Choices - sermon 7/26/2015 David and Bathsheba

“Choices”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 12, July 26, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and John 6:1-21


So we go from a soap opera story, David and Bathsheba and Uriah…. a story very much like a soap opera to the story of Jesus, that is, like, totally the opposite. Two very different kind of story.

David is selfish, thinking only of himself, and like pulling on a loose thread on a sweater, David begins a process of unravelling that leaves a wake of personal destruction behind him. People’s lives twisted and deformed, so much spent yarn left in a useless pile on the floor.

Everything was fine, David! And here I’m talking about King David, though I have said that line to myself on occasion… everything was fine, David, but you had to go and think only of yourself and your wants, and as the king, you have the authority to really overstretch your boundaries before suffering any consequences. Your power, King David, protects you from the harm that you cause.

What a jerk. And that isn’t even a strong enough word. He caused the death of someone, which goes way beyond being a jerk. It’s not like he stole a Twinkie. This is a deplorable act.

And yet David is also considered the greatest of all the Israelite kings. Regarded as such through history, and within the scriptural texts. More pages of the Old Testament are devoted to telling his story than anyone else’s, other than perhaps Moses. David is considered so great of a king, that all the later prophecies and hopes of a coming messiah demanded that the messiah be born from David’s lineage. The messiah must be a descendant of David.

But his life was so messed up. He made a lot of bad decisions in his life. He also made some good ones, which is why he’s celebrated as a good king. But he just couldn’t get it together. The Bible is not shy about pointing out David’s many failures, either. A very unusual kind of history that is written in the Bible. Often we like to gloss over the foibles, but in the Bible it is the mistakes and foibles that get talked about. The Bible is not shy about pointing out what he did wrong. As a king, for the most part, he did ok. But as a person, he didn’t do so well.

And maybe that’s why I like being named David, because I resonate with this guy. I don’t have it together, not by a long shot. I screw things up. I mess things up. I’m not perfect, not by any means. Now, I will say, in case you are wondering,. I’ve never used my power to commit adultery with a woman and get her pregnant and then have her husband killed in battle… that I’ve never done. But, that’s just a matter of semantics. Sin is sin, and there are worse ways to hurt people than to kill them. Worse ways to hurt people than to have them killed. I’ve never ordered the death of anyone, and as far as I know I was not the cause even accidentally of anyone’s death, but I’ve certainly hurt people in my lifetime. I try not to, but it happens. I fail people. I’ve hurt people. Failed to show up, failed to treat them with dignity, been dismissive, failed to see them as a fellow human being, failed their expectations, broken promises. I’ll leave you a moment to think of your own moments that you made decisions you are not proud of.

I never chosen to hurt anyone, except in a few instances when someone hurt me first and I thought I would hurt them back. Or when in anger I’ve chosen to lash out at people... but even if we don’t choose to hurt, the hurt can still come because of choices we make, even when we don’t mean to.

David is selfish. That seems to be a failure of many of us. I think a lot of Jesus’ ministry was teaching us how to be generous, and how to get out of the mode of wanting to be selfish thinking only of ourselves, our family, or our tribe, but to think about the entire community. Selfishness is a failure of many. I think it’s a failure of all of us. David’s selfishness is boosted by the power of being king. His selfishness can lead to worse effects. But, we ALL have some power! But as king, he has a bit more.

Notice that Jesus, in the Gospel text, they wanted to make him king but he refused it. Kings abuse their power.

In fact, you may remember if you have read the books of Samuel, that the Jewish people, after the Exodus, spent a few hundred years without a king. They had men and women called “Judges”, which weren’t judges in the legal sense, but wise people and authorities who would lead and settle disputes and help the people along, maybe lead them in battle. But they weren’t a nation, they didn’t have a king. After about 200 years, though, the people started demanding that they have a king so that they could be like the other nations around them. The prophet Samuel, after whom the book are written, warns them repeatedly with a long litany of why having a king is a poor idea. God is your king, Samuel said. You already have a king, he said, and it’s God. Lot of truth in that one. The early Christians picked up on that, and they refused to recognize Caesar, the Roman Emperor, as Lord. Only God is Lord, they said. Samuel warned them that a king will take your land, take the produce of your land, take your money, send your children into war, steal your women, let you live in poverty so that he can build chariots and fancy homes… good words for today, yes?

Basically, Samuel is warning them and warning us, that people tend to be selfish and make choices based on what is best for them, not what is best for the community. And the more power we have, the more selfish we can become, or if not more selfish, the damage we can do more damage with our selfish inclinations.

That’s why it is a good thing to keep people in power in check. But it isn’t just about people in power, because we all have power. We are all people with some power. The power to hurt or the power to heal. That’s the choice that we’re often faced with. Even if it is just as subtle as us being the customer against the store clerk or the waiter, or our encounters with strangers, our relationship with those we work with. We all have some level of power.

We are not kings, but our choices can still do damage or can be used to heal.

