Greed
(based on 2 Samuel
11:26-12:13a, Ephesians 4:1-16)
Every Bible ought to have a warning on its cover:
Some of the stories
found within these covers will shock you.
They will test your
faith.
They may even stretch
you and challenge you.
If they aren’t treated
carefully, they could possibly hurt you or hurt others.
Therefore, handle the
words found here with care and caution.
Even if that warning were on the cover of every Bible, I worry
that many people would not heed its warning. Too many of us look past the troubling stories
that we find in the Bible without even second guessing or questioning them. And we don’t really work through some of the misguided
or merely bad interpretations of these difficult texts. Too many of us ignore passages we don’t like
or we just mark them as antiquated tales having little or nothing to do with
us, but forgetting that these difficult-to-grasp passages of scripture can
teach us an awful lot about God and the paths of faith to which God calls us.
Sometimes, worst of all, we like to sanitize these texts, sort of disinfecting
the wounds that they might leave behind, softening their sharp edges. The problem with this, is that we then limit
the power and the struggle that real people who lived these stories both
suffered and learned from them.
Particularly, when we try to “fix” their stories, we silence their
struggles and muffle their cries.
The story of David and Bathsheba is one such story we have often
sought to “fix.” With today’s text, we
entered at the end of the story. But
perhaps we should really hear all of it from the beginning.
Read Chapter 11
Because of who David was in scripture; God’s chosen king of Israel
and the ancestral father of Jesus, we excuse David’s behavior on his rooftop
when we imagine him accidentally catching sight of
Bathsheba instead of seeing him like a Peeping Tom. Because labeling him as a Peeping Tom makes
him a bad guy. And since we can’t have
him as a bad guy, there must be some other person to blame – there must be some
other explanation. So, our scapegoat
becomes Bathsheba for exposing herself to the world, neglecting to consider
that she was not an exhibitionist but someone who was simply bathing in privacy
on the rooftop of her own home.
But, historically, we have done this before. We can go all the way back to Adam and
Eve. Generally, we have always
interpreted the story of banishment from the garden of Eden as Eve’s
fault. She ate of the forbidden fruit
and then made Adam eat of it, too.
Therefore, it was her fault. But
if you really read the story carefully you’ll see that Eve was tricked and
beguiled by the serpent to eat of the fruit while Adam, knowing full well what
he was doing (it even says so), took that delicious, forbidden bite.
As we should know by now, there is a cost or a consequence for
every sin. Having eaten from the tree
that they were told not to eat, Adam and Eve were banished from the garden,
forced to work hard for the earth to produce its bounty. And in today’s story from 2 Samuel, David
must face his consequences when he is confronted by Nathan. It’s a story that forces us to reflect in
particular on the sins of the powerful, the greed that comes with that power,
and the wave of grief these sins leave behind.
It is not an antiquated story, no matter how uncomfortable it
might make us or want us to switch the blame, pretty it up, or “fix” it. It’s a story that is played out nearly everyday,
right NOW in the news. The only
difference today is that Bathsheba herself has become her own Nathan to accuse
the men of their lecherous acts, both subtle and not so subtle towards
women.
Uriah, Bathsheba’s brave husband, is now dead, and Bathsheba can
only lament within the confines of a political system that does not allow her
to seek justice. Instead, she must
conform to the rules of a political system that use her as a simple pawn in the
desires of a powerful, greedy, King.
Perhaps the great king imagined that his crimes would go unnoticed
— but just like today, such scandals do not remain a secret for long. I imagine that the close alignment of Uriah’s
death and David’s acquisition of a new wife raised more than a few eyebrows. But who would confront the king with his
crimes? Who would have the tenacity to
accuse the king of such greed. God has
seen the great damage David has done and sends the prophet Nathan to execute
justice.
Confronting the powerful requires courage. Good strategy is helpful too. So, Nathan shares with David a parable of
sorts. What if a rich man with more
lambs than he could count takes the one treasured lamb of a poor man to feed a
guest? Notice how Nathan particularly
spends a great deal of time on the great care this poor man takes of his one
lamb. The rich man has everything he
could ever want but takes what very little the poor man has.
David reacts to this report with anger, failing to recognize his
very public hypocrisy. He concludes that
such a criminal is worthy of death and should reimburse the poor man four times
over. He thus falls into the trap of his
own condemnation. And Nathan can then
accuse the powerful king saying, “You are the man!”
Even as David is confronted with his crimes, a question remains:
Why did David do this? Did he really
think he could get away with murder? Perhaps he thought he would get away with
it. Perhaps he did this simply because
he could. Perhaps this was a pure
exercise of power for power’s sake. Perhaps
he never imagined that he would be confronted by his sins. Perhaps he did not
count the death of Uriah and the grief of Bathsheba as prices for which to be
accounted. Maybe David thought there was
no price to pay for his greed.
The powerful often think they are entitled to anything they
want. After all, they deserve it. The deserve the best, they deserve anything
they want. They deserve the prized
possessions of what little others have.
But he was wrong, not because he didn’t expect Nathan’s confrontation
but because he was blind to the damage he had already done. No sin is ever merely personal. No sin is truly only an offense against God. Our sin always impinges upon the lives of
others. That is the very essence and
definition of sin – something that breaks a relationship, a trust between you
and someone else and precisely what makes forgiveness so difficult to
experience on either side of the equation.
This story is not about sex or adultery, really. It’s not really about lust or desire either. At its core, the story is about greed – a
desire for what you cannot or should not have – the unrestrained greed that
accompanies the powerful, those who have access to do and to have anything they
wish, the will of the powerful to take and consume what belongs to the poorest
among us.
When the powerful sin, they leave a wake of destruction. Individuals are demoralized, families are torn
apart, relationships are irreparably damaged and the innocent are harmed –
sometimes beyond repair.
The story of David is tragically still too common today. Too
often, the crimes of the powerful are the subject of cover-ups, spin and
excuses, not justice.
Where is a modern-day Nathan when administrators conspire to
protect a football program instead of the lives and psyches of vulnerable young
men? Where is a modern-day Nathan when so-called
leaders or politicians of any party break their marriage vows so casually? Where is a modern-day Nathan when the greed of
corporation executives take millions every year, while their workers can barely
pay for their healthcare, when the greed of the most powerful consumes more and
more leaving others with less and less?
But, here’s the problem:
It is rather simple for us to point fingers to the sins of the
great among us. However, we conveniently
forget is that we too are imbedded in webs of sin: economic, political,
cultural, even religious.
Grocery stores lined with thousands of products and produce come
at a price. News that dwells on
entertainment and scandal not information comes with a price. A culture of consumerism and excess comes with
a price. Clergy – whether TV evangelist
or local pastor/priest – with unrestrained power and authority comes with a
price. Any spin that spews from the
mouths of politicians, political parties, or corporate executives, come at a
price.
How will we react when Nathan points an accusatory finger at us?
When the prophet declares that our lifestyles, our comfort come at a great
price and that this price is paid by the poor and the broken of the world? When
Nathan tells us a tale about a rich ruler with much wealth who was willing to
take what little the poor peasant had, will we realize that “I am the man”, “I
am the woman” who has committed such ghastly sins against my neighbor?
There is no easy way to answer these questions. We can only hope that with the help of God and
bold prophets like Nathan, such injustice might be exposed and brought to an
end once and for all. We hope against
hope and yearn for a new day, not out of naiveté or blind faith, but because we
hope that Nathan and the God for whom he spoke will always be in our midst.
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