First Christian Church The Way of Kings 2 Samuel 11:1-15 We're going to need to rewind back to the earlier chapters of 1 Samuel to get a feel for what's happening in out text today. David is behaving very badly, and Samuel had warned the people about the way of kings:...all the elders of Israel got together and confronted Samuel at Ramah. They presented their case: Look, you're an old man, and your sons aren't following in your footsteps. Here's what we want you to do: Appoint a king to rule us, just like everybody else. When Samuel heard their demand - Give us a king to rule us! - he was crushed. How awful! Samuel prayed to God. God answered Samuel, Go ahead and do what their asking. They are not rejecting you. They've rejected me as their King. From the day I brought them out of Egypt to this very day they've been behaving like this, leaving me for other gods. And now they're doing it to you. So let them have their own way. But warn them of what they're in for. Tell them the way kings operate, just what they're likely to get from a king. So Samuel told them, delivered God's warning to the people who were asking to give them a king. He said, This is the way the kind of king you're talking about operates. He'll take your sons and make soldiers of them chariotry, cavalry, infantry, regimented in battalions and squadrons. He'll put some to forced labor on his farms, plowing and harvesting, and others to make either weapons of war or chariots in which he can ride in luxury. He'll put your daughters to work as beauticians and waitresses and cooks. He'll conscript your best fields, vineyards and orchards and hand them over to his special friends. He'll tax your harvest and vintage to support his extensive bureaucracy. Your prize workers and best animals he'll take for his own use. He'll lay a tax on your flocks and you'll end up no better than slaves. The day will come when you'll cry in desperation because of this king you so much want for yourselves. But don't expect God to answer. But the people wouldn't listen to Samuel. No! they said. We will have a king to rule us! Then we'll be just like all the other nations. Our king will rule us and lead us and fight our battles. Samuel took in what they said and rehearsed it with God. God told Samuel, Do what they say. Make them a king. (1 Samuel 8:4b-22a; The Message) To begin with the text states that it was a time of the year kings go forth to battle, but David has sent Joab and the army of Israel into battle against the Ammonites, and he's holing up in Jerusalem. He's certainly not meeting the people's expectations to fight their battles for them. Samuel warned them that the king will make their daughters simple laborers, but David does far worse than that with Bathsheba. It begins with David taking a nap, while the army is out fighting. He wakes up to find a beautiful woman bathing on a rooftop. David sends soldiers to take her, which is our first indication that what David is about to do is against Bathsheba's will. He goes to bed with her, and she becomes pregnant. Sometimes the Church has been purposely ambiguous about calling David's actions rape, and some go as far as to charge Bathsheba with adultery. It brings to mind the difficulty many women and girls find themselves in when trying to prove to the police, and the general public, that they were raped. Women and girls are often disbelieved. But what David does here is without question an act of violence perpetrated against Bathsheba. 1
The evidence includes David telling the soldiers to take her, and neither they or her would have the option to refuse. And if we look ahead to the next chapter its only David who will be held accountable by God and the prophet Nathan. Bathsheba will not be accused of or punished for adultery in the scriptures. David rapes Bathsheba, and as horrible as that was, and as damaging as it would have been for his victim, Bathsheba is still only a character in the story. She is used to show how low David can go, and how sorry he can feel, and to the extent God loves and forgives him. The text doesn't have anything to say about Bathsheba's feelings or that a crime was committed against her, but we know one was and that she must have been devastated by what happened, and later by the loss of her husband. Because this is where David goes next. After learning of Bathsheba's pregnancy he needs to get her husband to come home and lie with her or he's going to be held responsible. So he has Uriah brought home from the front, and tells him to go home and enjoy his wife. But Uriah won't do it because all his comrades in arms are out fighting, so how can he eat, and drink, and be merry? So David gets him drunk in an attempt to get him to go home, but he won't go. At this point David gives up, and decides to eliminate Uriah as a potential problem all together. He tells his general to put him on the front line, and then leave him alone to be killed. Maybe we're not too surprised by the violent actions or the clever manipulations of the king, since Samuel had warned the people about the ways of a king. But the sheer lack of any type of moral struggle on David's part is astounding! Later on in the story David is both remorseful and repentant, but you would think what he did might have made him more hesitant at times? How do you think someone like David, a person of intelligence and power, can stoop so low as to commit the kinds of acts demonstrated here? Maybe Rob Bell can give us some inroads to that question in his book Love Wins. Here he interprets the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in this way: There was a rich man who ignored a poor beggar named Lazarus who was outside his gate. They both die, and the rich man goes to Hades, while Lazarus is carried by angels to Abraham's side, a Jewish way of talking about what we would call heaven. The rich man then asks Abraham to have Lazarus get him some water, because he is in agony in this fire. People in hell can communicate with people in bliss? The rich man is in the fire, and he can talk? He's surviving? Abraham tells him it's not possible for Lazarus to bring him water. The rich man then asks that Lazarus be sent to warn his family of what's in store for them. Abraham tells him that's not necessary, because they already have that message in the scriptures. The man continues to plead with Abraham, insisting that if they could just hear from someone who came back from the dead, they would change their ways, to which Abraham replies, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even it someone rises from the dead. Notice that the story ends with a reference to resurrection, something that was going to happen very soon with Jesus himself. This is crucial for understanding the story, because the story is about Jesus's listeners in that moment. The story, for them, moves from then to now. Whatever the meaning was for Jesus's first listeners, it was directly related to what he was doing right there in their midst. 2
