Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

I wonder how many times you have read or heard the story of David and Bathsheba? It’s a story I’ve definitely been familiar with for a long time, and the way I have heard or read it has most often been from David’s perspective. 

David sees someone beautiful, someone who catches his attention, a woman he asks about, wanting to know more about- someone he deeply desires and (in his mind) who he needs to be with. David sends for Bathsheba, she comes to be with him, and she goes back home. And then, there is trouble- this isn’t going to be just a one-time tryst, as she is now pregnant. And this isn’t something that is going to be easily hidden or explained, as her husband Uriah is away. 

David tries to get out of this trouble by bringing Bathsheba’s husband back to her, but he stays away from her, and shows his integrity. He doesn’t think it’s right for him to enjoy being with her while his men are out and still in danger. So, David has to take more drastic action and sends Uriah out to the front lines, setting him up to be killed.

And when we pick up the reading in today’s passage from the Hebrew Bible, it all works out for David, his problem is solved, Bathsheba becomes his wife and bears him a son. Phew- right?!
Well, except for that last part of Chapter 11, the very end of verse 27- “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,”  Whoops, David.

So, God sends Nathan to help David understand, and how does he do that? By helping him see what he has done from the perspective of Uriah. So David comes to see that he has done something very wrong to Uriah and has sinned against God. We even see in Psalm 51 how very sorry David is and how he pleads with God to help him.

I think it’s safe to say that we can all see, in looking at this story, that David did some awful, terrible, maybe some would say unforgivable, things. If we read it as presented from David’s perspective or even as Nathan presents it to David, recognizing Uriah’s perspective, it's awful, AND, unfortunately, when we look at it from Bathsheba’s perspective, it’s worse. 

Many of us were likely brought up with a patriarchal view of stories in the Bible. We are generally told the perspectives of the men in these stories and the women are referred to as property or possessions, when they’re included at all, except for a very select few. In fact, there exist interpretations which place the blame of seduction and adultery on Bathsheba. But, what if we look at this story through a different lens? 

Dr Wil Gafney, a prolific womanist theologian says, about Psalm 51, “It is ostensibly David’s psalm of repentance after his abduction, rape, and forced impregnation of Bathsheba, and his subsequent murder of her husband. Yet he does not mention her or his specific transgressions against her in it. To be fair, the biblical text constructs David’s sin as being against God and Uriah, her husband, but not against her.”

So yes, the Bible lays it out for us with this patriarchal lens, but if we really look at what it says, David took Bathsheba because he could. He was the king. He saw someone he wanted, and without regard for who it would impact, he claimed her. He didn’t need a wife, he had at least 6, not to mention access to servants or prostitutes. He ended up taking everything from Uriah and he also took everything from Bathsheba. When David spotted Bathsheba and sent for her, she didn’t have the choice to say no. She was taken by and for David and then sent back home when he was done with her, where everything was now different- and that was just the beginning. David’s sin took the life of her husband (who honestly seemed like a pretty stand-up guy) and also the life of her yet unborn child. 

So what can we learn from this awful story? 

When Nathan comes to David and tells him the story about the beloved lamb of the poor man being taken by the rich man, it’s clear to David who is in the wrong. Whether David recognized the effect that his actions had on Bathsheba or only on her husband and God, he knows he is wrong and instead of denying it, he immediately recognizes it, owns it and also faces the consequences (as did the others involved). 


I wonder if it’s easy for us to write this off, finding comfort in feeling like what David did was far worse than anything we’ve ever done. 

But, what if instead, we looked at where we might have done something that resulted in others being wronged, and look at how we have owned up to our actions? 
 

Likely we’ve all had moments during which we may have been so driven by what we wanted that we ignored the impact on others- times when we might have told ourselves we needed something or deserved something because of a position of power or a certain role that we had, or because of something we had accomplished. But when we don’t consider our actions through lenses other than our own, we run the risk of harming others. 

Living where we live, in this time, in this city, in this country, we all carry privilege- it’s different for each of us, but it comes from our gender, our economic status, our appearance, our skin color, our upbringing, our life experience, our family background, the ableness of our bodies, our education, et cetera. If we’re not careful to consider the ramifications our actions- even our basic daily decisions about if and what to purchase, what we say, what we eat, what we wear, how we get around- hold consequences, some more present and immediate than others. 


And what about the sins of our nation, and the hundreds of years during which all humans weren’t valued the same? While our laws now don’t allow for this in an obvious way, this is still happening. And our ancestors’ lives still have great impact on our lives today- when the opportunities our ancestors had were vastly different from those of others, we aren’t starting on level ground.

We continue to run into the consequences of our sins as a nation and it’s a scary thing. We are so divided, half of us think the other half is at fault, wrong and probably worse than that too. We can’t see eye to eye and we can’t understand each other. 


I believe there’s something in this story about what our role is going forward from here, like not being paralyzed by the fear of what is to come. David faces the consequences laid out before him and looks to God to help him work through it. Most of the time, we are likely not confronted with our behavior like David is here, but if we hold ourselves accountable, looking to God to help us find our role in changing things and recognize what gifts we have that we can contribute, we begin to move towards a better future for everyone.

I see many of you in our church and in our community working diligently for what you believe in and encouraging each other to do the same! And also, looking to the future in the life of our country, it’s easy to feel hopeless, and I think for some of us it’s tempting to say something like what I read between David’s lines, “I won’t like this, but I’ll survive”. The thing is, even if we aren’t directly vulnerable, there are others who won’t survive- those whose lives will be made unsustainable. We all need to try to look at this from their perspective, through their lens.

Who would those be? Those who are already facing challenges of poverty, those who rely on the systems currently in place to support themselves, those needing and unable to access reproductive healthcare, individuals seeking acknowledgment of unfair treatment that they still face today, LGBTQIA+ individuals who are outright persecuted for who they are.

We can’t just sit back and let this happen. Now is the time to work to protect and look out for people around us who are or will be affected even more than we are. 

So what do we do? 

I think we need to ask ourselves, individually and as a community- whose perspective are we missing?  Who has God placed in our lives, in our paths through whose lens we can see things differently? Whose voice is in danger of being silenced that we can listen for and amplify?
What privilege do we have that we can use for the good of our siblings who might not have as much? How might the audience we have be affected by hearing other voices? How are we connected, how can we be more connected?

In these next critical months, may we take seriously our place in God’s Beloved Community, and open our ears and eyes to the others here with us. May we look to God to help us keep our hearts and minds open and consider the perspectives of others in all that we do. And may God help us to see how we can use what we have and what we can access to help those who are in this Beloved Community with us. Amen.

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