Rich Man, Poor Man
2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a
Proper 13B
August 5, 2012
Proper 13B
August 5, 2012
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
While we’ve been dallying among the psalms, by turns delighted and dismayed,
the lectionary has been trudging on. In
the Hebrew Bible readings, which we take up this morning, the lectionary has
been following the history of the early kings of Israel. First Israel was warned against having a king
at all—more on that in a moment. Then
Samuel anointed Saul as king because the people insisted on it. Then Saul was found to be unfit for the
office and David was anointed in his place.
Several unpleasant things happened as the former-but-not-yet-removed
Saul attempted to hold on to his throne while the anointed-but-not-yet-ascended
David attempted to get the throne by waging a sustained guerilla campaign. Saul was killed. David was crowned. He was the king. So, he settled down to enjoy being the king.
And then comes the episode with Bathsheba. Bathsheba fascinates us. There have been novels and paintings and
movies. We are fascinated and appalled
because we are fascinated by sex. Our
popular culture remembers this story as a seduction with Bathsheba as the
villain of the piece. It sees David as
in some sense the victim: the victim of Bathsheba’s wiles, the victim of the
unlucky chance that had his gaze alight on Bathsheba as he was pacing on the
rooftop of his palace, the victim of his own weakness, the victim of
temptation.
We see this is as an episode of mostly sexual sin, the sort of thing
that happens far too often, that we happen to know about because it involved a
king. In spite of an attempted cover-up,
God saw what had happened. God sent
Nathan the prophet to confront David. David,
repenting, said, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan reassures David of God’s restoration
to God’s favor: “The Lord has
removed your sin.”
We see this as an episode of sin and exposure, of repentance and
restoration. It is primarily an
individual’s story—an individual who just happens to be a king. Really, it’s the sort of thing that could
happen to anyone. “Lead us not into
temptation,” we pray. And we mean it.
Unfortunately for this way of reading the story, the prophet Nathan
sees matters differently. And so, we
must conclude, does God.
To see what Nathan sees, we need to back up, way back to 1 Samuel
8. It seems that the people of Israel
wanted a king like all the other nations had.
Samuel saw this request as a rejection of God’s rule over them: they
didn’t need a king; they had Yahweh. If
they wanted a king it was because they didn’t want Yahweh. Samuel warned them of what a king would be
like:
He will take your sons, and will use them for his chariots and his
cavalry and as runners for his chariot. He
will use them as his commanders of troops of one thousand and troops of fifty, or
to do his plowing and his harvesting, or to make his weapons or parts for his
chariots. He will take your daughters to
be perfumers, cooks, or bakers. He will
take your best fields, vineyard, and olive groves and give them to his
servants. He will give one-tenth of your
grain and your vineyards to his officials and servants. He will take your male and female servants, along
with the best of your cattle and donkeys, and make them do his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and
then you yourselves will become his slaves!
What that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you chose for
yourselves, but on that day [Yahweh] won’t answer you.[1]
There is a down side to having a king. With their power they get wealth. With their wealth they get power. But they are never satisfied. There is no end to what they want. Pretty soon, the life of Israel in the land
of promise will look a lot like the life of the Israelites under slavery in
Egypt. Only this time, Yahweh will not
answer their cries.
But Israel insisted, so Samuel gave them a king. First there was Saul and then there was
David. That is whole story by itself, one
that won’t be told this morning. Instead,
we’ll fast forward to 2 Samuel 11 where we read these really interesting
words: “In the spring, when kings go off
to war, David sent Joab…But David remained in Jerusalem.”[2] Kings go off, but David remained. Kings have duties, expectations that they
must meet, but David was having none of it.
Besides, he had his general Joab, who could engage in the mostly
pretty boring work of laying siege to the enemy city of Rabbah, while he,
David, would relax and enjoy life in Jerusalem.
Except, of course, that life in Jerusalem was pretty boring what with
the army gone and all. So that led to
David pacing back and forth on his rooftop.
“Bored, bored, bored. What to
do? What to do? Hey, now!
What’s this? C’mere, c’mere! Who’s that?
The wife of Uriah the Hittite? The
wife of a foreigner?”
Do you remember that the preoccupation of God in the Hebrew Bible is
with the widow, the orphan, and the foreign worker? Because they lacked extended family
connections, people in these categories were especially vulnerable in ancient
times. The rich and the powerful can
take advantage of them and they have no one to come to their aid. And Uriah is one of them. Add to that the fact that Uriah was a member
of David’s elite household troops, his body-guard, the so-called Thirty[3], and is
therefore someone David can influence directly, and this is a situation that
David can exploit. And exploit it he
does. A little harmless amusement for
the king who is burdened with the affairs of state and bored besides.
But then Bathsheba sent word to David: “I’m pregnant.” David wasted
no time. He sent to Joab at the front to
send him Uriah the Hittite. There would
be no questions asked since Joab was more loyal to David than David was and
Uriah was a member of the Thirty. Uriah
arrived and David asked him how things were going at the front. How is Joab?
How’s the battle going? And, why
don’t you go home and “wash your feet” (wink, wink)?
