The Crossroads
A sermon by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Readings for this service: 2 Samuel 11-12
The story of David and Bathsheba comes at a crossroads moment in the Old Testament. Before this story come the calling of Abraham, the descent of Israel into Egypt under Joseph and its dramatic escape under Moses, the 40 years in the wilderness, the entry into the Promised Land under Joshua, the era of the judges, the anointing of King Saul and the zenith of Israel’s favour under David. After this story come the internal warfare among David’s descendants, the split between the northern and southern kingdom, the destruction of the northern kingdom, the wayward ways of the southern kings, the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon, the return from exile and the tentative reframing of Israel’s hopes under endless occupation. In simple terms, everything went right before David and Bathsheba; everything went wrong afterwards. Or to put it another way, Adam and Eve give us a story of the Fall long ago in the mists of time; David and Bathsheba give us a Fall right in the midst of Israel’s history. I want to look at this painful story from three points of view to listen to what it’s telling us about who God is and who we are.
From David’s perspective it’s a story about power. The story shows us what power can do and what power can’t do. David is king. Kings go off to battle in the springtime of the year, but David has power, so if he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t go. David espies a beautiful woman. David has power, so he has her sent to his private rooms. Uriah won’t fit in with David’s solution to his predicament. But David has power, so he contrives to ensure Uriah dies in battle. That’s what power can do. But notice what power can’t do. Power can’t give David beauty, passion and love, like items bought with a wad of cash. Power can’t stop Bathsheba becoming pregnant. Power can’t divert Uriah’s loyalty from its true focus. Power can seduce those who have it and mesmerise those who don’t; but there’s more to power than force and authority.
This is also a story about desire. Just as when Adam and Eve forget everything in the garden that’s theirs to enjoy, and fixate on the one thing they can’t have, so David, who practically owns the world, sets aside everything of value for the one thing he doesn’t have. St Augustine says that after the Fall we retain the ability to choose, but we lose the capacity to make good choices. If what David desires is intimacy, joy, mutuality, tenderness and love, those are not bad things; but to get them makes him embark on a path of rape, deception, cynicism and murder. No end can justify those means.
Beyond power and desire this is a story for David about pride. He gets into a hole and he keeps on digging. He takes an awful long time to realise he’s in the wrong. Perhaps he thinks right is whatever the king decrees. Eventually he learns there are other people in this story, that he’s been given kingly authority to keep graciously giving, not to embark on a pattern of recklessly taking, and that there’s only one way to redemption and it starts by saying the kind of ‘sorry’ that lasts for years.
Before we too quickly say, ‘I’m not a despotic king, actually lust isn’t my problem, and by the way I’m not proud,’ let’s recognise, yes, none of us are an unassailable monarch at the centre of a chosen people. But surely each of us needs to spend more time discerning how to use the power we have than to bemoan the power we don’t have; each of us knows what it means to desire one thing so much it obscures our commitment to other good and worthy things; and sooner or later each of us needs to learn how to stop digging ourselves into deeper holes of falsehood and simply speak the truth about our lives, even if it means losing face amongst those who prefer the lies.
Let’s turn our attention from David to a second perspective in this story, the prophet Nathan. Just as David sent messengers to Bathsheba, the Lord sends Nathan to David. We’re about to get a lesson in what’s often called ‘speaking truth to power.’ Nathan doesn’t rant or rail. He tells a story. A parable. A rich man, who had countless flocks and herds, didn’t want to kill one of his own animals for dinner. Instead he seized the female lamb which was a poor man’s only possession, and regarded like a member of the poor man’s family. David is so far out of touch with his actions that he’s the last to realise the story is about him. He condemns the rich man for his lack of pity. Then Nathan says some of the most shuddering words in all of scripture: ‘You are the man!’ And Nathan then enumerates God’s grace towards David, David’s utter lack of pity, and the catastrophic consequences. David is trapped.
Here is a lesson in protest. Nathan doesn’t use force. He doesn’t make a scene. He knows he’s speaking the truth: he doesn’t have to shout. He judges that David still has a better nature to appeal to – a sense of justice he doesn’t realise how deeply he’s abrogated; a conviction about right and wrong he still upholds for others, if not himself. He intrigues David by telling a story, full of pathos and humanity. He elicits David’s uncompromising reaction. Then he turns the tables on David and holds a mirror up to the king that the king can’t deny.
