rate guilt, self-contempt and self-hatred above the mercy, lovingkindness and forgiveness of God is bad theology, even blasphemy.

Today’s story about king David is old stuff to us, we know the Bible story, we know all the savory and unsavory characters. We also remember that for all the people in the Bible, that God, YHVH, Adonai the Lord loves them all but only makes friends with two people - - David the shepherd king - - and Abraham the Patriarch, God’s old drinking buddy. I know how that is, I don’t have a drinking buddy any longer, my old drinking buddies have all died of old age and I, only I, am left. I do have a walking buddy my age. I have an oyster buddy my age, and we usually finish off a pitcher of beer along with several dozen oysters. God and Abraham, being about the same age, were buddies from the moment God said “Go from here to the land I will show you,” and laid down the promise, “I will give you land, and I will bless you and you will be a blessing, and I will give you as many descendants as there are stars in the sky and grains of sand on the seashore” and Abraham obeyed, went. 

Admit it or not, everybody has a favorite. Adam was a son, but Abraham was God’s favorite even though Abraham let God down many times, with his yellow cowardice, Abraham lying that Sarah his beautiful, sexy, vivacious, 90-year-old wife was his sister, so various kings would welcome Abraham and marry Sarah into their harem instead of killing Abraham and seizing his wife as was the custom in that day and age. 

Abraham could be disgusting, a contemptible old man, but he and God had a long history together, and Abraham obeyed and loved God, and God loves Abraham unconditionally (a theological definition of Grace), and even though God strung Abraham along with covenant after covenant for twenty-five years, God eventually kept his promise because God loves Abraham.

The other person God loves and favors so dearly is David, who came into God’s life as a young shepherd boy just when God needed a king to replace king Saul. So David, with his “rod and his staff, they comfort me,” David with his harp and his psalms praising God, David tall, ruddy and handsome with beguiling eyes, David the fearless warrior child who slays Goliath, David the most innocent of Jesse’s eight sons, David is chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, and lives into his destiny as the most beloved king in history.

David the lusty one, who broke God’s heart by treachery, sin, the most unspeakable crime in all the Bible: betraying a loyal and devoted army officer, David steals Uriah’s wife, in adultery David impregnates Bathsheba, and when Uriah in honor, trust, and highest integrity, innocently does not cover David’s sin, David wickedly consigns Uriah to death in battle, the sin and high crime of the Hebrew Bible.

How does Joab the general feel respectfully toward David now? How does Nathan the prophet, David’s chaplain and spiritual director, feel about David? How does David feel about himself? How do you feel about David? Worse, worst, how does God feel about David? God still loves him.

What’s the moral of this horrendous, disgusting old Sunday School Bible story? Pick one, pick a moral!

Pick a moral yourself. You know the rest of the story as well as i do: when Nathan confronts lusty, arrogant, love-struck king David with the enormity of his sin, David is devastated, appalled at himself and repents. The baby dies, David and Bathsheba’s next boy, Solomon, becomes king, a memorable but cruel despot with hundreds of wives and concubines, who conscripts thousands of brutally abused people for slave labor, caused the United Kingdom of Judah and Israel to split upon his welcome death; and yet before this story is over, Nathan will say to David, “The Lord has put away your sin.”

Are you kidding me? Jiminy Christmas, is nothing sacred not even honor, integrity?!! Apparently, if God loves you, no sin is unforgivable, even this evil.

I hope you have not jumped the gun on my proclamation and seen the inevitable conclusion: the old story of Abraham and today’s David story are about you, you, you. God loves you just as God loves Abraham the contemptible coward, just as God loves David the murderous adulterer, God loves you.

Whatever your sin, whatever dreadful thing you have thought, schemed, said, or done, there is forgiveness for the sinner because God loves you.

Your baptismal covenant: whenever you fall into sin will you repent and return to the Lord? I will, with God’s help. Look and see, remembering Abraham, and in the story of David, how it is between you and God, between God and you: God loves you just that much. You, a gentile sinner, baptized in water, coming to God through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Stop and think. Right now, stop and think: what sin is troubling you? What sin against God, or against yourself or another person is holding you back, separating you from God? Do not grovel in guilt, self-pity or self-damnation as did that parishioner who came to me so long ago. Confess, repent and return to the Lord, forgiven and restored because God loves you. Listen, baptized Christian, here’s the promise:

Almighty God, the Father of Abraham, the Father of David, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that we may turn from our wickedness and live, has given power and commandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. He + pardons and absolves all those who truly repent, and believe his holy Gospel.

Wherefore let us beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do on this day, that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, and that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Amen!

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Sermon, homily on the first reading, by the Rev Tom Weller, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. Sunday, July 29, 2018, Proper 12B. Art: “You are the man!” painting by Angelika Kaufman

With my after church martini, I like the three hugest olives I can find.