2 Samuel 11:27 - 12: 15
Charles J. Tomlin, May 23rd,, 2021
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Series: The Roots of God’s Justice 7/20
Dear People of God,
Have you ever been surprised by your own reflection? Maybe you are passing by a mirror, but don’t realize it’s a mirror until an image catches the corner of your eye. You jump. Then you realize the image was only you; you being reflected in the mirror you just walked by.
Or maybe one morning you get up, after a night of restless sleep, and then look into the bathroom mirror. There you see a stranger with dark circles under the eyes, puffy face, tangled hair, and a hollow expression. You gasp. Who is that person? Surely not me!
Have you experienced this, or am I the only one? We all have times when we don’t recognize ourselves, don’t we? Sometimes it has nothing to do with the physical image we see, but the ‘relational’ image others see!
Maybe you have had an interaction with someone, in which you acted completely different than you normally do? Something someone said or did, pushed your buttons. You found yourself saying or doing something other than your usual reaction. This just wasn’t the ‘you’ you now think to yourself. You can’t even think about it now without getting upset. You still shake your head, asking yourself, ‘I can’t believe what I just did or said!’ Why on earth did I react that way? What got into me? That’s not like me at all! Anyone identify with what I’m saying?
In our Scripture reading today, the prophet Nathan confronts King David, the beloved King in Israel’s history, who also acted in a way that was ‘out of character’ for him. He suffered from what counselors and psychologists call an emotional or moral blind spot which resulted in a ‘lapse of character’. It is important that we consider this story as we reflect upon God’s justice because we are reminded that ‘doing justice’ is first and foremost, a matter of the heart. In other words, we can’t ‘do’ God’s justice, unless or until we make things right with the world around us and inside our minds and our hearts.
‘YOU DID IT SECRETLY’ (12); Prophetic RECKONING:
King David’s story is still important for us because we all do things we fail to recognize as unjust, or just plain wrong. We may not realize it, but there are areas within our mind and actions in which we all have blinders on. It’s like when you look through your camera on your phone and take a photo. Then afterward you discover that your thumb was in front of the lens!
We all have “blind spots” in our lives that trip us up. But even if we know this, there are times when we get tripped up anyway! That’s why it’s called a “blind spot”! The best people have them. Remember the Challenger disaster. That was due to a blind spot. Remember Bernie Madoff. Blind spot. Also think about the Financial collapse of 2008. Blind spot.
The most faithful, and loving people in the world have “blind spots” too. Our Southern forefathers promoted slavery as good and right. Good Germans and good Americans, along with most of Europe too, turned a ‘blind eye to Hitler at first. Blind spot. In the same way, King David was a ‘man after God’s own heart’ but he still had a blind spot in his behavior. In fact, when you look at the stories of scripture, you see that they are filled to the brim with flawed and faulty people –people with blind spots. Good people. God’s people too. But also people who make mistakes and need God’s grace and God’s guidance to get them back on track again.
Let’s pause, and look at the story of David a little deeper, and consider the dangerous “blind spot in David’s life. His “blind spot” had a name. Anyone remember? His blind spot was called Bathsheba.
Bathsheba was the wife of a man named Uriah, who held an important position in King David’s army. While Uriah was off fighting David’s battles, David’s eye wandered across the royal walls and upon Uriah’s wife –the beautiful Bathsheba. David had a number of wives already, an entire harem of them in fact. But when his eye caught Bathsheba, his heart jumped, and he just had to have her. He watched her every day, and each day, he wanted her more. The fact that she belonged to someone else soon became irrelevant. In fact, he probably started rationalizing to himself, that he was after all King, and that he should be able to have whatever and whomever he wanted. He held an awful lot of power and prestige. And of course, Bathsheba should be honored to be welcomed by the King. That was part of what cause his blind spot.
But what about Uriah? Well, to David he was ‘out of sight, out of mind’. That’s the other part of the blind spot. All David saw was his desire growing greater, each and every day. It obscured his vision like a big, fat thumb in front of his lens. And here’s the thing about a Bathsheba kind of blind spot. Pretty soon, things seem awfully simple. Forget complications. Forget integrity. It’s very easy. He wants her. He takes her.
