Sermon for July 25, 2021, Pentecost 9B
Audio is here.
Video is available (after Sunday) at the YouTube Channel of the Central Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith, AR.
2 Samuel 11:1-15
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 at Jerusalem.
It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose 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. 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.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”
It is part of my sense of personal mission in life to disabuse people of bad theology. Bad theology is dangerous. Bad theology makes people suffer. Maybe you have been a victim of bad theology; I have.
Let me give you some examples of how bad theology hurts people.
It is bad theology to tell people that they are essentially bad. People may do bad things, but at root, we are children of God, beloved by God. Fundamentally, we are not bad, so it is bad theology and causes suffering to tell people they are bad. It leads to guilt and shame, even self-loathing and worse. No. We are created in God’s image and pronounced, “very good.”
It is also bad theology to tell people they are in danger of going to hell. When you believe in a God who is essentially defined by the word Love, it makes no sense, in my opinion, the idea that God’s crowning achievement would be an eternal torture chamber. Hell is bad theology, and the fear of hell has caused much suffering!
Now here is the bit of bad theology that I want us to focus on today: It is bad theology to believe that whatever I am suffering is some kind of payback, or recompense for my misdeeds.
The Real World
There are two ways to show that God is not a God of retribution. First, the real world. Does the real world show us that suffering is the result of Divine punishment for sins?
I was just having a conversation with a person who spent a career in nursing, from nursery to pediatrics, all the way to home health and hospice nursing. We were talking about children. Not only do children get cancer, but some are even born with it. Same with Spina Bifida. Some are born addicted to drugs. They have not done anything to deserve it.
To imagine that there is such a thing as a God who would punish parents by causing infants to suffer and die makes God out to be a moral monster. None of us would imagine doing something so unjust and hideous. God cannot be like that; not if God has an ounce of goodness. The real world shows us that it doesn’t work that way.
Jesus’ Theology
The second way to deconstruct the doctrine of divine retribution is that Jesus said repeatedly that God does not work that way.
Jesus said that the man born blind is not guilty, and neither are his parents.
The ones who died when the tower fell were not killed for being the worst sinners, Jesus said.
He said that God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the fields of the righteous and the wicked, the godly and the ungrateful.
So it is not the case that suffering comes as a consequence of bad behavior.
Some behavior carries its own consequences: bad diets lead to bad health outcomes, for example. Drug abuse can lead to addiction and a whole cascade of problems, but that is not something God does; we do that to ourselves.
So, turning to the story we read, I want to say to Bathsheba: you were not raped by King David because God was punishing you. I want to say to Uriah, you were not murdered by King David because of anything bad you did.
Just the opposite. I want to say to Bathsheba: you were raped because an entitled powerful man believed he had the right to your body to satisfy his own lusts. He did not. He was abusing his power. He may have been a king, but he was not above the moral law. David was wrong. Bathsheba was not.
Neither was her husband, Uriah guilty of anything. In fact, according to the story, he was so upright that he would not even take advantage of a chance to be with his wife when his men were suffering on the field of battle. Uriah was not killed for his sins; he was killed by the same man that raped his wife; a powerful man conducting an attempted cover-up.
No One Is Above the Moral Law
There are several reasons why this sordid story is in the Bible. One is what we just reflected on: that bad things do happen to good people without being punishments from God. And we will return to that them in a minute.
Another important teaching from this story is this: no one is above the moral law, not even the king. Later in the story, the prophet Nathan confronts David, possibly at the risk of his life. He speaks truth to power. He believes in an authority above the king. No one is above the moral law, regardless of power, wealth, popularity or position.
This is a value we Presbyterians hold dear. When the government is wrong, we will raise our voices. When officials are corrupt, we will not be silent. When there is abuse of power, we will call it out. We will champion the causes of the oppressed. We will fight for justice for people discriminated against.
We continue the tradition of Jesus who went to the temple to shut it down, resisting the corruption and oppression its aristocratic leaders were subjecting the peasants to.
We join the great tradition of Presbyterians who were at the forefront of the effort to free slaves and abolish slavery.
We join hands with all the Presbyterians that marched with Dr. King and other civil rights leaders, demanding changes in laws that restricted access to voting, housing, education and employment for people of color.
Recently we marched against the killing of George Floyd and the systemic racism that his murder symbolized.
We are, right now, working to bring the Bail Project to the River Valley so that poor people do not have to sit in jail, while their wealthier peers are out on bail, awaiting trial.
The story of David and Bathsheba, combined with the Jesus tradition, is there to give us the mandate to holding all people accountable to do the right thing.
Retribution? No.
But let us return to the story again and reflect more on what happened. Bathsheba and Uriah were victims of evil acts. They did not suffer because they were being punished for anything they had done.
It is important to notice that there is more than one perspective about this in the Hebrew Bible. There are many chapters that teach the doctrine of retribution: that those who are good get blessed and those that are evil are punished.
Even in this story, later we read how David was punished for his sins. The son born of his rape of Bathsheba died, as punishment, according to the story. So, although Bathsheba and Uriah were innocent victims, nevertheless the author here still believed the guilty should be punished.
But as people in those ancient times reflected on the reality that many good people, like Bathsheba and Uriah, suffered through no fault of their own, they began to tell other stories that taught a different view.
They told the story of Job, a righteous man, according to the author, who suffered horribly. He lost his children, his flocks and herds, his health, and the love of his own wife who told him to “Curse God and die.” His friends, according to the story, came to tell him his suffering was punishment for something he must have done. But they were wrong. Job’s sufferings were not a punishment from God.
As we saw, Jesus concluded that Job was right, and his friends were mistaken about God. So, Jesus taught us to love God, not to fear God.
Jesus taught us that when we do wrong when we lose our way, when we get off track, God is not there to make us suffer. Rather God is like the shepherd who searches for his lost sheep.
God is like the woman who searches for her lost coin, and rejoices when she finds it. God is like the father of the prodigal son who runs to meet him on his return, and interrupts his planned repentance speech with announcements of a party.
We believe that when we suffer, God is there, suffering with us, just as when we rejoice, God is there, rejoicing with us. God is with us in every moment of our lives, experiencing what we experience. And God’s Spirit is there, even in our suffering, to open up new possibilities for a future with hope.
The Cross at the Heart of Christianity
At the very heart of our Christian tradition stands a cross on which an innocent victim died, not because he was being punished by God, but because Rome considered him a threat.
It is hard to face suffering. It was hard, even for Jesus. He felt abandoned by God, as we sometimes do when we suffer. But Jesus was not abandoned by God.
When we gather around the Lord’s Supper table, we remember that Jesus suffered, he was broken like the bread is broken. His life was poured out like the cup is poured out.
We need to remember this often. That is why John Calvin wanted us to celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Our faith needs the frequent reminder that suffering is not a punishment from God.
Rather, as we receive the bread and the cup, we are fed spiritually. They are the meal that sustains our faith so that we can stand up for those who suffer, as Jesus did, taking risks, as he did, on behalf of the God who loves every one of us, and walks with us through our suffering. God is good; suffering is not your fault.
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