Shining light in dark places. August 5, 2018 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:13a

In the Hebrew language the name David means beloved.  And it certainly is a beloved name around here.  If you had to guess, how many Davids would you say are in our church community?  I wondered myself.  And I want to give props to Diane Hartling, our Administrative Assistant, for finding out the answer.  How many Davids are in our church?  Eighteen!  I think it is safe to say that David wins the prize for most popular name.

And there are various reasons why that is the case, why so many parents, myself included, have named a son David.  Family legacy is one reason.  Just the simple, solid way it sounds is another.  For some it’s because it’s a biblical name.  King David’s reknown as being the greatest king of Israel and a man after God’s own heart, seems like a pretty good person to name a son after.  But there’s more to King David’s story than just worldly success or committed faith.  Our Old Testament reading from the book of 2 Samuel picks up in the middle of the sordid saga of this David’s fall from grace.  

Previously in the story while the Israelite army was out in the country fighting King David’s battles, David himself stayed back in Jerusalem where one afternoon he spies a beautiful woman, Bathsheba, bathing.  Intrigued, David sends his men to go and get her in order to “have his way with her.”  Sometime later the message comes that Bathsheba is pregnant, which puts David in a bit of a quandary because Bathsheba is married to one of his faithful and fighting soldiers, Uriah.  Seeking to cover up what he has done, David calls Uriah back to Jerusalem and tries to get him to sleep with his wife.  But when that effort fails David opts to take more definitive action.   He sends Uriah back to the fight with secret orders to place him at the front of the worst fighting and then have his army pull back.  When Uriah is killed in battle the path is cleared for David to take Bathsheba as one of his wives.

Now our reading tells us that God was displeased with what David had done to Uriah.  But that’s an understatement and a poor translation of the original Hebrew which reads that what David did was evil in the sight of the Lord.  So God sends his prophet Nathan to tell David a story about two men, one rich and one poor.  To cut to the chase, the rich man, who has lots of sheep, takes the poor man’s only and beloved lamb and slaughters it for a feast.  Upon hearing this unjust story, King David is rightly enraged by the rich man’s flagrant abuse of power and privilege.  He declares that such a man should not only payback the poor man fourfold for his crime but also be put to death.   At which point Nathan cried, “You are the man!”  And with that pronouncement David sees what he previously had not and confesses, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

God sent his prophet Nathan to reveal to David one of his blind spots which, by their very nature, are parts of ourselves, our communities, and our culture that we are unable see.  And because that is the case, it often takes an outsider to expose them.  David, though, is not the only one who exhibits a blind spot.  The story itself, written in a particular time and culture, demonstrates a good amount of blindness when it comes to the first person to suffer at the hands of the king.   

In days past, the story of David and Bathsheba was often been portrayed as a tale of star crossed lovers.  However this romanticized version of the story is nowhere to be found in the Bible.  Rather Bathsheba, being a woman and a subject of the king, has no say in the matter - no voice, no power, and no ability to give consent.  Using his power and privilege David takes Bathsheba, which results in an undesired pregnancy, the murder of a husband, and a forced marriage.  When all is said and done, Bathsheba is powerless to call the king to account for the abuse and violence done unto her.  This is a blind spot. 

And we all have them - no matter who we are or when we live.  That’s why we need each other.   King David needed the prophet Nathan.   We need one another to show us what we can’t see on our own.  For me, it’s just been in the last year that I have discovered one of my blind spots.  It happened by listening to the stories of others, particularly others like Bathsheba who have had little voice or power, that I realized something that is very humbling and hard to admit - that is, I’m a racist.  Not that I’m a hate-filled bigot who dehumanizes the lives of others based on skin color.  But I’m a racist because I’ve been shaped by the culture I live in - a culture steeped in racial inequality.  I’m seeing for the first time that even my well-meaning ideas of trying not to see color and wanting to help brown and black skinned people comes from a place of privilege and power that can actually work against racial justice.  I’m still in the process of having my eyes opened to that blind spot and seeing it which is never easy.  But it’s necessary - necessary if we want the Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives and in the world.   

For God is always seeking to shine light in dark places, on our blind spots which are areas in our lives that if hidden keep us and others from living into the fullness of who we are created to be.  King David, with all his flaws, models for us an ability to hear hard news about oneself and to confess it.  Bathsheba is an icon of all those in the world who have no voice or power and are all too easily forgotten.  And Nathan the prophet is a sign to us that God continues to send messengers into our lives to tell hard truths in hopes of revealing to us our blind spots.  All this is in answer to our prayer that God’s kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven so that everyone knows that even if your name isn’t David that you, too, are called Beloved.