And so, he did.
But that wasn’t the end of it, was it? Now David had a problem. Bathsheba was pregnant. What’s he going to do? First, he tries to get Uriah to sleep with his wife, so that he thinks the child is his. That doesn’t work. Then he resorts to desperation to cover up the deed. His blind spot has now cost him his dignity. And now all he can see is how to get himself out of the mess he got into! Big time blinders! So, what does he do? He has Uriah killed. Now his fling has blossomed into a bigger, fatter, darker SIN!
Then, as a result of grave injustice God does what God usually does. God sends in a prophet! When things get rough, we send in the clowns and comedians. But God sends in a prophet or a preacher. In David’s case, it’s a prophet named Nathan. Nathan was no stranger to David. He was one of David’s closest advisors. Still, this wasn’t an easy task. This is a King we are talking about. If the King didn’t like what you said, it could easily get you killed! So, even as a preacher and prophet you had to be discreet about it. Nathan is smart and gets creative. He tells the King a story to test David’s moral compass and let him to confront his own blind spot.
The story Nathan told was this parable about the rich man who took his servants little ewe pet lamb to serve for supper to his visitor. The poor man didn’t have much other than his family and this one lamb, but the rich man had many sheep and lambs of his own, decided to demand to take and eat the only lamb the poor man had. Hearing this story incited David’s moral conscious. He demand to know who this rich man was who would do such an immoral, cruel deed in his kingdom. Gotcha. This is when Nathan is ready to lower the boom. David. Look in the mirror! That man is you! Nathan turns the tables on the King. Suddenly, David sees his own reflection. Now, he is the man in the mirror. And the person he sees, isn’t pretty.
THE THING...DISPLEASED THE LORD (27); God’s desire for RIGHTEOUSNESS
So, now with the ‘blind spot’ exposed the question is what good is all this? Recently, I went online to watch a video of a former Old Testament professors, Logan Carson. He was a very unusual because he was born blind at birth. He overcame all kinds of obstacles to learn Hebrew in Braille and become a professor. I also recall him saying that, even if they found a medical way to restore his eyesight, he never wanted to see in this world, because he wanted his first image to be seeing the face of Jesus.
Dr. Carson was a very powerful preacher, serving as a pastor even while he taught students. In my mind and memory, I can still hear him preach his most famous sermon on David and BATHsheba! Even as a blind man, he would turn and spin as he preached through the drama of David’s temptation step by step; with God saying ‘no!’, while choosing to listen to the devil’s ‘yes’! ‘Yes’ to taking a second look. ‘Yes’ to ordering a servant to fetch her to his palace. ‘Yes’ to ordering her to lie with him. ‘Yes’ to having an extended affair with her, and finally saying ‘yes’ to attempt to cover up the whole ordeal with murder. And where did all those ‘yeses’ take David? It was a dark place where a person never thought the would go, by doing what they never thought they would you, and becoming who they never believed they would be.
This is a sad story, not just of forbidden love, or ‘sin for a season’ which can destroy a reputation or a life, but this is the very tragic, human drama that reveals the kind of moral weakness or ethical ‘blind spot’ all of us have in one form or another. It may not be the sin of lust, but it may be a will to power, a need to control, the greed for more and more, or the pride to live only for self without regard for others. In some way, because we are human, we all have an Achilles heel. We all have issues we must work on, feelings we mustn’t give in to, or we have flaw that could be fatal. And it not easy to face or think about these things. We think it’s better to deny, lie or avoid confronting our own blind spots.
In our own recent history, most of us remember the very public ‘blind spot’ of President Bill Clinton, who not only had an inappropriate relationship with Monika Lewisky, but how he also lied about it under oath. We can also think about the tragic downfall of Richard Nixon and Watergate. What was he thinking? Why did he allow it or attempt to cover it up? And these are only the most public displays of power ‘blind spots’ that corrupt, and corrupt absolutely too.
