October 19 -- David & Bathsheba

Let us pray, Create in each of us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us.  Cast us not away from thy presence and take not your Holy Spirit from us.  Sustain in us the joy of your salvation.  AMEN.

David & Bathsheba:  a lot has happened since Joshua stood at the verge of the Promised Land last week, and week kicked off our capital campaign with Philip Reitz.  “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  We stopped reading at that quote and reflected on it.  But, do you know what happened next?  All the people respond to Joshua, “Yes, yes!  We will serve the Lord!”  And Joshua tells them back, as a sort of foreshadowing of the next few books of the Bible, “Umm, you can’t serve the Lord, you won’t serve the Lord.”

Old Testament summed up:  God blesses, people mess up, God gets angry, people repent...and on and on.      

Israel evolves into kingship.  That wasn’t the original plan.  Originally the idea was that there would be judges of different provinces.  Leadership was to be shared.  The book of Judges tells the story of those judges, those characters -- Samuel, Deborah (a woman), Gideon.  Heroes to us, perhaps as children; but with adult perspectives, they too are humans -- fallible and broken.  And so a new plan to anoint a king.  First king of Israel was Saul.  That goes horribly wrong.  And then a shepherd king: David.  And the book of first Samuel tells of his rise from very humble beginnings.  Samuel anoints him as a boy.  Slays Goliath... Outdoes Saul time and again.  He’s purer, he’s smarter, he’s more faithful, he’s even handsome.  He’s meant to be king.  God blesses.

And then if you’re wondering what this story about the new prophet Nathan going to David is all about.  Here’s the backstory:  I share this with our confirmation kids...

[story of David, Bathsheba, Uriah]

We pick up today the passages and a related psalm that follow this dramatic, seamy account.  And it’s what-happens-after that we really gather around today.  God sends Nathan to David.  One definition of a prophet is “the one who holds up a mirror”.  All Nathan does is tell David a story.  He gets David to announce judgement and then simply holds up that mirror.  

Who are the prophets in your own life?  We give thanks for the prophets today.  Those who call us on our stuff.  Those who hold up the mirror -- You know when we’re complaining about someone or something, and then you realize that the thing you’re complaining about is often something you yourself do...something that you don’t like about yourself.  Often it takes a close friend, a spouse perhaps, to turn that light on and help you see it...but that’s prophets work.  Give thanks today for the prophets in your life.   

But it’s more than that.  It’s more than just seeing your faults, whether someone helps you see them, or you know them already.  I imagine we can do that for ourselves pretty well.

What’s truly amazing...is that normally if someone who doesn’t have any power approaches someone who does, and points out a significant moral flaw, they’d be dismissed, right?

In that period, that’s putting it gently.  They’d be killed.

But David repents.  

David falls on his knees before this weak, old, long-bearded, scraggly-toothed madman prophet Nathan.  And he says:  “I have sinned.”  

We should have read that part too.  Because “have mercy on me O God," doesn’t mean much without first admitting, “I have sinned.”  

I think we can all put ourselves into this story, even into the great King David’s shoes...because we’ve all sinned.  The challenge is to come to terms with it.  To see our own reflections in the prophet’s mirror.  I almost played Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” for you this morning.  “I’m starting with the man in the mirror.  I’m asking him to change his ways.  And no message could have been any clearer.  If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make that change.”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God sends us prophets to expose those things about ourselves that that we do a pretty great job of covering up -- I’m not talking about blemishes and imperfections on our bodies.  I mean those blemishes and imperfections on our souls, those corrupt things about ourselves, those secrets that we even lie to ourselves about.  Thank God for the prophets.  They are a gift.  Now it’s our challenge -- like David’s, I’m sure -- not to kill them.  Not to dismiss them, not to laugh them off as some out-of-touch scraggly tooth.  David is punished for his sin, and he accepts it, he grieves, he begs for mercy and finally he receives and accepts that mercy.  

David’s sin is not commendable.  Neither is ours.  But the aftermath of David’s sin is what we’re lift up in church -- his acceptance of Nathan’s prophetic visit, his admission of wrong-doing, and finally his openness to God’s mercy.  At any one of those three points we can get off track.  We could reject the prophet’s visit, we could refuse to repent, and finally and maybe most difficult for us long time church people, we can reject God’s forgiveness, and go on living in guilt and fear, blocking our ears to hearing the prophet’s good word -- the prophet has a good word for us too:  “The Lord has put away your sin.  You shall not die.”  Happened to Adam and Eve in the garden, happened to Sarah the unbeliever, to the Jacob the devious, happened to David.

Today we ask God to create in us clean hearts.  To renew a right spirit within us.  And God answers our plea.  God, through Jesus Christ forgives our sin.  We will not die, but live eternal, and the response to that undeserved gift of forgiveness starts now.  We can lift up our heads and smile, even if we’ve done terrible things in our pasts.  God is good.  And God is faithful, and God does not abandon us, even when we abandon God.  

You are blessed too.  God doesn’t ignore our sin and our brokenness, the error of our ways, just like a good parent doesn’t ignore their children’s misbehaviors.  It’s because God loves us that God sends us Nathans to hold up the mirror.  Grace falls even fresher when that happens.  

That grace is for you.  Yours to receive, yours to revel in, yours to celebrate, yours to share with he world.  AMEN.