But Uriah didn’t go home. “Uriah,
my good man, why didn’t you go home?” Uriah’s
reply showed that he was a better soldier than David was a king, “The chest
[that is, the ark of the covenant] and Israel and Judah are all living in
tents….How could I go home and enjoy my wife?”
David had a problem. His
cover-up plan was going nowhere. “Okay,
I’ll tell you what, stay another day. I’ll
send you back tomorrow.” And then David got
Uriah drunk. But Uriah did not go
home. “Fine,” said David to himself.
“You asked for it.” And David wrote a
letter to Joab the gist of which was this: Put Uriah in the front of the battle
line and then, when the battle is raging, pull back and leave him alone with
the enemy.” And, perversely, he had
Uriah carry the letter—his death warrant—back to Joab. And Joab did exactly as his king had told
him.
And that brings us back to the present. David has gotten what he wanted. Well, most of what he wanted. I doubt very much whether he intended to have
another wife, especially one who came with no connections or political
usefulness at all. On the other hand, here
was the pregnant wife of a dead war hero.
He could pose as the protector widows and orphans as he looked after the
family of Uriah the foreign worker. He
was doing God’s work! So Bathsheba came
to live in the palace and when she gave birth, it was a son. All’s well that ends well.
However. Isn’t that a great
word sometimes? However, “what David has
done was evil in the Lord’s
eyes.” Enter Nathan, the prophet.
Now Nathan is in a bit of a pickle.
He’s a prophet and therefore has a duty to speak on God’s behalf, whether
this pleases David or not. On the other
hand, David pays his salary. So Nathan
didn’t come to the king and accuse directly: “This thing you’ve been up to with
Bathsheba is wrong and you are in trouble with God!”
Instead, Nathan told a story.
And notice what sort of story it is.
A rich man had a house guest and was therefore obligated to feed
him. But instead of feeding him from his
own flock he stole a ewe lamb from a man who was so poor that this lamb was the
family pet.
David was corrupt and ruthless, but he was also a child of the
Torah. And he knew an injustice when he
heard it. And this was an
injustice. And he said so: “He must
restore the ewe lamb seven times over because he did this and because he had no
compassion.”
“You are that man!” Nathan told him.
Now I notice two things here.
The first is that, as far as Nathan is concerned, the story of David and
Bathsheba is not about sex. It’s about
power. The prophet Micah describes an
ideal world as one in which every person “shall all sit under their own vines and
under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.”[4] That is, the ideal life is one in which each
of us has enough and we are content with it and are able to live with our
neighbors in such a way that we neither threaten them, nor they us.
In the Hebrew Bible there are two threats to this ideal. The first, as we have already heard, is the
king, who will want our fig tree and our vine, or at least a tenth of our figs
and a tenth of our grapes, as well as our children to fight his wars and do his
work. Samuel has warned us about
kings. The second threat comes from the
rich. They want to own everything they
see. In the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“[they] join house to house, [they] add field to field, until there is room for
no one but [them], and [they] are left to live alone in the midst of the land.”[5]
I’m taking a risk by making an observation. If you’ve been watching any television at all
you’ve been flooded with campaign advertisement. Mostly we’ve been “muting” them, but
sometimes they get through. We have two
parties contending for the grand prize. My
observation is that both parties want us to be afraid of something or
someone. One party wants us to be afraid
of big government. The other party wants
us to be afraid of big money. One party
wants us to believe that, if they lose, we’ll be defenseless against the
government. The other party wants us to
believe that, if they lose, we’ll be defenseless against the major
corporations.
But to the prophet Nathan, it doesn’t really matter. He can tell a story about a rich man and the
government correctly comes to perceive that it is about him. To Nathan, power is power. To Nathan the biggest threat to a life of
sitting under our own fig tree comes from power and it doesn’t really matter if
that power is primarily economic or primarily governmental.
Now that’s the first thing I notice.
The second is that, while the movie producers see this as a story about
David and Bathsheba, a story about sex. I’ve
already said that I think it’s a story that concerns the king and his power
over a foreign worker, but I think that in the end, it’s not so much about
David as it is about Nathan the prophet.
At least, I think we can and should read it that way.
Nathan is in the uncomfortable position of having to tell truth to
power and that, I think, is where we find ourselves today as the people of
God. Our nation’s political class is
obsessed with an election and they want to believe that this is a choice between
two political parties, and our choice is either a Democrat or a Republican. But, God is not a Democrat. Nor is God a Republican. Neither party nor any faction thereof speaks
for God.
But someone needs to speak for God and for God’s priorities. Someone has to be the prophetic voice as our
nation and our world wrestle with questions like, when is it acceptable for a nation
to use military violence against the people of another? And what is the meaning
of wealth, what is it for, and who should control it? And who speaks on behalf
of today’s version of the widow, the orphan, and the foreign worker?
I don’t know who is going to win in November, but I have a pretty
good idea it won’t be God. And I also
have a pretty good idea that whether it’s the party of governmental power or
the party of financial power, it will be a mixed bag for those who hope to sit
without fear under their own fig tree.
One party or another may try to invoke care for the widow,
the orphan and the foreign worker, but I am convinced that it will fall to
Nathan to speak the truth. If the people
of God don’t take up Nathan’s task, I am certain it will not get done.
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