But what’s the point of revealing or confronting such moral flaws and failures? Since we all have them, we all fail and make mistakes, and we all have blind spots and weaknesses, why confront them at all. Like the Argument Bill Clinton’s lawyers made when he faced impeachment; adultery may be immoral, but it’s not illegal. Then, with an argument that Nixon’s lawyers couldn’t make, it was one thing to lie about something that isn’t illegal, but it’s another thing to lie about something that is illegal.
What David did wasn’t necessarily against human laws, but it was against God’s law. But what does this sin matter, or confronting or facing sin matter in a world that negate not only God’s laws, but has negated God? What does morality or righteousness mean in a world that lives as if God doesn’t matter anymore?
Perhaps the most important words in this ancient text is how this story begins in chapter 11, vs 27, saying ‘the thing David done displeased the Lord’. Later on, in the confrontation by Nathan, the prophet expresses this idea again, asking David, ‘Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? (V. 9). Do you see how personal this language is? God is ‘displeased’ or his word has been ‘despised’. God is taking the matter, not so much legally, but emotionally, relationally too. The point the story is making is that human morality isn’t simply a choice humans have to make, but human morality is a responsibility. The more privilege, power and freedom a person is granted and given, even if it is perceived to be self-made and earned, the more responsibility a person has to discover ones own blind spots, and to learn what it means to do what is moral and what is right.
But how can we learn, know or do what is just and right, when everything is relative to how we feel or what we want? Well, the truth is we can’t. I’ve told this story before, but here, we need to think about it again. When I was working in Germany, in the prestigious German State of Brandenburg, I spoke to an ethics teacher who worked in the public education system in German schools. That’s one thing very different in German schools, where there isn’t any absolute separation of church and state. Those schools are mandated to give moral, ethical, and religious ideas in public education. Of course, they don’t indoctrinate students, but the government does teach the basic religious and ethical moral values of the state, which is Christian.
So, understanding what a great opportunity and difference this was in Europe, I asked this Religion-Ethics teacher, ‘Does it work?’ Does having the opportunity to teach basic morality or religion work? His answer was no idea works alone, unless it become personal for the student. The only way it works, and only students who take their moral or ethical responsibility seriously, in other words, are those who are either living to please God, or who fear that by not pleasing God they are despising the very words that give them life and hope.
This is exactly why justice and righteous are important and how they become important for a people and a society, isn’t it? Somehow they must become more than ideas or teachings, but they must become real and personal. For David, the words and confrontation by Nathan the prophet was real and personal, because He knew that he had a responsibility to God, who had blessed him, and had chosen him to lead and to serve. Out of this great opportunity came a tremendous responsibility, not just to live as David wanted, but to do God’s will, God’s work, and to ‘please’ the Lord, rather than ‘displease’ Him.
It is this ‘personal’, inward, and relational ethical nature of human responsibility that inspires and calls human beings to their best and greatest sense of duty and moral purpose. And this inward personal sense, when understood rightly, isn’t personal in that we are selfish or self-centered or self-focused, but it’s this very personal sense that calls us to be relational, to treat others as we would want to be treated, as the prophets remind us, and as Jesus the greatest prophet, preached, it is out of this great relational and responsible love for God, with all our mind, strength, and soul, that we also learn what it means to love and be responsible to others as we become responsible to ourselves.
This is where the true personal and responsible relationship with God should take us, and this is where David, in his own freedom and failure to be responsible with his freedom failed. It is the great risk that always comes with love and with the freedom given to any human being. We can choose to do right, or we can also choose to go against what is love and what is right.
During the Cold War, and long before, when Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto, once wrote that ‘religion was the opium of the people’, I think before we can best disagree with what he said, we must first agree that what Karl Marx said something that Jesus would have partially, at least, agreed with. If ones religion is only about yourself, if it only wants to have riches and make money, or earn ‘capital’ for the sake of capital itself; or if, in David’s selfish decision, we begin to wrongly think that everything in the world is for our own taking or having, without regard for what is right, just, or fair for others, then yes, religion and faith in God can be abused, misused, and be misconstrued to our own selfish ends.
