It Happened Late One Afternoon

Sermon by James W. Crawford 

September  20, 1998

Psalm 51: 1-17
II Samuel 11:1 - 12:15b

 I want to walk with you this morning through a Biblical saga  almost 3000 years old, with uncanny overtones reverberating even as we gather this morning. A number of Biblical Commentaries on Second Samuel have been enormously helpful to me in preparation of what we might call a "Medidation on this Current Event," and in particular I would express gratitude to Walter Bruggemann's Commentary published by the Westminster Press in 1990.

 We  stand in this story "at the threshold of psychology" at the same time we witness a most "ruthless political performance."  We meet here the icon, the messianic symbol of Israel's hopes and dreams at a moment "of no return." As Bruggemann writes, "innocence is never to be retrieved. From now on the life of David is marked, and all Israel must live with that mark. We pause before this artistic rendering, because this text, like no other . . .  has the power and the subtlety to address us.  If we face this text at all, we are invited behind" all the academic and scholarly questions of time,  place and author "to face the harder questions of human desire and human power -- desire with all its delight, power with all its potential for death."

Bruggemann informs us, "The plot in its telling is not complex or complicated.  Yet we dare not read the narrative as simple.  We must be awestruck that we have such a rendering of life before us. We may wonder what made this artistic achievement possible or what made this terrible disclosure necessary. . ."  Indeed, there is a revelatory, "eyes open" approach to the truth of the human condition that needs no couching in divine inspiration or perverse human motivations.  The writer has cut very, very, deep into the strange web of foolishness, fear and fidelity that comprises the human map. This narrative is more than we want to know about David, and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.  We might wish this story about David could be untold. David's memory cannot be unwritten any more than our shared life with David can be undone."

Now this narrative in Second Samuel is placed at the exact point where the narrative shifts from David's ambitious, subtle and ruthless climb to the top, his triumph in joining Juda and Israel and the twelve marauding Hebrew tribes into a single and united kingdom -- this narrative moves from all these public triumphs to "personal and unrelieved pathos. It is the abrupt transition from life under blessing to life under curse.  It is the intrusion of sin into the life of David (and his nation) cutting so sharply that it rivals in impact for the theologian-historian behind  this story, the breach between the Divine will and the  human situation described in Genesis. This  is so massive and penetrating it almost defies our capacity to interpret.  Every effort fails before the story itself," for no interpretation can embrace the depths and scope, the   pathos and tragedy of a story like this. Perhaps only the art of the story teller is appropriate for the occasion.

 I

In any case, beginning at the first verse of II Samuel, chapter 11, "In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem."

The king has a heavy agenda: Wars to deal with, international relations askew, resentful tribes to be ameliorated.  The Party of Saul whom  David defeated hates him, tried to undermine and destroy his sovereignty from the very beginning.  But David is  in position now to delegate authority and responsibility to underlings, no longer to risk his own life at the head of armed forces in the field.  So while his political and military surrogates fan out to do their jobs, King David takes a breather from a hectic  and strenuous schedule, remaining at his residence in Jerusalem.

The narrative continues at verse two: "It happened late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful." (One commentator suggests that the woman may well have bathed in such a place as to guarantee that the eyes of the king might indeed fall on her.   But that is pure speculation, and maybe subject for another day.)  We continue: "David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, 'This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.'  So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period -- (a time, by the way, believed when this narrative was written to be most propitious for the chances of pregnancy.) "Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, 'I am pregnant.'"

David wants the woman; he hears she is married to one of his soldiers, Uriah the Hittite -- it may give him pause -- but she is beautiful and he plunges ahead, hardly knowing her name, nor caring; she is simply the property of her father and husband.  He is the king.  He gets his way.  "He resides at the culmination of his enormous power."

Then, as  Bruggemann writes, "The action is quick.  The verbs rush as the passion of David rushed.  He sent; he took; he lay.  The royal deed of self-indulgence does not take very long. There is no adornment to the action. The woman then gets some verbs: she returned, she conceived. The action is so stark. There is nothing but action. There is no conversation. There is no hint of caring, of affection, of love -- only lust. David does not call her by her name, does not even speak to her.  At the end of the encounter, she is only 'the woman.' The verb that finally counts is conceived.  But the telling verb is, 'he took her. . . . Kings are takers,  graspers. . .' To this point David never takes anything. Everything, by God, by his friends, by his wife Abigail -- everything is given to him.

But no more.  When the woman speaks for the first time, she says but two Hebrew words: "harah 'anoki," " I am pregnant."

