B Proper 13 (OL
Proper 12) BFC 2015
2 Samuel 11:1-15
August 2, 2015
By now I hope you
understand and know my viewpoint on the Bible, Holy Scripture. I certainly think the Bible is divinely
inspired, but just as I might think any one of you divinely inspired, I do not
believe that makes you perfect or without fault or foible. Just as I hope that you will perceive me as
divinely inspired, all the while knowing that I have my faults and
foibles.
I believe the Bible should be taken
seriously but not literally. There is
much to glean from its ancient teaching, practice, and story. Many of the Biblical stories have sifted
through so many hands and have been deemed so important because generation
after generation has seen the story or parable repeat itself time and time
again. Let me share three examples—that
bear repeating, again and again.
As I shared two weeks ago, though
Sabbath and rest have been preached for millennia, we still seem to think of
Sabbath and rest as options. We use
Sabbath and rest, not as God’s sacred rhythm, but when we have time for Sabbath
and rest. Or when we crash and burn.
The story of Naomi and her
daughter-in-law, Ruth, tell us that love can often be taught to us by those who
are outside our own group, race, or ethnic clan. If “ruth-less” is wickedness and depravity,
then to be “[R]uth” is to be a foreigner who is full of kindness, love, and
devotion. Our society, on the whole,
still sees the stranger or the person not like us as someone to be feared. This fear seems to generate a whole heck of a
lot of hate in our society. As a result,
we tend to shoot first and ask questions later.
Finally, Jesus, Ghandi, and Dr.
King taught us about the power of non-violence over and against the ghastly and
cruel State violence of an Empire—a violence which crucified our Savior. Yet, it did not take too long before
Christianity began a tradition of lauding and making heroes out of those who
wield weapons and protect their freedom to do so at all costs. In turn, we have made fools out of and
diminished those who preached the gospel of non-violence. If the Bible is to be lived out in our day
and age, why does not one of the end-of-the-world, action movie have humanity saved
by someone who practices non-violence? Community
building take too long? Healing not
exotic as a car chase? Solidarity with
the poor not sell enough tickets?
If the Bible was taken seriously,
these would be the values lifted up time and again in our culture. Sabbath, the kindness of a stranger, the
saving grace of non-violence. Instead, I
think culture drives against such eternal values.
I believe our tradition calls for
us to engage the Bible—to practice what we discern to be truth, to argue and critique
where we have disagreement, and to sometimes recognize our need to evolve from
Biblical teaching or story that is not in keeping with a God of love and
compassion.
You may be surprised to know that
our spiritual ancestors, our interfaith sisters and brothers, the Jewish
people, have long taught out of this tradition--engaging holy Scripture. Within this Jewish tradition, to evolve Jewish
individual and communal teaching and law is considered essential to the
survival of Jewish faith, the surrounding community, and the world. If the
Jewish people are to bend their souls to a God of compassion, Scriptural
teaching must be engaged and evolve.
An example. Within Jewish tradition are priests called
the Kohamin. The Kohamin
are to be priests set apart, more spiritually pure, more holy, tasked with
some of the most important pious work.
One of the more blunt provisions within Jewish law was that the Kohamin could not, not one of them, in
any way, touch the body of a dead person.
They were set apart, as a ministry for God’s living, and to make that
clear and set and true and right and keep them ritualistically pure, this was
the hard line law. So hard-line is this
prohibition that Kohamin would be
careful not to take trains over a graveyard.
They would even go so far as check out flight plans that might fly over
graveyards. The Kohamin would go to these extraordinary lengths because the ritual
impurities last forever and extend upward into the heavens and therefore extend
to air travel. This is hard-line law.
Hard-line law. Except.
In verses after this hard-line
law, there seems to be this recognition that if we are going to live in this
world one has to have a heart. The Kohamin could not touch a dead body except if the body is of a dead loved
one—a husband reaching out and touching, for one last time, the body of his
wife; a grief-stricken father touching the much-too-soon dead body of his
daughter. So the hard-line prohibition
found exceptions and was limited to people outside the Kohamin’s immediate family.
Then the law was changed so that if a Kohamin saw an abandoned dead body alongside the road with nobody
to properly bury the body, the Kohamin could
extend compassion to a person who had no other.
