August 5, 2012
Pentecost 10
2nd Samuel 11:26
- 12:13a
Ephesians 4:1-16
(prayer)
If you were in church here
last week, you would have been blessed to hear Esther preach on King David’s
misuse of power surrounding his (Clinton accent) sexual relations with ‘that’ woman: Bathsheba.
In case you missed it,
here’s the Reader’s Digest version:
For
some reason, King David was home and not out on the battlefield with his army.
As
he looked down from his palace, he caught an arousing naked view of Bathsheba,
bathing. David learned that she was the wife of Uriah, one of David’s loyal
soldiers. That didn’t stop the king: he
sent for her and ‘lay with her’. If
coveting his neighbour’s wife and committing adultery wasn’t bad enough,
David’s actions led to Bathsheba becoming pregnant.
No
big deal, David thought, he’ll just reward Uriah with a little furlough. Uriah would come home, he’d sleep with his wife
and no one would suspect that anyone other than that Uriah was the father.
What
David didn’t count on was Uriah’s unfailing loyalty. When he came back to the city, he refused to
‘go home’ while his comrades in arms were still camping in a field.
David’s
plan B: send a note to his general to place Uriah on the frontline when he gets
back to the encampment. It worked,
Bathsheba became a war widow. We can add
conspiracy to commit murder to
David’s list of sinful crimes.
//
Today’s reading from second
Samuel picks up the story at that point.
With Uriah dead, David took Bathsheba as his wife. She gave birth to his son.
// // //
Nathan was a prophet of
God, who served the court of King David.
He had observed David’s sexual and murderous behaviour and expressed
what he described as God’s displeasure with the king’s action.
Nathan does this is a smart
way. He shows David the meat of the
situation by telling the story of two men: a rich man who had many flocks and
herds and a poor man who had but one ewe lamb which was more of a pet than
livestock.
When the rich man had a
visitor over for supper, he was so self-absorbed and greedy that he did not
want to use one of his many sheep for the meat at the meal, so he just took the
poor man’s pet lamb.
A credit to Nathan’s
storytelling ability, David really got into it: ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this
deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing,
and because he had no pity.’
Nathan wasted no time in
getting to the point: ‘You [David] are the man!’
The whole situation moved
David to seek to live more faithfully.
Psalm 51 is David’s prayer
of confession:
A Psalm of David, when the prophet
Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
1Have mercy on me,
O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
5Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
2Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
5Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6You desire truth
in the inward being; therefore
teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
10Create in me a
clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
11Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
11Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
As he confessed, David saw
that his actions affected more than just himself. In his state of greedy entitlement, he had
neglected to view God as his sovereign and to enjoy the blessings of humility. Nathan, the prophet, was pleased in the
contrition he saw within the king and proclaimed him forgiven.
//
As an aside: sadly, history
would interpret the untimely death of David and Bathsheba’s infant son (after a
week long illness) as some form of divine punishment.
However, not long after
Bathsheba and David had another son, who they named Solomon (who, as David’s
eventual successor, would play a big role in the history of Israel).
// // //
David acted as if he was
entitled to do whatever he wanted, to take and use whatever he saw fit. Power can have that effect on people.
Wise advice and personal
tragedy allowed him to be more humble and see a wider picture of God’s love and
justice.
In the early Christian
Church, the Apostle Paul wrote to believers who were experiencing their own
battles with feelings of entitlement.
Some were looking inwardly at their own skills and gifts for ministry
and claiming some level of comparative status:
my gift is bigger and better than
your gift! Paul’s message: ‘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.’
Humility, gentleness,
patience, love, unity, peace. These are
not characteristics of ‘entitlement’. We
have, each, been gifted by God, Paul says, in ways that serves the whole body
of Christ – it is not any one individual gift that is needed, but the balance
combination/ He compared the church to a
maturing body – as it grows, it needs to value every ligament, every joint,
every connection, so that the Body of Christ (the church) is joined and knitted
together by building itself up in love.
//
The big picture of
forgiveness is that it is not something that we can provide for ourselves. Forgiveness is a gift that someone else gives
us.
Or from the other side of
the coin, when we forgive, it is a gift that we have chosen to bestow on
someone.
//
Now the biblical history of
forgiveness is complicated. For the
ancient Hebrew people, there were Levitical practices of sacrifice and
atonement for ‘sins’ for both individuals and for the assembly of the people as
a whole. These almost exclusively
related to actions or in actions that got in the way of the people’s ability to
live faithfully within God’s Torah (law).
Often God is described as merciful
to a fault: in the book of Nehemiah, while recounting the time of Moses and the
Exodus, it says you are a God ready to
forgive, gracious
and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
One of the central
characteristics of God, is the ability to forgive, even after the most
horrendous of sins or crimes. We might
even, fairly, question whether God is being just in such cases, whether a more
punitive response might be called for.