These words change everything: "I am pregnant." The claims of war  on David, with all of its terror and confusion, dissipate, and instead we begin to the see in Jerusalem another kind of  "terror and confusion."

We know David is not the last person to have his world shattered by this message. Nonetheless, the world-shattering words of Bathsheba completely nullify the royal power of David." He feels his moral authority collapse, his capacity to lead dissipate, his royal prerogatives vanish, his political power evaporate.  He has been in control. But no more. His control ends. And we are reminded by the commentator, this woman makes no demands; she devises no quid pro quos; she frames no threats.  "Her words say enough and say it all."

The cover-up begins instantly.    The remainder of  Chapter 11 tells of an anxious, cagey king terrified of discovery, realizing his marriage lies at stake, his royal power on the line,  his moral authority in peril desperately attempting  to bail himself out.

In verses 6-13 David invites Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba's husband, now on the battlefront fighting David's  war against the Ammonites, David invites him home. He entertains Uriah, engages him in friendly conversation, urges a short furlough and says, "Nice to have you home. Take some time off. Go down to your house. Greet your wife, 'Wash your feet"'-- "Wash your feet," in Hebrew, a euphemism here for that most intimate relation between men and women.  Of Course. If Uriah becomes involved with Bathsheba and she is   pregnant, David is off the hook.  Bathsheba knows the truth.  David knows.  But no one else does. They will make a pact, David and  Bathsheba both denying their liaison. Don't ask. Don't tell.  Nothing untoward occurred.  David can pass off the prospective baby as Uriah's. Cover-up complete.  Public humiliation averted.  Problem solved.

No way. Uriah is a principled man. He appreciates David's solicitude, but, hey, there is a war on; his buddies are in the field; they risk death for David's sake, and although he is an immigrant, by gosh, he will not enjoy the pleasures of home while his platoon gets bloodied up. He will not go home while his colleagues risk their lives. Stymied,  David invites Uriah to stick around  for another day; invites him to the residence for a cozy chat the next night, gets Uriah roaring drunk, ostensibly to lower his inhibitions and set him up for Bathsheba -- but Uriah, principled, honorable, faithful, loyal, a vivid contrast to the scoundrel doing him in -- Uriah sleeps it off in the servants' quarters. No way will he betray his comrades at the front, even as he is himself ironically and tragically betrayed.

David senses things swirling  out of control.  His first attempts at cover-up fail.  So panicked and terror-stricken, as Uriah prepares to return to the front, David sends a note, courtesy of Uriah, to General Joab out there in the trenches battling the Ammonites.  What daring! What chutzpah!  What gross, terrible and tragic  presumption! David must consider entrusting Uriah with this note a dazzlingly, ironic conceit -- for the note in Uriah's hand to General Joab is Uriah's death warrant. David tells Joab to put Uriah on the front lines; to involve him in the most bloody, brutal and savage of the fighting; to set him up for certain death.  And David  does not care what happens to the troops; he does not care if the Ammonites wipe out the whole regiment;  he cunningly risks hundreds of good soldiers in a massacre so long as the message he receives from the front, finally, reports:  "Uriah the Hittite, killed in action."  That is the note in Uriah's hand.  Nice guy this David.

Joab does as ordered. He sets the regiment on suicide charge. They get slaughtered. Uriah among them. Joab, no doubt suspicious, an enabler and facilitator to the cover-up, if not the king's indiscretion,   sends two Messengers to David with the news of the gory defeat.  The messages reek of double-talk, half-truths and technical obfuscation.  Joab believes David will explode with fury when he learns of the utterly ludicrous and suicidal strategy Joab uses to fight the Ammonites -- but he suspects David's fury will feign his relief that what appears as a monumental military blunder succeeds in murdering Uriah.

And Joab is right.  David's response to Uriah's murder and the slaughter of his regiment though faked with anger and fury is, in reality, relief.  And in a casual and brutally cynical response to Joab David  writes, "Hey, Go to war, you get killed. Some people live. Some people die. Nothing we can do about it. Too bad."  For David, the one thing necessary to happen, happens. With the only one outside of himself and Bathsheba now dead, and Bathsheba not talking and himself sworn to silence, "The pregnancy is reassigned. David no long bears the burden. The truth is concealed. The guilt and responsibility passed. His royal status, moral authority, political privileges and personal integrity saved."