Nathan’s a brave man. He may trust to the angels of David’s better nature, but he’s risking his life. David might deal with problem by striking down the prophet. He was ruthless with Uriah, after all. But Nathan gives each one of us an example of how to approach the tyrants in our own lives, and the tyrants in our political and social worlds. Nathan has the truth: but he also has imagination, empathy, and craft. David is won over. He simply says, ‘I have sinned.’ And Nathan says, ‘Ok – now we’re having a different kind of conversation.’
And so to the third perspective. The woman whose name we only hear once in the whole story; who is defined by relationship with and attractiveness to men – called ‘a woman bathing,’ ‘a woman who was very beautiful,’ ‘the daughter of Eliam,’ and (three times) ‘the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ At no stage in the story are we given any account of Bathsheba’s own feelings, aspirations, passions, interests, or intentions, except just once – when she makes lamentation for her dead husband. We can only speculate what it must have meant for her to be swept up by the king’s messengers, delivered to his chamber, and made the subject of his longings. Even when Nathan intervenes he does so on behalf of God, who has given David so much; of Uriah, who has been murdered by one to whom he showed utter respect; and even of David, who still has much to give as king despite his shortcomings; but Nathan makes no mention of Bathsheba, even obliquely, and his transformative parable is not about the ewe lamb – it’s about the poor farmer.
In Bathsheba we the perspective of those whose humanity is considered of no account. We can’t call her a victim, because that assumes she went kicking and screaming to the king, and was lost in confusion about the child she conceived. The story doesn’t tell us enough for us to impute the role of victim: the point is, her perspective simply doesn’t matter. We’re told she’s beautiful, to make some explanation for David’s recklessness, that she’s the wife of Uriah, and that she’s pregnant. That’s it. Her insignificance is in many ways worse than persecution. No one in the story blames David for not taking her feelings into account. That’s not the sin for which he repents. We may be moved to contrition by David’s failure or empowered to witness by Nathan’s courage but we might pause to remember that the history of the world has many more Bathshebas in it than Nathans or Davids. The point about Bathsheba’s perspective is not so much to empathise with her humiliation or be outraged by her assault or even to lament the world’s inequalities: it’s to recognise how many people historically, and still today, simply don’t seem to matter, are just vehicles for others’ passions, desires or sins, and are written out of the happy stories as well as the sad ones. We may long to give them a voice, but we can’t assume we know what they would want to say.
So this is a parable about power and sin; at the same time it’s an account of courage and witness; but beneath the surface it highlights the people society ignores and history forgets. There’s plenty of reasons to read this uncomfortable, disrupting, confronting story. And it’s a mistake to assume David’s, Nathan’s or even Bathsheba’s perspective is the most important one.
But Christians read this story not just to become more penitent, more courageous, or more empathetic. Christians read this story to come face to face with God. For God in Christ was the one who was considered of no account and died a death in a forgotten outpost of the Roman Empire as a result of the predatory pride of others. God in Christ was the prophet Nathan who held up a mirror to the power and pretensions of the influential of the day and brought them face to face with the truth at tremendous personal cost. God in Christ shouldered the punishment of the sword meted out to the descendants of David and brought about the forgiveness not just for David’s fall but for Adam and Eve’s also. God in Christ was the innocent Bathsheba, subject to the whim of the ruthless and overbearing tyrants of the day. God in Christ told parables that showed people then and now who they were and who God was. And God in Christ entered the parable as the precious lamb, treasured by the Father, at the heart of the divine life; and so that we might sit and eat as God’s companions forever, God in Christ the lamb was slain that all the flocks and herds might be spared.
Most of all, whether we are a respected person perceiving our own sinfulness, cruelty and folly, or a timid person finding a voice to stand up for truth, integrity and justice, or a forgotten person accustomed to having our own oppression, suffering and pain overlooked, this story is telling us that God in Christ is at the very heart of our struggle for identity, faithfulness and meaning. We read this story at our peril, because in it we come face to face with God.