Case in point: Jonah. He hated
the Assyrians for the way their empire encroached on Israel. He detested everything about them. And so, when God told him to offer the people
of Nineveh (the Assyrian capital) forgives, Jonah just knew that God would
forgive them and he didn’t think that was the right thing to do, so he ran away
from his task and indeed, he tried to run away from God. In the end, when the Ninevites repented and
God did forgive, Jonah was miserable and went and sulked under caster bean
plant.
It seems, quite often, that
God is able to forgive, in situations that make us uncomfortable.
So opportunities for
forgiveness between people is different than forgiveness coming from God.
//
When it comes to conflicts
between people, the Bible also offers some wisdom:
Proverbs
17:9 says One who forgives an
affront fosters friendship, but one who dwells on disputes will alienate a
friend.
Ecclesiates
28 seems to imply that God’s forgiveness is tied to our ability to forgive: Forgive your neighbour the wrong [your neighbour] has done, and
then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.
That
is somewhat similar to one of the most well known forgiveness passages in the
Bible...forgive
us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
The
disciple Peter famously asked Jesus, ‘Lord, if
another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Peter thought he was being generous offering
so many second chances, but Jesus responded by saying the number is closer to
500 times (seven times seventy) – Jesus
clearly was being hyperbolic: there is no realistic limit to the times you can
(or should) forgive.
Having said all that, there
are at least as many examples of passages where people encouraged God not to
forgive or where people are told to give up on people who aren’t interested in
making peace.
//
That last point seems to be
the key when it comes to inter-personal forgiveness. Forgiveness is sown in changes of heart.
//
In this church, as in many others, each Sunday, we take time to share
the “Peace of Christ”. Now the modern
practical purpose of that time is to welcome each other and saw hello, but the
meaning behind the ritual is that we are setting aside anything that might be
dividing us. We are proclaiming (with
those handshakes and hugs and waves and pleasant eye contact), that we are of
one body here – like Paul wrote so wonderfully, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
individually we are members one of another.
//
Forgiveness among people is
often much easier when there is a sense of contrition and repentance and a
desire to live more peaceably.
//
And yet, there are some who
are able to forgive, in spite of another’s lack of repentance. That must be because, there is a blessing and
value in simply offering the forgiveness, regardless of whether it is sought or
even graciously received.
I have witnessed the sense
of deep and lasting peace that comes to people willing to let go of their
anger, when it would be perfectly understandable for them to resentful forever.
//
Jesus caught a lot of
criticism for expressing his beliefs about God’s forgiveness. When Jesus would declare someone’s ‘sins
forgiven’, his opponents would say he had no jurisdiction to say such things:
forgiveness belongs to God alone. Now we
can look at this passage in a couple of ways: (1) Jesus was the incarnation of
God on earth, so his proclamations of forgiveness were really God’s anyway; but
also (2), the fact is that the Biblical history was that the Torah was set up
to allow the priests and the prophets to announce forgiveness, when the
appropriate atonement had been completed (in the same way that Nathan declared
David forgiven). Jesus’ announcements
were prophetic in nature.
I think it was the
statement Jesus was making about God through his words and actions that really
upset the authorities.
//
A pattern of Jesus’ acts of
forgiveness was also the invitation to ‘sin no more’. Jesus sees forgiveness as more than a moment
in time, but part of a process of transformation, where we are part of (as the
Apostle Paul wrote) a new
creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2nd
Corinthians 5:17).
It was one of the earliest
teachings of the Christian movement...Jesus lived and taught and showed a
forgiveness that was broader than a lot of people thought or even wanted.
There are those in the
world (in Jesus’ time and in ours), who benefit from an atmosphere where fear
and anger are more dominant than peace and forgiveness.
Forgiveness is an
incredibly powerful thing. It can close gaps between people; it can make
violence harder to justify; it can keep people afraid and therefore easier to
manipulate by those act as if they are entitled to the power that fear and
anger breeds.
//
Forgiveness is powerful
because, humility is honorable and noble.
When we can humbly see our own shortcomings and when we can see the
potential for reconciliation that must be given a fresh start to others, we are
standing up to fear and disarming its effects.
This is why Jesus’
declarations of forgiveness were so threatening to those in power in his day;
it is why the early church was puzzlement to those outside, when a theology of
universal atonement took root. We all
are forgiven and right with God because of Jesus.
To not live in the shadow
of condemnation is and should be very freeing for us. How can we not offer that to others in our
midst?
//
The big picture of forgiveness
is that forgiveness is healthy for us.
Forgiveness is part of a
healing transformation. When we set
aside entitlement for humility, we can begin to experience this truth.
Let us pray:
How
difficult it has been, O Creator, for us to be humble and caring. We so easily
forget your teachings of the just and right relationships that we are to have
with each other, as brothers and sisters, in this land and around the world.
May
we find peace so that we might share peace that is genuine and real, and help
others to know peace-within. Spirit of life, help us to walk the road of
integrity back to the circle of life. Let your breath,
O God, fill us with life
anew, that we might love as you love and do what you would do. Let us know the
peace that comes from good relations with each other and with you. Amen.
#79MV “Spirit, Open My Heart”
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