Question: by what we know at this point in David's story, do we have grounds for reprimand, rebuke,  dethronement?  What dowe see here? Killing off a regiment to cover up a personal indiscretion? Essentially ordering a general, whom you make an accessory to your plot,  to put to slaughter an army so you might get off the hook for commitment of a reckless and stupid, adultery?  An act of personal morality covered by corrupting the machinery of state?   So we ask: personal sinner? Or abuser of power of the royal office?  Troubling question.

 II

But the story, for all the apparent success of David's cynical and self serving political and military machinations, is not over.  Another presence barges onto the scene: God. Yahweh. The ground and future of the nation.  As the last verses of Chapter 11 say, what David's eyes no longer see as evil, God's eyes do.  And God sends a discerning, subtle, single-minded, devastating prophet-prosecutor to the Royal Household. Chapter 12, verse 1: "The Lord sends Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, 'There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.' Then  David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, 'As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did these things, and because he had no pity.' Nathan said to David, 'You are the man!'"

Oh David, you indict that cynical, selfish, greedy, power-driven, rich man as a pitiless wretch deserving of death. Restitution must be made. Reparations are in order.

Hold it: "You are the man!"  And after cataloging for David all the Divine gifts poured out in his behalf over the years, Nathan brings David up short, tells him that with all of his military muscle, all of his political triumphs, his staff, the sycophants and the bureaucrats, his august house, his fame, his adulation, the adoring crowds, the levers of power there is another accountability brooding over him and us, and in this case while  killing, adultery and  coveting may be the stuff of  kings and counselors, of legislatures and commerce, of the streets and bedrooms of the commonwealth, it is definitely not the stuff of the ultimate Divine vision for human existence.  The breaking of covenant in the illusion that we live without moral coherence, in a world where evil elicits indifference or has the last word -- or where we just go it alone, making it up as we go along, autonomous and free from ethical and moral accountability is something this brilliant biographer of David rejects.  David is off on his own in chapter 11, doing his own thing, covering his rear, conspiring to do as he pleases, willy-nilly, with human life. He is brought back to a universal moral reality in chapter 12 where Nathan reminds him that the very means he uses to dispense with Uriah, -- the sword -- will now hover over his house for the remainder of his days and for so long as his nation exists.   And indeed, the violence and tragedy and upheaval, including the death of David and Bathsheba's so-called "love child," rape and incest among his sons and daughters, conspiracy and rebellion inaugurated by his heirs, the perverse and bizarre murders of his sons, one of them an X-rated assault on Absolom by David's bloody-handed co-conspirator Joab, with consequences so  stark that what originally looks like a history of the triumphs of David's monarchy and dynasty turns with that afternoon tryst into a shameful, bitter and chaotic saga  of national decline. Someone cares about how we treat, and speak and deal with one another and if we don't care our personal and community life can suffer wounds that will not heal, damage we cannot reverse. David's rash but deliberately calculated covert rendezvous,  so typical, so concealed,  so royally entitled -- so human -- as our writer sees it, bears epic consequences, it taints not only David's  house but poisons and corrupts his empire with layers of mistrust, vengeance and cynicism for centuries to come.  We see here a stunning, shocking, coherent moral vision.

Is there any hope? Can David ever find consolation?  Do you see David's response to Nathan's prophecy? "I have sinned," he cries. "I have sinned."  Clearly,  David  knows long before Nathan comes on the scene that he flounders in a moral swamp threatening everything he claims to stand for.  But Nathan's prophetic reflection crystallizes David's condition and pries out of him a confession: "I have sinned."  And as we hear in the wonderful Psalm we read a few moments ago, we discover before us a model for  gaining reconciliation with the Divine life we can wall-off or, casually wandering in another direction, set aside with a  "thanks but no thanks."   We see in this Psalm: David,  stripped of all the trappings of royalty and  the presumptions of power; we see one who dismantles himself before God, who discards all claims to office and  status, who bears only a broken spirit and contrite heart  reconnecting the bond between himself, the  Divine heart and, because ours is God of ethical dimensions, bonds with the betrayed religious and national community.  One starts from ground zero.  The Lord, as many of us in this room can attest -- the Lord by grace can wipe the slate clean and we can begin again. In David's case -- David's case -- this happens. His prayer, "do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me" is answered; although his life and that of his nation are marked forever, David no longer assumes moral autonomy; he no longer presumes ethical activity without collateral implications; he no   longer surmises Divine disinterest in the decisions of human beings and their communities.

For you, for me, for whoever we may cherish or brood about in our hearts and in our prayers today, David's tragedy, David's ethical interdependence, David's finally humbled and renewed spirit may offer us a revealing perspective on God's caution and grace, God's warning and hope, our human condition amid Divine Providence and promise.