There was a king
and queen of Israel during the time of David, but it was not at all as the
nation of Israel thought.
I’ll get to them
in a minute.
You
might recall, deep in the recesses of your memories, that God didn’t want to
give the people of Israel a king. God was supposed to be their king, and
anybody else was going to be a shallow imitation. But they asked and asked and
asked, and God, being the parent that he was, unable to say “No” forever,
eventually said, “Ask your mother,” which was also him, so that was confusing,
but eventually he relented.
“Fine!”
God said, “You can have a king.”
And
much like that rare occasion when a child gets rewarded after hearing “No” from
their parents a thousand times, the result of the children of Israel getting
what they want is a disaster. The line of kings leads Israel through the
Promised Land and out of it before you know it.
David
was supposed to be the greatest king. He’s the subject of our reading today,
but by the time we pick up with the story, we should realize it may have been
better if he would have been killed by Goliath long before, because when David
falls, he falls hard. The hero-David becomes the villain-David, who uses his
power to have an affair with a married woman named Bathsheba, and afterwards,
unable to coerce Uriah, her husband, into covering his tracks, he goes and has him
killed instead. It’s the kind of thing we would hardly be surprised to hear on
the news today, as everybody expects their politicians to abuse their power.
Not everybody! You might say. Surely
there are those in power who don’t abuse it, and there are—absolutely—but there
are only two paths with power: You either use it and abuse it, or you give it
away. Neutrality is not an option—not in this game. Any time a person in power
gives away power they are starting down that road toward discipleship, following
Jesus who told us that to be a disciple we are to deny ourselves, take up our
crosses, and follow. The problem is that giving that power away also means
giving away your influence. History is littered with anonymous people who had
power and gave it away, but we don’t know who they are.
Meanwhile, anybody
with power who we consider “good”—our moral leadership, you might call them—has
figured out how to work this world of transactions and keep enough power to
keep doing “good.” This may well be pragmatic, but it isn’t righteousness. At
best, it’s making do in a broken world. The paradox of Christian discipleship
is that you can’t follow Jesus and retain any power for yourself whatsoever.
In
our story today, David had the opportunity to give away his power in a variety
of ways. He could have not reached out and taken Bathsheba; he could have not
sent Uriah the Hittite off to die in war; he could have refused the temptation
of what he wanted, but as king he was able to do all those kings, because to be
king was to have what he wanted—whatever he wanted. To be king is to have no
earthly repercussions for sin.
At least, that’s
how it seems until God reappears, throwing a monkey wrench in all this with the
prophet Nathan. “You are the man!” Nathan screams in David’s face. You are the one who took the sheep—Bathsheba—from
the poorest meager shepherd—Uriah—and then you had the shepherd killed. Not
only that, you didn’t fear any repercussions because you believed that, as
king, it was within your power to do so. David forgot about God, because
power makes us believe we are our own God. Only a person in need of something
understands the source of that blessing. The repercussions of David’s action
are terrible… but, sadly, they are worst of all for Bathsheba. She was taken by
David; her husband is killed and her son dies because of David’s sin. What did
Bathsheba do to deserve that?
The sad truth is
that sin always disproportionately affects the victims. Victims are victimized
again, perpetrators seem to skate by with minimum punishment, offering wisdom like
a Virginia Congressman, who this week told inmates at a county jail that, “You
think you’re having a hard time—I got $5 million worth of negative ads going at
me.”
You see, the kings
will never imagine they aren’t the ones under threat.
David thinks he is
king, but there can still only be one king, and it surely is not him. Sure,
David can wear all the kingly attire—and, yes, he was anointed for the role—but
his mistake is in believing that that throne is ultimate. Meanwhile, God does
something unexpected—something even the people in the story don’t recognize—something
we only know because of Jesus, who allows us to look back, knowing that God
meets people not on throne chairs in kingdom halls but on the throne of the
cross. So, rather than looking for God in the temple, we have to turn to the
most desolate alleys and the most lonesome characters. That’s where God’s mantle
rests, and that’s where we find Bathsheba.