Second, note what it is the man wants in hell: he wants Lazarus to get him water. When you get someone water, you're serving them. The rich man wants Lazarus to serve him. In their previous life, the rich man saw himself as better than Lazarus, and now, in hell, the rich man still sees himself as better than Lazarus. It's no wonder Abraham says there's a chasm that can't be crossed. The chasm is the rich mans heart! It hasn't changed, even in death and torment and agony. He's still clinging to the old hierarchy. He still thinks he's better..jesus teaches again and again that the gospel is about a death that leads to life. It's a pattern, a truth, a reality that comes from losing your life and then finding it. This rich man Jesus tells us about hasn't yet figured that out. He's still clinging to his ego, his status, his pride he's unable to let go of the world he's constructed, which puts him on the top and Lazarus on the bottom, the world in which Lazarus is serving him. He's dead, but he hasn't died. He's in Hades, but he still hasn't died the kind of death that actually brings life. He's alive in death, but in profound torment, because he's living with the realities of not properly dying the kind of death that actually leads a person into the only kind of life worth living. (p.74-77) Why do you imagine the rich man has such a hard time letting go of the old hierarchy? Where he sees himself as better than Lazarus, and in a position to actually be served by Lazarus, even though he's in hell? The answer to this question ties into our story about David and the hierarchy he lives within, and maintains through his kingship. David has everything: wealth and women, power and prestige. On top of all that he lives within a culture, and is surrounded by people affirming, that he has everything anyone could ever desire. When you feel you have everything, and that your living at the top of the heap, and the culture around you confirms your feelings it must be hard to imagine living in any other way. In fact, when you think you're living at the top of the heap, conversely everyone else will be living below you. You will actually feel as if everyone else is not only in a position to serve you, but you may also feel you can do whatever you want with them to get your own needs, wants and desires met. This is precisely what we see David doing with Bathsheba, and Uriah, and Joab. He appears to be entertaining no ethical or moral considerations whatsoever! How frightening is that! To be so immersed in your own hubris that you're not even aware your doing anything wrong. Of course, in the next chapter God changes all that after David faces God head-on via the prophet Nathan. But for now David is living in a hell of his own making. He is headed for disaster, because the child born to Bathsheba will be taken from him in death, and this will crush David with grief. And as Nathan tells David, the sword shall never depart from your house. (2 Samuel 12:10a) This is just the beginning of the tragedies that David will endure. Unlike the rich man in Jesus' parable, David does repent of his violence inflicted upon Bathsheba, but he stops short of the transformation he needs in order to find the only kind of life that's worth living. He needs to go a step further and allow God to transform his heart, but that doesn't happen. As Rob Bell said, Jesus teaches again and again that the gospel is about a death that leads to life. It's a pattern, a truth, a reality that comes from losing your life and then finding it. But the rich man in the parable and David in our story today never figure this out. One of the reasons its so difficult for them to embrace God's amazing grace is that they have so much to give up, or at least they think that's the case, and those around them agree. 3
This is why its the people who have the least among us who are the most likely to get it as Richard Rohr would say. Our closing hymn this morning is Amazing Grace which includes the line I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see. The rich man and David are blinded by their own self-importance, and material abundance. They can't see how one could be rich in grace and God's abundance, that simply makes no sense to them. But for someone with little or nothing in terms of material abundance, and lacking an overblown ego, the gospel makes perfect sense. Jesus is speaking to these folks at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in the third beatitude, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3) It is the least of these among us who have the best chance to fall into the kingdom, because they have the least to lose. In other words, people who's False-Self has failed to pay-off in this world are more willing to try something different. Most people just keep banging their heads against the wall with their never-ending attempts to make the False-Self work for them. Its a lost cause, but it seems easier and safer then dying to it, as Jesus suggests, and being born again into a whole new kind of being. Anyway you look at it dying is scary, and its perfectly understandable why people avoid it. But once you see that trying to make the False-Self work is like being dead while your alive, it makes it easier to step-out in faith with Christ and fall into the kingdom. People do it and are doing it everyday. Here's a poem written by someone who has taken Jesus at face value, and has fallen into the kingdom of God. Her name is Yani Davis and this is how she describes her new adventure: Inspired by the self I forgot about, the one that died to ego and rose again in wholeness I am the epitome of wellness springing in a soul full of joy, Once abandoned, once forgotten, Inspiration brought me back to a place of Oneness and clarity...my only friends in a world of Pain, pointlessness and poverty. Where I come from, poor is a disease and rich means quite alright. Where I am, peace is power and materials mean nothing. Meet me here and see how internal wealth overflows from the hearts and mouth of those who get it. Those who dare to never let it go. This place isn't just safe. It's all I've lived for and imagined. Make me over and make me new. Show me the depths of this self. The depths of this 4-letter-L-word. That is and was, the essence of all I am. We are the ones that waited for ourselves! No one else was going to think about us or save us. Or look at us and dare to understand. You are here. You look good. Now keep going... Her world was bleak and barren or as she put it, Once abandoned, once forgotten...in a world of Pain, pointlessness and poverty. It is the least of these among us who have the best shot at the kingdom, because if you lived in pain, pointlessness and poverty, and were given a chance to give it up would you take the chance? Yani did! Are you ready to take the chance? People are doing it everyday. Rev. Mitch Becker July 29, 2018 4
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