Readings, 2 Samuel 11:26–12:13a and Ephesians 4:1-16
Image, Nathan's parable of the ewe lamb (1965-1968), Oskar Kokoschka

We pick up, in Samuel, where we left off last week. There attended to David’s abuse of Bathsheba and assassination of Uriah; actions predicated on the assumption that David was able to act not only with impunity, but without discovery. And yet, as the Johnny Cash song tells, You can run on for a long time, But sooner or later God will cut you down
 
The thing David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. Nathan, perhaps considering the most effective tactic of confrontation, weaves a fable and David walks into its moral trap. You are the man! Nathan declares when David’s outrage reaches its boiling point over a stolen lamb. It is satisfying to see David condemn himself for the evil he has performed, and yet, it is not enough that David’s conscious should be pricked, or that he buckle under the weight of guilt. For the harms done cannot be undone; and surely blood calls out for blood.
 
Thus sayeth the Lord: the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife… 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 neighbour, 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.
 
Last week I drew the comparison between the unbridled villainy of the actions of King David and those of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Here, keeping with literary allusions, the punishment allotted by God rivals the poetic, ironic twists of a Greek Tragedy. For the very crimes David thought he hid, shall be reversed upon him in the light of day – and all shall see the displeasure of the Lord poured forth upon the king.
 
David, struck by fear and guilt, exclaims in confession: I have sinned against the Lord! This is where the lectionary ends the reading. Punctuating the story with David’s admission of guilt, and desperate plea that the judgment of the Lord might be lifted off his house. If we end the reading here, accompanied as it is with the psalm of confession attributed to David, a certain selection of avenues for proclamation and the lessons open before us. Consolation in the nature of God who does not excuse the sins of kings, commendation of the prophet speaking truth to power, remembering the importance of confession and hope of restoration.
 
But while this is where the lectionary cuts off, this is hardly where the story ends. For if we read on beyond David’s cry of confession, Nathan responds: Now the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.” David’s own life is spared, his humiliation and downfall averted, and yet, the Lord was scorned, and so the child born of David’s transgression will perish. The child becomes ill by the hand of the Lord. David fasts and weeps, pleads and prays, but the Lord hath spoken, and the child dies.
 
Then David rose from the ground, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes. He went into the house of the Lord, and worshiped; he then went to his own house; and when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive; but when the child died, you rose and ate food.” He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” Then David consoled his wife Bathsheba, and went to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, and he named him Solomon. The Lord loved him.
 
Here, is where the story ends. And how, we might wonder, does this change the way the word is proclaimed, and the lessons we learn?
 
In this telling, the story centres something of a council, where, God’s prophet meets with God’s king to deliver God’s judgment. The punishment is adjusted upon David’s contrition, and is accepted by David as lamentable, but justified. And yet, who is not in this council? For the child might be born of David’s sin but he came from Bathsheba’s womb. The reading pays no attention to her feeling. Is she even aware the sudden illness which strikes life from her child has come from God to punish the crime committed against her and her husband? Nor is there any consideration of the child himself, as one knitted together by God in his mother’s innermost parts. Indeed, the narrator seems to present the death of the child and the subsequent birth of Solomon as a resolution; a fresh, clean, new beginning. The child born of sin is dispensed (and with it any residue of David’s transgression), which paves the way for a child who the Lord might love. In this story all things orbit David and God; their actions and feelings the only ones considered both in the crime and its punishment. As David himself makes clear, he has sinned against God alone.
 
We are left, again, with a pretty dire image of King David (but that’s not too troubling, since we reached the same last week). More troubling is this image of God who took the child because God had been scorned by David’s deed. If last week, the story of David provided a chance to lament and learn from the ways the church has longed for kings and excused and legitimatised the abuses of its all-too-worldly leaders, then this week we might also learn from and lament the times our church and society has modelled its image of crime and punishment in such retributive binaries. When we have believed blood cries out for blood, prioritising punishment of the individual over the health of the community. The story as we read it, affords us a chance to learn from and lament the times in which violence against women has been “addressed” by men coming together to punish the defilement of their honour, rather than considering what justice would mean for the victim-survivor.
 
These are not insignificant lessons, for they reflect the stress of the Ephesians reading where unity of the body of Christ is known through a democratic appreciation of the whole. For the church is not marked and defined by the privileged few, but there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Each have been given a gift, which, while differing in detail does not differ in value. All gifts belong to Christ and each is given to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. We cannot function and flourish as the body of Christ while those whose voice (so often written out of our scriptures and traditions) remains silenced in the church.
 
This is part of why the Uniting Church holds that all people, regardless of gender, sexuality, culture, or language are fit to be ordained, preside over the table, proclaim the word, and sit on its councils. For baptism is the all-inclusive sacrament by which we are initiated into the church in the name of Christ. The church is the whole people of God, who are brought through the waters of new life in Christ, sustained on the way by Christ’s body and blood. The body is formed by no less than this whole people, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped. And when each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. It is for this reason we practice consensus decision making as the church, and for this reason we seek to be governed by non-hierarchical councils. These steps represent the yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
 
And, finally, as the people of God considering the full story from Samuel and the reading we heard from Ephesians, we are reminded again that the Uniting Church lays upon all its members (not just those who preach) the serious duty of reading Scripture. Readings like ours today ask for such seriousness. Part of what it means to read scripture seriously is the requirement to consider images of God set one against another. To reflect on the differing (sometimes divergent) imagery, language, and teaching in the Bible. To locate them amidst their cultural worldview and, considering our own, search out and prize those images which herald good news. Now this is not simply an Old Testament vs New Testament dichotomy. All parts of scripture can proclaim the truth in love, and all are capable of reflecting cultural captivity and human limitation. Here, today, the serious duty of reading scripture asks us to consider which image of God best reflects what we love when we love our God. Is it the one who takes the innocent child of a father’s sin, or the one who takes captive captivity itself? It is not that there aren’t truths of God and the world found in both, as we have seen already. But we might confess that one proves a firmer foundation for the church’s doctrine, one more richly teaches the truth in love, one better helps us grow up in every way into Christ. It is through this serious reading that we are drawn, not only nearer our God to thee, but to those in our communities whose place in the story, whose value in the body, has been diminished, denigrated, forgotten, or forsaken. For it is here that our efforts to maintain the unity of the Spirit and bond of peace most reflect the one who descended even into the low parts of the earth so that all shall know the freedom and gifts of God.

Readings, 2 Sam 11:1-15, Ephesians 3:14-21
Image, Girl Sitting Alone in the ‘Sea Grill,’ a Bar and Restaurant (1943/1989) Esther Bubley

In this story, King David rivals Shakespeare’s Richard III for unbridled villainy. And like so many stories of depraved abuses of power, it strikes an ominous note from the beginning. In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle… David remained at Jerusalem. This is not unintended irony, something is amiss. Remember, when a youth, David volunteered to face Goliath alone. Now when kings go out to battle, David stays home. Not only is he avoiding responsibility, it hints, narratively, at the potential for trouble. For if all of Israel have been sent out to war, who remains in the city to oppose the whims of the King? The picture the narrator paints is one of King David, a man alone, in a city of women.
 
And David spies one such woman, Bathsheba, benignly attending to the banality of bathing. It is notable that the reason David is able to play the voyeur is because he lingers in the king’s house – raised above the rest – and from this perch he is able to look down. Spying something he likes, and sensing no possible opposition, refusal, or discovery, David sends for Bathsheba and (as the text euphemistically states) lies with her. I stress euphemistically here, because like the heading assigned to this reading in many Bibles (“David commits adultery with Bathsheba”), this language elides the abuse, obfuscates the unequal power dynamic, and seeks to make neat the ugliness of this scene familiar to far too many who have been called into the office or home of a superior and realised that there is no way to say no without risking their safety, security, or livelihood.
 
Tragically for Bathsheba, the violence does not end on this day. For Bathsheba falls pregnant, and suddenly David discovers that his act is perhaps somewhat more discoverable than he believed. Should Uriah return after a season of war, he will discover Bathsheba pregnant and all eyes will fall upon the one man in town with power and opportunity.
 
