This is the Good News

Sermon Preached at Germantown Mennonite on July 29, 2018

Based on 2 Samuel 11: 1-15

 

The Bible is full of Good News.  News of healing, liberation, justice, and a vision for a new way the world could be.  

But there’s also a lot of bad news in the Bible.  There are stories of people being hurt by the powerful, stories of enslavement, of sexual violence.  Today’s story is a bad news story. It’s bad news for women, bad news for anyone in the service of the powerful.  

This is a bad news story, but not an unusual one.  We hear it in one form or another pretty regularly in the news.  Powerful man, neglecting his duties, catches a glimpse of a woman and wants her, wants to own her and possess her.  So, he sends for her and make it impossible for her to resist–he is, after all the most powerful person in the known world.  And he finds a way not to directly kill this woman’s husband, but he put the husband in a position where he would surely die. So many aspects of this story sound familiar.  Don’t they?

This is a story of bad news.  

But there are places where this story is read and preached as good news.  I recall hearing this story preached when I was a kid. And I wish I remembered it because it was a good teaching.  I remember hearing this story as “Bathsheba was seducing and alluring King David, a man chosen by God to lead the people.” “Bathsheba wanted the King’s attention.”   “Bathsheba was compliant with King David’s wishes because she knew she was part of God’s great scheme.”

I know I’m not the only one that heard that story interpreted like this.  And I’m disgusted by this interpretation. Nowhere in the text does is say any of these things.  Nowhere does it say that Bathsheba wanted attention, or asked for it. Nowhere does it say in the text that she was scheming, or trying to lure in the king.  These are behaviors that have been put on the Bathsheba by the readers. And let’s be honest–they’ve been put on these text by powerful male theologians and preachers.    

But, this is not what was happening in this story.  Bathsheba was just taking a bath. Some biblical scholars have even made a case that she was “washing” on the roof–washing her hands, washing her clothes, washing her body–we don’t know.  She was washing on her roof when all the men of the city–including the King–were supposed to be out fighting in a war. No one was supposed to see her because all the leaders, all the men, should have been out fighting in battle.  

This is not a good news story.  

In fact, it’s another story in a long line of stories of the leaders of Israel abusing their power, trying to possess and control women–to add them to a collection, a harem.

This is not a good news story, but it is not a surprising story.  It’s one that’s played out in the news, in the courts, in our political drama.  This is not a good news story. It’s just the news.

We have some indications that David’s behavior is not a surprise to the writer of the book Samuel. The author writes, “In the spring, the time that Kings go to war”.  That is the most ho-him thing I’ve ever read. At the time that kings do what they do… It’s as if the author is preparing us for what we all expect–another abuse of power, another assault to the people who don’t even get to tell their own story.

To understand this comment about the king, we have to go back to earlier in the story and remember that the people wanted a king, but the prophets reminded them of what a bad idea it was, and how God wanted better for them. God could rule them instead–they didn’t need a king to lead them, a king that would surely be corrupted by power, wealth and their own selfish aims.  

But they insisted.  We want a king. And God got tired of fighting, and the prophets got tired of warning them of the eventual selfish narcissism of Kings, so God gave the people what they were sure they wanted.  

So the people got their king, and the kings did what they do. They went to war.

And the people became accustomed to Kings taking who and what they wanted for their own pleasure and not thinking about anyone but themselves.

And this became so commonplace, and so bad, that even the author of the book of Samuel has fallen prey to the narcissism.  He’s told the story of Bathsheba from the perspective of David. David saw, David wanted, David took. And sometimes, friends, we have fallen prey as readers, because we assume consent.  We assume that Bathsheba would say yes, that she would be ok with this, that she would desire this.

But, in the story, we never hear a word from Bathsheba.  But don’t be deceived, friends, we know she had something to say.  We know she reacted, responded, had strong feeling about the whole experience.  I can only assume that she wept when David took her, she wept when her husband was killed, she wept to be David’s favorite wife.  Because it was not what she asked for. It was not was she desired.

We have read the scriptures to assume that because David did it, and David was God’s chosen one, that David was perfect, that David thought about his choices, cared about the people he led, desired only good things for them.  We assume that David would mind boundaries, would care about Uriah at the very least, and would respect the bond between Bathsheba and Uriah.

But if this is caring about people, if this is leading people, there’s something very wrong here.

This is not good news.  

This is abuse.  What King David, the leader of God’s people, did to Bathsheba and Uriah was abuse. 

Abusive behaviors take place when we fail to see the humanity in other people.  This happened in the way that King David treated Bathsheba and her husband. And the abuse continues in the ways we tell the story, and in the ways we interpret the story, when we fail to see the humanity of Bathsheba, a woman with a voice, with feelings and with a complex inner life.  The abuse continues when we do not put ourselves in her place, and witness for ourselves all the boundaries that have been transgressed.

The lack of humanity with which David treated Bathsheba, and the lack of humanity with which we have been told this story it is a symptom of a spiritual illness.  It’s a narcissism that that insists on telling the story from the perspective of the powerful. It’s a narcissism that desires to be in David’s place, that wants to satisfy our own needs, rather that being present to the pain of others.  This is the same narcissism that limits even the vision of the writers of the Hebrew scripture, who cannot manage–despite their gifted writing skills–to give this woman a voice.

The bad behavior of King David, and the flawed assumptions of the writers of theology are more than just troubling behaviors.  The way some see this story as good news, rather than the bad news, bad behavior it is, gives us eyes that are untrained to see abuses in the church, in our families, in our communities, and in our political sphere.  

Instead of seeing this as just bad behavior, can we see this as a deep need for humanity’s transformation in heart and mind.  Instead of seeing this as part of God’s plan, can we see this as David’s deep spiritual illness, despite being labelled as “God’s chosen one.”

The only way we can address this sickness of heart and mind is to bring it to the light.  We name David’s abuse of Bathsheba, and all the ways that this went against what God desires for humanity, and it continues with the ways that we have been trained to accept it, condone it, or ignore it in scripture.  

We name and bring into the light the abuses of theologians like John Howard Yoder, famous Mennonite ethicist, who sexually abused countless female students and colleagues, all while framing it in a theological construct of “love.”  We name the ways that his theological framework did damage to a generation of women in the Mennonite denomination who tried to speak out and who were silenced because John Howard Yoder was “God’s chosen”.

We name and bring into light the abuses of our politicians whose behaviors we’ve ignored because we’ve been enamored with their public persona.  

And we even have to name and bring into light the ways that–yes, even in this church–patriarchy rears its head when some women are only asked to be in the kitchen and some men are only asked to be trustees.  

The ways we fail to see the full breadth of humanity of each other does damage to our spirits.  It is a spiritual illness. And God calls us back. God calls us not to the way of kings. God calls us back to God’s side, back to that place where we are fully seen and known, not as a thing to be possessed but as a person with a name, a voice, talents, opinions and agency.  God calls us back to our full humanity, a place where we are treated with dignity, a place where our talents and gifts are understood and respected.

We were not born to be possessed, to be owned.  We were not born to assert power over others. We were born to be seen and known by God and each other.  We were created to be loved and to love each other in our full humanity.

This is the good news.  This is the good news. AMEN.