Now, it’s tempting
to say we are supposed to go and lift up these Bathshebas of the world—that that’s
what a Christian is called to do, and it might even be the right thing to do
but for the wrong reasons. Bathsheba is not lowly; Bathsheba is not the one in
need of saving. Jesus says “Take up your cross and follow.” There are only two
people in the story doing this and one is Bathsheba. She’s the worthy queen
that David didn’t know, but David’s kingship isn’t what he thought either. After
Jesus, who obliterates the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, the king no
longer has anything to do with bloodline. Rather, the king is the one who
sacrifices it all for the sake of others. The king is Uriah the Hittite, who only
utters a single sentence in all of scripture—a sentence about his duty as a
soldier. The real king is the man who gives himself for the sake of a nation
and a leader, in David, who wants him dead.
King Uriah. Queen
Bathsheba. Neither of them are ever crowned, but who cares? That’s just what
the Israelites wanted to do to signify a king, but, after all, as God told
Samuel when David was anointed, “Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the
heart.”
The true measure
of a king or queen is not the power they acquire but how much they give away.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus talks about the poor woman who gives away a couple
pennies when he says “Truly… this poor widow has put in more than all” the
others (Lk 21:3), because the measure is not how much you have but how much you
have left. Bathsheba, who lost nearly everything—her husband, her son, her
dignity, her freedom—and Uriah—who lost it all, killed by a king’s greed—were the
only ones who approach the standard God levies on kingship.
For us today, who
look back on this story, it’s tempting to talk about how much we need to lift
up the Bathshebas of the world and how much we need to avenge the deaths of the
Uriahs, but we have to be careful. If we speak up for the Bathshebas and the
Uriahs it cannot be out of our generosity and power, because they are the true
kings and queens we need. Instead, if we are to speak up it should be to point
to the real examples of faithful living, because they are so much better than
the fake imitations we have installed on the thrones before us. Through all of
this, we walk the way of the cross, where power is perfected in humility and
self-sacrifice, where judgment meets grace, and where the proud and haughty are
brought to their knees.
I want to close by
talking a little about royal blood, since we get hung up on this stuff, and it
certainly plays a role in how we view David and Bathsheba.
I find one of the
most interesting verses in the whole New Testament to be Matthew 1:6. The book
of Matthew kicks off the New Testament with a thrilling genealogy, which is
every Bible nerd’s favorite and every Sunday morning lector’s worst nightmare—lots
of names, devoid of context. There, in Matthew 1:6, in the middle of all those
names—from Abraham to Isaac and so on, it says, “and Jesse the father of King
David”—now, this is where it gets interesting—“And David was the father of
Solomon by the wife of Uriah.”
The wife of Uriah.
She’s only one of four women mentioned in the genealogy—the other three being
Tamar, who was raped, Ruth, who was taken in a levirate marriage, and Mary, the
mother of Jesus, who had Jesus out of wedlock. Four women—all of whom had
relationships that were not “proper,” even as none of these relationships were
the woman’s choice. Every one of them is a victim either of an individual or a
system, but before we pity them, understand that they are also the ones who show
us the way of discipleship—they are some of the first to walk the way of the
cross. Think about it for a minute. Why did the Gospel of Matthew use that
wording? Why say, “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” Why
mention not only Bathsheba (and not by name), but also Uriah?
Because Jesus was
about to turn the whole world upside down, and those two—Uriah and Bathsheba—alongside
Tamar and Ruth and others found in that genealogy—Isaac and Hezekiah and Amos,
to name a few—were the footprints we are to follow as we walk that way of the
cross. So many of the figures in that genealogy were victims and perpetrators.
Yet, in Jesus Christ, victimhood is not the thing that defines us any longer. In
fact, victims are made glorious in their weakness, perfected in their
imperfection, and made saints by their deaths. The Magnificat lays it bare: The
real king and queen of Israel will stand not on the throne of power but on the
throne of the cross and what the world sees as weakness will be revealed as
strength; where the world remains haughty, those would-be victims know: The
path to glory doesn’t lead to the mountain—not at first—because this God, who
meets us in despair, raises Bathsheba and Uriah, humbles David, and gives us a
promise that there is no depth where God will not find you and no height where
God will not raise you.
So, behold the
true king and queen of Israel: A dead soldier and his wife, who never had a
choice. This is the kind of God we’re dealing with here: A God of grace, who is
turning the whole world upside down.
Amen
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