But in the same way, any belief, or human idea, no matter how noble or how just we think it is, can become corrupted, just like Marxism or communism did, and just like capitalism did, which cause the great financial collapse of 2008, and can cause more ‘blind spots’, and moral failures to come. There simply no human system that remains incorruptible, unless we continue to believe that this moral and ethical responsibility comes from beyond us and continually beckons us beyond who we are today. That’s why Marxism failed, and it’s a lesson to how Capitalism will fail too, if we take our hearts away from the moral responsibility to answer God’s call, which can only be known and answered in our moral responsibility to do justice for others, just as we would demand justice for ourselves.
“I HAVE SINNED AGAINST THE LORD: Hopeful RESTORATION (13).
Where this text finally lands, is that none of this matters, without the right, honest, and sincere human response. That what ‘responsibility’ means. This is what God’s desire is about and why the prophet speaks God’s word. The whole story brings us to this moment where David responds in a way that puts him back on the right track, so that he acknowledges his blind spot, and he finds his way back to God’s favor and grace. When confronted with the truth, David doesn’t deny, hide, run away, nor put up his defenses, but David comes clean, saying before God and the prophet, who now becomes like a priest, hearing His confession, when David says sincerely, ‘I have sinned against the Lord!’.
The good news in this whole ordeal, is that God freely forgave David‘s sins, but God did not remove the accountability or the consequences of David’s sins. The consequences will show up in his marriage to Bathsheba and in the fact that the child won’t live. The consequences will also show up in the rest of David’s family, and eventually in his grandsons, who will end up splitting up the nation. Sin can be forgiven, but the consequences for sin can’t be so easily undone.
This is why it’s so important for us, not only to find God’s grace in this story, but to find the personal and prophetic path toward justice and righteousness too. It’s why we must always be willing to face our sins and short comings before God and to learn how we can live more just and righteously with and for and before others. We need Jesus to open ‘blinded eyes’ still today so that our own flaws can we revealed, so that we can not only be forgiven, but so that we can be changed to do better and to avoid the consequences that take us into a life or a world, where there is no moral return. For until we take doing right as personal to us, it won’t become a personal responsibility for us in learning how respond to both the call of God and the needs of our fellow humans around us.
In announcing his ministry to the world, Jesus declared in his hometown, Nazareth, “I’ve come to give sight to the blind.” Sometimes, we are the blind. This is not always because there is something wrong with us, like it was withDavid. Sometimes it’s just because we are human, and we can’t see, know, or realize everything we need to know because of our limits. But recognizing our limits is how we come to realize our need for God, and our need for seeking and doing justice, that begins in out heart, but reaches out to others. We need both the light and the love of Jesus to help us see how we can best do right for ourselves as we do what’s right for others. This is what God’s justice has always been about.
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died last fall, although she was a secular Jew and often decided cases that were more liberal than I consider myself to be, I learned, in her passing, that a phrase out of the Bible guided her, her whole life. It was a line framed on her wall from the Hebrew Bible, Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdof, which comes straight from Jesus’ favorite book of the Bible, Deuteronomy. This line is found in Chapter, 16, verse 20, where God challenged his people, ‘Pursue Justice, and only Justice...’. Then the Bible continues with this conditional promise, ‘ so that you may live long in the land the Lord, your God is giving you.’ What drove Justice Ginsburg was exactly this, to insure our country has a future because we pursue justice for everyone who lives in it. I absolutely believe she was right about that.
Our Lord commands his people, to be salt and light, and to continue being serious about ‘doing justice’ wherever we are, so we and others can keep and receive the blessings of life God continues to give. That’s exactly why Nathan confronted David; to expose his moral blind spot and to open up his soul for moral growth and healing. This wasn’t to take anything away from David, but to help David continue to receive God’s gifts and blessings. Today, let us ask for the Light of Jesus to shine through us and among us, to reveal us in our own sins and blind spots, not to condemn us, but to cleanse us from our own unrighteousness and injustice, so that we can continue to have God’s grace upon and in us. Amen .
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