David devises a plan. He calls Uriah home from the front, urging him, go down to your house and wash your feet. Which, speaking of euphemisms, is a common one for sexual intimacy. However, to David’s shame, Uriah refuses. While David has no problem sleeping in a palace, Uriah will not rest under his roof while his comrades spend their nights in tents. David tries again, this time plying Uriah with wine in the hope that alcohol might shake his commitment to abstinence. Yet even drunk, Uriah has more integrity than the king. With no other cards to play, David betrays Uriah to his death, ordering him to be abandoned on the frontlines, to die far from the bed he refused, the wife he loved, and the city he served. Condemned by his king to die in a moment of confusion wondering why everyone drew back while he walked on. When news of his death reaches Bathsheba she makes lamentations, after which, David brings her once more to his house – making her his wife, and the unborn child his own.
 
Our domestic violence work has exposed us to too many heart wrenching stories not to find here parallels of male entitlement, coercion, and abuse. The Me Too movement has exposed too many stories to not find parallels in a man weaponizing power to gain gratification without paying heed of the consent or discomfort of the object of his desire. It is far too late in the day to try and soften the edges of this story, to euphemistically distract from its monstrosity, to rush to excuse, forgive, or forget. For to follow such a path does little to honour the past, and less to protect the future.
 
It is no accident that David’s actions recollect the warning issued to Israel when they demanded a king. A king, God forewarned, will take your sons to be his soldiers, your daughters to be his perfumers and cooks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king. The people were not put off, demanding a king so that we may be like other nations, and because (ironically enough) a king shall go out before us and fight our battles.  
 
I bring up this warning not to imply anyone in the story deserved their treatment, or that David should receive a pass since this is just what kings do. Israel’s desire to be like other nations represents a failure in their calling to be a people set apart to be a witness to the other nations. Far from longing to be a simulacrum of worldly nations, Israel’s call was to witness to what is possible when a people order their lives as subjects to the God of freedom. In just the same way, when the church longs for kings, we too fail to live up to our calling to be a community created and sustained by grace. When we seek to secure our identity and survival in individuals and systems of human power, we invariably lose our way as a people who follow a crucified messiah. When we long for a power that conforms to the way power is distributed and demonstrated in the world, then the vulnerable and marginalised in our community will invariable bear the harm that such power tends to yield. For the impulse to bestow sovereign authority and protect the reputation of leaders, clergy, or past pillars of the community lies beneath so much of the reprehensible abuse scandals that have caused irreparable harm to individuals, communities, and the church itself.
 
And so we ask, how do we avoid such an impulse? Avoid creating environments where all-too-worldly power might be given divine blessing to act without fear of opposition, refusal, or discovery? It is not as simple as willing. Israel asked for a king because they suffered under corruption from within and threats from without, they asked that they might secure their survival and flourishing in the land God promised. So too the church has longed for, empowered, and excused abuses of power because it has looked and quivered at its precarious place in the world as a pilgrim people, whose very life depends on the arrival of Christ and his sustaining grace. All this to say, if we’re going to resist the appeal of worldly power, it will not happen by accident, we must act to be rooted and grounded in love.
 
For it is only with deep roots in love, firmly grounded in the Spirit’s power, that we become secure enough in our calling as the church to resist the lure of worldly power. Too much harm has been hushed away because we feared the church was not strong enough to survive the scandal. But if we devote ourselves to the collective work of tending to roots and grounding ourselves in love, we might be able to trust that telling the truth about David, let alone the truth about those who have come after, will not bring us down but set us free.
 
The truth sets us free to place our trust and identity not in the corrupting power of mortals, but the generous life-giving power of God. This is why we gather and go. To tend to the roots and clear the ground we pray, we approach to the table of grace, we build up each other in love and good deeds, we visit each other and place our calls, we serve food and talk over morning tea, we set flowers and sing praises, we listen to scripture and hear the word proclaimed, and we go forth in grace to love and serve the world, to learn from others and form coalitions for the common good. And we do this (and much more) again and again and again because this is how roots grow deep. To ground ourselves in Christ’s love as the sole power which secures our identity and shapes our life cannot simply be decided (for the lure of worldly power is just too strong). It must instead be determinatively pursued together through spiritual practices, fellowship, and the work of justice, listening, and truth-telling. It is by this that our inner being will be strengthened with power through the Spirit, by this that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, by this we are filled with the fullness of God, and by this that we are rooted and grounded in love.