In fact, in the name of compassion, Jewish teaching says that the
highest of priests was charged with leaving the highest of Jewish holy days to
take care of an abandoned, dead body.
Those who belong to the Kohamin priestly family lines, not just
the Kohamin but the whole family
line, were also charged, for the longest time, with never being able to marry a
divorced person. But in 1952, Rabbinic
teaching, changed, evolved, to say, “Are you saying that because someone
belongs to a certain family line, they are not allowed to marry a person they
love? Really?” Do we hang on and lock
away our tradition, never to be engaged and sometimes transformed? Or do we help the tradition evolve so that it
might become something more compassionate and more beautiful.[1]
Rabbi Sharon Brous, teacher of the
IKAR congregation in Los Angeles
And both servants waited for the
king’s return.
The king returned and was
delighted to see the delicious bread and beautiful table cloth. The king looked at what the other servant had
done, put what had been given to him under lock and key, and said to that
servant, “Woe! Woe, to the one who did
not think they had the right to do anything with their flax and wheat.”[2]
We are to engage our tradition, be
serious about it, put our hands into it and discern the delicious, beautiful
parts within it. It is one of our most
sacred tasks.
Today we have one of the most iconic
Biblical stories before us. As in any
good storytelling, the tone is set early on when we are told that it is the
season when kings go out to war with their armies. But David is back in the palace in Jerusalem
Among those Christians who clamor
for social justice as a primary value within our faith tradition, this is one of two stories from Hebrew
Scripture, Naboth’s vineyard being the other, to point out that even the most
powerful and glamorous figures within Jewish tradition cannot escape the Jewish
God’s love of justice. The king, as a
representative for God to the Jewish people, is particularly tasked with justice
making and justice doing.
Psalm 72, like an inaugural
speech, states God’s hoped for values for the king, “Give the king your
justice, O God. May the king judge your
people with righteousness and your poor with justice. May the king defend the cause of the poor of
the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. For the king delivers the needy when they
call, the poor and those who have no helper.
From oppression and violence, the king redeems their life and precious
is their blood in the king’s sight.”[3]
King David was to protect those
who had no helper. Precious is their
blood in his sight. In Jewish tradition,
that meant taking care of the widow, the orphan, and the alien or
immigrant. David is to protect the life
of the alien or immigrant, Uriah the Hittite.
But in this story, David sends for the wife of Uriah the Hittite, the
alien or immigrant who is serving him well in battle. David rapes the wife of Uriah the Hittite and
then, to cover up the pregnancy, sends for Uriah the Hittite, sends him to his
home to have sex with his wife. Sends
for him to get Uriah drunk and then send him back home. When that does not work, David sends Uriah
the Hittite back to battle with a note he has sent to his commander, Joab. This notice tells Joab that he is to have
Uriah killed. And when the murder and
cover-up are complete, finally, King David sends for Bathsheba to join him in
his palatial estate, as one of his wives.
This story culminates what began
with Samuel the prophet. The Israelite
people come to Samuel and say to him, “We see the nations around us brandishing
their swords to make war. We feel that
our national security is at stake. We
want to be like other nations. Give us a
king!” This call from the people is a
disappointment to God. As King of the
Universe, God believed that Israel
As judgment against what King
David has done, and to make us aware that this story is a cohesive whole, God,
in punishment, vows to take away
David’s women and have someone else lie with them.[5]
In the story before us, King
David, the master manipulator, controls all the action. As the word take is the focus for what the king will do with you, the word sent is how the king controls all the
action. The word “sent” appears eleven
times in just twenty-six verses, almost always used by King David. David, who was supposed to be the antithesis
of kings, chosen by the prophet Samuel when he is just a young boy shepherding
sheep, the small lad with the slingshot, is selected way back when by
Samuel. God chooses David because the
Living God does not look on outward appearance or stature but upon the heart or
character.[6]
Alas, absolute power corrupts
absolutely. David becomes just like any
other king. Israel becomes like any
other nation. The story has enough references and parallels to the David and
Goliath story to tell us that David becomes Goliath. That is a powerful critique of a king, an
imperial presidency, or a nation that is willing to subvert its deepest values
to rule the world.