Jesus chose that path of healing, to do the things that offer healing.

David’s story reads like a soap opera, because it’s full of bad decisions. That’s the genius of the soap opera genre. It’s a bunch of people who are very selfish and they just make bad decisions. And that makes for good TV or movies or story telling. Much of the great literature of the ages is people making bad decisions that lead to conflict that needs to be overcome. If you want drama in your life, then be selfish and worry about meeting only your own wants.

But if you want a healthy life free of such anxiety, be outward looking. Jesus’ story reads as the opposite of a soap opera because he looks outward. He’d worried about the needs of others first. Thinking beyond himself.

How do we make decisions? How do we make choices in life?

Next Sunday, we continue to look at David’s story and will dramatically explore this question about how we make decisions.

But we can do some exploring now, as well.

David looked out from the rooftop of his palace, he is on his high place looking down at all around him and thinking, “How can I use these things and these people? What benefit can I derive from them, and what is the minimum that they need? How can they serve me?”

Jesus is in the midst of the people, he also is on a high place. He’s on a mountain. He’s looking around at them, and thinking, “What do they need? How can I help? How can I serve them?”

David looks out, surveys his kingdom, says “I want that woman, bring her to me.” Even after being told she’s married. She gets pregnant, he tries to cover it up by sending for her husband to come home. “Go to your home and wash your feet”, David says, using one of many biblical euphemisms that have nothing to do with feet or washing. But Uriah doesn’t. Uriah chooses to be loyal to the people he is serving with. “Shall I go to my home and sleep in a bed while my men are still out on the battlefield? No. I won’t do that.” Good for Uriah, very inconvenient for David. Uriah’s presence is now too inconvenient, and the truth simply won’t do. David is in too deep. At any point he could have stopped it by telling the truth and repenting, but instead he keeps trying to cover up his failure with more failure, and it just doesn’t work. So David has him killed. Get rid of the inconvenient person.

Instead of David understanding that he, David, is making his own life inconvenient and a mess, easier to just blame it on Uriah and have him eliminated.

Inconvenient people. There are a lot of them, it seems. Personally, I don’t believe that anyone is an inconvenient person. We are all God’
s sons and daughters. But a lot of people get treated as convenient. The homeless, whose presence shows us our own failures and our poor choices as a society. The sick and suffering. Immigrants. Our LGBT brothers and sisters. The poor. The underpaid workers who are asking for a living wage. People whose religion we don’t like or trust, or who speak other languages, or have different customs. The mentally ill. The obese. The veterans who return home with injuries of body, or especially with spiritual and psychic injuries.

The children and young adults who simply want an education, but can’t afford it or graduate with incredible debt loads at very high interest rates.

And in our own personal lives, there are inconvenient people. The rude guy at the restaurant or the store or on the road. The waiter who needs tips to survive. The prisoners asking for justice and dignity. The food stamp receivers. The elderly who are making monthly decisions between food or medicine. The people who aren’t dressed “right”, or don’t look the way you think they should look, or act the way you think they should act. All these inconvenient people who … I don’t know, who are the inconvenient people in your life?

Now Jesus, like David, is on a high place where he can look down and see the people. He is looking downwards, but he isn’t looking down on them. He sees a people with a need. They’re getting hungry. The disciples are like, “Let them fend for themselves. It’s not our problem.” But Jesus sees the world, Jesus sees people, differently. They are our problem. They need to be fed.

A young boy is there and he sees the world similarly as well. He doesn’t actually speak in the text, but I imagine he says something like, “I have food.” And by having food, he has some power. “It’s not much. But I choose to use my power on the behalf of these people, so please, have my food to share with them.” He could have said and would have been justified to say, “Hey, I worked for this food! I have a right to it.” He could have said, “Why should I care if they’re hungry? They should have thought to bring a lunch of that before they came. It’s their fault.” He could have said, “Why should I be inconvenienced because they didn’t plan ahead?”

But he doesn’t. He goes for generosity. And through his generosity, a miracle is worked.

If you want drama, be selfish. If you want a life of goodness for yourself and the people around you and your community, be generous.

This is the vocation of the church, and of us who follow Jesus.

Generosity, love, compassion.

There is a phrase that’s been around for a long time that offers help when faced with a decision, to ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” I think that’s a perfectly fine question. What would be do? Follow in his example. Although I have an issue with that because Jesus does have a lot more power than we do. He can do things that we can’t do. So maybe the answer to “What would Jesus do?” would be “Jesus would walk on water.” Well, I can’t walk on water. But I can still try to follow Jesus.

So maybe a better question is to ask not “What would Jesus do?” because that’s a really high bar, but ask, “What is the loving thing to do?”

Or maybe, if you want to put this question in terms of an example of a person, ask “How can I be like the boy who had the loaves and the fish?”

I leave you with that. Amen.

[the next Sunday was the rest of the David and Bathsheba story, and a drama set in modern times using some of the subject matter of this story - listen here: