David isn’t a role model. His isn’t a story to tell us that “with GOD, all things are possible.” We shouldn’t imitate David. His sin – a sin we recognize as a sin against GOD, his neighbor, and Bathsheba herself – is not our rule of life. And neither is his action on the battlefield. But it is his faith – and it is how GOD connects to that faith – that should move us.

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King David and GOD’s beautiful, flawed creation
Proper 13B  |  2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; John 6:24-35

Why David?

Every Thursday night, we get together to talk in our Bible Study. We’re reading through the whole Hebrew Scripture. In January, we started in Genesis, and now we are finishing the Wisdom literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs) and are moving into the prophets. And when we gather each week, I invite us to retell the story from the beginning. I mix it up a little, sometimes we go into real detail and sometimes I have us go book by book. Sometimes, it is the big picture.

I have us do this because it is important know the story.

Now, I don’t just mean that our Scripture is important or reading Scripture is important or even that we need to know what happens in our Scripture. All of these are important, for sure. But more important than all of that is knowing that there’s a story here. Not just a history. Not just some rules. Not just old texts to worship. Not something precious to wrap in fancy leather and keep with us at all times. That we have a story about GOD and the people. A story that isn’t always easy to deal with.

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And every week, we find ourselves wrestling with the same thing – we did it again this week – we always do. We wrestle with the biggest figure in the Hebrew Scriptures, what our tradition calls the Old Testament. David. The king.

We wrestle with this guy and we wrestle with why he’s such a big deal. Why we should care about him. We even sometimes wrestle with why it matters that Jesus is called Son of David; that Matthew and Luke both compose blood lines that go back to David.

The simple answer is that he was the great king. But that doesn’t do it justice, and certainly doesn’t respect the true power of David in the text.

The sequence we’ve been reading the last few weeks in Samuel is central to understanding, not just David and the Hebrew people, but of how people saw Jesus a thousand years later. We can’t know Jesus without knowing David.

The problem with David

We know David as a boy who felled Goliath. And we know the king who gains GOD’s favor. But we also read about this favor–the covenant GOD makes with David–which is a promise to be with him, unlike Saul. That GOD would be with him no matter what. Not because David deserved it, right? But because GOD wanted to give it to him. That certainly sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

So we read last week about David sitting on the roof and seeing Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife taking a bath. He wants her. So he has his soldiers go get her. And when he’s done with her, he has the soldiers send her home. The great king raped his neighbor’s wife. And when he couldn’t cover it up, he had his neighbor killed.

David, great King David, is a sleazebag. This is not “youthful indiscretion,” this is evil. So Nathan needs to get David to see his problem, doesn’t he? He can’t go in straight to it, he can’t confront the king, or the king will get defensive and may even have him killed. He won’t see the problem. He’ll see the weeds, the excuses that get in the way. He’ll justify it somehow.

So Nathan tells him a simple story. A story of stolen property that can’t ever be returned. And when David announces that the character in the story deserves death, Nathan announces that the character is David – for he has stolen from Uriah what can never be returned.

And the writer is masterful, not using Bathsheba’s name here, referring to her as “Uriah’s wife” even as David has taken the widow as his own wife since.

David knows the problem. Nathan has cut him down with the word of GOD and he knows he has messed up royally. He has sinned. He hasn’t just done something wrong, he has violated GOD and GOD’s promise. This is big time. And from here, the powerful David begins to take a backseat in his own story, as his sons fight over who will succeed him.

Not a role model

So here is this flawed king, this man set before us as special, as the one who GOD adores, who is given a promise, a covenant, which will endure, which will stay with his family, no matter how awful and evil his descendents will be. And some of them are some real scoundrels. This just doesn’t make sense. Especially if this is who we compare Jesus with. This dude seems like bad news.

None of this makes sense if we think GOD’s promise is a reward for behavior, that grace is given transactionally, that David, or anyone else earns GOD’s favor.

It also doesn’t make sense if we think that David is GOD’s ideal role model. If we think GOD wants us to be more like David, who breaks, what, four of the ten commandments in about a week’s time, then none of this makes sense.

But, if we remember that GOD’s favor is given, not earned; that it isn’t reflective of our behavior, but an invitation to relationship, then we can start to see David a little differently. If we see David’s power and wealth and action and place as not some transactional blessing from GOD but a gift given with hope for opportunity. That this man GOD loves will do what men can’t do.

This is, remember, the boy who slew the giant, not because he was stronger, or faster, or wilier, or smarter than the giant, but because he believed GOD was with him and would protect him. He literally couldn’t wear Saul’s armor and had to go out as him, a boy in the flesh, not a warrior.

David isn’t a role model. His isn’t a story to tell us that “with GOD, all things are possible.” We shouldn’t imitate David. His sin – a sin we recognize as a sin against GOD, his neighbor, and Bathsheba herself – is not our rule of life. And neither is his action on the battlefield. But it is his faith – and it is how GOD connects to that faith – that should move us.

King David, the gift GOD never wanted to give, was a gift, not in his failures, but in his faith. A gift fulfilled a thousand years later in Jesus. Who came and offered to this crowd of thousands a passover meal of himself. In the gospel we call John, this telling of the Feeding of the multitudes is the book’s Passover/Last Supper story, with the promise that he is bread and that he will be with them whenever they break bread together.

GOD acts through imperfect people

We know that GOD doesn’t bless us because we’re worthy, but I don’t think we always get what that really means. We look for perfect people and role models among the scriptures and among the saints and even among comedians and football players, but we aren’t going to find them. And I’ll dare to say that Jesus can’t be perfect and fully human at the same time because these identities contradict each other.

And we struggle with this because it sends us into the weeds, to parse what perfect is, what actions are required of us, and what it all really means, and we lose sight of who we are called to be. We have thousands of examples to follow, from figures we’ve heard about in books, to our own parents and loved ones who have lived lives of faith and of confusion; hope and disillusionment.

But we also get the story. The story of a GOD who reveals GOD’s self to Moses in a bush and when asked what name can Moses give the people, GOD says:

I-will-be-there-how-so-ever-I-will-be-there

And GOD shows up at the Sea of Reeds. And sticks with them in the desert and in the Promised Land and in Unified Kingdom and in the Exile. GOD promised to be there and GOD shows up. Not to fix things for us. Not to appear in the way we demand of GOD to show up, but in the way of GOD’s choosing: how-so-ever-GOD-will-be-there.

GOD sticks by David, not because David is a hero. He certainly isn’t. But because sticking with us is what GOD does. Coming to us in the form of vulnerability, not power; support, not rule; hope, not victory; conscience, not certainty; generosity, not forceful obedience.

And that is the way GOD teaches us how to live and move and have our being: a story, living a vibrant life, and loving one another as if none of this were ours and all of this were GOD’s. And each of us is a beautiful, flawed creation with the opportunity to share and love and act to reconcile this beautiful, flawed creation to GOD and GOD to us all.