Hear this though. Though this story is a powerful critique and
relates some of my deepest values, I want to engage and critique our tradition,
put my hands in it, to say that we must not let this story be the end. For there is something strikingly absent from
an incredible story written out of male-dominated world, a story that would
critique one of the greatest figures in Jewish history. There is something missing from even the
prophet Nathan, who shows up later in this story, who comes to hold King David
account for his misdeeds. The prophet Nathan tells David that the Biblical God
seeks to exact punishment for what he has done and that punishment is the death
of the child with which Bathsheba is pregnant.
What has been forgotten is the
woman who was raped and carries that child—Bathsheba. Her husband, Uriah, is remembered. It is as if the dead Uriah, as a man, is the
only one who seems to matter to Nathan and the Biblical God as judgment is
pronounced against David.
Too often this story has been
altered to maintain our prejudices. In
keeping with our windswept romance novels found at any grocery store, I remember
finding a book some years ago that sought to fill in all the details of this
tragic story. I remember reading it as
if these were the long, lost details only the National Enquirer could report.
You know the ones I mean. David
is half-naked, wind blowing through his hair, Bathsheba held in his arms, maybe
her tunic down her arm to indicate what is about to happen. According to this fictional novel, Bathsheba
seduced David, David romanced Bathsheba, and the starstruck lovers were
destined to give birth to the promised future king—Solomon. But the Biblical story gives no hint of such
romance.
Bathsheba is taking her purifying
bath when David sees her. David sends
for her. This is an act of kingly power,
not seductive act. Bathsheba is so
forgotten that when David sends Uriah to lie with his wife, Uriah feels more
kinship with his soldier comrades out in the field than with a wife he has not
seen for some time. As a credit
to Uriah and to his honor, he forgets his wife.
Bathsheba must not only grieve the
violence done to her in this rape, the violent death of her husband, Uriah, but
also the violence done to her by God when it is decided that her child
shall be taken as a punishment for King David’s acts. She is but a byword in a terrible
story.
And I say to this part of a powerful
story, that I disown it. It is
wrong. In my relationship with the
Living God, a God who has often been my nurturing and strong mother, a God who
has held my hand and confidences as wife, sister, and friend, a God who has
inspired and seduced me with wisdom too great for my own brain, this is not the
God of compassion I have come to know.
Nor would I want to worship a God who forgets Bathsheba and her pain and
then punishes Bathsheba.
One can only imagine what
Bathsheba felt, what any number of women forgotten in the tradition have felt,
as Uriah, her honorable and loyal husband is dead. The purity she was keeping when David saw
her, gone by the man who murdered her husband.
Her child, the product of a violent act, now dead, by the hand of a
violent God atoning for the sin of David.
Then Bathsheba is supposed to endure intercourse with this same man to
have another child by him. The rapist
takes her once again to complete God’s promise.
As I work out those details to the
story, my stomach turns and I am revolted by this part of the tradition. Bathsheba, and so many strong women who have
survived their silent tragedies, need to be remembered so that we create a
community which is counter to the one which suggests that kings, presidents,
priests, pastors, and football coaches have carte blanche to fulfill their
needs however they see fit. Our women,
daughters, and children should not have to atone for the sins of their fathers
to be part of God’s continuing promise.
I say that part of Biblical
authority and tradition is wrong, revolting, and we must remember our
daughters, Bathsheba, and all women who have been lost in our tradition. I say, sisters and brothers, that we should
not lock up our wheat and flax but put our hands in it so that something more
beautiful and compassionate can be made out of it. We will not let any tradition or king or
powerful program have our daughters, or our women, or our sons as a sacrifice
to sate their desires. And let us
proclaim that we do not believe God requires it as well, and that God grieves
and thunders in the Halls of Heaven every time we believe such a sacrifice is
required—whether that be Bathsheba or the women and children of the Yellowstone
Valley. The God of Compassion seeks to
deliver those who are without a helper and precious in God’s sight is their
blood. Precious in God’s sight is their
blood. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1]Rabbi Sharon Brous,
“Evolved.,” preached May 12, 2012, http://ikar-la.org/content/shabbat-sermons. Taken
unceremoniously, almost word for word, from Rabbi Brous.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Psalm 72:1-2,4, 12, 14.
[4] Everett
[6] I Samuel 16:7
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